The question is, how long will it take for them to get going. At CLFY, they hired lots of salespeople, and the benefits (at least to the stock) still have not materialized. At VNTV, on the other hand, it's in there.
I have no idea how long it will take them to get going. But this is certainly a poor analogy. As far as I know, clfy is a second tier player compared to sebl and vntv - is that correct? Is there some significant thing that clfy does that neither sebl or vntv have that is of key importance to customers? Don't you agree that top salespeople are less likely to migrate to clfy, and will face tougher competition. So a bunch of salespeople were hired at clfy and didn't produce, so what?
The situation we have here in scm is more like vntv vs. sebl. Both are leaders in a respective area and the overall mkt is exploding. Recently through some acquisitions manu will begin competing against I2, but I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. If I were a salesrep Im not sure I would favor I2 over Manu from a pure product standpoint, in fact I probably would prefer Manu at this point. I2 has an Oracle/Siebel-like agressive sales force, and I have never heard that about Manu (otoh agressive sales didnt do much for Oracle apps vs. psft did they?).
Unlike front office we do have the Sap scm vaporware threat to deal with and Im unsure as to how that will play. Gibson mentioned in the CC that gartner group says the erps wont have a complete scm solution until 2003 (very conservative Id say).
I don't know what the ROI is with front office apps, it seems like it is tough to quantify in any case. For us in SCM 1.5-5% savings cos/cogs is commonplace, and CEOs are afraid that their competition is going to install scm and leave them behind ala Dell vs. Cpq. I think this sense of urgency may prevail and cause customers NOT to wait for an ERP solution.
Michelle
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