SAP puts a Web 2.0 spin on CRM upgrade
San Francisco - SAP on Tuesday announced an update to its customer relationship management software with a Web 2.0-style interface that could help to increase usage rates among workers. — Companies often report that usage levels for their business software …
Context & Ripple Effects
The update lands in the middle of a busy year for SAP: after getting on-demand religion in early 2006, the company spent 2007 announcing Business ByDesign for 100-500-employee firms, targeting the $15 billion mid-market, and agreeing to pay $6.8 billion for Business Objects — its departure from organic growth amid rapid business-software consolidation.
A Web 2.0-style CRM interface is a usability play aimed at the chronic problem the article itself flags: companies reporting low usage rates for business software, which undermines per-seat value and gives hosted rival Salesforce an opening at the low end.
First-order effects
- SAP CRM customers get an interface overhaul whose stated goal is raising worker usage rates — adoption, not new transactional functionality, is the product lever being pulled.
Second-order effects
- Salesforce and other on-demand CRM vendors face pressure to match consumer-web usability standards, since SAP is explicitly borrowing the browser-era interaction model that made hosted CRM attractive in the first place.
Third-order effects
- If usability becomes the differentiator, enterprise software competition shifts from feature checklists toward adoption metrics — reinforcing SAP's broader 2007 pivot to subscription delivery via Business ByDesign and acquired capability via Business Objects rather than organic releases alone.
The trend: Enterprise application vendors are converging on consumer-web interface conventions as worker adoption, not functionality, becomes the bottleneck in business software.