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Six months after SAP's largest user group fired its chief executive amid growing unrest, the software giant is putting a positive face on its customer relations.
On the convention floor of SAP's annual Sapphire gathering in Orlando this week, questions over the change in leadership at America's SAP User Group, or ASUG, were still heard among the buzz. But on center stage, the talk was all about speaking out and influencing SAP's direction.
Abbe Mulders, ASUG vice chairman, said the user group was working closely with SAP to increase members' influence in both product development and service offerings. "Let your voice be heard," she encouraged attendees at the Monday evening keynote. "The difference is you," she said in reference the conference's theme.
The bid to smooth relations between SAP and its customers comes on the heels of a difficult year for both SAP and ASUG. Last November ASUG announced that it had released CEO Steven Strout from his duties. Strout was named the organization's first full-time CEO 16 months earlier. At the time ASUG said the organization was seeking new leadership and wanted to move in a different direction, but there was widespread speculation that the firing was related to customer unrest over new software maintenance fees being proposed by SAP. Concerns were raised that Strout had not fought hard enough against the changes.
SAP had taken steps to eliminate its Standard Support offering. Those who had been using that offering were paying a software maintenance fee of 17% of the price of the software they'd licensed. Without the Standard Support offering, they had to move up to the Enterprise Support at 22%. The change was to be phased in starting at 18.3% in January 2009 and increase to the full 22% in 2012.
Following Strout's firing, SAP began talking with its user groups once again to try to reach a compromise.
Then, last week, with the economy in the tank and customers packing their bags to give the company an earful at its annual conference, SAP backtracked somewhat. The company said it would slow the pace of the support fee increases. SAP will now extend the phase-in period to seven years. As a result, support costs for migrated customers will rise by an average of 3.1% per year, as opposed to the 8% originally proposed.
Sharing the stage with Mulders at Sapphire, Stefan Kneis, head of global customer communities for SAP, said the company had made significant progress working in cooperation with the SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN). "We listened to your feedback and realized the challenging economic environment we are facing," Kneis said.
In addition to the longer maintenance fee phase-in, SAP and SUGEN also announced they had reached agreement on a series of key performance indicators, or KPIs that would be offered to customers to assist in benchmarking performance.
"The role ASUG played in this exercise cannot be understated," Kneis said.
The Sapphire conference continues in Orlando through Wednesday.
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