Entries Tagged 'Compliance' ↓

Here’s the timeline of events: 

• March 22, 2007: Oracle filed a lawsuit on SAP in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging that SAP, through it’s third-party application provider TomorrowNow, illegally accessed and downloaded thousands of customer support documents, software and other confidential information from Oracle’s online customer support system.
• July 2, after over 3 months of no-response, SAP declared they will present their defence on July 3.
• July 3, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, in a dramtic U-turn, accepted that employees of TomorrowNow had indeed downloaded more info than they were entitled to!

Regardless of right or wrong doing (which could only be known after some investigation), SAP made two blunders in it’s response to the Oracle suit:

(1) When you are accused by your topmost competitior in the market of wrong-doing, it’s already a dangerous situation, because there is a strong chance it’s true, because your top competitor would not want to lose face for baseless charge. SAP needed to respond within a a week or two (it’s more than enough time for any kind of investigation when it involves IT systems). Plus SAP owed it to it’s business partners/investors/sales teams to prepare a fast response…not wait for 3 months like it did – 3 months of open wound on reputation is not good for any industry leader. It just creates a perception that you have actually something wrong, and are finding ways to juggle out of it – and in this case the perception turned out to be true. Such a law suit…anything over 2 weeks of time would have provided good ammo to Oracle’s teams…and it surely happened.

(2) Multiple messages and U-turns: this is the kind of error acceptable from a small business when the business plan is still evolving, and not at all expected from an experienced player like SAP. It just looks like the folks in head quarters at Walldorf, Germany have less control/transparency on what their units in the US are doing. In a way, this lawsuit may just be a symptom of a more serious operational issue in SAP’s US vs Europe vs Worldwide operations. As an executive, any U-turn in messaging is damaging for the ground level teams, who would have used your previous message to get some progress in their work. But SAP chose to do it, probably because they say a bigger danger in trying to defend the case, with facts going against them. So Blunder 1 led to blunder 2.

You could be facing a similar situation at your own business. While most execs won’t have a clue, our members are equipped with some tools and answers. You can get started too – with a free copy of our Difficult Decisions Guide.

Here are the background articles:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2154584,00.asp

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2154139,00.asp

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2107280,00.asp

When you are in any business, there are some information items you want to protect, even while working with business partners, clients, and vendors. That’s the Non-Disclosure Agreement. Over the last 10 years, I have seen few admirable applications of it, and lots of bad ones. The first and most important thing to note is this: does the guy who is signing the NDA know what it means? does he realize that he should not present the information from your engagement in some ‘knowledge management’ session with his colleagues in his company once the engagement is over?

The first and most important thing to note is this: does the guy who is signing the NDA know what it means? does he realize that he should not present the information from your engagement in some ‘knowledge management’ session with his colleagues in his company once the engagement is over?

Improvements in generic business practices are fine for propogation. When employees and vendors leave and join competition, it happens – can’t be prevented. But valuable business knowledge/ IP must be revealed to selective parties.If something is really valuable to you, make sure you add the weightage in evaluating those who can protect it better. Keep information systems under control, and unreachable to those who don’t have to see it. It is not uncommon to hear of employees who have taken a list of customers to competition, and staff of vendors, who are checking in the ERP system, how much business is going to which vendor.

The point is: With trusted people, you don’t really need an NDA. And with people who you can’t trust, you need a lot more than an NDA. Our observations indicate that “brief and easily readable agreements” are read and remembered much better than long-drawn contracts. So if your aim is to make people understand what you are saying with your NDA, try to keep it within half a page. Here’s our NDA, for example: (no talk without action!)

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Alpha Neuron acknowledges that the information received or generated, directly or indirectly from the Client is confidential and therefore any people employed or engaged by us, agree not to disclose, directly or indirectly, any information with respect to any business discussion with the Client. It is agreed that:

• We will not disclose business challenges, financial information, business plans, strategies for development or growth, any proprietary information or any other information regarding the management or method of operation that is not known generally to the public or in the public domain.
• We will not reproduce, in any form, information provided to us outside the scope of the consultation/service unless otherwise approved, in writing, by the Client.

This Non-Disclosure Agreement shall remain valid for a period of two years after completion of a consultation/service to the Client.

On behalf of Alpha Neuron:

Shankar AVSB (Director)
London | New York
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