AbleBrains

Was Dennis Howlett Right?

Back in March 2009, I received the following tweet from Dennis Howlett:

    @choirshark @stevemann : I know you are all over Twitter, but your method is annoying, blatant pimp    crap

At the time I was creating SAP's Social Media strategy so I wrote about it and in fact I was pretty defensive about SAP's presence on Twitter.  I told Dennis that I thought SAP was at a cultural tipping point and that the company was evolving its market engagement model.  Well, today I received this tweet:

 

I clicked the link and was taken to a page on SDN:

I was bummed and I immediately thought back to Dennis' critique of the organization's presence on Twitter.  Let me get this straight, if I follow @SAPEcoHub   (SAP's online marketplace) I'm gonna win a $100 American Express Gift Check???  Are you kidding? You are going to pay me to RT and follow you?   If we were accused of of pimping back then what's this?

SAP you know how to do this. Folks who are going to follow you for 100 bux are not the folks you want following you at all.  Don't you want folks who want to have a genuine conversation with you?  To engage with you?  To grow from having a conversation to you to attaching value to you to actually having an affinity for the brand? 

C'mon you're better than this.  What's going on?

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. 

More things you didnt want to know about me

Charlie Wood tagged me. I'm so glad this happens just once a year.  The parameters for this tag are:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

OK 7 things you didn't want to know about me:

1. I'm the son of an orthodontist AND I now need braces (cobbler's children syndrome)
2. I have a fascination with the people who love Multi-level Marketing schemes.
3. I'm a "time Nazi"... I strive to ALWAYS be on time and hold others to the same ridiculous standard.
4. I should have gone into the media business -- i'm a news junkie
5. I thought I didn't want any more children but now I can't imagine my life without our triplets
6. I want to retire to Mustique (if you don't know, don't ask)
7. I actively work to slow my aging (except when I'm drinking, over eating or forgoing sleep in the name of hedonism).

Tagging...

1. Thomas Vanderwal
2. Timo Elliot
3. Adam Christensen
4. Jeff Nolan
5. David Armano
6. Zoli Erdos
7. Jennifer Leggio

Still Ghostwriting Executive Blogs??? You're Still Missing the Point

I swapped some email with a Board Member of a company  recently commenting to them that an internal blog would be a great way to engage the employee base and open up a true dialog with the employees. 

The response I got was:

Thanks for the hint. And yes we have.

This is great...First time that this company's Sr. Execs thought to use a blog to converse with the employee base.

Well, I was invited to take a look at the blog... (never saw a blog platform like this btw,  I think they hacked their forums for user-friendly comment posting but I don't think its a true blogging platform). Good content though. I  was really pleased to see the company moving in this direction. So I had to ask.... I emailed a colleague familiar with this blog and asked, "who wrote this?" and they told me that "I am ghostwriting" but "we work on his messages together"

I responded back that I didn't think this was the best strategy, that blogs are conversations and if you are writing it for him, its you having the conversation not him.  It'd be like me sending someone else to a party that I was invited to and told that person to pretend its me... would the other guests ever really get to talk to ME?  Obviously not.

So... great first step on the internal blogs.. don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Execs at this company that are blogging internally.... but if you don't have the time to blog, don't do it... it won't come off as authentic and people will see thru it... I did after reading one post and I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack... If you're looking to engender credibility and transparency, then you have to write it yourself. If you're doing it because "blogs" are on your communication checklist, then stop.  There are better ways to communicate internally than to have someone ghostwrite your blog.

Didn't this meme burn thru the blogosphere 2 years ago????

Fiddler on the Social Media Roof: "Attention! Attention."

In moving forward with thinking about SAP's Social Media marketing implementations, my thoughts are shifting from tools and strategies (I think I know where we need to go) to the notion of "attention."   

Our internal constituents... like yours have limited cycles to spend and will naturally  gravitate to the tools that deliver the most value.  Thanx @jenrobinson for spurring these thoughts on. 

