I had a coffee and a chat this afternoon with Jonathan Becher. He was the CEO of Pilot, the performance management company that SAP recently acquired. We talked about selling to CFO’s, SAP politics and reverse hierarchy inversion, Oracle, Hyperion, GUIs, usability and the state of the universe in general.
Come to think of it a Reverse Hierarchy Inversion is an Otterism. I figure it needs a couple of diagrams to explain in its full glory.
I would tell you about the GUI and the plastic surgeon, but this is a family blog.
Jonathan’s blog is well worth subscribing to. I’d love to see more exec types at SAP blogging like this. Solid advice, not marketing speak. If you know stuff, write about it.
This is a smart acquisition. James agrees. It rounds out our product set, has limited overlap, squirts some 2.0 juice on our GUI thinking and gives us a solution that we can scale through the field. For one so new to starship enterprisey, Jonathan has a great grasp on how to get things done here. Just about everyone I suggested he talk to he already knew. It looks as if he has been taking his own medicine.
Effective performance management goes well beyond deploying scorecards, dashboards, and reports. It requires communication and collaboration between everyone involved in achieving in a goal. It can’t be done in the privacy of our offices. We have to get up and walk around.
The development plans seem realistic, and SAP has learnt alot from the Virsa experience about how to roll out this sort of solution to the field organisation. If there are any of my account executive mates reading this, I’d suggest dropping Jonathan a note. This stuff will sell, it already has.
I’ve blogged on the Pilot acquisition before, but I need to thank James for connecting me with Jonathan. I figured James would be useful for my network outside SAP, but I didn’t expect it to work inside here too. Semi-permeable membrane I believe he calls it.
I’d really like to explore the HR potential that Pilot brings to the party next time I see Jonathan. Jürgen ought meet him too.
Vendorprisey 
Thomas: You’re much to kind. Especially to suggest I’ve figured out the unternehmen. But you’re right, the answer doesn’t live in the four walls of my office. Talking with you reminded me that I need to blog about the difference between pretty UIs and user interaction design. Now about that plastic surgeon story…
Your HR mention in the last paragraph made me think: is hooking up people intra-company like this something that HR could/should be doing as well as the RedMonks of the world? Is HR as a culture even hip to that kind of thing?
Cote’
It is exactly what HR is supposed to do. At least in theory.