SAP UK & Ireland promises 'to listen' to customers

SAP's sales force, however, only wants to sell on-premise software, say users

SAP UK & Ireland has responded to customer complaints over "forced march" upgrades, and high licensing and maintenance fees with a promise to "listen" more closely to customers.

Cormac Watters, SAP managing director for UK & Ireland, said that the company had even reorganised to make it more responsive to customers.

Speaking at the SAP User Group in Birmingham today, he said: "First, we have taken steps to change processes to enable us at SAP UK & Ireland to listen to our customers more effectively. We set-up a 'customer success' office to take feedback and to work closely with customers on areas, including our offers, policies and support."

He continued: "We have also worked to raise awareness of our global SAP Listens survey and the methodology to improve participation and results.

"Second, I have changed the team structure and roles in response to customer feedback. Traditionally, we have had a number of different members of the sales and accounts teams on each customer account. We reorganised so that we have the same number of account managers across a much larger number of accounts, helping us to build longer, more personal relationships and to help us to engage with and understand our customers' challenges.

"Third, we are transforming the way that we engage with our customers. Our business is driven by quarterly milestones, but we recognise that this is not true for all of our four-and-a-half thousand customers. We are working to change this mentality and to build a calendar of activity that will support more regular engagement.

"Even more important is how we engage with customers. We have run a number of training seminars internally across the year to educate the accounts teams on how to verbalise the digital transformation journey," said Watters.

However, talking off-the-record to Computing, some customers have suggested that SAP's cloud-first, digital-centric message isn't reflected in the company's own sales force.

They, say users, are still focused on the high upfront commissions they can make from on-premise software sales, rather than selling software-as-a-service and subscriptions.