Busting the omnichannel - enterprise hacks and chats

Epicor Insights - is ”Cognitive ERP” the way forward, and what does it mean for customers?

After day one of Epicor Insights 2026, Jon Reed and usual suspect Brian Sommer hashed out what they learned in a vigorous day of keynotes, exec meetings and customer discussions. Epicor's ERP manufacturing bona fides are well known, but what is the impact of their Cognitive ERP push? Is the AI strategy differentiated? Does it line up with what customers need? An unexpected AI candor came out from the keynote stage, but how are Epicor customers faring in their own AI pursuits? Yes, it's time to dissect the "forward deployed engineers" buzzword... Did Brian managed to avoid getting through the entire podcast without bashing the Gaylord Opryland Hotel venue? You're about to find out.

The SAP Sapphire 2026 final review - with Josh Greenbaum

In a time-honored tradition, on the Thursday morning after Sapphire 2026, Josh Greenbaum and I commandeered an abandoned session room at the Hilton to ask ourselves the burning questions: what the heck just happened? What we can take away? Where did SAP advance the conversation, or come up short? Given I have issued multiple podcast from the event, I issued another challenge: let's not repeat prior podcast topics as much as possible. Also, in the context of SAP's new "autonomous enterprise" all-in messaging, the clear/awkward question must be asked: has Greenbaum, one of the most vociferous agentic AI critics in the SAP ecosystem, especially in terms of ROI, changed his stance? And: what did we learn from all of our interactions with SAP execs and customers? And yes: the API data controversy is addressed here. We had an hour of hot topics to work through, and didn't even get to them all. But, a few timestamps:

4:15 - AI and "Toolchain" advancements redux

16:43 - the API controversy breakdown - what we learned at Sapphire

26:00 - has Josh's stance on agentic AI changed

38:00 - the autonomous enterprise framing

49:00 - SAP Connect, the business case challenge, and final hot seat questions

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SAP Sapphire review - the UKISUG’s Conor Riordan talks AI migration tools, adoption questions, and yes - APIs

At the tail end of SAP Sapphire Orlando, Jon Reed sat down in a semi-empty location with UKISUG Chair Conor Riordan to get his reactions to SAP's news, AI strategy and how customer value is changing. Amongst the hot topics Riordan brought up were: business cases and SAP's new AI migration tools (and Joule for Consultants). How impactful is this on business cases and customer AI adoption? Will partners/SIs make the shift? Where are we with public versus private cloud ERP? We also discuss Riordan's take on SAP's recent API policy changes - and how user groups got involved. Some back-and-forth on agentic accuracy and consumption pricing kept things lively as the event wrapped up. Note: after this conversation, Jon Reed talked with SAP's Philipp Herzig, who clarified that the ability to compare private and public cloud ERP readiness does already exist, and can likely be enhanced further, re: industry readiness assessments.

SAP Sapphire 2026 watch party recap - the keynote review

On Tuesday, SAP kicked off SAP Sapphire Orlando with a important keynote to set the tone for their enterprise vision amidst AI and SaaS upheaval. So how did they do? This audio production recaps the live Watch Party we held with Jon Reed, Josh Greenbaum and Bonnie Tinder, along with a stream of savvy/snarky audience members. In this 30 minute version, you'll hear our pre-keynote expectations and what SAP needed to accomplish. Then you'll hear our post-keynote recap - the highs and the lows, and what SAP accomplished, or not. Note: you can view the entire Watch Party replay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7458204874200186881?viewAsMember=true. SAP's keynote is also available online, check the SAP Sapphire Virtual event as a starting point.

Enterprise Month in Review - event detox and AI agent reality check edition

About ready for an event detox? Need a break from agentic keynote overdose? Join us for our picks and pans of the month, and perhaps a surprise guest or two, as we valiantly push to break through the noise and boil down our top road lessons. As always, Brian's infamous slide deck will be on display. Bring your savviest and snarkiest commentary... Note: this is the audio-optimized version... To see the full slides, check the youtube video replay: https://youtube.com/live/ga5DGxy74sA. 

The state of SAP, and where should customers go from here? An opinionated (and unscripted) review

What is the state of SAP in April 2026? The markets have one take - but is that the whole story? What if we frame this in terms of customer priorities and value instead? And how does the enterprise AI story factor in - with the "garbage in, garbage out" data issue firmly in mind? That's plenty of fodder for our first air-it-out 'State of SAP' review in six months. (Though there is also our live ASUG Talks sessions with live customer Q/As since then). This podcast begins differently - Jon Reed had an opening ventilation in store for Geoff Scott and Josh Greenbaum to riff on. From there, we follow on our unscripted way, into SAP's AI strategy - and what individuals (and customers) should do in the face of global volatility and tech disruption. Along the way, we address two of SAP's major news items as well: the Reltio acquisition, and Thomas Saueressig's move into Chief Customer Officer on the SAP Executive Board. This podcast is intended to set the stage for SAP Sapphire Orlando and the co-located ASUG Annual Conference, where will we be taping live again.

