This sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Not so fast….
But first, let's take a short diversion. This is my first post since I left SAP last year and I have to admit it feels a bit strange and nostalgic to be back at SCN. I joined NextPrinciples last November helping to drive our marketing and product management functions. NextPrinciples offers an integrated social analytics and engagement platform and has been a proud member of the SAP Startup Focus program since its inception (not to mention we 've had many playdates with HANA ever since she was an infant). You can see my previous frozen self ted.sapountzis. Apparently, there is no way to transfer my existing profile, hence the new avatar (but with the same old picture).
OK, now back to our regular programming....
Few people currently question the opportunity social media has to revolutionize industries and companies. Many organizations are currently leveraging social media to transform their business by allowing them to engage with their customers, partners and influencers to offer a more consistent and real-time customer experience.
How about saving lives? The world first experienced the true power of social media during the ‘Arab Spring’ events that toppled governments in the Middle East more than two years ago. More recently, many associate the capture of the bombers during the horrific events in Boston a few weeks ago to the effective spread of the news over social media.
NextPrinciples has been working with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies during the past few months. Based on what I have seen, I believe the world is now in a position to prevent the loss of human life through the effective use of social media. The opportunities we have seen through the use of our Insight-to-Action platform powered by SAP HANA® are both limitless and beyond my wildest imagination. From the effective use of social media to gain real-world insights by connecting with others to research new therapies, to proactively identifying potentially lethal product safety issues before they spread, we believe the potential social media has to actually save lives is enormous.
One of our customers is using our platform to gain real-world insights by engaging with medical experts across various social media channels. The insights and speed by which they attained those insights would have been unimaginable without the use of social media. Their researchers will soon be able to hone in and focus on approaches that would have taken them years to develop on their own.
Another one of our customers has been able to detect potentially lethal product safety issues with an over-the-counter medication on two separate occasions. By proactively recalling their products and notifying the public, they were able to prevent the loss of human life.
Imagine the possibility of being able to track millions of conversations across the web about a drug or disease and have your platform analyze and present you with the summary of these conversations. Now imagine being automatically alerted based on the velocity of these conversations, kinds of people talking (e.g., consumer vs. expert) and the underlying content, context and sentiment of these conversations. Today’s social media analytics and engagement platforms such as NextPrinciples Insight-to-Action powered by SAP HANA make all this possible.
Can you attribute an ROI to this? We think not.
If you are planning to be at SAPPHIRE NOW this coming week, please join us at 1PM ET on Thursday, May 16 at the Database and Technology Microforum (DT629) to hear first-hand how one large pharmaceutical company is harnessing the power of social media to gain real-world insights. Even if social media is not your cup of tea, please stop by the Database & Technology campus and say hi, I will likely be loitering in the area all week. I look forward to seeing all my old friends and making new ones.
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