Please excuse our back-of-the-napkin math, but while we're waiting on hold to join the SAP/Ariba analyst call, we thought we'd share some quick arithmetic on SAP's recent cloud transactions.

SuccessFactors
2011: 1,578 employees, sales $327.9M - $208K per employee
SAP paid $3.4B -- 10.4X revenue or $2.15M per employee

Ariba
2011: 2,432 employees, sales $443.8M - $182K per employee
SAP plans to pay $4.3B - 9.7X revenue or $1.77M per employee

SAP
2011: 55,765 employees, sales $19,116.3M - $343K per employee
At the same 10X evaluation SAP would be worth $191B -- however today their market cap is $70B

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Every year, SAP has a massive conference in Orlando for clients, prospects, partners, media and probably also to cross-train SAP employees in what the Walldorf-empire is up to. The range of products and the size of the venue is immense -- in fact, you could probably roll half-a-dozen ISM shows into the SAPPHIRE format and there would still be room left.

SAPPHIRE is a well-run event, with few expenses spared -- this year they had Van Halen as their closing act (something I had to pass on, unfortunately). There aren't many other software companies out there who can match that level of wow factor.

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Please click here for Part 1 of this series.

We'll continue our look at Seal Software by tossing out a few more case examples for good measure, to show the breadth of applicability for this truly special product, starting first with M&A. In an M&A situation, Seal can enable new levels of visibility into all contract exposure areas before a deal is completed and then drive a rapid post-merger integration as soon as deals are complete. Based on speed, quantity of contract analysis and the amount of deals processed at any given time, Seal's approach can enable contract visibility an order of magnitude faster than manual (or even other automated) approaches across many different contract fields and metadata (e.g., change of control, non exclusivity, escrow, end-of-life, auto renewals, most favored nation status, right of first refusal, limitation of liability, exclusivity, non-competes, non-solicitation, indemnity). A large law firm currently uses Discovery to reduce contract review time using bundled extraction rules.

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There's much ado about supplier management at Sapphire this year. Yesterday, we sat down with the solution managers for two products: SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (something new!) and SAP Supplier InfoNet. We'll give a detailed introduction and analysis to SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (internally called "SLC" to differentiate from the real SAP SLM - i.e. Software Lifecycle Management) soon, and also take a closer look at the latest in our favorite multi-tier supplier management product, SAP Supplier InfoNet. But today we'll give our cursory thoughts at both solutions, beginning with our initial impressions of Supplier Lifecycle Management in this post (check back later for a quick update on InfoNet).

SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management is designed to serve as a core supplier information toolset. It supports both closed registrations (i.e., those in which you invite pre-selected suppliers) as well as open registrations (e.g., a supplier diversity registration portal). 70% are currently doing closed registrations primarily and 30% are predominately doing open registration approaches, according to SAP. Supplier Lifecycle Management differs from SAP's On Demand Sourcing Supplier Management toolset in the following ways:

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Click here for Part 2.

It isn't every day that I get to write about a solution that every company of some size needs, no matter what they already have! This series is about a revolutionary way to really understand what is in contracts -- either your own, or those of an M&A prospect. It's not about the standard elements of contract management (even though in this case, the vendor in question has those as well: authoring, clause libraries, repository, milestones, requests, alerts, dashboards, compliance, etc.). No, it's about something just as -- if not more -- tangibly valuable, an approach to contract management that can likely deliver greater ROI and faster than any other solution in this area.

Moreover, with this approach, not only do you get to a nearly unprecedented level of insight, but it is done quickly in an automated manner. In two to three weeks, you get tens of thousands of contracts scanned and analyzed -- we use the phrase "scanned" loosely because much of the power of the tool comes from automated scanning across a network -- with full visibility into not only basic (yet critical) terms such as expiration and renewal dates, but also the type of contract, parties involved, assignability, insurance, indemnification, IP rights, discounts, start/termination dates, renewals, solicitations, value, rebates, liquidated damages and more. The standard results come back with around 40 core data points per contract (as applicable), and many more can be retrieved per specific client needs. The solution can even search on its own for contracts across a distributed desktop environment.

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Baltimore was the host city for this year's International Supply Management (ISM) convention -- a 4-day activity that concluded last Wednesday. For those who haven't been to these conferences, ISM is a nearly 100-year-old not-for-profit organization that draws nearly exclusively on members and volunteers for its events. This approach creates a setting which might lack some of the creature comforts of corporate user conferences, but in return is rich with participants, ranging from students to junior buyers and seasoned professionals at all levels as well as representatives from solution and service providers, many of whom are exhibiting at the trade show run in parallel with the many workshops on various supply chain topics.

I had the pleasure of participating in this year's event, as I have in so many previous ISM conferences. It is always a good learning experience, a great opportunity to make new contacts, and to maintain old relationships. It is a small industry and there are many familiar faces every year at ISM. This conference had a unique angle for me -- my first ISM after a solid year of working as a Spend Matters analyst. In prior years I'd worked for various solution providers. Approaching the event in a unique non-competitive position let me speak comfortably with everyone attending while getting a quick feel for the latest plans from many firms.

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Please click here for Part 1 of this post or download the entire report here: Supplier Information Management (SIM) Technology Fundamentals -- Part Two.

When it comes to multilingual capability in supplier management, the main caveat that companies should factor into account is not actually not the UI (user interface) -- most vendors either have or can quickly come up with any language flavor for fairly modest one-off fees. Rather, the key is to pay attention to how the solution handles localized versions of core data elements (e.g. contact name, company name, addresses) that play into other initiatives such as spend analysis and sourcing -- local language support can inadvertently create difficulties to find and correctly associate content.

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I'm headed down to ISM today, along with my colleagues Thomas Kase and Lisa Reisman. Thomas and I have no speaking duties this year (which feels like vacation) and have intentionally left ourselves unbooked. This will allow us to wander around the presentations and "walk the hall" talking to new and old faces alike. Lisa is speaking on Wednesday. The title of her session is "Minimizing Commodity Risk: Practical Hedging and Non-hedging Strategies for Volatile Commodity Spend". This year, ISM takes place in Baltimore, a city that even people like me from Philadelphia tend to look down upon (hard to believe, I know).

If you think my accent sounds bad -- ask me to say "water" -- you don't even want to go there with Baltimorese. However, the inner harbor is certainly quite nice and Camden Yards did start the new stadium baseball renaissance, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. Moreover, they are equal opportunity in Baltimore when it comes to taking advantage of tourists who've had a bit too much to drink.

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The recently published Spend Matters Compass Report, Supplier Information Management (SIM) Technology Fundamentals -- Part Two, offers a true insider's view -- in condensed Cliff Notes format -- into the nuances of successfully implementing supplier management systems and programs from the likes of providers such as Aravo, GXS/Rollstream, HICX, Hiperos, SAP, Oracle, Emptoris/IBM, Achilles and others. One of the subjects we examine in the paper is whether multilingual capabilities truly matter -- or not.

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