SAP Anywhere was launched in the UK at Internet Retailing Expo 2016 where they were the headline sponsor. Promising a product suitable for small businesses, it promised user-friendly digital tools that manage e-commerce, marketing, customer engagement, inventory management and business analytics, from any mobile device or computer.
SAP, traditionally an enterprise platform created SAP Anywhere aiming to crack the SME market with pricing and availability anywhere from any device but it appears to have been a failed experiment with SAP Anywhere shutting down with almost immediate effect.
With launches in Europe, the USA and China, take up appears to have been remarkable small customers and half of those that did sign up are thought to be inactive anyway.
Inactive customers are being given 30 days notice (hint, if that’s you then download your data before you lose it!) and we believe that active customers will be allowed to use the solution until the end of their contract period. There are reports that customers are being offered a full refund if they waive any claims against SAP… in otherwords SAP are shutting the service down with very little notice and if you go away quietly and promise not to sue then they’ll give you this year’s fees back in an attempt to mollify you.
This leaves SAP SME customers with nowhere to go within the SAP solution offerings. By definition the attempt at an SME solution was because they were missing out on a lucrative tranche of customers that hitherto and in the future they don’t have a suitable offering for.
Competitors such as Netsuite might be expected to be rubbing their hands in the expectation of reclaiming the SME space, but with a suspected well under 100 customers signed up to SAP Anywhere it’s not a huge opportunity in monetary terms, although they’ll be pleased to see a potential competitor exit the space.
