11 SAP Executives to Follow on Twitter
There was an excellent interview with Brian Ellefritz and Jonathan Becher on SAP and Social Media at Sapphire Madrid, that contained a great quote by Jonathan “social media is the ultimate listening platform”. As a regular user of twitter over the past two years I can tell you first hand that SAP is really listening and it is extremely impressive how companywide they have embraced social media. The SAP leadership team deserves a lot of credit as they are leading by example and providing their insights, views, information and engaging with the community on a regular basis. This article outlines 11 SAP executives that are active (min 300 tweets) and have embraced social media that I would highly recommend that you follow.
Vishal Sikka – Vishal is the Chief Technology Officer at SAP and always has a
keynote at the major conferences. A sample tweet is “@vijayasankarv thx sir. It takes massive personal toll. But our teams (hana+hotel_calif) & developer+customers’ love make it all worthwhile.” You can follow him on twitter at vsikka
Jonathan Becher – Jonathan is the Chief Marketing Officer for SAP. A sample tweet
is “SAPPHIRENOW and SAPTechEd in China was something truly historic. Largest IT conference in country. 50K people, incl 15K in-person.” Earlier this year an individual tweeted that he couldn’t get anyone to contact him regarding a piece of SAP software his company wanted to purchase and Jonathan not only noticed it but responded personally which show how closely SAP is listening. You can follow him on twitter at jbecher
Sanjay Poonen – Sanjay is the President and Corporate Officer, Global Solutions,
SAP. A sample tweet is “Did whirlwind visit to SAP Dublin Inside Sales & Dev Teams. The energy & strategic learning is fantastic, opportunity huge, keep WINNING in UKI!” You can follow him on twitter at spoonen
Sven Denecken – Sven is the Vice President of OnDemand at SAP. A sample tweet
is “Good we do have this as a design priciple in SAPCareerOD SAPOnDemand http://lnkd.in/tsujVv.” You can follow him on twitter at SDenecken
Dawn Crew – Dawn is the Vice President of HR Solution Management at SAP. A
sample tweet is “Why SAP HCM? Discover the value of selecting SAP HCM. Check out this new video to learn more. http://bit.ly/u3Ez5x.” You can follow her on twitter at dawncrew
Oliver Bussmann – Oliver is the Global CIO at SAP and very active with social
media. A sample tweet is “We have 11,000 iPads out of 50,000 users at #SAP – more to come #sapchat.” You can follow him on twitter at sapcio
Steve Lucas – Steve is the Global General Manager and Senior Executive of SAP sample tweet is “Join the 100k club on SAP HANA and @vsikka will take your team to the real Hana (Hawaii)!” You can follow him on twitter at MarkYolton
Chip Rodgers – Chip is the Vice President and COO, SAP Community Network and
Ecosystem Events at SAP. A sample tweet is “Love seeing SAP board member @vsikka do his own HANA demo at China Sapphirenow SAPTechEd Beijing.“ You can follow him on twitter at chiprodgers
Jeff Word – Jeff is a Vice President at SAP and heavily involved with HANA. A
sample tweet is “Getting ready to amaze @sapmentors with all the geek porn in the SAP HANA test drive at SAPTechEd Madrid.” You can follow him on twitter at jeff_word
Aiaz Kazi – Aiaz is the Global Vice President and Head of Technology and
Innovation Platform Marketing at SAP. A sample tweet is “@applebyj On the contrary thanks 2 @vsikka 4 the passion, enthusiasm, & the opportunity 2 lead technology & marketing innovatios & +ve impact 4 SAP.” You can follow him on twitter at aiazkazi
SAP is also starting to roll out a new initiative called SAP Chats in which users can ask SAP executives and mentors live questions via twitter. Oliver Bussmann took part a few weeks back and covered 36 topics over 60 minutes and check out the great Q&A. Sven Denecken and Richard Hirsch are going to discuss SAP’s Cloud Strategy on December 7th using the same format. I would expect the SAP Chats to continue in 2012 and this is an excellent opportunity for you to interact with the SAP leadership team and thought leaders with the only requirement is having a Twitter account.
I have seen firsthand the value that Twitter can bring a SAP professional and over the past 18 months have written several articles including:
Five Ways Twitter will Help your SAP Career
How to find and follow SAP Content on Twitter
Value for SAP Customers to start using Twitter
Twitter and SAP – Whats in it for You
Ten Recommended SAP HCM people to follow on Twitter
12 Enterprise Software Analysts to follow on Twitter
How Twitter Helped me become a SAP Mentor
It is important to note that social media for SAP professionals is only in its infancy and going to continue to grow in popularity and importance. You all have a unique opportunity to be early adopters and if the SAP leadership team sees the value and can find the time for social media shouldn’t you.
11 out of ????. Have ???? nothing to tell!?
All the best,
Guido
There are many SAP employees making good use of their social media channels for the benefit of the community. Jarret's piece is about SAP Executives, not every SAP Employee and from my own experience the SAP Executives' use of Twitter reflect their personalities very well, i.e. they are not pure marketing engines - so I think this blog has a lot of value.
Thanks
Chris
The other interesting dynamic is they are stepping outside of their comfort zone as there are many people on Twitter who arent afraid to challenge their viewpoints if they feel it is hype or marketing.
I have already a twitter. Currently twitting on personal insight and German politics, mainly in German.
If you join my conversation, I will include IT in English to my subjects.
@Genosse_Bruno
Glück auf,
Guido Brune aka Genosse Bruno
just adding all 11! Good starting point to become part of SAP ecosystem.
Thanks!
Guido
Sample tweet:
My number was D032939@SAP! Never forgotten & always appreciated!
your posts on twitter and the SAP world that revolves around it, are always a treat to read and learn and implement.
Loved your article in this times Mentor quarterly..
I should say, your rendition of the content and the crisp and effective messaging is getting a lot of the twitter world into SAP and vice-versa
Great work buddy and keep them coming.
Am sure that in the days to come, more Execs from the SAP leadership world will get a handle and start crowd-sourcing from outside the enterprise to inside the SAP EcoSystem..kudos
Cheers-Tridip (follow me on twitter @tridipchakra, we evangelize and spread the world on twitter re: SAP's Procurement Solution portfolio, also follow @SAP_Procurement - SAP's official Procurement twitter handle !!!
Thanks for the kind words and I have seen first hand the value that Twitter can bring for SAP professionals.
Enjoying following you on twitter as well even though I dont understand much of the Procurement stuff 🙂
Thanks,
Jarret
thanks for this
Muthu Ranganathan
(Now you can also follow me @muthurangnathan )
Thanks for the comment and it is impressive to see how open and engaging many of the key leadership team is on Twitter. Now all you need to do is convince Jim S & Bill M to join 🙂
Jarret
Of course, this isn't an exhaustive list of SAP executives on twitter. I've started a list of SAP people of twitter which you can find here: @jbecher/sap
I was not aware there was a Twitter list that captured executives/management so thanks for sharing. Hopefully there were no glaring omissions from my list.