'SAP customers aren't ready to innovate' - an interview with UK and Ireland user group chair Philip Adams

As the SAP user group reaches 25 years old, Computing sits down with new chair Philip Adams to talk licensing, support and the road ahead

As head of IT at Mercury Engineering and now chairman of SAP's UK and Ireland user group, Philip Adams has spent his first year pushing hard for changes and closer relations with the vendor. Computing sat down with Adams at the group's 25th annual conference in Birmingham to discuss the trials and tribulations of the past 12 months, and what SAP users expect from the road ahead.

Computing: Congratulations on reaching the 25th year of the user group. And this is your first year as chair. How does that feel?

Philip Adams: Wow, yeah. 25 years. I just hope I don't mess it up from here!

CTG: Seems like you're doing quite well so far. For instance, things appear to be calming down with regard to the rather fierce debates about licensing that arose at last year's conference. Would you agree?

PA: It's getting sorted. We've made progress, which is important, because there's only so much energy you can put into this before you have to say it isn't worth it, and you should spend your time doing something else. But the key thing is to invest the time in it because I think it's going in the right direction. Certainly there's more work to do, as I said yesterday [in my keynote], but I hope SAP will work with us and engage with us so we can move there faster.

CTG: Are you still pushing for licence parking?

PA: We are, absolutely. And that's not just UK and Ireland. There are groups globally pushing the message equally. We have a global policy we're engaged with there. We described it as a pain point in a document 18 months ago, and that's still there. We'll continue to push for that one until we get an answer. And if they say no... well, I guess with the on-premise and cloud extension policy there's now an element of - not parking - but partial termination, but there's a clear difference between those.

Parking is where you can put it back on the shelf and use it later, whereas termination well, it's gone, and you'll have to repurchase if you want another. The only business that would probably ever choose [termination] as an option is if you've divested your organisation, significantly downsized, and are unlikely to see an upturn any time soon. So it's only useful if you're 100 per cent clear - still, at least it's now an option.

CTG: SP VP of cloud strategy, Sven Denecken, just reminded us there's a premium to pay when moving from on-premise to cloud, but that's a fair decision. Do you agree?

PA: Absolutely. Though we're looking forward to more information early next year, especially about the metrics and making all that a little clearer. We don't have the hard facts yet - there's some elements out there. It's difficult for [SAP], because since we started on this journey with them, they've bought three or four companies. And when they add to the portfolio, the metrics are already in place for those companies, and the costs go up, from no fault of SAP's. So I don't envy the guy trying to keep up with it.

If you're going from on-premise to cloud, SAP is supporting your whole infrastructure. It's not a like-for-like licencse model anymore. It's, I think, a factor of 1.2 to 1 to upgrade. It sounds attractive, but I haven't done it from my own business perspective. They've come out with a metric that makes sense, certainly for them, because that's the challenge for a lot of cloud companies.

'SAP customers aren't ready to innovate' - an interview with UK and Ireland user group chair Philip Adams

As the SAP user group reaches 25 years old, Computing sits down with new chair Philip Adams to talk licensing, support and the road ahead

CTG: It all seems quite positive this year though?

PA: Well, we've not been negative as such, just frustrated, in keynotes and things when we've been working with SAP over the years. So I've just been concerned that some members might get tired with that and they'll want to see some positivity from the user group, albeit still challenging SAP, because I also don't want us to be seen to be losing the strong voice and the independence we've got.

Being positive indicates we actually are making a difference. Being too negative might cause people to say ‘Well, you say you're independent, you say you've got this voice, but you're not actually getting anywhere with it. You're just spinning like a hamster in a wheel'.

But we're at a level of engagement with SAP now that I've never seen before.

CTG: Sounds good. Who do you talk to at SAP most?

PA: I've met [VP, cloud solutions at SAP] Sven Denecken more times, and even Jim [Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO of SAP] more times than I've met Tim Noble [SAP UK and Ireland CEO]. That can't be right. So we need to get more out of [UK executives] because these are the guys who are on the ground, and are easier to get to for a start - they're less busy than Jim might be - so I think it's important to get them involved in more events. We want them to drive our membership and stay relevant, and we can't do that without them.

