by Lucy Swedberg, Sr. Director, SAPinsider and insiderPROFILES

Working as an editor in the SAP space for almost nine years now, I’ve seen my fair share of branding changes. Product names evolve, key terms fade in and out of popularity, and oh-bla-di, oh-bla-da, life goes on.

But occasionally, an SAP branding update makes me pause and really think about the motivation behind the change — rarely is it just “change for change’s sake,” even if customers (and editors!) joke about how the frequency of updates may make it feel that way.

I came across the following blog post from Helen Dwight, Sr. Director of Analytics Solution Marketing at SAP:

blogs.sap.com/analytics/2012/05/09/under...

For me, the highlights of Helen’s blog include this handy reference chart, which demonstrates SAP’s effort to simplify the branding of solutions in its analytics portfolio:

The examples in the far right column are my favorite here — SAP Access Control is a whole lot easier than “the SAP Business Objects GRC solution for access control,” which was a version I remember from magazine issues past.

The other highlight of Helen’s blog for me is her explanation of the transition from the term “business analytics” to simply “analytics.” Given the increased role of social collaboration and the consumerization of analytic solutions, SAP believes that analytics have a broader play than just in an enterprise context — so using “analytics” rather than “business analytics” makes a whole lot of sense.

I have no doubt that names and terms in the SAP world will continue to change and evolve over time. But, for now, it’s nice to see a focus on simplification in branding here — it makes life for SAP customers (and editors!) a whole lot easier.

I’m always curious; for you, our customers, do SAP branding changes have any impact on your day-to-day work? Would more information on branding changes be of interest to you?