CRMKonvos – Bob Stutz and Esteban Kolsky of SAP are talking straight
In this episode Ralf Korb, Marshall Lager and I had two very special guests: Bob Stutz, president of SAP’s CX group, who shapes the CRM industry for more than 20 years now and Esteban Kolsky, former analyst, both independently and at Gartner. Esteban has deep roots and a passion for customer service processes and now leads the sales and service products at SAP CX. And then there was a special star, perhaps the youngest guest who we will ever have. Again, and as usual for our CRMKonvos, we did not stick to one hour. Bob and Esteban actually shared their insights for a full 90 minutes, which is something for which we are deeply grateful. We covered a lot of ground starting with how 22 years of experience in the military services can help in the software industry – and not ending with why it took him and his team that long to publish an SAP CX strategy. You are interested in the state of AI and machine learning? Ask Esteban – or listen to his statements in this episode. Same for what we are doing wrong in customer service for five decades now. And he needs to know, having a service centre background and having covered the service arena for 20 years now in various roles. Did the acquisitions that SAP did in the past years make sense? Why did it take SAP that long to figure out some of the gems in their portfolio? How should pricing look like and why would make this pricing vendors build better software? Why Emarsys? Where does it fit into the stack – and why?Ever wondered what the real...
SAP throws the CX Glove
It has been an intense 2 weeks. The CX or CRM or however you want to call it market got a serious makeover. After a long time without a tangible strategy, SAP announced a lot of things, starting with the intended acquisition of Emarsys, followed by an announcement about the release of a customer data platform as part of its SAPCXLIVE event, and then it also conducted its SAPCXLIVE online event in an impressive manner. I wouldn’t proclaim it ‘cineastic’, which is the current mot du jour, but still, it felt very much like a trade show, just virtual. And the week before, SAP president of CX Bob Stutz shook the players during an executive roundtable (very good discussion, intense 2:40 hrs) with representatives of the big 5 held by the CRMPlayaz Brent Leary and Paul Greenberg. He openly questioned the enterprise software vendors pricing policies by asking why the industry does not go for a utility bases billing approach – or should I say utilization based billing approach. Maybe it was just a challenge, as SAP applies usage based pricing with the indirect pricing model for its ERP software and intends to offer it for (at least parts of) its CX software. Pre event some pundits, e.g. Bob Evans of Cloudwars and myself, dared a look into the glass ball, interpreting the SAP world differently. What can be said is that any allegations of SAP withdrawing from the CX market, succumbing to the 800-pound gorilla that Salesforce is, should have been wiped out latest after the first few words of SAP CEO Christian Klein’s keynote of SAPCXLIVE. The...
CRMKonvos #17 – Entering The Dark Side of the Cloud
#CRMKonvos #17 – The dark side of the Cloud – danger, hope, liability, subscription, privacy … are they all gone? Quo vadis on premise and managed services? We are looking at the dark side of the cloud, its effects, chances and possibilities. We are also analysing the acquisition of Emarsys by SAP, do a little breakdown of the Microsoft cloud services that got announced last week (MS Teams anyone?) and general perspectives. Is the coveted 360 degree on the customer an illusion? And there is some harsh reality facing some suboptimal corporate structures. Fair play, as lived by Zoho, is another topic to be covered … Expectations towards SAP and its Customer Data Platform CDP++ are going towards the next level. Is SAP planning to destroy the silos to create more transparency? Is CDP really some BS (hint: not really) or can it be used in a valuable (for the customer) way)? A CX platform or at least a #COTP (Customer oriented Transaction Platform) are possible ways. Lots of ground to be covered. This episode is in...