My concern is that the balance between professional internal use, professional external use, personal external use and personal internal use of Social Media will carve up the Attention pie into so many small pieces as to be ineffective.

I know for me, I feel much more connected and part of vibrant community as twitter.com/stevemann and to our SAPListens experiment on Twitter versus SAP's internal SAPTalk laconica implementation.  I feel my own attention pie carved up into some pretty small pieces. I feel like a Fiddler on the Social Media Roof, balancing my attention precariously among these different efforts.

Where is the point of diminishing returns?  When do we get to the point where the Attention Pie is carved up into so many small pieces that diminishing value from a particular social graph is the result.

These are the thoughts that are consuming my cycles right now.  What are your thoughts on this potential Attention Deficit?

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.

What's Your Social Quotient? A Method for Assessing Social Media Risk

Oy.  Its been a month and 2 days since last I posted. That is far too long.  I will endeavor to tighten up. Ok, when last we spoke, I wrote on the use of the Social Quotient to determine the likelihood of success in a Social Media initiative.  So its just sorta hangin out there now... how do you assess a companies' SQ?  So here are my measures, feel free to recommend your own.

1. Are there Grass Roots Social Media efforts underway current -- Award 1 point for Yes, 0 for No

2. Is there someone at the organization "in charge" of Social Media - look to the comms and marketing orgs typically, there may be more than one person doing this job. - Award 1 point for Yes, 0 for No

3. Innovation Measurement - I think propensity for innovation is a key indicator of the ability for an org to fulfill the promise of Social Media - to me it represents an openness to new ways of doing things.

• Compensation tied to Innovation & Innovation initiatives (bonus pay typically) -- 6 pts
• Dedicated Innovation Function in multiple functional groups - 5 pts
• Employees encouraged to experiment and Fail Fast - 3 pts
• Dedicated Innovation Function in one group (R&D) - 2 pts
• No innovation function - 0 pts

4. Cultural Fit - this is a completely subjective measure and one that some may find useful and others not but here goes:

• Risk Embracing (use failure as a means to drive success)- 6 pts
• Risk Tolerant (don't like failure but not afraid of it) - 3 pts
• Limited Risk Taking (failure and risk are not liked much and failure is looked down upon) - 2pts
• Business Laggard (fuggedaboutit) - 0 pts

5. Management style - is the company consensus-driven or command-and-control oriented or somewhere in between. Too much of either style is no good.  Consensus is inherently more social but slower, C and C is less social, more controlling but faster. You need a balance of the two:

• Balanced Management Style - 3 pts
• Command and Control - 1 pt
• Consensus - driven - 1 pt
• Its a mess - 0 pts

6. Action Orientation - while not a prime indicator of success or failure in Social Media, I view a companies action orientation as indicative of the length of time it takes companies to move from insight, to strategy to execution.  The more Analysis driven an enterprise the longer it typically takes it to get in market. Conversely Seat of the Pants decision making can be just as detrimental - granted you get to market fast but with the right thing?  Again, a balanced approach is warranted.

• Balanced Action Orientation - 3 pts
• Analysis Orientation - 1 pt
• Seat of the Pants Orientation - 1 pt
• Its a mess - 0 pts

7. Co-innovation - does your organization regularly co-innovate with customers? Do you listen customers? Solicit feedback regularly? Do you create with them?

• To a large degree - 6 pts
• To some degree - 3 pts
• Rarely - 2 pts
• Not at all - 0 pts

8 Customer-centricity - how customer centric is your organization?  Do you tend to put the customer at the center for all your efforts? Is there inherent transparency between your brand and your customers? Are customers "valued"? Do you use Net Promoter Score to measure your loyalty and engagement with customers?

