Draft Table of Contents for SAM Research
*This is an in-process research design document. It will be updated as the design is refined.
Introduction
There are many areas to be covered on SAM software that would be quite useful in a SAM guide combined with an explanation of SAM vendor offerings.
Our References for This Article
If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.
Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.
- This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
- Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.
Research Intent
The intent of this research is the following:
- Overall Level of the Study: The study is to provide a background on forecasting made understandable to a beginning audience (that is readable by executives and members of IT who in most cases have never used SAM software).
- Differences with Previous Similar Work: To provide a level of explanation not found in previous similar work.
- Explaining Foundational SAM Topics: To cover foundational topics that are often poorly understood. For instance, “is SAM still a thing now that companies are transitioning to Cloud?”
- Specialized SAM Applications Versus Excel: Cover why specialized SAM applications have specific benefits over exports and Excel.
- Software Characteristics Explanation and Review: Layout the important characteristics of SAM applications.
- Highlight the Importance of SAM Software Characteristics: Explain why certain SAM software characteristics are so essential to licensing success/licensing improvement using ServiceNow versus Snow Software.
- Highlight Techniques in SAM Software That are Proven to Work: Explain what SAM techniques tend to provide the greatest benefit.
Features of the Research for Vendors
The research would help vendors in several different ways.
- Lead Generation: Standard lead generation, coverage in a credible source.
- Category Promotion: The overall emphasis on the importance of the forecasting software category. The research is by its nature promotional of the overall software category. SAM software is essential and has many areas for growth both in potential customers that do not possess such software and in improvement in expanding the footprint of the software already purchased.
- Current Account Enlargement: The research could be sent to any prospect and any customer? Why customers? Even at accounts that have already been sold, there is the question of enlarging the footprint of functionality used. Areas such as the “Techniques in SAM Software That are Proven to Work” are a jumping-off point for current account discussions. Customers that use more functionality within a particular application tend to buy more software from software vendors, extensions, plug-ins, etc..
- Separate Application Profiles: In some cases, vendors would like to be part of the overall research paper. However, in other cases, the vendors prefer to provide the vendor profile without the rest of the research. Currently, the thought is that the research article would have links to application profiles. This has the extra benefit of keeping the individual article from being too long. Therefore the application profile could be sent to customers/prospects rather than the overall research article. Some explanatory articles will also probably be linked to the main article for readers interested in more detail into a technical forecasting area.
Funding and a Level Playing Field
The funding model for the research is designed (being designed) to keep larger vendors from receiving preferential treatment over smaller vendors. That is the issue with Gartner and Forrester.
The funding model is still being refined, but the emphasis is on keeping the exercise fair. That is, it is not to be profit-maximizing.