Why I Love SAP?
January 2, 2011
It is 15 degrees Fahrenheit and snow is falling. Most American findability experts are in shut down mode. The weight of a lousy 2010 press the information retrieval wizards into quiet, hunched shapes. The countdown to the holiday season is underway.
What do I receive from SAP, an outfit that just admitted it misused Oracle’s intellectual property and has to pay a big fine? I got this email spam urging me to buy a copy of SAP Crystal Solutions. If you are not familiar with Crystal Solutions, one can suck in data and make some charts. If you want more information about this SAP product, navigate to the SAP Crystal Solution subsite on the SAP.com Web site.
What’s interesting is this remarkable offer.
Now I know gold is tough to read, and the magnify feature of my blog publishing system is pretty awful. Let me help you with the deal.
First, you can buy a bundle with enough stuff for four employees to be lost in SAP learning land for a year, maybe more if none of the staff is any good at business statistics. Second, the price of this deal is only $23,995, which is a discount of $8,769. That means the bundle costs $32,764.
A couple of observations:
First, I don’t know anyone who can spend $24,000 on a bundle. Those days are long gone. I got a check from a company that had in big letters “Requires two signatures if more than $20,000.” There you go. A bundle for the lucky dog with a credit card and the ability to spend $24,000 on an affordable business intelligence system. Quick get yours now.
Second, SAP is spamming me. I write a column for Information World Review that points out some of the more interesting activities of this company. I follow SAP because it had a search engine called TREX and I think it is still available.
Third, the buy online angle is interesting. I navigate to a Web page and take advantage of “year end savings.” Now that’s quite an offer to send as spam. Most of the pitches I get are for considerably cheaper products. I find spam really annoying, but the SAP spam is downright amazing.
Now get this. The fine print at the bottom of the email says the offer expired on June 30, 2010. Yep, that’s right June 30, 2010. As I write this, my trusty Timex tells me that today is December 15, 2010. Think SAP needs to rethink its email marketing campaign? I do. Don’t panic, gentle reader. I am queuing stories so this one is going to run 17 days after I save the file to WordPress. Such is the price of a free blog. That’s why I have two or three readers, and I am darned proud of that achievement.
SAP, I love ‘em.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2010
Freebie, unlike the expired bundle of Crystal Solutions goodies.
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