Nuts and Bolts: 'We do not believe in SaaS'

At SAP World Tour 2011 in Mumbai, many customers shared their journey with SAP and all the stuff that travels along, including the challenges, comparison bars and alignment with an organisation's individual ambitions and growth path. Here's the first of that series. An Interview with Suresh R Shenoy, Senior Vice President, IT, Wockhardt

How has your overall experience on SAP been like?

SAP is a sturdy product. Any issues, if they happen, get a fast response time too. Even with patches needed time to time (like on taxation etc), SAP comes up with solutions pretty fast. The support part in short, is ok. If I raise a ticket, I get immediate response.

How much of the traditional ERP suite approach would be affected by the advent of SaaS? Has it entered your consideration list?

We do not believe in SaaS. The reason is that every organization has a set of rules, standards and processes. Those kinds of functions and capabilities are taken care of in SAP. In case of SaaS, it will take time to understand the space. We have in fact tried it and burnt our fingers. You can not call the salesman back after three months. Personal attention takes a beating in SaaS. Either you have a good stand-by of manpower or you go the traditional way.

There’s another big change in the undercurrents with new and flexible licensing models coming up. What do you make of that?

We are in process of considering them. Review of licenses is in progress. We will evaluate the options before any big change.

And why SAP? How is it better than its competition?

It is a web-based solution for one. Second it has got a good customer base, which translates into better availability and a larger range of choice. I get the best quality I ask for.

No gaps?

Products are pretty much sturdy. Certain aspects can be paid more attention to, which SAP is doing I guess.

What’s your view of HANA? Would it impact the market strongly?

It is still at an infant stage as I see it. Not much customer education has happened so far. If you are doing huge scales of processing, it would be a good application to bet on. But now, they are working on some areas. For us, it would be assessed from the point of view of cost-effectiveness.

Any challenges you have to navigate? Migration, implementation or specific requirements?

We now have an in-house implementation team. Availability of implementation specialists is not an issue now. Quality aspects are still to go. Product-related skill-sets though, are an issue. The know-how part of SAP, which normally should entail five or six modules is what I am talking about. In terms of technology or functionality, it is good enough, be it BI or Business Warehousing.