Marketing Management

SAP Case Analysis Notes

Date: 31 July 2015

Group 8

Soumya Barmam (348)

Sameer Prakash (338)
Yogendra Mistry (358)
Arvind balaji (308)
Raghav Bhasin ( 328)
Neha Sankhe (318)

1. Why didn't SAP pay adequate attention to branding and marketing?

SAP was perceived as a product-driven company providing quality services in enterprise resource
planning and building loyal customer base. The employees were technically sound but did not focus on
making the customers understand the services offered in an easy manner. Most people associated with
SAP did not know what SAP does. Wallstreet and BusinessWeek provided reviews saying that SAP
had entered the e-commerce race quite late and was failing to transform as per market demand.
It was only when some new companies led a wave of hot new products in the internet based services,
SAP realized the importance of rebranding the brand to cater to the changing market requirements.
SAP realized that it was important to transform the company image from product driven to market
driven.
2. What were key branding related issues that SAP had to address in the year 2000?
In 2000, the company released that it was lacking in the promotion of its internet based services. When
some new companies entered the field and gave tough competition to SAP, the organization realized
that strong marketing and brand management was the key to maintaining companys position in the
marketplace.
Due to this immediate pressure the company decided to rebrand itself as mysap.com which was the
service offering internet-enabled suite of products. In spite of the new product suite being strong, lately
the company image was passe which could lead to failure in the rebranding strategy. Plattner hence
decided to change the logo to SAP to mysap.com to give impetus to the internet based services.
This led to confusion amongst the consumers about the primary ERP-services offered by SAP.
Apart from that, SAP also faced other branding problems like inconsistencies and variations in the
logo across geographies.
3. What should Sap stand for? What is its key brand promise?
Centralized marketing SAP must device a centralized marketing team for ensuring consistency in
the branding. This can be achieved by having an internationally consistent logo and positioning.
Organizational aligning To rebuild the SAP brand, it was important to change the mindset of the
entire organization. The employees must have a market driven approach and must be aligned to
consumer-centric organizational skills. Instead of using technical jargons and confusing the consumers,
the employees must deploy necessary skills to align with the industry needs. This will ensure that the
consumers perceive the brand as a high quality and trustworthy brand.
Positioning The positioning statement . SAP- enables companies become best-run businesses
should be the promise from SAPs side. . The brand promise should resonate how these values help
customers improve their own businesses, thereby making them the best-run businesses. Also, this
communication should be consistent and continuous. A lot of fluctuation in positioning or at least
portraying the positioning creates a lot of confusion and so, SAP wont be able to hold its values and
promise.

4. What should be done with SAP brand architecture and what should be done with the logos?
Brand Architecture: The brand architecture should be such that it emphasizes more on the overall
brand than the product. It should recognize the brand portfolio, which should come under the
corporate brand. This image of the corporate brand should be uniform across all brands of the
company. Although the promotion of products should be done as sub-brands, they should always
carry the name of the corporate brand.
Logo: SAP should have a single corporate logo in alignment with the brand architecture. Different
products in the portfolio should be presented along with the Corporate logo