June 16, 2003
(Computerworld)
SAP AG this week will detail planned enhancements to its CRM and supply chain management applications at its Sapphire '03 user conference, which starts today in Orlando.
In addition, SAP is rolling out the red carpet for PeopleSoft Inc. and J.D. Edwards & Co. users that might have cold feet about Oracle Corp.'s hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft - an offer that in turn jeopardizes the proposed merger of PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards.
In an attempt to woo customers away from PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards, SAP plans to offer them financial incentives to migrate to its applications, said Laurie Doyle Kelly, a spokeswoman at SAP's headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. "The scope of the incentives will depend on many different variables, but they'll be attractive," Doyle Kelly said. She declined to provide any details about the planned offers.
SAP also has invited key customers of both PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards to attend the Sapphire conference. But Bill Wohl, a spokesman at SAP America Inc. in Newtown Square, Pa., said the conference will proceed exactly as the company had planned prior to the announcements of the PeopleSoft/J.D. Edwards deal and Oracle's unsolicited buyout bid two weeks ago.
Ed Thompson, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said most users that have installed Version 8 of PeopleSoft's applications during the past 18 months or so are unlikely to be interested in what SAP has to offer. That group of customers "won't budge," Thompson said. "They aren't about to toss away that investment and go through another major migration process."
But users that are still running PeopleSoft's Version 7 software might be tempted to jump ship, he added. "Those are the customers both SAP and Oracle are interested in. They're going to have to make a migration at some point."
Wohl said SAP will announce a Version 4.0 upgrade of its CRM applications at Sapphire. The new release includes industry-specific features, such as trade promotion management capabilities for makers of consumer goods.
SAP also is adding inventory management collaboration functionality to its supply chain software in an attempt to help users improve their product replenishment processes.
Blau is a reporter for the IDG News Service.