How can SAP break into the SME industry market space?

I read with interest and some entertainment the article on this mining blog about SAP Australia and NZ teaming up with another company to target the SME mining industry.

(You always need to be wary of companies that have a continent in their names - a rule I live by...)

These sorts of press releases and posts are beyond hilarious. They should be titled "How can we convince small to medium companies to regress to the early 1990's?".

SAP will NEVER break into this market space without dramatically changing their business model? Why?

Because at present their business model relies on technologically ignorant CFO's who like sexy reports and transactional control. Nobody has ever been sacked for buying SAP - but companies have gone out of business while waiting for it to fix their problems.

1. Most mid level miners are heavily leveraged. They need to fix their problems NOW, not in 18 months time.

2. SME miners are often dealing with plants in several geographical regions, not just a few miles down the road. Most do not have the cash or the patience to invest in the on-premise infrastructure to carry these behemoths

3. Mining and maintenance processes are pretty much well known these days. There is no reason for them to go through all the BS of mapping them and the whole AS-IS / TO-BE scam.

4. It is too expensive. Period. SME miners and other industry sectors do not suffer from the general confusion over purpose and means that dogs large corporate entities. 

Here is a prediction for you. (Given that I am absolutely terrible at predictions...) Within 8 years only the very top of town will have the egos and general malaise to pay $80 million for an ERP system implementation...

The rest of us will have worked out better ways to manage this with readily available technologies.