AbleBrains

SAP At A Cultural Tipping Point?

I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about the use of Social Media at and by SAP.  And although this is a post on my personal blog, consider it a motivational speech to my SAP colleagues. This was motivated by a brief conversation on Twitter with Dennis Howlett, a person I respect and consider a friend.

This weekend, Dennis tweeted myself and Chris Horak. Den had an extensive conversation with Chris about SAP's presence on Twitter. (Here's the feed of that conversation) but what Dennis had said to both of us:

Wow. I was surprised.  Blatant pimp crap?  I thought we were pretty good at having conversations.  As you'll see from the feed, I was brought into this conversation at the tail end, the majority of it was between Dennis and Chris.  But I appreciate Den including me and it in fact spurred this post.

I can imagine that many of you are wondering to yourself?  Am I pimping crap?  I don't think so. And  I haven't yet spoken to Dennis directly to get his thoughts. But I think its fantastic seeing so many new SAP initiatives which include a Social Media component.  I'm so pleased to see it and be a part of helping to create these strategies.  But remember, our capabilities as marketers must evolve so that we become  Conversationalists and Storytellers.
 

So back to Dennis' reaction.  My guess? (and it is a guess)  Dennis is reacting to the fact that there has been a tremendous influx of SAPers into Social Media channels.  This is all goodness.  And we're kinda swarming about trying new things, some of it more uni-directional than true conversation and some of it which may or may not belong in these channels. Also some of us have not yet used Social Media in support of a business brand before.  That's why we've been doing the training and immersion that many of you have attended. And some may be using it in more traditional ways, more as a one-way communication channel, rather than using it as an opportunity to have value-based conversations.  If you're not saying something of interest -- how do you know its interesting?  Someone is talking back or at least listening... if you're not doing that then stop.   Re-think why you are here and if you have questions... go to the experts on SCN or come talk to me or Mike Prosceno or many other folks designated as responsible for Social Media and ask their advice.   

You can't really serve offers thru these channels unless a channel has been designated as such (a la @delloutlet ) or you have the permission of those you are conversing with to do so.  That's why we are so keen to understand who is following us on these social channels and what type of information they are interested in seeing.   We did this on Facebook and here's a link to the Survey Data we collected.  We now know what's an acceptable framework for conversation on Facebook...

• Customers want to be able to research solutions
• They want to connect with other customers
• They want to understand what their peers in their industry are doing to weather the economic crisis.

You need to do the same -- you need to understand what the folks who are following you on Twitter or who are Fans on Facebook want to talk about.  You do this in the same way you have a real time face to face conversation... you ask..."So what do you do?  What's happening these days?  What's new?"

Look, I told Dennis I think we're witnessing a shift in SAP's corporate culture. And I think we're approaching a Tipping Point. We're getting out onto Social channels, en masse and we're beginning to integrate those channels into our overall development, services and go-to-market strategies.  But, some of us have evolved into the conversationalists, and some of us are still on the journey.  I think we're moving in the right direction and I encourage you to keep evolving. And if you want our assistance.  Please ask!

Evolution, Enterprise 2.0 and Integrating Conversations with Processes

Enterprise 2.0 is spurring the evolution of us business professionals.   Its enabling employees, no matter their role in an organization to engage directly on behalf of their brand - to advocate for their brand, products and services.  We all know the market talks about our brands - with or without us being present.  By integrating conversations with business processes, brands can not only tell their story with convication and passion but they can act on those conversations.

          Now, the ZDnet crowd as well as many of the Enterprise Irregulars and many others have weighed in on the SAP Business Suite launch and the Enterprise 2.0 functionality now found in the Suite.   As I've been lucky enough to be included in some of the discussions around this type of integration, I thought it'd be helpful to share a bit more of our thinking and perspective as we approached this new wave of functionality.

