What's in Store for SAP SRM 7.0?

Posted At : May 27, 2008 3:12 AM
Related Categories: Spend Management

At SAP Sapphire, I had the chance to take a closer look at SAP's forthcoming SRM 7.0 release. I was told that ramp-up was scheduled for Q408, although G/A timing felt a bit nebulous to me as the SAP folks I spoke to had different answers when I asked. If ramp-up goes off without a hitch, I'd expect GA sometime in the Q209 time frame, but as we all know, until it's actually available, don't make any plans for it. Still, SAP SRM 7.0 represents a big step forward for SAP on a number of fronts and it is a release to get excited about. It offers significantly tighter integration -- and advantages -- with core SAP ERP components (and eventually other SAP business applications as well).

For the first time, SAP reps will be able to claim with a straight face that there are material functional advantages to running their SRM 7.0 on a core SAP platform over a best of breed solution. Still, upgrading won't be a walk in the park. Building off of the NetWeaver 7.0 release, SRM 7.0 amounts to what is essentially a forklift upgrade -- once a customer upgrades to this version, they will be able to gain "future functionality delivered via enhancements packs" not to mention better integration across their SAP environment. Still, using a forklift to transport a pallet is not the same as using your own hands to lift box, if you catch my drift.

As part of a forklift upgrade or not, SAP positions the advantages of SRM 7.0 coming from three key areas: procurement excellence, services procurement and foundational enhancements. From a procurement excellence perspective, SRM 7.0 will provide unified access and information across a purchasing environment and SAP ERP information. It will provide a single view for all purchase orders and queries and will consolidate SAP ERP and SAP SRM business objects (e.g., supplier or part information will be an object both within SAP SRM and SAP ERP, allowing users to work within different SAP applications and access the same information). Additionally, SAP positions SRM 7.0 as enabling a centralized operational contract repository across both ERP and SRM, offering a single, consolidated contract type/object that will enable easier access and management.

SRM 7.0 will also bring much needed enhancements to SAP's services procurement capabilities, allowing "end-to-end collaboration on the procurement of services", "excellence in the procurement maintenance, installation of construction spend," and "effectiveness in the supplier submission and payment of services". Foundational investments include extended work flow capabilities, total cost of ownership reduction, enhancement packs, and improved enabling via what SAP is positioning as a "collaborative supplier management" module which I previously wrote about in a post from Sapphire.

Stay tuned for my analysis of how SRM 7.0 stacks up to the market (although it's like comparing moving trains, considering that we don't know what Ariba, Oracle, SciQuest and others will have available by the time users adopt SRM 7.0 en masse sometime between 2009-2011 -- or perhaps even later).

- Jason Busch

Posted By : Admin | Comments (3) | Send | del.icio.us | Linking Blogs

Comments

[Add Comment]

I do not envy you your task of trying to make sense out of vaporware that is not even at the vapor stage yet. Since one normally encounters vapor in the form of steam rising from a boiling pot of water, maybe we should coin some new terms for pre-vaporware products. How about these:

WIC: Water Is Cold
WIW: Water Is Warm
WIH: Water Is Hot
HWHV: "Houston, We Have Vapor"

We can then proceed to the usual later stages of "vaporware," "promise-ware," "demo-ware," "credenza-ware," and so on.

# Posted By Amused | 5/27/08 8:20 AM

I am rolling on the floor ... amused, you should be in marketing ;-) Seriously, I do believe that SAP has every intention of releasing SRM 7.0 next year from a G/A perspective (they simply can't afford to have two colossal release cock-ups on such an important product -- that will kill any credibility they have created with SRM to date). And I was not just looking at screen shots when I saw the demos. But no one should make any decision until the product has references and is available. Until then, companies should only compare the actual capabilities of SRM 5.0 with what is currently available from competitors and should not make any investment decisions -- or delay other decisions -- based on what SAP plans to release going forward until it's actually for sale.

# Posted By Jason Busch | 5/27/08 8:37 AM

Thermodynamics says that vapor will become solid at higher pressure, and I can tell you that the pressure is definitely on at many marquis SAP shops where the Procurement executives feel like Charlie Brown with the football getting pulled away again. Just talked to one today. SAP flew the Germans out to US to try to convince them to move to 6.0, but were surprised when the firm said it might not be a good idea since the product wasn't officially a product anymore! After the meeting, the CPO said it was clear where they WEREN'T going to be getting their sourcing apps from. Unfortunately, it's not just SAP playing the role of Lucy, but IT as well. What was the Gartner number for heads-down ERP user license, $50K? That money could buy a nice little spend analysis project from CFOKnows, BusIQ, etc. with some money left over to fund a few sourcing events and some liquor for the party afterwards. That's what I would do if it were MY money (well, at least the liquor part).

# Posted By SpendFool | 5/27/08 8:26 PM

[Add Comment]