Marketing XI

[former_member187587]

Good day mates.

An issue we confront every day as XI consultants-salesman is explaining the customer the benefits he can get from XI implementation.

Most of the XI implementation demands comes from the following reasons:

1.A new SAP system is implemented for the first time and needs integration to old systems.

2.Managing the organizations interfaces becomes a headache..

3.The current EAI tool is not integrated to SAP systems

good enough.

But can you advice me with some tips how to market an XI solution for a cusomer that don't apply for any of the situations mentioned above??

Why a customer should move from his current solution when everything is working "almost" fine all the time.

I know Xi for a long time and aware of all the advanteges but mainly on the technical side...how can I explain this sofisticated tool for an IT manager with no technical skills at all, that looks at XI as another new Buzzword???

Appriciate your postings...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Nimrod,

the main point you canuse in selling XI in a company that already has an integration solution which is working almost fine all the time is its tight integration to SAP. No other EAI tool has such good adapters to SAP solutions and no other EAI tool comes with such extensive predelivered content for SAP solutions.

In SAP centric landscapes this will be a huge advantage but be aware that some customers are not that SAP centric, they might have one SAP system and the rest is self developed or from other vendors, then the tight integration is not that useful. But with a customer having or planning to have R/3, BW, CRM, SRM etc. it will be a huge advantage.

Regards

Christine

[Former Member]

On more thing Nimrod...just do a search on weblogs in sdn with the search criteria as "vs"...you will get some very interesting blogs from which you cn take some pointers...

-Sushumna

[Former Member]

Hi Nimrod,

Ask your customer the following questions...

1. How many SAP systems and kinds of SAP systems are involved in his landscape?

2. How far will their implementation extend to?-as in is there a chance of increase in the number of systems involved?

If the answers to these questions are very positive, then you can mention the following pointers:-

1. SAP XI's accessibility to other legacy application systems...XI can boast of a very wide range of adapters-JMS, Mail, webservices(SOAP), HTTP, etc..

2. The hub and spoke model which XI complements - i.e it can talk to many SAP and Non-SAP systems conveniently.

3. The extensive monitoring features of SAP XI,which will make any prson's job easy - sxmb_moni, RWB and alerts...which can trace each and every kind of error that might occur..

Also go through the following blog which compares SAP and Oracle..it might give you some pointers...

/people/sap.user72/blog/2006/02/28/face-off-sap-vs-oracle

/people/sap.user72/blog/2006/03/27/sap-xi-adapters-vs-oracle-pm-adapters

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Sushumna