From cumulusIQ Blog earlier in the week. Also check the Press Release for details.

Our recent SAP Help survey disclosed that 47 percent of SAP customers consider themselves to be paying too much for help. One-fifth of all respondents said that their SAP help ROI was sufficient, and many of the rest admitted that they were paying exorbitant rates for SAP help (to SAP itself, as well as to consultants and system integrators) in order to guard against SAP system downtime.

Of course, no one with a major SAP investment wants to see a system go down, but SAP’s own Help offering isn’t necessarily what’s keeping the lights on. Check out these comments from survey respondents:

“SAP Help does not constitute much of a valuable resource when SAP problems occur.”

“Help from SAP support is of questionable value. Rarely am I satisfied with the level of attention or expertise. The experts are there (SAP Developers, Platinum consultants) but are rarely used.”

Plenty of SAP customers aren’t getting satisfaction from SAP Help, and the survey showed similar dissatisfaction with the high costs of consultants, systems integrators, and in-house IT resources.

Fortunately, a handful of survey respondents showed the way out of the dilemma: knowledge transfer. Here are some eye-opening comments:

“I don't need SAP help anymore—I've been on SAP for the past 6 years and I trained for 6 months in PP before go live by consultants. I have seen every error SAP can produce and know how to correct all and I actually like SAP.”

“I believe our company would do better with a larger internal SAP help skill set & personnel than the current third-party provider we use.”

The core of Enterprise 2.0, as of Web 2.0 before it, is a transfer of power and knowledge from rarefied experts to ordinary technology users. In SAP help terms, smart companies are already pursuing this transfer—they are learning to fish, instead of paying consultants and analysts hundreds of thousands of dollars to fish for them.

This does not mean that there is no place for the SAP help provider; however, SAP help must get closer to the customer. We think that 80 percent of SAP help can be delivered On-Demand in the form of answering questions, directing users to FAQs, and offering rich instructional knowledge content (like videos, PDFs, ebooks, etc.) for user takeaway.

Enterprise software services is one of the last domains of knowledge that has stubbornly resisted the Internet’s power of disintermediation and downward price pressure on knowledge providers. However, some of our SAP help survey respondents have confirmed that knowledge transfer is the way of the future. People will inevitably learn to fish, perhaps with the assistance of experts who remain in the background to reel in the monster catch now and then.

We consider SAP Helpdesk in the Cloud to be the enactment of this metaphor in the SAP world. In our paradigm of SAP Helpdesk in the Cloud, subscribers pay for the number of SAP help questions they pose, and get to take away knowledge (in the form of instructional videos, PDFs, and other rich media) from verified SAP Help desk analysts. Pricing for SAP help in the cloud begins at $2,000 per company per month, a fraction of traditional SAP help prices.

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