A world of opportunities

Marcin Poznań: Your company has visibly benefited from the growing Polish economy. Are there still opportunities to be found on the market?

Jose Duarte: I see a world of opportunities, to be honest with you. We have good operations in Poland. Steady GDP growth and stable political conditions are a cocktail for investment. So if I couple this with our portfolio of solutions and the fact that we have fundamentally covered large enterprises and, on top of that, we have been able to strongly address medium and small-sized companies, I would expect a booming business in Poland for years to come.

What is characteristic of the CEE market, from your point of view?

Our regional subsidiaries have taken different routes to get to the similar levels of development they are currently at. [Because of delays in state investments in IT], in Poland SAP's development is predominantly driven by the private sector, whereas development in Slovakia or the Czech Republic goes relatively closely with the public sector. If I proved to the market that doing business between SAP and the public sector in Slovakia is good for both the client and SAP, why wouldn't it be good business in Poland? Can you see bigger potential for us than this?

So, do you have plans to enter the public sector in Poland on a wider scale?

Let me give you an example of my home country, Portugal. We set exactly the same objectives way back. We started small, winning a municipality here, an agency there, slowly building a portfolio of references. Recently the Portuguese Ministry of Finance approved the deployment of a budgeting and controlling system for the whole of Portugal. In France, the same projects started in January 2006. A whole financial platform for the French state. We didn't build this overnight. It took years. But we had the persistence and we knew we could do it.

So, to answer your question about the public sector in Poland, let me put it this way. We are never in a market for the short term. We have money, we have time, we have the solutions. And we will get there.

How do you see the competition?

During the last four years we have seen a huge consolidation of this market. The strategy of our biggest competitor, Oracle, is to buy the market, while we have decided to constantly develop through organic growth, using our talent. However, we made a major acquisition of Business Objects earlier this year. We felt this was a huge opportunity and the level of [synergy] was very important.

If you look at the large-enterprise market it is covered by three or four players: SAP; Oracle; IBM, with their consulting force and WebSphere; and the biggest competitor of all times - bespoke software. It doesn't show up in any statistics, but it is out there, everywhere, and that's the reality. Microsoft is also a player in terms of tools that actually boost bespoke development. And of course you cannot underestimate the local [companies], which in many cases have a significant share in particular markets.

What is SAP's most popular software?

ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] is by far the SAP product with the broadest install base. It is present in 95 percent of our plans. So, if we talk about revenues, reference ability and acceptance in the market, it is ERP. Actually, our latest release - ERP 6.0 - is the fastest ramp up of any technology we have had in the market in our 36 years of history.

By acquiring Business Objects, we have acquired a number-one company in the world in terms of business intelligence. So inherently Business Objects is a pretty popular product, enjoying recognition and acceptance by the market. It has become very relevant for our install base, having a level of adoption and level of growth which is unprecedented in this market.

We also have a product that enables our clients to be compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley [a US federal law written in response to corporate and accounting scandals]. It is a bestseller and has enjoyed triple-digit growth three years in a row.

And what is SAP's response to criticism of its products?

We are a very market-oriented company, so constructive feedback from our clients is actually part of our DNA. There is nothing in the world like a perfect product. So the art of being competitive in this business is to find a way to perfect your product, while making it relevant for your client. There are companies who develop technology for its own sake and don't listen to what their clients say about what is relevant for their business. At the end of the day, clients are the best salespeople that you have.

SAP is a leading provider of business software solutions. According to the firm, there are currently 1,100 companies and institutions in Poland using its services. In 2008, the company signed deals with Lotos and Agora, as well as with the Defense Ministry and the Social Insurance Office (ZUS).