Ironically, Guy [Armstrong, COO of SAP UK and Ireland] changed job roles, but indicated he still wanted to be user group sponsor, so now he's COO, he didn't pass the baton to somebody else. I see him very regularly.

CTG: What's the group's relationship like with Tim Noble, then?

PA: Erm... well Tim's obviously a key part of the team but, you know, there's no point in wasting two peoples' time when you go straight to Guy, and Guy can do whatever you need to do. If he can pull the strings, we don't need to go through Tim to do it. Works for us, works for them. Guy is very much committed. He's the one who signed the memorandum of understanding with us.

CTG: Tell us more about that?

PA: We had a strategy session about 18 months ago, and we decided we wanted to strengthen that bond with SAP. We said, well why not get that formalised, and agree what we will do for each other.

CTG: So that's a legally-binding document?

PA: Oh, yeah. But Jesus, the difficulty we had getting that through SAP legal. We had one version and then it came back, and it was a completely different version. So we ended up getting back to more or less where we started eventually, but I remember it was just their legal department [standing in the way]. It wasn't Guy, it wasn't any execs.

So it more or less describes how we work together, how they support the user group. I hate to advertise, but we do have competitors out there in UK and Ireland. Certainly not on our scale, but we can't be complacent about that. We want to make sure we are the user group.

CTG: So SAP promotes you more now?

PA: Yeah. At events and even internally now. So if you go to Clockhouse [SAP's UK headquarters] now, the breakout area has a big user group advertisement there with leaflets. And I think the pack that goes out to new customers has a flyer in it, too.

CTG: Sounds encouraging. The ‘theme' for this year's conference is "Tomorrow's World". To build on your keynote, how would you like SAP to be helping its users move forward with its offerings and innovations?

PA: There's two prongs there. One, our customers aren't ready to innovate yet - they just don't have the time or the space. Their businesses just aren't always in that steady state. But they've still made a significant investment [in SAP], so I just wanted to make sure they got the most out of that.

So I wanted to challenge SAP to make a noise about whether customers are getting what they're paying for. I've found this myself; I've been through this pain for years; that extra 20 per cent [licence fee] kicks in next year, but many customers never actually make the effort to find out exactly what you can get from the results of it.

SAP talked about it when they introduced it, but I think very few customers have tapped into it since. And also [we must] say to SAP - encourage us, draw it out. I don't have the time to spend half the day trawling through the marketplace to find five or six things that may be of benefit to me, and realise after another day they're no good to me.

'SAP customers aren't ready to innovate' - an interview with UK and Ireland user group chair Philip Adams

As the SAP user group reaches 25 years old, Computing sits down with new chair Philip Adams to talk licensing, support and the road ahead

CTG: Is that what your words about tighter focus on the roadmap were about?

PA: Well yes, we do need to know where we're going. Everybody has a three, a four or a five year strategy, but nobody knows what technology will be like in the next few years. So it's not that roadmaps aren't important, but we need to almost feel like a partner [with SAP].

Tim or Jim said it... you don't necessarily invent the market if you don't know what's coming next. And while they're probably getting ideas for that from some of their partners, we need to make sure it'll be of benefit to all members in the long run.

CTG: SAP has said it's getting into "design thinking". That's a little bit trendy.

PA: It is a bit, but we've started using it with the user group just to figure out how good we are at implementing SAP ourselves in the user group. Well, we should use it. You can't have us implementing Oracle! So we thought we'd ask them if they want to do a design thing [with us] and it so far looks very good.

But they need to find more people within the organisation to engage with customers on things like that. And we can help that, too. But, generally, people we get at these customer sessions aren't selling, however well they explain products or innovation.

CTG: That's a common topic. Just why is SAP so bad at selling itself? Oracle's Larry has a boat. What have they got?

PA: I don't know if it's a Germanic thing? Obviously Larry Ellison is a big brand within himself. So they have that American image, I guess. I'd describe SAP as very subtle - ‘We're about the product. If the product's good, it'll sell itself, and we don't need to be all singing and dancing'. And they probably thought that was to their advantage at one stage. But they're getting better, slowly.

And anyway, it's quite good for a user group. While we don't want to become their marketing arm, it gives us an edge to bring more value to our members, because it's difficult to get this information from SAP, but we can try to do it for them.