SOA Still Misunderstood Says Capgemini Survey

Sorry to be so SAP specific of late. . .(really, I can talk about other things!)

eWeek reported that

37% of respondents surveyed at two of SAP ’s Sapphire conferences said “a lack of understanding” was the biggest obstacle to adopting SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Their data came from a Capgemini survey of 1,000 respondents.

What’s the Lesson?
I think it’s really about speaking in a language decision makers can understand – and that will be different depending on the decision makers. Sure, it’s ok to discuss the advantages of the architecture in terms of coding when you are speaking to those who code, but I’ll need to speak in normal, everyday business terms to win over the executive paying the bills.

And I’m not talking about throwing around general phrases like “increased productivity” or “improved efficiencies” – I’ve got to be ready to give some specific information that shows how the business will run better – give some real life examples of before and after. Show the implications and impact of this technology.

I think that SAP has a lot of that information available. If not, I’m sure that will come through pilot customers. Then it’s just a matter of getting it out there – the right message, to the right people, via the right channel(s).

Congrats to Germany today! Especially to Lehmann for making some nice stops.

Should SAP Leverage “Germanness” in Advertising?

I was reading a post by Thomas again on SAP and he mentioned something he has said before

SAP needs to market its Germaness.

One of his old posts talks about VW and how well they do that. (Read that post here)

And in reviewing that post, I see that Thomas might find my armchair advertising advice for SAP from yesterday to be a little off.

However, I have to point out a couple problems with that.

1. VW target audience is much different than most decision makers at large organizations – (but maybe not too far off from some smaller to mid-size enterprises)
2. “Germanness” can still mean “inflexible” to some. That is exactly the opposite of what SAP is trying to be (and had a bad rap for in the past).
3. Anyone who owns a newer VW knows what “well engineered” means — you cannot even change a headlight by yourself it is so tightly engineered into the front of the car (although a friendly local dealer did show me how – the manual, however, says you need to have the dealer do it).

To be fair, some humor might be nice. I think IBM has found a way to be that “trusted advisor” type of brand while using some humor. The VW humor is great, but different. (Personally, I think they could have had a more off-the-wall engineer in those ads Thomas referenced – with a slightly more funny accent.)

Where I think humor could work really well is in talking to the developers or consultants. These people need the humor and it’s a little more safe to make fun of yourself with them. It would actually build trust. At Morsekode, we’ve been trying to work with the SAP’s Software Developer Network SDN to inject some of that, but we’re still knocking at the door.

Having Said All of That. . .
Smart engineering is important and that is part of the trust SAP has earned. Don’t discount the user interface too much though. At the end of the day (that phrase is for Charlotte), it’s people who have to use the stuff and the productivity of companies depends on people.

5-minute Armchair Advertising Advice for SAP

I wrote a short overview of SAP and what I felt was “their brand story” a couple weeks ago and Thomas stopped by to comment. He asked what I thought of SAP’s current “[insert company name here] runs SAP” campaign and what I would do next.

With the combined Microsoft-SAP product, Duet, launching and a Wall Street Journal article last week on how SAP is focusing (once again*) on the design of the user experience, I think I have more than enough to drive some off the cuff comments.

[insert company name here] Runs SAP
On one hand, this approach seems to make sense. When I was at American Airlines, I was told that the CEO chose SAP, saying

“If it’s good enough for [some other big company that I cannot remember], then it’s good enough for American Airlines.”

That CEO was probably bolder than most. But many executives do look at what their counter parts are doing. Big decisions need rationalization to fit what their gut tells them they want to do. The last thing a decision maker wants to look like is a fool.

Some of my European SAP contacts find the advertising expression a bit odd. “Since when does Colgate run SAP? Did they buy us?” It’s a language issue that might have been thought out a little better. Easy for me to say – hindsight is 20/20.

The ROI Sell
The Return on Investment (ROI) advertising SAP has been doing is powerful because it is results driven. And, results help decision makers rationalize the purchase. (Many leading psychologists say that all decisions are emotional first, then rationalizations simply support what they’ve already chosen to do.)

