It took me about five minutes to stop laughing after I read the SAP press release claiming that they are gaining market share from Infor in the small- and medium-sized business market. SAP says it has signed up a handful of former Infor customers and partners in the SMB space and draws the conclusion that this somehow represents “Momentum in the SME Market.” I guess they set their bar for momentum a bit lower than mine. 

After I reread the announcement for the second time, I felt compelled to share a few of my thoughts:

• It’s an odd announcement.  It is pretty unusual for a market behemoth to publicly jab a competitor unless they actually view them as the market leader. I can only surmise that SAP is taking it on the chin in the field and they wrote a release to give them a bandage for the bleeding. I was pleased to see that an objective observer had a similar opinion.

• We rarely see SAP in SMB accounts. We mostly compete with companies that have solutions explicitly designed for the SMB market and not the generic solutions that SAP and their partners provide.

• They are grasping at old news. The customers mentioned in SAP’s press release haven’t been Infor customers for some time, nor have the partners mentioned been partners of ours for years. These customers left over the years for all sorts of reasons, like being acquired by a company that was already using SAP. And the partners mentioned, well, let’s just say we were OK with them no longer representing our company and products.  In fact, one of the partners mentioned has never been an Infor partner.

• Infor knows SMB customers are different.  SAP is trying hard to win small- to medium-sized customers, which is completely different from SAP’s traditional customer base. Unlike SAP, we designed our business and technology models specifically for this market. We know that these customers:

  • Face the same complex business problems as the Fortune 500, but they don’t have access to huge IT departments or legions of consultants to implement and manage business solutions to solve these problems.

  • Want solutions built for their businesses—solutions that are easier to implement, have greater flexibility, and cost less to own over the long term.

  • Don’t want to be “locked in” to a vendor. They also need to have the ability to integrate applications in a mixed-vendor environment.

  • Our customers want their vendor to provide value for maintenance.

• Finally, Infor embraces, supports, and rewards partners that perform. The partners mentioned in the release parted ways with Infor years ago. Fact is, we have a thriving partner program and our valued channel partners are responsible for almost 20% of our license revenues and almost 50% of our new customers each year.

In my humble opinion, SAP’s press release is more about fear than momentum. Sorry SAP, we didn’t mean to scare you.

Posted by Rick Parker, SVP, Marketing