Lets start with a couple of assumptions:

1. Social Media is a HOUSE OF CARDS

Easy to Build and Easy to fall apart unless you tie it directly to your business objectives and hence the processes of your organization and use it to enrich the experience ca customer has with your organization

 

2. Conversations Can Impact Top and Bottom line Revenue Growth

When a customer or prospect has an experience with your brand--  "marketing" in any form (product experience, service experience or Big M marketing, conversation begins.  Those conversations may be with the brand or with other customers.  If customers find value in those convesations, they begin to develop not only an affinity for those value driven exhanges but relationships develop.  Out of those relationships and value exchanges eventually the customer not only comes to appreciate the intrinsic value of the conversation but affinity for the brand develops.  At this point, a buying cycle is likely to proceed to everyone's satisfaction.

You can think about people engaged in conversations as a non-linear process.  In any conversational dynamic, individuals take away nuggets of information and pass that information onto other groups and other individuals.

    

 

What we've done is integrate conversations into enterprise processes so that they are actionable on behalf of the enterprise.  These take 2 forms.  Conversation -> Process integration and Process -> Conversation.

A good example of Conversation -> Process integration was demonstrated yesterday briefly but to elaborate, by pulling Tweets into the SAP Business Suite and applying a sentiment engine to those tweets, a customer service rep can make those conversations actionable by identifying and emerging customer or brand issue. Someone may be complaining about your product or service.  With Sentiment analysis not only can an organization proactively address a looming customer crisis but they can initate corporate processes such as raising a Customer Service Ticket to initiate a problem resolution process.

 

Once done, SAP can then issue the results of those trouble tickets on Twitter itself!

Going the other way, a super example of Process->conversation integration is the deployment of Marketing Campaigns using Social Channels.  Using Business Suite functionality,  users can now design and deploy marketing campaigns which can execute over a variety of social environments, including Twitter.

And there ya go...

 

Enterprise 2.0 is the latest evolutionary pressure on businesses.  Those of us that adapt will survive this pressure and thrive as the new ecosystem comes to dominate our business dealings.  Those that don't will find themselves facing extinction pressures that will be hard to avoid. 

My CIO.com Interview on Social Media

Tom Wailgum was kind enough to spend some time with me talking about what it is I exactly do for the SAP.  :)  You can find the article here... but one of my fav lines?

Our strategy has been to tie social media to specific business objectives, and the reason why we're focused on customer experience is that as an organization we've recognized that a lot of the power in the market has shifted. Traditionally, vendors were very much in control of selling cycles; we don't believe in selling cycles any more. We believe there are buying cycles now, and in buying cycles, the customers are in control.

So our focus around social media has been to ensure that we're giving customers the tools they need to be empowered, to make the right decisions regarding the software services and selection process, and that will predispose them to do business with SAP.

Another SAPer Joins the Blogosphere

Ed Brice, who runs Demand Generation for SAP Global Marketing has started a blog entitled Marketing Gimbal. Ed is  a perfect choice to write this type of blog.   Ed truly gets marketing and more than that, he knows what works and what doesn't, what we can throw away and what's new which we should adopt.  Check out Marketing Gimbal!

SAP to Acquire Business Objects

Things just got interesting again...especially after our announced intention to "grow organically"

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SAP (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) has agreed to a cash offer to buy software group Business Objects (BOBJ.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) (BOBJ.O: Quote, Profile, Research) for about 4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in the face of an aggressive acquisition spree by rival Oracle (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

The world's leading business software maker said on Sunday the primary driver for the acquisition, its biggest and a reversal of its avowed organic-growth strategy, was the potential to gain new business.

   

Entire article @ Reuters

Business ByDesign Go-to-market

Nice piece by Dennis on our GTM strategy (yes, I'm quoted, a little out of context but directionally correct).

SAP’s Business ByDesign go to market by ZDNet's Dennis Howlett -- One of the niggling questions about SAP’s Business ByDesign is just how the heck it is going to reach the numbers it says it wants to achieve. 10,000 new customers a year by 2010, many coming from this market, is ambitious. To date, SAP has been fuzzy about how that will work. Brian Sommer, one [...]