• To a large degree - 6 pts
• To some degree - 3 pts
  
• Rarely - 2 pts
  
• Not at all - 0 pts
  

I've also considered adding a "Millennial Infusion" rating. What is the Make-up Millennials in your organization.  Millennials and Gen Xers are digitally native and tend to have a higher propensity to adopt social tools than late and early stage boomers - although this is in no way a hard and fast rule.  However, I don't have any data suggesting where the tipping point is on how many Millennials are needed to ratchet up adoption. Suffice it to say that the more the better.

These are the major metrics I like.  There are more and for a complete assessment I would use more.  But this in my opinion is directionally credible.

This data can be gathered via an on-line survey of hundreds of employees or you can do this as part of a risk assessment.. I typically recommend a broader based approach. I'd also recommend the use of  ethnographic techniques to sound out the true orientation of a given enterprise - participant observation, guided interviews and facilitated sessions would work well here.

So how did you score?

High SQ: Strong Propensity for Success: 25 - 32 Points
Medium SQ: Likely to succeed but there are Risks which must be managed:  17-24 points
Low SQ: Substantial Risks to a Successful Implementation: 10 -17 points
Abysmal SQ: Likely to Fail:  0-10 points

The "Social Quotient" Web 2.0 and Great B2B Customer Experiences

I've talked about Danny Meyer's approach to hospitality as a business tool.  Danny believes that in his restaurants, if you want to deliver a superior customer experience, don't begin with customer experience strategies.  Begin with employees that GET customer experience and have a high Hospitality Quotient (HQ) -- that innate ability to be hospitable, listen to customers and deliver an enriching experience to customers.

Question: Can the same approach be used in B2B environments?

In a word yes.

Companies that deliver great customer experiences tend to experience:

1. An appeal to both techie and non-techie users because both are engaged with the content and communities that appeal directly to them
2. Higher return on marketing dollars because they don't provide marketing speak but speak in plain spoken, conversational tones and leverage great UGC. So customers WANT and NEED to engage in such forthright conversations.
3. Products that are more closely aligned with market needs again because using the voice of the customer to influence product decisions
4. Greater intimacy between customer and brand leading to a superior revenue stream: Marketing  Drives Conversation, Conversation Drives Relationships, Relationships Drive Brand Affinity > Brand Affinity converts into Revenues
5. Customers as avid brand evangelists that do your reference selling (WOM) for you

Many believe that Web 2.0 implementations are the vehicle for making this customer centricity possible.  While those are indeed the tools, foundational elements within a corporation need to be laid first.  Chief among them are what I call a companies - "Social Quotient"  - the likelihood of an organization to effectively utilize Web 2.0 solutions to drive greater customer intimacy.  A companies' SQ begins with its employees:

1. How likely are they to want to use social media tools to connect not only with one another but with customers and partners?
2. Are they using Twitter, blogs, Wikis of their own accord?
3. Are they demanding that these tools be deployed internally for greater internal collaboration
4. Are they part of a diverse workforce generational makeup - does it have a broad distribution of Millennials (Gen Y), Gen Xers, Early and Late Stage Boomers  - Millennials and Gen Xers tend to drive adoption of these tools
5. Do they have a penchant for experimentation and are not afraid of Failure? Are employees given innovation time? Time to do their own projects?
6. Are there lots of grass roots implementations afloat and are employees evangelizing them to others?

Employees with a high SQ will want to use Social Media to drive customer intimacy and in so doing benefit not only the customer but the brand.  So start with an Employee First approach to Social Media NOT the Social Media itself.

SAP Virtual Marketing Meeting "Photo Tour"

So, I feel like I'm a tourist, sharing my pics on my trip to Virtual SAP.  Here are a few pics of what I've seen today...

Here's our exhibition hall

Then I went to visit Sirius Decisions...

Got some Information a video overview of what they do...

And then started to chat with a rep...

If I'm tired of "walking around" I can go to Conference Center and sit down in any geography and attend a relevant session.

Where I could get the agenda for current and upcoming sessions