I’d mentioned to Mark Crofton that I was thinking about doing a couple of podcasts from Sapphire. He suggested that I chat to his boss, Denise Broady. Denise runs the the Office of the CFO team in the US.
I worked closely with Virsa in 2005, helping roll it out in Europe, so it was great to catch up with Amit Chatterjee (SVP GRC) at Sapphire in a bus and then later in a taxi. This solution set has really moved on since the Virsa deal, and SOX is not the main focus today, by any means. It is a pity we couldn’t squeeze in a blogger’s corner session, but for Vienna this is a must. I’d love to see Amit, James, Dennis and Vinnie having tea.
The office of the CFO is a sound and sensible sales move, long overdue in my view. At SAP we are good at talking product and technology, but we need to get better at addressing the business. With the Office of the CFO, we have combined GRC, eSourcing, and Corporate Performance Management into one overlay sales team.
My personal view is that over the last few years with Netweaver, ESA, ESOA etc, we haven’t focused enough on the business user. All this platform stuff is important, but it did tend to drown out the businessy side of the equation. As usual, Hugh provides a cartoon. (It is aimed at Microsoft, but I hope he doesn’t mind me borrowing it here)
Talking to CFO’s is what my group does at SAP here in Europe, so I’m sure I’m be talking to Amit and Denise about this more in the future. We work closely with his group already, but I think there is a lot more we could be doing.
GRC got a lot of buzz at Sapphire last year. This year it got slightly less PR noise, but the solutions are doing really well on the market.
Corporate Social Responsibility is a big interest of mine, and I’m pleased to hear we are getting some product out there to help. We aren’t the only ones who see this a growth market.
I need to figure out more about the Cisco stuff and the Acorn partnership. (This stuff all relates to that PhD I’m supposed to be writing, but I seem to be blogging instead)
Denise and I did two recordings, one on GRC and the other on the office of the CFO. My recording and interviewing skills leave much to be desired, but I hope that the content is interesting. Hearing about Kimberley Clark significantly reducing audit fees is goodness.
By Vienna I hope to be a little better at this! I have an evil plan with Mr Craig Tarantino Cmehil brewing. It will involve at least switching off the mobile phone while recording.
update: Mark has beaten me to it in posting the recordings. I was planning to get all this stuff in itunes, etc, but I’ll get around to that later.
In other news I’m off to see Bob Dylan live tonight..
Vendorprisey 
I’m in
Come on that was one piece I would not edit out – classic videocasting I would say!!
Right in the middle the phone actually rings – too good!