SAPanese comes to life

Jeff Nolan sent this to me... please feel free to add, embelish, delete, modify etc...

SAPanese

Nailin it...

Love Josh's post on the BBD announcement... it just nails it... Josh has always covered SAP fairly,  been critical and challenging but fair.. and he does it again with this post...

Why Business ByDesign is a very big deal by ZDNet's Joshua Greenbaum -- Can SAP's Business ByDesign drive competitive advantage for customers? And competitive positioning for the enterprise software market?

The Customer Experience Behind SAP Business ByDesign

Its finally happened.  SAP today announced its new onDemand software suite... code named "A1S" the solution will now be known as SAP Business ByDesign.  I was lucky enough to be part of this craziness as one of the Total Customer Experience leads for the company.  Our team's role was multifold and our success was a result of the collaboration with our colleagues in IT, marketing, telemanagment, our volume business initiative, our community and social media teams, and go-to-market teams.  We were responsible for:

1. Helping to conceive of new innovations in the area of customer feedback and validation
2. Assisting in driving alignment and decisions on business process design and  route to market strategy
3. Performing experience design and helping to drive change into the way we engage with customers  - in fact creating a model in which the customer is in the driver seat NOT SAP
4. Helping to drive SAP's Social Media Strategy into new areas (check out Jeff's post as well)
5. Changing the way we "speak" to customers - the very tone of how we say things to customers needed to change.... we needed to frankly be more conversational, plain spoken, impactful, positive yet honest about our short comings - and this is some of the change I,  in particular, am, most proud about.

I am also very proud of the experience design work which Peter Ebert (one of the most prodigious inventors at SAP) and his team did in the areas of design.   Peter and his small team, working extremely long hours, created a compelling customer experience that (1) delights customers, (2) puts them in control and (3) takes the best B2C thinking and integrates it into SAP's B2B model...

As you can see below, the design is clean, efficient and is focused on facilitating customer "moments of truth" in a buying cycle. If you think about your own experiences in buying, there comes a time when you make a decision in your own process and move closer to procuring that iphone or new car  or  home... but you work YOUR process.  B2B customers are no different. Why? Because individuals buy, companies don't. Its an individual who "writes the check." And as much as we want to think of selling software as a logical process, its not. Yes there's due diligence and RFPs and business pain mapping but at the end of the day, its emotional... you WANT to buy, you need to buy, you have to buy... all emotive responses, not necessarily logical. 

SAP Business byDesign has its own portal, its own "Business Center" that is protected currently and is only turned on for countries where we are rolling out first and for qualified prospects.  But here's how the puppy looks. Notice how simple the design is. Notice the self-guided nature of the process.  Three clicks to a best-run business - Explore, Evaluate & Experience - a phrase which for better or worse I coined.  We initially had gone with a guided experience of See-Try-Buy but eventually opted for the E-cubed approach to ensure we included the after sales and service aspect of the experience.  Other things to notice - immediate product immersion.  All of our research tells us to enable the prospect to get in the products early and often.  And the notion of a personalized trial that a prospect can make his own and take into production when he sees fit is another critical competitive differentiator. Community for the first time is front and center in an SAP Web Property as well. This is the first time that the company has embraced social media as a critical element of its GTM strategy.  This will of course continue.

And of course its available in German as well and very shortly in UK English, French and Chinese.  We are getting ready to begin another innovation cycle in advance of volume readiness as Henning discussed this morning. So be on the lookout for some radical changes coming to a hyperlink near you soon. 

 

Social Media Today Rave on SAP's Web 2.0 Efforts

Mark Yolton forwarded me this rave around SAP's successful use of Web 2.0... this was authored by the Social Media Today collective.

Social Media Today also sent two bloggers to Sapphire Atlanta.  Jerry Bowles published a post titled "SAP to Enterprise 2.0 Community: We Get It"  ... Here is Jerry's original post