I was recently attending SAPPHIRE – SAP’s Annual Global User Conference gathering tens of thousands of customers, partners, press and analysts from all over the world.

Traditionally the sales cycle for most software companies has been rather complex. You needed an appointment, a sales and presales person, a demo, and last but not least complicated contracts and invoices to handle the buying process. Buying was a challenge and it seemed like you needed a PhD to fully comprehend what was going on, especially if you were a small or midsize company without armies of legal representatives.

While attending this mega event I was walking around the show floor and was approached by a young marketing gun from SAP. He quickly presented to me a new cloud solution for performance management. He was full of enthusiasm and true passion. He showed me a couple of screens, gave me a cool demo and then asked whether I wanted to buy a user with a special SAPPHIRE discount. The young man quickly added it’s a great and simple way to check out this new cool cloud app and then decide later if I wanted all my staff equipped with a license. I was really intrigued by the solution and decided to simply pull out my American Express Platinum Credit card. I filled in a couple of fields (through the online SAP Store) and within seconds I got an email with a password and a customer number. Basically within seconds I became a new customer.

How easy, cool and simple buying software had become! The world in which buying software from large ERP vendors such as SAP was complicated, had changed upside down and had became a totally new experience. SAP Supermarket – The New Aldi or Bloomingdale for Software. How about that?