But, Oracle’s cheeky response to those ads (which basically counters and says that SAP companies actually have worse financial results), now has everyone likely thinking (again) that “All Marketers Are Liars!” So Larry has done a good job and creating mistrust. Personally, I’m inclined to trust Larry less, but I digress. . .

So What Next?
The Wall Street Journal article last week talked about improving the SAP user experience (Designing Away Tears). The release of Duet (see www.duet.com) also simplifies the end-user experience. It seems to me, that if SAP can show the business implications of an improved user experience and the flexibility of the business process based on NetWeaver/Business Process Platform, then that combination might be an attractive sell.

Especially for making good traction in small and mid-sized enterprises, which seem to be the gold rush of this decade.

So, without the luxury of a long, in depth analysis, I’d mix ease-of-use/productivity gains with the flexibility of customizable business processes to strike a winning chord and also give justification for current customers to upgrade – many don’t understand why they should. A campaign that would show the value might be a nice targeted campaign as well (maybe not advertising, but through some other touchpoints).

I’d also contact Morsekode to help SAP make that happen! ☺

—
* I say “once again” as SAP engaged Alan Cooper in the late 90s to help improve usability of SAP applications in a large initiative that was entitled “Enjoy SAP.” As I peek at Cooper’s Web site, it looks like he has continued to help and may even still be involved.

Why Management Trends Quickly Fade Away

Phred Dvorak wrote a nice piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Why Management Trends Quickly Fade Away. He was exploring why management fads such as Total Quality Management (TQM), business process reengineering, and others come by storm and then quickly fade away.

Lack of Expertise The Culprit
The academic researchers seemed to point a bit of the blame at business consultants who fashion surf, or jump on to what ever seems hot at the time, although they don’t really have any specific expertise. (They might be generalists. . .)

That lack of specific expertise may be the reason many of those projects failed, potentially causing the fading out of the fad.

Specialists Actually Deliver
Dvorak writes that some companies may have actually begun seeing success with “fad” projects just as the fad was fading. Why? Companies were actually able to engage consultants who specialized in the particular fad or practice.

When studying technical communication, I remember the A-HA moment I had when I realized “I’m actually going to have to understand this stuff to write about it!” For some reason I had thought that my craft was writing. That was only half of it. The other half was about learning. I had to know what I was talking about before I could communicate it. Sounds simple, but I guarantee you there are plenty out there writing things about which they don’t fully understand.

Weed Out the Posers
So, what are the implications of this article for those seeking external marketing resources? You have to weed out the posers. You have to figure out who really understands what you do, who has the history, who can talk about relevant case studies, and who actually has the ability to understand your target audiences. Typically they’ll be able to talk about results they’ve delivered as well.

Now to catch up on the World Cup and Wimbledon. . .

SPIN Selling, Enterprise 2.0, and Real Business Benefits

I’m listening to Neil Rackham’s book S.P.I.N. Selling right now. I like it. It doesn’t have the same “cheese factor” that most sales books have. And, it’s geared for people who make “large sales” or those that require more than one sales call.

Asking Questions
His approach is quite nice because he gets you asking questions. Over the course of a number of calls you will use these questions to find out about the prospects situation, about the prospects problems, turns those problems into “explicit needs” and then uncover the “implications” of those problems. Finally, through questions, you move to deriving the need/payoff of the solution. (So, SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff).

Understanding Needs
His focus is really on understanding the customer’s needs. Clearly understanding. And shaping the discussion around those explicit needs. Then placing your solution in direct response to those needs. Pause for a moment.

Enterprise 2.0
Today I first learned that there was a term called “Enterprise 2.0” that we can all add to our buzzword toolkit. It made me think about Web 2.0, and all the so-called “social media” things such as RSS, podcasting, blogs. And don’t for get the PR 2.0 I just blogged about. Enterprise 2.0 adds wikis into the mix.

