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SAP's Hosted CRM: Ten Things You Need To Know
[July 27, 2005]

SAP's Hosted CRM: Ten Things You Need To Know


Sizing up SAP's plunge into the hosted CRM market.
 
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
  1. Henning Kagermann, CEO of German enterprise-software powerhouse SAP, says SAP will launch a web-hosted version of its customer relationship management suite.
    1. Earlier they'd said they had no plans to do this, according to Infoconomy's Pete Swabey.


  2. At the US Sapphire user conference in Boston a couple months ago SAP talked a lot about its CRM version 5.0, which you'll see in the third quarter of this year, but didn't say anything about a hosted product offering.
    1. There were some rumors.
  3. Lots of companies have succeeded with hosted CRM.
  4. Think it's a coincidence that the announcement came after SAP announced their second quarter results, which showed that the CRM division was the only one where revenues stayed flat?
    1. This reporter doesn't either.
    2. Kagermann said there wasn't any link.
    3. This reporter has no reason to doubt his word, either.
    4. Guess we just don't know, really.
  5. It took Siebel longer than most companies to catch on to hosted CRM.
    1. It took SAP a little longer than Siebel.
    2. Think seeing the likes of RightNow, salesforce.com and others, including Ellison baby NetSuite succeeding, made an impression on SAP?
  6. In October 2004, according to ComputerWire, SAP America and HP offered a managed CRM product aimed at the mid-market.
  7. Some people think the reason SAP's CRM numbers were low this quarter is because everyone was waiting for the heavily-rumored hosted product.
    1. Which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you accept the not-a-coincidence announcement timing.
  8. ComputerWire thinks the move is a "complete change of strategy."
    1. Evidently back in May at the European Sapphire conference Peter Kirschbauer, head of business solutions told ComputerWire the company had no plans to release a hosted version of its CRM product.
  9. Other hosted CRM vendors are beings sporting about it.
    1. Salesforce.com said the move was "fantastic" because it "endorses on-demand as what customers want." And hey, it might take business from Siebel.
    2. Siebel's hoping it'll take business from salesforce.com
  10. Things are going to get a lot more competitive in the hosted CRM space now.
Sources cited in article:
 

 
 
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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
 
 

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