Strategy of SAP

Résumé du document

Today, SAP is the global market leader in collaborative, inter-enterprise business solutions. The company now employs more than 34,000 people. But its leadership is threatened by Oracle's transformation from a database company to a business applications vendor. Over the course of three decades, SAP has evolved from a small, regional enterprise into a world-class international company. What is a secret of SAP's success? The aim of this work is to describe SAP's strategy as a reaction on the dynamic developement and changes in global ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) market, which is base on creating a business ecosystem. In the first part it will shortly describe the history of SAP. In the second part it will essay to analyze the ERP market environment and new SAP's opportunities. Finally it will explain how SAP's strategy works.

Extraits

[...] To grow, firms must make allies with others in order to create more value. Companies must therefore build economic communities based on inter-company synergy. The directors of SAP soon understood the value of co-operating with several partners in order to create their business ecosystem. Thus, SAP‘s innovation mainly consisted in its choice of alliance, which still depends on three different types of partnership: client partnerships (vertical relationships), transversal partnerships with companies from different industries (transversal relationships), and alliances with competitors (horizontal relationships). [...]

[...] The aim is to grow that share to a range of 40% to 45% by 2010. SAP's success in the SME marketplace is achieved through partnerships with qualified, committed, and effective resellers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and other partners. Through programs such as SAP PartnerEdge, which offers a variety of incentives for successfully developing and selling SAP software-based solutions, future success will involve partners to an even greater degree. By the end of 2005, SAP and its ISV partners offered a total portfolio of nearly 600 qualified mySAP All-in-One solutions, which are available in more than 50 countries and used by more than 7,700 customers worldwide. [...]

[...] Codenamed Mendocino, and built in keeping with SAP's ESA vision, the new solution will provide a strong bridge between SAP's business applications and Microsoft's desktop productivity tools, opening up new opportunities to bring SAP functionality to a larger class of end users, and helping customers gain enormous productivity gains. Announced software alliance between Microsoft and SAP means offering transparent, seamless integration between their products. For example, SAP schedule changes entered in Outlook will feed directly back into SAP; financial budgets in SAP will be viewable in Excel ect . It is a great alliance which neatly leapfrogs Microsoft into the Enterprise Applications space, and makes SAP more accessible via familiar Microsoft Office interfaces. Everyone wins. Except of course big league competitors Oracle and IBM. [...]

[...] By the end of the decade, intensive examination of SAP's IBM database and dialog control system leads to the birth of SAP R/2. The 1980s: SAP moves into the company's first building on Max-Planck-Strasse in an industrial park in Walldorf, near Heidelberg. their software development area and its 50 terminals are all now under one roof. Fifty of the 100 largest German industrial firms are already SAP customers. The SAP R/2 system attains the high level of stability of the previous generation of programs. Keeping in mind its multinational customers, SAP designs SAP R/2 to handle different languages and currencies. [...]

[...] As the decade draws to a close, Hasso Plattner, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman, and CEO announces the mySAP.com strategy, heralding the beginning of a new direction for the company and SAP's product portfolio. mySAP.com links e-commerce solutions to existing ERP applications, using state-of-the-art Web technology. The 2000s: With the Internet, the user becomes the focus of software applications. SAP develops mySAP Workplace and paves the way for the idea of an enterprise portal and role-specific access to information. By million users work each day with SAP solutions. [...]