Should SAP seek out "negative" business cases from knowledgeable SCN'ers

Question

A few years ago, I had the privilege of contributing a "positive" SAP business case to Mark Yolton's dossier (it had to do with the help that SCN'ers gave me during two real development crises caused by my client's HQ getting nosy in a way that the client didn't expect.)
My question now is the following.
By fortunate or unfortunate coincidence, I currently have a ringside seat to an amazing drama in which an upstart "agile nimble" product is beating the pants off a less-than-agile/less-than-nimble product that SAP recently acquired.  This drama is unfolding at a major US organization, and involves the organization site-licensing the "agile nimble" product for units of the organization to develop stuff on their own that they would literally have to wait months or years to get if they asked the organization's IT team to try and create the same stuff with the "dinosaur" product.  (Plus, believe it or not, SAP's dinosaur is actually lacking many features that come "standard" with the new upstart product.)
This situation is not pleasant to watch ... I am not only professionally committed to SAP, but think very highly of the company (with some relatively minor differences of opinion), and I hate to see the SAP product trounced at this organization because SAP apparently can't see the writing on the wall (or which way the wind is blowing, if you prefer a '60's metaphor from the last century.)
So - I am sure that I'm not the only SCN'er who's in this situation - i.e. not the only SCN'er who has the opportunity to be a first-hand witness to a business case that isn't working out well for SAP.
And if this is the case, shouldn't SAP be seeking out SCN'ers who can provide first-hand accounts of why and how an SAP product is doing poorly rather than well?  (Think here of the model of the Weather Channel, with its network of committed viewers who send in bulletins, photos, etc, in severe weather emergency situations.)
Or should SAP emulate the ostrich (i.e., stick its head in the sand) and choose not to obtain "early warning signals" from SCN "eyewitnesses"?
Is that question "loaded" enough for everyone?  I hope so, because SCN'ers could provide a valuable source of free valuable information that SAP would have to pay marketing consulting firms some pretty hefty fees to otherwise obtain.
djh

Answer 1

Stephen - you wrote:
The only problems I can think is how does a company know that the person reporting it, is not a competitor trying to throw you off course or some other person with less than pure intentions than reporting what they have seen.
And it's funny that you see the problem in that direction, but not the problem in the other direction, i.e. the problem with relying on info directly from clients.
Here's just one of many reasons why SAP can't really rely on info directly from clients.
Assume some outfit has been using a certain SAP product for many years, and furthermore, that the champions of this SAP product within the outfit are all relatives of Dilbert's famous character Mordor ("Preventor of Information Technology)". 
Assume also that one important reason these Mordors like  the SAP product is because they know it will help them keep their own locked-down centralized control of IT (relative to both data access and new development).
Finally, assume also that there are champions of some new upstart "nimble/agile" competitor to SAP's product within the same outfit. i.e. a group of folks who have actually used the new upstart product to jumpstart IT development that the Mordors would either never do, or take years to do.
Who do you think SAP is going to be able to talk to if it approaches this outfit for feed-back?
Do you really think the Mordors will ever let SAP near the champions of the new upstart product?
If you do, I've got the proverbial ocean-front property in AZ and the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.
What SAP should be doing in this case is licensing the nimble upstart as a reseller and figuring out how to feed this upstart from the SAP "centralizing" product, i.e. let each product do what it does best.
But SAP will never ever learn that this is what it should do if it listens to the "client" in this case. 
Because all it will hear is the chant of the Mordors.
Best
djh
PS - and remember also the classic Cold War scenario, where the Soviet military had much in common with the US military in the sense that they both wanted to maximize their shares of the overall national budgets.  In the same sense, there are probably plenty of Mordors inside SAP who are only too happy that SAP will only hear from the Mordors at the client in the above case.  The internal SAP Mordors don't want to have to rethink their Weltanschauung, do they ?