SAP的创新文化

    SAP公司也许是世界最大的企业软件制造商了，不过SAP一向以效率低下和官僚作风严重而知名。因此去年公司引入了新的管理层，帮助公司简化业务流程，刺激创新文化。两位共同首席执行官施杰翰和孟鼎铭誓言将加速产品发布的进程，并精简内部的繁文缛节。但到目前为止，他们的努力所带来的成效还未在投资者身上显现出来。上周四这家德国公司宣布其营业利润在第一季度上涨了26%，但仍没有满足分析人士的预测，因此导致SAP的股价出现了下跌。与此同时，SAP重申其全年营收将上涨10%到14%。我与SAP的联席CEO施杰翰在该公司位于帕洛阿尔托的办公室见了面，探讨该公司如何能够通过发展新技术来实现增长。

    《财富》：您谈到SAP创新的三个方面。它们分别是什么？

    施杰翰：首先是移动业务，将商业内容搬到移动设备上，我们认为这存在着大量的商机。第二个方面是云计算，云计算让你无需应付IT的复杂性。我们提出了一个企业方案，可以让你把整个企业都放在云计算的环境里运营。这对安全性和可靠性等提出了很高的要求。有些人可能会说我们涉足这个市场较晚，但是我们希望能解决这些根本性的问题。第三方面是内存运算。这是一种技术引导型创新，它挑战了数据必需在硬盘上存储的常识。我们正在试图把所有的数据移到电脑的主储存器上。

    《财富》：在移动业务方面，SAP斥资58亿美元收购了赛贝斯公司（Sybase），这起收购导致了什么成果？我们什么时候可以看到这笔收购的成果？

    施杰翰：你将看到两方面的技术成果。首先是基础架构本身，也就是让你与数据和流程进行联通的移动中间设备。其次是为移动设备打造的应用程序。今年我致力于在年底前推出40款来自SAP的应用。不过我们相信，其中许多应用将来自一个类似于苹果公司那样的应用生态系统——苹果的许多应用都不是苹果造出来的。苹果促进了那些应用，但它们是由别人打造出来的。我们即将推出的平台包括了一个软件研发工具箱，方便其他企业利用这个工具箱来自行开发移动应用。在三周内我们就会推出这个平台，并将它预联到SAP世界中。我们的软件开发工具包也允许其他人在这个平台上打造移动应用。我认为，在一两年内，就会有成千上万款移动应用从SAP平台上诞生。

    《财富》：你是如何在SAP灌输创新文化，并加快产品发布速度的？

    施杰翰：提出创新策略是一回事，但你必须要实现它。三年前我开始关注如何在软件上进行创新的问题，我发现SAP的办法是非常传统的。我们先会确定制造一款新软件，然后进行编程，然后进行测试，然后对第一批客户进行发布。这个流程要花费15个月的时间。后来我观察了一下移动软件界，发现移动软件的发布速度是以星期为单位，而不是以月为单位的。因此我们做了几件事以改变这种情况。首先，我们组建了规模更小的精干团队，他们可以随机应变，不必请示管理层的决策。其次，我们一开始就让他们与客户进行会谈，而不是在最后才让他们见客户。而且我们采用了一种迭代的开发方式，每隔四个星期就会研发新的工作软件。这种方法在业内又称“Scrum”，不过通常小企业才会使用这种办法，而我们有14000名研发人员。

    《财富》：这些变革带来了哪些成果？

    施杰翰：在改革的路上，我们大概已经走了半程。我们的创新周期已经从15个月下降到6至9个月。现在，我们已经能通过更小型的团队，研发出比过去更好的产品。而且我们把客户邀请到研发过程之中，客户对此也非常兴奋。我们花了一两年的时间才达到了现在的效果。我们也可以再花两年的时间进一步进行调整。

    《财富》：在转型成为一家更敏捷、更迅速的公司的过程中，最艰难的部分是什么？

    施杰翰：对一家大公司进行改革的难度，总是要大于小公司改革的难度。对于我们公司来说，创新的潜能一直存在，我们只是在释放这种潜能。不过由于我们过于官僚主义、过于程式化，因而员工有时被公司自身限制住了。因此我们正在着手取消这些繁文缛节，给予员工更多的权力。我们在这个方向上做出转变后，员工、客户和合作伙伴给出正面反馈的速度之快，让我十分惊讶。提出这一战略只是改革的第一阶段，不过对于我们来说，最重要的是证明我们能执行这一战略。