Rackham Makes Me Think
We spend so much time blogging, hyping, discussing technologies and how they will be “the next big thing,” but often we forget to talk about it in terms that matter to paying customers.

If I tell you (assume you are a CEO) about the features of an Enterprise 2.0 solution based on wikis, you will then understand what a wiki is, and maybe even understand the difference between structured and unstructured data. BUT you probably won’t feel the need to act on implementing it.

What’s the problem the wiki solves? What’s the implication of that problem in a business? As Rackham says,

“Implications are the language of the decision maker.”

Speaking Their Language
It’s hard to switch from geek speak to something that speaks like the CEO, or maybe CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) in the case of Enterprise 2.0, but the sooner we can use less “feature speak” and more “benefit/direct business payoff” language, the more successful we’ll be.

(To be fair – we geeks should all continue the discussion of the technology, but for my readers in the marketing land, we must not forget what sells – real business benefits.)

NOTES
WIKI – Basically a site or resource where users are allowed to add or edit content collectievely. Here’s an article about it from The Media Online.

Enterprise 2.0 – Read Thomas’ discussion here – he gives some definitions.

Wall Street Journal’s Sandberg Rains on Brainstorming

So many things I’d like to comment on right now, but the quickest one is a Wall Street Journal article about brainstorming by Jared Sandberg.

I usually only point these things out if I’ve also hear the same thing elsewhere or in previous research.

Group Brainstorming Ineffective
Basically, Jared is saying that many experts find the idea of group brainstorming to be highly ineffective at producing truly creative ideas.

Jared quotes a professor at University of Texas who says that teamwork and brainstorming are two management fads that have little research to support them. (He quotes a bunch of other professors throughout the article).

“The best way to get good ideas is to get people to write them down privately and then bring them in,” says Savid Perkins, professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The article is called Brainstorming Works Best if People Scramble For Ideas on Their Own in secion B1 of today’s Journal.

Anyone care to disagree?

OPML the Prescription for Anxiety Caused by Social Media (Blogs, Podcasts, RSS, etc.)?

Recently I began to feel an anxiety as I found myself bloglogged with millions more available for me to be aware of, to parse, to review, to explore.

It reminded me of 1995 when I first opened an early Netscape browser late one night at SAP and began exploring the already impressive number of Websites available. I could have, and did, spend hours in amazement at what was available.

Maybe you have experienced this anxiety too?
The anxiety of knowing there are massive amounts of information available and the uncertainty about whether you know all you want to know. Have I read all the blogs relevant to me and my industry? Can I speak authoritatively?

There’s a fear of seeming ignorant, not “in the know.”

Social Media like blogs, Podcasts, etc. have brought this anxiety to new levels.

A Movement Brewing
It seems there is a movement in the brewing among a niche (or maybe not so niche?) group of developers who are deep into investigating solutions to solve this “Information Overload.”

Alex Barnett (of Microsoft) was interviewed in this DevSource clip talks about, among other things, OPML and how it may be the answer.

What Is OPML?
This is what Wikipedia has to say:

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format for outlines. Originally developed by Radio UserLand as a native file format for an outliner application, it has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators.

This idea is that if we somewhat formalize a manner of general tagging, people will be able to limit the information they consume through a simple subscription/filtering operation. More formalized than the type of tagging you see on Technorati and the like. (And, btw, I’m just trying to make you aware – I’m still trying to get my head around all of this too.)

Why Should Anyone in Advertising or Marketing Care?
As viral or word of mouth campaigns become more the norm and people are “choosing” what advertising they view, appropriate tagging of your content (without spamdexing) may be important in determining how far of a reach your message gets. Same for blogs, websites, etc. (Actually, it’s already true for these.)

For example, let’s say you or had something posted on YouTube.com – aside from the viral traffic, it would automatically appear a list of new information in a new generation of aggregators for people who had said “I’m interested in X, Y, and Z.”

Maybe it will become a bit of an art form like Search Engine Optimization.

Natural Discovery?
One problem with this approach, raised by the interviewer in the DevSource clip, is that it may limit natural discovery of those unexpected gems of information.

