Customer relationship and data mining tools from Siebel, Oracle and E.piphany help big companies sift through data on their customers to identify patterns and boost sales. But it is little more than a browser slapped onto SAP's creaky enterprise products, and it has failed to wow customers, analysts or investors. SAP has a solid line of supply-chain products, and it could use its comfortable cash position to go up against smaller competitors like Manugistics. SAP can also take heart that its fellow ERP companies are also experiencing tough times. It lags in emerging areas such as CRM and electronic commerce.
Money helps, but time is the larger concern here.
Nonetheless, with Y2K concerns having faded, SAP's core business should pick up, giving the company a window of opportunity to regain lost ground. Never count this giant out, particularly given its dominant market share and customers determined to maximize ROI on some very heavy investments. SAP has a lot of customers, so I wouldn't worry too much about problems with one. Four or five years ago, every SAP customer was complaining about how hard the system was to use, but that didn't stop the company from continuing to grow. I'm not a huge SAP fan, but I wouldn't worry too much about Hershey's problems.