RightNow aims to take on SAP

February 15, 2007 from ZDNet – “Greg Gianforte, the outspoken CEO of RightNow Technologies, says the market for customer relationship management software in Europe is booming--and he predicts that some of his company's biggest wins will come at the expense of industry heavyweights SAP and the Oracle-owned Siebel.

Gianforte says chief information officers are tired of what he calls costly and time-consuming on-premise implementations. His company, he says, is picking up enterprise customers from both of his big-name rivals. "We beat SAP at Nikon, for all their campaign management. We threw Siebel out of Electronic Arts. And those are just some of the ones who are prepared for us to talk about it," Gianforte told Silicon.com.

He said many companies are unwilling to admit when they've been forced to ditch costly software rollouts: "You have to understand this is fairly embarrassing for these companies because they made big investments and couldn't get value."

Gianforte singled out market leader SAP for criticism, on the back of recent poor results. "You could drive a truck through the cracks in SAP's armor," he said, claiming he would much rather have his current problem--the recent announcement of $49 million in losses related to a change in RightNow's licensing model--than those of SAP or Siebel, which have to turn around far larger businesses…”

180 View – Although Greg Gianforte is biased, he also has a point or should we say a sharp knife for his competitors. We actually agree with Greg in that the complex/costly implementations are now history. The mid market is where lie all the new business opportunities, and mid market companies won’t put up with complex/costly implementations.