SAP Business ByDesign - Adding Color to the In-built Solution Configurator

Dennis Howlett ( @dahowlett ), a popular SaaS ERP writer, recently posted SAP Business ByDesign - An update.  In this great SAP Business ByDesign article he touches on a couple of things:

SAP admitted that none of its BYD sales to date have required a Request For Proposal, which is the usual way that vendors are selected for this style of application.

That is an interesting statement.  In over eight years of selling SaaS ERP applications, Skyytek has only ever been asked for a response to one or two RFPs.  Maybe the market that these applications play in (small to mid-space), combined with the colorful demos and trials available in SaaS ERP and resistance amongst vendors to respond to RFP's (since in many cases the vendor has already been selected prior to the RFP) the formal RFP process is something of a dinosaur.  Who knows?  But one thing for sure is that RFP's in the ERP SaaS world are very few and far between (at least in the US).

Thus far, none of Skyytek's potential SAP Business ByDesign customers have issued such a request.  We feel the SAP Business ByDesign in-built configurator may be playing a part.

What is the SAP Business ByDesign configurator ?

This is a feature in the app that allows a solution, along with the customer to be fully scoped during pre-sales.  In other words, the solution is scoped in real-time.  The output is a full scoping document that the customer signs off on and therefore clearly defines expectations from both ends of the equation.

But of course it is more than that!  

Once a customer purchases SAP Business ByDesign, this "Scoping Tenant" (which it is referred to) can then be reused to initiate the project based on the pre-sales scope, progress through preparation, fine tuning, and all the other necessary phases to ensure a smooth and successful deployment.

And even more!

During this process - you are actually configuring your account.  So not only is it a scoping tool, a planning tool using a set methodology - it is the beginning of the end to your go-live.

So what are the advantages to the customer and reseller?

Once a customer purchases SAP Business ByDesign the advantages are numerous:

• Reduced deployment costs
• Everyone is on the same page and working from the same set of data - no ambiguity
• Project control is in-built with tasks and project steps you can define and allocate clearly - thereby reducing management costs
• "Scope Creep" becomes a much lesser issue since the scope is defined pre-sales
• Risk of a failed deployment goes down significantly, since it's a methodical step by step (and modular) approach to deployment rather than traditional SaaS/Non-SaaS project where the chances of success highly depend on the ability of the consulting group (and client team)
• Overall cost to the customer is reduced for deployment and the reseller gets to essentially "commoditize" deployment 

Conclusion

As @dahowlett states:

As far as I am aware no other vendor can offer that functionality from inside its system. It is a huge time saver and should ensure much higher implementation success rates than are usual for this class of software

We couldn't agree more !

Comments

[Simjen]

This article was a superb read about SAP Business ByDesign! I couldn't have explained things better myself regarding the configurator.