In 1983, the Indian company Cavin Kare began selling shampoo in small plastic sachets instead of large bottles in order to make it more affordable to the poor.
In 2011, 87% of shampoo sold in India was in sachets.
Now what has this got to do with SAP ?........."THE SIZE"
With the recent product developments, innovations and acquisitions happening at SAP, have you ever wondered how the future products would be designed and delivered to customers?
I put a thought on the above and let me share my understanding and the images that passed over me.
There are 3 major aspects I think of about how products in SAP were/are being developed;
- Integration
- Client requirement
- Technological Advancement
Till the 3rd phase of product development, the core concept was “Integration”. The 3rd phase, as highlighted by SAP, is where R/3 was developed (The 1st and 2nd phase is where R1 and R2 were developed in 1972 and 1979 respectively). When my SAP. Com was launched in 1999; SAP combined its existing ERP applications with new e-commerce solutions on the basis of cutting-edge Web Technology.
From 2002, the product was developed hand in hand with technological advancement. These advancements, I believe, were something which very few could visualize and comprehend.
If you observe the product after phase 3, it can be understood that SAP developed products based on client needs. The first development came with ECC which was a scaled down version of R/3 and a product with Unicode feature. The products like SAP All-in-One, SAP Business One were pre-configured solutions which were developed for catering SMB’s (Small to Medium Scale Business). SAP claims that
70% of its implementations are for SMB’s. What I understood is that the size of the product was scaled down to cater to different section of clients.
The SAP fraternity is now talking of SAP HANA, technologies like cloud and mobility. As I understand SAP HANA improved the system performance thereby reducing the architecture to R/2 from R/3. SAP acquired Fieldglass and Concur which developed specific solutions
for Contingent Workforce and Travel Management. Do you think that these two solutions are not available in ECC or with my SAP.com?
It is available but these solutions are cloud based and to reiterate “SPECIFIC” solutions for very specific purpose.
With these observations, I feel that the size of the hardware requirement and that of software is reducing. SAP is concentrating to provide focused business solutions, which is easy to market, implement and maintain.
In the future, I will not be surprised to see SAP available in a pouch with specific solution for specific business need and with varying user license. To be better, the products could also be available in major retails; like how windows and antivirus solutions are available. The implementation could be in the form of a set up file along with easy online help.
My tagline will be “AFFORDABILITY OF HIGH QUALITY PRODUCT COUPLED WITH THE EASE OF ITS AVAILABILITY AND USE”
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL AND SMALL IS CHEAP
