ERP RIP, SAP AOK?

Anyone who watched the US Grand Prix over the weekend will not have failed to see the company is prepared to spend big marketing bucks to get its message across.

But can it really dust off its image as a dusty ERP player?

Firstly, one wonders why it wants to do this. Sure, many SAP roll-outs ran a tad over time and a teeny bit over budget (look no further than the BBC, which struggled for seven years over its implementation).

But, with the turbulence currently being felt at Baan, it pretty much had the market cornered (with all due respect to JD Edwards and PeopleSoft).

So why the shift? Obviously, the potential number of major ERP contracts are few and far between - and will dwindle in the next few years. Diversification is therefore an obvious option.

But moving into an arena where other companies have a headstart is risky.

And it's not entirely clear whether this move is marketing gloss or a genuinely bold business decision. The company is proudly boasting of its latest contract to overhaul Exxon Mobil's infrastructure, which is implementing MySAP.com throughout its worldwide offices.

The system, estimated to support 100,000 users, is expected to reduce costs and make it easier to integrate web-based applications.

Which, apart from the last three words, sounds remarkably like a description of an old-school ERP roll-out.

The marketing has - so far - been impressive (and very, very expensive). But the company needs some equally impressive, and impressively different, contract wins to prove that SAP is indeed back on track.