    当我们提出不仅要扩展核心业务，而且要进入这三个领域发展的口号时，对于我们来说，重要的是在12个月内就要显示出我们的进展，而且我们的确做到了这一点。在移动业务上，我们收购了赛贝斯公司。在云计算方面，我们在去年7月底推出了Business ByDesign，现在我们已经有了两个后续版本。在存储计算上，我们在去年11月底推出了（实时分析软件）HANA。这些举措已经形成了一股势头。最艰难的部分仅仅是开头。当时很多人认为SAP很庞大、很复杂，而且很“德国”。

    译者：朴成奎

    SAP may be the world's largest enterprise software maker, but it suffers from a reputation of being slow and bureaucratic. That's why last year new management was brought in to help simplify the business and spur a culture of innovation. Co-chief executive officers Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott have pledged to accelerate product releases and cut internal red tape. But their efforts haven't paid off for investors quite yet. Last Thursday the German company announced its operating profit rose 26% in the first quarter, failing to meet analysts' estimates and sending SAP's (SAP) stock down. At the same time, the company reiterated its forecast for full-year revenue to rise by 10% to 14%. I caught up with co-CEO Snabe at SAP's Palo Alto offices to find out how a focus on new technologies could help the company grow.

    Fortune: You talk about three categories of innovation at SAP. What are they?

    Snabe: There's mobile, where we see tremendous opportunity in bringing business content to mobile devices. The second category is cloud computing – the idea that you don't have to deal with the complexity of IT. We came up with an enterprise approach that lets you run your whole business in the cloud. This puts the bar very high on topics like security and reliability – some people would argue that we were late in this market but we wanted to solve these fundamental problems. The third category is memory computing. This is a technologically-driven innovation which challenges the assumption that data needs to be stored on disk. We are moving all data into the main memory of the computer.

    Fortune: On the mobile end, what has the [$5.8 billion] acquisition of Sybase resulted in? When will we see the fruits of the acquisition?

    Snabe: You'll see two categories of technology. One is the infrastructure itself -- the mobile middleware which enables you to connect to data and processes. The second piece is applications built for the mobile device. I committed to delivering 40 applications from SAP by end of the year, but we actually believe that many of them will come from an ecosystem like what you see from Apple, where a lot of the applications are not built by Apple (AAPL), they are facilitated by Apple and built by someone else. So the platform that we will deliver includes a software development kit so that companies can build their own mobile applications. In three weeks we're taking that platform and pre-connecting it to the SAP world. The SDK will allow others to build on top of that. My expectation is that in a couple of years there will be thousands of mobile applications on SAP.

    Fortune: What have you done to instill more of a culture of innovation and get new products out the door faster at SAP?

    Snabe: It's one thing to articulate an innovation strategy but you need to deliver on it. Three years ago I started looking at how we innovate software and found that SAP was very traditional in our approach. We would specify a new piece of software, then program it, then test it then launch it for the first customers. That process takes 15 months. But then I looked at the mobile world, where new things come out in weeks, not months. So we did a couple of things to change this. First, we made smaller teams that don't have to ask management for decisions. Second, we put them in the room with the customer from the beginning, not at the end. And we switched to an iterative approach where every four weeks we produce working software. This is a methodology known in the industry as Scrum, but it's typically used by small companies. We have 14,000 developers.

    Fortune: What kind of results have you seen from these changes?

    Snabe: We're about halfway through the transition. Our innovation cycles are down to six to nine months instead of 15 months. We see better products built by smaller teams than in the past. And customers are totally excited that we invite them in to be part of the process. We spent a couple of years getting to where we are now. We can do another two years of fine-tuning.

    Fortune: What is the hardest part of making this transition to a more nimble and quick company?

    Snabe: It always takes more effort to change a bigger company than a smaller company. In our case we are helped by the fact that we are unleashing a potential for innovation that was always there. But [employees] were somehow limited by ourselves because we were too bureaucratic and too structured. So we are taking structures away. We are empowering people. I was surprised by how fast employees, customers and partners gave us positive feedback on this new direction. The first phase was articulating the strategy. But the real moment for us was proving that we can execute the strategy.

    When we said we want to not only extend the core business, but go into these three areas, it was important for us that within 12 months we would show progress and we did that. In mobile we bought Sybase. In [cloud] we delivered Business ByDesign at the end of July and we're now two versions later. In memory computing we delivered [real time analytic software] HANA at the end of November. That's what's been building this momentum. The hardest part was just to get it started. There were a lot of assumptions that SAP was large, and complex, and German.