Here are my top 3 takeaways of the Day 1 keynote – which is always more about the general business, with the Day 2 keynote more reserved to product as delivered by Dmitri Krakovsky tomorrow.
- Another SuccessConnect – another transition. Last year it was the first time that SuccessConnect happened with a new leader, Lars Dalgaard having left SAP, and Shawn Price did a very good job re-assuring attendees that the new SuccessFactors would only be better than before, to quell any takeover angst. And overall that has panned out very well for SAP with most of the SuccessFactors clients staying loyal, giving both credit to SAP and the product vision. Of course it doesn’t hurt when all customer need a product, that is being promisingly delivered – which is EmployeeCentral.
12 months later there is a new leader with Mike Ettling, who performed equally well with his first major keynote in front of the customer, user and partner base. A different style, it was all jeans on stage, a few more jokes and bringing back Lars Dalgaard on stage was a different delivery than last year, which – what matters most – was well received by the audience.
- Trends, Trends, … No HCM event these days without talk about Millennials. And the keynote even brought them on stage – two new graduates of the SAP sales academy talking about experiences, an then in true – as presumed – Millennial fashion taped Dalgaard’s view on where the industry is – right in to a SAP Jam session. It was all good – but looked a little bit too scripted. And in general we don’t think at Constellation Research that it’s about your date of birth, but your digital proficiency – read my colleague Alan Lepofsky’s report here). The implications for vendors are significant – as e.g. Jam is not only for the Millennials but for all users. If digital proficiency will postulate a different user experience – as it should – remains something to be seen – beyond SAP.
- Major Service Improvements – Unfortunately only at the very end of the keynote – when the audience was as usual a little drained in attention span – Ettling announced a number of key services changes – unfortunately not explicitly mentioned on slides – so I may miss a few – but the key ones were:
- A rolling roadmap of 12 months, which garnered direct applause. A good move as customers deserve to know and plan what’s ahead.
- A separation of test and production. I think that is already the case – and probably this didn’t come over as clear as supposed to, meaning more that customers will have access to the new version before it goes to production. Certainly something SuccessFactors needed to address.
- A release document 6 weeks before cut over. Not sure how late or early SAP customers learnt what is in a release but this is certainly a welcome change, too.
- A rolling roadmap of 12 months, which garnered direct applause. A good move as customers deserve to know and plan what’s ahead.
We need to find out more on these – and see if they are meant for both SAP HCM and SuccessFactors products and more, stay tuned. Ettling has an extensive services background from his time at NorthgateArinso and Unisys – so I am pretty sure he knows what stands behind these announcements, which ultimately should be all for the better for customers and ecosystem overall. Now SAP needs to deliver on them .
MyPOV
A successful start for this SuccessConnect – next executive transition handled well – stay tuned for the event report in the next days. We had asked SAP for roadmaps since the longest time – something that SuccessFactors as a SaaS company claimed it couldn’t (or needn’t) to do – so this is a change for the better.