Maybe it’s worth it to reduce my anxiety? (Probably!)

Question (or another big potential problem)
Can we count on authors to tag their content most appropriately and meaningfully?

Will this work?

Postlude
Everything has become so fast and so immediate – is there any chance that we are sacrificing the quality of information presented? Will this new breed of web writers/bloggers/producers/etc. all die prematurely of heart attacks trying to instantly and constantly say something informative, relevant and meaningful?

Thomas, Vinnie, Charles Zedlewski, SAP, SOA, and Brand Storytelling

WARNING: Some SAP-specific tech-speak involved!
Thomas Otter’s Sapphire (SAP’s big user conference) recap I agree with Vinnie on something. . . got me thinking. I went to Vinnie’s post to see what Thomas was agreeable to. And Vinnie took me to Charles – man, sometimes this blog thing can be a mess.

Charles was explaining (defending) all the good things about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture for my non-geek readers). I think he did a pretty good job. As I read his post, something resonated with me. No, it wasn’t that I understood it all, nor did it answer all of Vinnie’s questions, but it reminded me of a story.

Storytelling
In the marketing world, the idea of storytelling has been getting lots of press. If you Google “brand storytelling” you’ll get over 2 million hits.

SAP’s Story
Charles reminded me of SAP’s story and how SAP started. It’s pretty simple: The founders of SAP were working at IBM, constantly building similar applications over and over again for clients in Germany. They said, “Hey! We could standardize this.” They took it to their bosses at IBM and the bosses said, “I don’t think so.”

Well, IBM was wrong.
They (Hector, Plattner, Hopp, Tschira, and Wellenreuther) could and did.

35 years later. . .
Almost 35 years later, SAP is doing the same thing – taking code and trying to standardize it in reusable code. (NOTE: this assumes that the code is “useful” as well – performing something businesses want or need done.)

The Differences Today
The differences today? Numerous.

• The network has changed – it’s the Internet (or local Internet technologies).
• The rules have changed – partners are developing applications that will work together in what Kagermann calls “co-evolution” (if I recall correctly).
• Business process innovation is now supported by more application providers and software is more adaptable (read “less rigid”). Fitting the applications to my/your company’s specific business processes is more plausible now than ever before.

Because of all these changes, SAP has had to do some “enablement” work, creating an infrastructure (read “NetWeaver”) on which all of these applications can play nicely with one another.

SAP – Continuing the Story
SAP – at its core – is really continuing the story they started in 1972. They are trying to reduce inefficiencies of one-off, custom development, while offering customers productivity gains. The manner is different today, but the story reads on.

If SAP can place the current chapter of SOA/ESA/NetWeaver (aka Business Process Platform) in context of that over arching story, the message could be more powerful. (Disclaimer: I don’t read everything SAP puts out, so maybe they are doing this already – although I doubt it.)

Now to Thomas’ Point
Thomas was basically ranting about how SAP talks too much tech (SOA, ESA, NetWeaver, etc.) and forgets the business side. He talks about what really “sells” SAP in his presentations – it’s showing them the impact on their work (by showing what you can do as a result of their latest innovations such as Duet, Virsa, Adobe forms, etc).

The Opportunity
The opportunity to really resonate is to tie this all together with the big brand story. SAP has three decades experience in cutting out inefficiencies at the code/architecture level and improving business processes as a result (not always improving the user experience, but that’s another entry).

A New Chapter
SOA/ESA/BPP is another chapter that can and needs to be translated for the business buyer (as both Thomas and Vinnie pointed out). SAP can do that by giving customers and prospects a taste of the story, a story that paints a picture of their business run on an SAP’s lean, efficient infrastructure and all the good things that come as a result of that. (Vinnie might argue that it’s not lean – but give me some grace, this is a marketing post!). If the story is cohesive and easy to understand, customers (with whom the story resonates) will get on board.

SAP has a good story underneath all the acronyms, they just need to explain it the way I imagine their founders did.

Clear, simple, and relevant.