Dennis posted about Kagermann’s interview with the FT. I normally like to read Dennis’ musings. He is acerbic, controversial and very well informed. He knows lots about accounting stuff.  I didn’t like this post at all though.

Dennis if this was a few centuries ago, I’d have to call you out at dawn, your choice of weapons, for insulting my good leader !-)

 

Instead, I’ll post this…..

Dennis wrote: 

Now I KNOW he doesn’t read my blog but for the benefit of all you SAPpers out there that do – have a whip round and please give Henning a new telescope

1. Kagermann may well read your blog. A number of your posts have been picked up by the press search (it has a section “from the blogsphere”), which execs and others subscribe to. This is called “early bird” and normally arrives in my email first thing. Typically this will pick up key announcements about SAP competitors and the state of the market. (it isnt a RSS feed, but hey it works, and with a  blackberry optimised version)

2. Winweb looks really interesting. But I had a bit of a look at the free bit on the site. One user, very limited functionality. hmmm. very free. like toy in cornflakes free.

 Dennis goes on to mock this…

“You influence people less by talking to them,” he (Kagermann) says of running SAP, “than through what you do.”

Doing things is always important but Henning: – ever heard of the idea that markets are conversations? Oh well. Can someone double up that request and get a pair of binoculars as well? And could tech support fix Henning’s laptop with Technorati as the home page? Or maybe fix him up with an RSS reader with all the SAP bloggers in it. Classic cluelessness.

3. Kagerman is merely stating actions speak louder than words, and he is right. I buy all the conversation marketing cluetrain stuff, but there is a big difference between conversation and talking. Kagermann is probably the best listener in the business. I like working in company that has a CEO that listens more than he talks, and does stuff without always shouting about it. When Kagermann says something I believe him, and that goes for 99,9% of the folks here… Stick that on your cluetrain.

4. The cluetrain site you linked is somesort of “clever” search site with thousands of pop ups, I narrowly avoided a big dose of spyware. (please remove the link)  the famous ”read only” landmark cluetrain.com is also unavailable.  sdn.sap.com is up, and is the best example anywhere of a software company “in conversion”, at least according to James. 

Seconds, step back….

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