SAP Service Partners, Get In Touch!

Why should SAP® Service Providers partner with Corevist?  Because the Gartner Group says to.

Well, they don’t exactly say you should partner with Corevist per se, but they do say in their November 13,2014 report entitled “Predicts 2015:  Cloud and Digital Business Shape Strategies in the Future IT Services Market” that:

“Service providers, to remain relevant, must define and clearly articulate their cloud and digital business strategies, as well as value promised for digital business services and solutions”

What the Gartner Group really believes is that things are changing in the IT Services market…and I couldn’t agree more.

They believe that CIO’s are:

1. becoming less motivated by cost cutting initiatives and are shifting their focus to realizing the speed and organizational agility that cloud technologies enable and, they are
2. trying to leverage digital business technologies to innovate in support of their business’s goals and outcomes.

So what’s a Service Provider to do?

Well, according to Gartner Service Providers need to come up with digital business based offerings that will allow them to compete by delivering real business value.  Simply selling bodies that are used to implement expensive on-premises software packages (you know who you are) simply won’t cut it anymore.

For now, in the SAP® eCommerce space, the service provider herd is all running after the BIG hybris implementations.  I wrote about that last week in my trip report blog from the SAP® hybris GamePlan event in Chicago.  Accenture, Sapient, Razorfish and Deloitte are all chasing the mega million dollar engagements that the digital business pioneers are willing to fund.  I guess as long as people are willing to buy, than they’ll be service providers willing to sell.

But eventually, two things will happen:

1. There will be a growing number of “disillusioned” projects (technology specifications met, but little to no business value delivered) and,
2. the market’s appetite to spend a lot of money for highly customized, risky and expensive projects will diminish.  We’re already seeing an awful lot of push back on cost by almost every Industrial Manufacturer who wants to get into the B2B eCommerce game.

Gartner thinks that a HUGE number of these “early adopter” projects are going to fail:

“Through 2017, 70% of service provider-led digital business transformation will fail due to lack of business model innovation that delivers quantifiable business outcomes.”

In other words, while IT and Marketing had fun spending all those millions of dollars over 2 plus years, when the CEO finally gets around to asking “so what did I get for my investment?” the answer is going to be “well…we have a pretty website but our B2B customers and salespeople still have to transact business via phone, fax and emails”.

The solution?

Gartner has a Strategic Planning Assumption for that as well:

“By 2018, 20% of new technology spending will be on fully integrated, platform-based solutions, offered with as-a-service pricing models.”

My only point is why wait until 2018?

Corevist has been providing a “fully integrated, platform-based solution offered with as-a-service pricing” for SAP® Integrated B2B eCommerce since 2008.

If you are an SAP® Services Provider who is looking to differentiate yourself in the coming battle to deliver quicker business value utilizing the newest digital business technologies, what are you waiting for?

Operators are standing by to take your calls.

Sam