SAP on the Cloud

Blog series “March to Madrid”: Let’s get down to #social biz, again

October 3, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Blog 3: Social Collaboration is at the heart of Monitoring & Engagement

This week at DSAG, which is the SAP User Group conference for German-speaking countries, we exhibited our Social CRM offerings. Due to the tremendous interest in leveraging SAP offerings to manage consumer reviews, we decided to write a short follow-up to our last blog.

For some industries, user opinions are given so much weight that evaluation management has become one of marketing’s most important tasks. Foremost among these is the hotel industry. The tremendous growth of TripAdvisor, and similar review sites, is evidence of the power of social business. It’s fair to say that consumers are storming to web applications that provide user – in this case guest – reviews. Many websites even bundle guest opinions from other review sites and offer of course travel booking services. As a result, traditional service providers are struggling to reach the masses.  Indeed, they are even experiencing customer churn.

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September Cloud Strategy Update

September 19, 2012 by Sven Denecken

As I began preparing my cloud presentation for upcoming events, I reviewed my SAPPHIRE blog to see what had changed since May.  As one would hope, the only major difference was execution.  In other words, in May we talked about developing a cloud product for financials.  In the meantime, the product has already launched!  What is it that allows us to remain so consistent?  Consider our unique competitive position in the cloud as summarized below:

  SAP has a seat in the boardroom of Fortune 2000 companies.  We are committed to the cloud and uniquely positioned to help our customers leverage the cloud without disruption. SAP in respect to cloud is now the grown up in the room.  (more…)

Blog series “March to Madrid”: Let’s get down to #social biz

September 17, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Blog 2: Exposing the influence on purchase decisions?

 “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”. 

The waste of resources implied by this famous law of advertising attributed to John Wanamaker has been the bane of business since at least the 19th century*.  Little has changed to resolve this issue…until the emergence of social biz.

No, social biz hasn’t found the holy grail of identifying the wasted half.  What it has done, however, is introduce a disruptive innovation for influencing purchase decisions.  In other words, more and more purchasing decisions are being made based upon word of mouth as opposed to advertising.  Word of mouth of course isn’t new.  What Social Biz has done, however, is provide a platform for customers to easily share information.  While this information can’t be fabricated like advertising, it can at least be measured and thus managed.

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Blog series “March to Madrid”: Let’s get down to business – exposing the value of Social Media activities and data

September 4, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Blog 1: The Social Voice – How fine-tuned is your radar?

 “If you’re happy, spread the word. If you’re dissatisfied, please let us know.” 

This phrase and related approaches to managing customer relationships have always played a key role in business. In fact, it’s probably more crucial than ever to be customer-centric and to implement the right mindset and tools within your organization in order to succeed in today’s multi-channel world, in which consumers have learned to tune out the constant bombardment of advertising, while having access to more feedback channels than ever before in our history.

Not surprisingly, customers now increasingly prefer the judgment of other consumers.  It is the Internet that has become the ideal place for people to turn to when they want access to the praises or criticisms of other customers that will likely play a large part in their decision.

Most businesses are aware of this growing trend – especially in B2C of course – and many companies are looking at what customers are saying about them on major review sites. After all, these reviews, positive or negative, are likely the first thing people look for when making a purchase decision and are in turn valuable elements for companies turning potential customers into real customers. Thanks to the rise of online reviews and Social Networks, implementing Social CRM strategies become increasingly important these days – if not even elementary.

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Social in the cloud, watch video from Co-Innovation team

September 2, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Is your company also getting serious about Social Media? At SAP, we have had many fruitful discussions with B2C and B2B companies on how IT can help companies managing initiatives and gaining insights around the ever increasing “social channel”.
SAP is now offering new opportunities for your company taking advantage of the “Social CRM” opportunity, supporting a more strategic approach to Social Media than what our Co-Innovation team is currently observing in the market.

Watch the video to learn how. Regards Niclas Ottte (@Ottenic) and Sven Denecken (@SDenecken)

The Future of Digital Marketing is Now!

August 27, 2012 by Brad Smith

Story originally published on SAP Business Trends by Malcolm Kimberlin

This topic aired on SAP Radio’s Coffee Break with Game Changers August 25, 2012. This date is not significant for any particular reason except to underscore that we are now in the 21^stcentury.  Marketing as we have known it for the last few decades is experiencing a rebirth and we are already in the third trimester. SAP Radio producer/host Bonnie D. Graham got the scoop from three experts.