Why CX data fragmentation blocks AI progress - a live research review with Rebecca Wettemann

When you issue research that says things like this, you have my attention: "Instead of simplifying, many organizations are doubling down on complexity in the name of AI. This is where the story takes a turn. AI has become the top priority for modernizing customer service, but it’s also exposing just how broken the underlying data layer really is." Rebecca Wettemann of Valoir released fresh CX research that laid out the siloed predicaments CX (and contact center) teams are facing. But what should enterprises do about it? And why do we keep pursuing sexy AI solutions that won't get results - until we deal with the underlying data/people/silo problems? At Oracle AI World New York City, I hashed out these issues with Wettemann live during an event pit stop. (We also recorded a halftime recap of the Oracle AI event and agentic apps news, which was released as a separate podcast). Note: you can see the Valoir CX research summary/reveal on diginomica: https://diginomica.com/pursuit-customer-holy-grail-why-organisations-must-finally-tackle-cost-dis-connected-cx).

Oracle AI World NYC 2026 - the halftime recap with Rebecca Wettemann

Halfway through Oracle's AI World Tour in New York City, Jon Reed caught up with Rebecca Wettemann of Valoir to recap the highlights of what we heard so far. After discussing Valoir's new CX research - released as a separate podcast - we dig into Oracle's enterprise AI play, which is a bit of a neglected media story, lacking the sensational appeal of the market news Oracle has been in the middle of. We also discuss where Oracle CX goes from here, and what to make of Oracle's 22 new agentic apps - news which dropped a week before this event. Note: Jon will release deeper analysis of this event on diginomica, after his 1:1 interviews were completed.

On ERP value, AI disruptions and where we go from here - hot issues from Sage Analyst Day 2026

After a vigorous first day at the 2026 Sage analyst event, Brian Sommer and Jon Reed hash out an ERP vendor with a provocative approach to AI for finance. Why has Sage advanced the conversation with domain-specific finance models? What did the customers on-site say about AI adoption/disruption? Is there a compelling future for ERP beyond a simplistic image of agentic prompts? What open questions does Sage need to tackle at their upcoming Sage Future user event in late April? Note: due to saving Sage's news previews for Sage Future, this podcast focused on hot issues rather than state-of-the-company details. Those will be revealed/updated in a month's time at the user event.

Hashing out a provocative enterprise AI keynote - live at CRM Playaz IRL with Esteban Kolksy

Esteban Kolksy, Chief Distiller at Constellation Research, closed out the CRM Playas IRL (In Real Life) event in Atlanta with a provocative keynote the debunked enterprise AI myths, while making a case for where the value in AI truly lies. After Kolsky left the stage, we broke down his main points on why LLMs are becoming commodities, and why proper enterprise AI is superior to out-of-the-box frontier models. Is AI "intelligent" - or a fascimle of intelligence - and why does this matter? We argued, at times, before landing on why Kolsky hates context graphs, and why I believe the misuse of the word "grounding" holds us back. This keynote was worth hashing out: there are big takeaways for customers that want to avoid lock-in, and to accomplish something better with AI by making AI a strategic part of infrastructure, rather than a not-very-smart chatbot.

Enterprise month in review - agentic AI gut check time - with Andreas Welsch

Yep, we're back. It's time to join us for our unscripted review of the enterprise year to date. We also have special guest Andreas Welsch on tap, for an agentic AI enterprise gut check, timed with the Wednesday, February 25th announcement of his new book, The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge. As always, the audience brought their savviest and snarkiest comments. Note: to check Brian's infamous slide deck, go to the live video replay at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yGo9a01lPA&t=3s.

ZohoDay 2026 - the impromptu recap with Thomas Wieberneit

After two full days at ZohoDay 2026, Jon Reed and Thomas Wieberneit quickly regrouped for some first impressions on the slew of news and potent topics, such as intelligence as a commodity, the tension between custom solutions and technical debt, advances in AI coding that impact Zoho's own development teams, and reactions from customers on site.

ZohoDay 2026 - the unscripted review with Brian Sommer

ZohoDay 2026 is in the books. But while the assembled mass of industry analysts were still in Austin, Jon Reed and Brian Sommer grabbed a quiet room for an unscripted recap. There was a flurry of news at this show to make sense of, some of it NDA but most of it not. The guys were on the clock this time, with only 25 minutes to hit on the hottest issues from customers, partners, and Zoho leadership - not to mention Zoho fleshing out the "Zoho ERP" news. Brian had his infamous hand-scrawled notepad on the state of Zoho, and Jon walked listeners through Zoho's take on the changing risks of SaaS in the AI era. (This podcast was taped prior to Jon's last AI deep dives with Zoho in Austin, but there was plenty of AI content to discuss regardless). As always, catch Jon and Brian's recaps on diginomica.com for more background as they appear...

ERP vendors versus AI agent disruptions - an information discussion gets heated

During their Acumatica Summit podcast review, Jon Reed and Brian Sommer went off into a full-blown treatment of ERP versus AI agent disruptions. Sommer managed to expertly nudge Reed into blowing a gasket over LinkedIn AI exuberance, so we decided to release this back and forth as a separate 15 minute podcast (you can also hear the full Acumatica Summit review as a separate podcast). *** This debate is not intended as a complete coverage of this topic, just as a flavor for the issues ERP vendors and their customers are facing ***. Though this discussion references Acumatica, it's about the ERP market as a whole, and there is a contrast made between ERP vendors with legacy install bases and those with more flexible/real-time systems - without that older install base. Discussions where things run hot are fun, but for a more complete review of this topic, track Reed and Sommer's ongoing articles on diginomica.com.

Acumatica Summit 2026 - the virtual review with Brian Sommer

An unforgiving storm kept Brian from the tarmac, but that didn't stop Jon and Brian from doing their annual Acumatica Summit review, the virtual edition. On the last afternoon of the show, Jon caught up with Brian for an online review of Acumatica's AI news and strategy... What moved the needle, and what didn't? The guys also delve into customer proof points, including the use case discussion Brian did with a customer this week. Brian also lured Jon into ripping into a major cloud ERP versus AI fanboys/girls rant, but to keep this podcast focused, that will be released next week.

Acumatica Summit 2026 - views and reactions on-site with Josh Greenbaum

On the second full day of the Acumatica Summer 2026, Josh Greenbaum crashes the show with Jon to make sense of Acumatica's cloud ERP customer impact as the AI plot thickens. We get into our candid talks with customers, partners and Acumatica leadership, and what we found in our own session crashing also. (Brian Sommer was not able to make it in person, look out for a virtual show review with Brian soon).

Are ERP and SCM vendors ready for AI security? - the Louis Columbus interview

In the January edition of the Enterprise month in review, we interviewed Louis Columbus with the burning question: are ERP and supply chain vendors ready for AI security, and new attack vectors like prompt injection? Louis has been nailing this on his Venture Beat AI security blog - so we put him in the hot seat to see what we could learn. This podcast is only the Columbus interview, which has been optimized for sound quality. If you want to see the full video replay with slides, check: https://youtube.com/live/-DQBB6mYJ_g.

Enterprise month in review - ERP (and supply chain) vendors aren't ready for AI security

Are ERP and supply chain vendors ready for AI security, and new attack vectors like prompt injection? Our special guest Louis Columbus says no. Louis has been nailing this on his Venture Beat AI security blog - let's put him in the hot seat and see what we can learn. Your hosts Brian Sommer and Jon Reed will also share their underrated news stories of the month, and unleash their enterprise highs and lows via the infamous slide deck. As always, bring your savviest (and snarkiest) commentary and let's get this done. Note: this is the full show, including our first 20 minutes of underrated news stories and final whiffs. The interview with Louis Columbus is also being issued as a separate audio podcast. If you want to see the video replay with slides, check: https://youtube.com/live/-DQBB6mYJ_g.

Where do we go from here? A candid AI enterprise recap with CRMKonvos

In this special crossover podcast, I share my hot seat appearance with CRMKonvos - as hosts Thomas Wieberneit and Ralf Korb press me on the lessons we learned - if any - from enterprise AI and 2025. And how do customers prepare for 2026, given my skepticism of the tech predictions industry? Wieberneit and Korb weigh in with their field views as well, along with audience lessons. 

Enterprise Month in Review - is AI changing the B2B buyer?

Yes - it's time... Let's review the highs and lows of the enterprise month, with Jon, Brian, and the infamous slide deck like no other. Plus: we have special guest Barb Mosher Zinck in the virtual chair, to talk about her latest research on what B2B buyers care about, and how AI - or isn't - changing what they need and how they evaluate. As always, bring your snarky and savviest commentary. Note: if you appreciate enterprise content with NO commercials and no sponsors, consider sharing this content, leaving a favorable review, etc. I've funded my own podcasts since 2007 because I believe in this medium of free exchange of ideas. Your advocacy matters. To see the slide deck visuals, catch the youtube replay at: https://youtube.com/live/Mg_UKnWdeBo. To see the post on B2B buyers and AI by Barb Mosher Zinck on diginomica, check https://diginomica.com/buyers-are-engaging-vendors-sooner-not-reasons-you-may-think-heres-whats-really-driving-it