It’s no longer about pushing products in a simple one-way conversation. “Companies need to start incorporating contextualized content into the e-commerce experience to leverage the Internet as a dynamic and profitable sales, marketing and service channel”, stated Glenn Conradt, VP of Global Marketing at CoreMedia.

And to whom should companies be targeting these contextualized e-commerce experiences? Scott Liewehr, President and Principal Analyst at the Digital Clarity Group (DCG) says, “The future of digital marketing focuses as much on marketing to pre-existing customers as it does on marketing to prospects.” Customer loyalty is a huge factor for companies who hope to grow, according to Liewehr. (more…)

SAP Radio Puts Retailers on Social Notice

August 13, 2012 by Brad Smith

Story originally published on SAP Business Trends by Malcolm Kimberlin

“The winners in retail today are retailers who understand that the customer calls the shots,” stated Christine B. Whittemore live on SAP Radio July 25, 2012, and she is dead-on with my experience. What she’s saying is that social-minded customers are probably not sharing the bells and whistles you crammed into a tiny widget, they are more likely sharing the experiences they had (good and bad) dealing with your company’s customer service, web site, warranty program or product quality. SAP Radio host Bonnie D. Graham set-up the conversation saying, “Today, it’s tougher than ever before to turn customers and prospects into loyal evangelists for your brand.”

Hard sell marketing tactics are a turn-off for social media savvy consumers and they are far ahead of the curve when it comes to knowing a product’s features and functionality. And even before your product hits the market, consumers may know a lot about it, as was the infamous case recently with the iPhone left in a bar. An extreme case for sure, but it underscores the tenacity of the social-minded consumer.

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CRM is getting social and eco-system ready… in the cloud – June release is available

July 8, 2012 by Sven Denecken

With the General availability of SAP Customer OnDemand June 2012 release, there are massive enhancements that are available now – all based on customer and partner co-innovation and design-thinking. What an amazing acceleration of development and applying our new “every quarter a release”  approach we saw fast iterations on existing scope and additional areas covered.

Thanks to all the customers and partners that supported us, and kudos to the team!

The  Customer OnDemand team confirmed Friday that the SAP Customer OnDemand June 2012 release is generally available! As of this release, we have the following solutions available:

•  SAP Sales OnDemand
•  SAP Sales OnDemand, cloud integration option (to SAP ERP and SAP CRM)
•  SAP Social Customer Engagement OnDemand
•  SAP Social Media Analytics by Netbase
•  SAP Cloud Developer Studio

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Social Media: don’t “just do it”, but apply Social CRM strategies

June 27, 2012 by Sven Denecken

First of all we need to apologize for borrowing that famous “just do it” slogan from Nike and putting it completely out of context. Well, now that I’m thinking about it isn’t that what actually happens with Social Media, too? Social Media users talking about us, our products, brands, what they like or dislike about us? Is that all brought in context with our Social Media or general customer-facing activities?

Our Co-Innovation team has had a lot of discussions with cutting-edge Marketing departments of leading B2C and B2B companies, in which we observed this first hand. Companies are storming to where their customers are – on the Web – specifically Social Networks of course. Not surprisingly, there is tremendous buzz around Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Co. whose growth is truly astonishing.
In fact, most companies – especially in B2C – have experimented with or successfully established Social Media activities (e.g., campaigns on Facebook fan pages or YouTube, new twitter channels, etc.) by now.

However, from close engagements with customers on related initiatives our team has come to the conclusion that companies are now challenged to adopt new ways if they want to harness the opportunities while better managing the challenges and threats around Social Media. Basically, the old “just do it” approach is truly history and a more strategic Social CRM approach that is aligned with the holistic CRM strategy is clearly emerging.

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From Social Media experimenting to excellence – SAP Social Customer Engagement OnDemand enters the market

June 11, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Is your company also getting serious about Social Media? SAP introduced new offerings at SapphireNow that will help you entering the next phase in your company’s Social Media lifecycle.

In fact, this trend towards companies becoming more serious about Social Media is very obvious today, with most enterprises – especially in B2C- seeing Social Media as a significant Marketing opportunity now. At SAP, we have had many fruitful discussions with our Co-Innovation customers and industry analysts on how IT now needs to help companies managing initiatives and gaining insights around the ever increasing “social channel” which includes public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, as well as a company’s community network or other social networks relevant to the specific industry and segment.

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