Your core BPX team is proud to share the latest developments with your BPX community in 2008. This was again a year of accelerated growth and surpassing half a million members of our community is an excellent opportunity to share the more valuable 2008 stories with each one of you. I decided to try it "community style" and not go all official on people.
This year we focused on further development of new and existing "neighborhoods" in your BPX community and expanded to a total of 34 "neighborhoods" to date. This means we now have 18 industry specific neighborhoods; 12 application and topic specific neighborhoods; and 4 general BPX topic areas such as people collaborating around Business Process Modeling, SOA and standards.
In January we launched the banking community, in May at Sapphire we launched : Value Engineering, Professional Services Industry and the Travel and Logistic Services Industry communities. After that in July we added a very important and now very thriving neighborhood: the ERP Community ( already more than 175 blogs posted since July ! related to just ERP) and then in November at TechEd Bangalore we added the latest one: the PLM community. In the meantime we also spend time to revamp and update the standards community, and BPX education area. More importantly we have more than 100,000 identified customers and 25,000 identified partners in your BPX community.
As you can imagine, growing so rapidly also requires improvement of infrastructure and services that are provided. Our small but strong team has tried to continue to deliver infrastructure improvements to wikis, blogs, forums, e-learning and other platform enhancements and to maintain quality content services, community services and to improve standard reporting services to make your neighborhoods successful and we are proudly looking backwards of what we collectively were able to achieve in this year of accelerated growth. There are almost 4000 blog posts in the community this year alone in 38 BPX related blog categories ( granted you are allowed to post in more than one category; don't hold it against us !... )
Amongst those..-did you hear about the Go LIVE blog on the CRM community@BPX by Eclipse aviation ? The customer Eclipse Aviation shared their experiences in a CRM 2007 Business Transformation Study and the Eclipse Aviation goes live with SAP CRM 2007 blog that was posted during April 2008 has now more than 6200 views to date collectively. How is that for giving the customer a voice - ? I would love to see more of those stories of customers and partners being shared in the communities.
Of course we did not expect all neighborhoods to suddenly thrive and be as vibrant as the CRM and ERP and our Chemical community, but as we hoped we have many 2008 Success Stories that were collected: some to highlights that should have special mention are the stories of:
Pacific Coast Feather Spreads Its Wings In China (PDF 147 KB) For its expansion into China, Pacific Coast Feather Company needed expert advice on setting up a chart of accounts to meet Chinese financial reporting regulations. The Business Process Expert community drawing on the SAP® ecosystem and partners - provided the necessary knowledge.
Brenntag Canada Viewed BPX Clips and found a Sales Productivity Solution (PDF 60 KB) Brenntag Canada Inc. was considering upgrading its SAP® Customer Relationship Management application to enhance the end-user experience but debated whether or not to proceed. Then a video clip posted in the customer relationship management section of the Business Process Expert community made the decision easy.
REACH Compliance: How the Business Process Expert Community Helps the Chemicals Industry (PDF 60 KB)
This Business Expert Community Proof Point showed how participation in the BPX Community can help chemical companies develop strategies for compliance with Regulation, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) policy in a web2.0 approach ( Thanks to Kieran O'Connor !)
Florida Department of Revenue: Overcoming Challenges With Collaboration (PDF 252 KB) The Florida Department of Revenue improved service for taxpayers, cut costs significantly, and saw improved revenue after networking within the BPX community.
And of course we should not forget quotes like those of Susan Wright, Managing Director, BearingPoint, Inc:
"The Business Process Expert community helps us model a process first, then compose the application. During the design of our Business Acquisition Management Solution, we tapped the collective intelligence of the community to get smart on industry practices. The end result was a better application that came to market sooner." -
I am also particularly proud to mention that BPX community contribution is now part of the Partner Pinnacle Awards and that to date we have had more than 120,000 points in specific SI related contributions to date and an increased commitment by SI's to use our community as a knowledge sharing and engagement platform for their business analysts, application and BPM/BPX consultants and you should see much more engagement and value from them in 2009.
The most important testament is that we collectively accelerated exponentially and increased all elements like traffic, engagement and value this year.
I can not finish this blog without sharing my personal favorite moments this year. ( and no it is probably not sitting with Mark Yolton, Chip Rodgers, and Michael Bechauf in the backseat of a rather small Indian car driving through Bangalore to TechEd; having the bottom of the car scraping the Indian pavement, being scared of tumbling over the sacred cows; although very funny if you were there yourself)
The Process Design Slam - Bangalore '08 that occurred during BPX Community Day ( with over 300 participants in three locations), the day before each TechEd.. I do want to give a personal recognition for the tireless work our Chief BPX community evangelist Marilyn Pratt has done to make not only this event but many BPX community events offline and online collaboration happen; many thanks and additional accolades to especially our BPM community member Marc Dietrich for support. The Code name says it all: DON'T DROP IT ......( the egg.. First Process Design Slam a Smashing Success - Don't drop IT) It was just an example of community at work and when at TechEd Bangalore more people attended the Design Slam than Hacker night I had to give a nod and hats of to the organizers ( especially knowing TechEd still focuses a lot on Technical versus functional audiences ). Nothing bad about hacker night by the way because Thomas Jung and Craig Cmehil tireless effort to create community passion in both SDN and BPX communities can always be felt.
The delivery, launch and completion of the BPX Community Book : Process First, The evolution of the Business Process Expert. Many thanks to the 70+ contributors to the wiki book and especially to Natascha Schuberth for her tireless support in making this book and many other novel web2.0 BPX community marketing things happen.
Finally having a first BPX certification available for our community members. So many of our customers and partners asked for it over the last year. Many thanks to especially Ann Rosenberg for her tireless drive and helping in the outreach and curriculum.
The connections made with and between all of our community members, SAP BPX mentors and internal community champions at BPX day, Sapphire, TechEds and Wispubs events this year. When you visit these events you can really start to see the passion shine through; these are the people that really understand that communities is the new way of living and have already made web2.0 part of their daily lives and help drive value for SAP and its customers and partners. Our BPX community is really a lighting example of our ecosystem: cross team collaboration across SCN, GEPG, SAP, companies, people and boundaries.
Last but not least as favorite is the increased awareness with our customers to use the BPX community as a resource for their success, especially ASUG in the Americas. Marilyn drove the creation of BPX ASUG day the day before Sapphire with more than 150 attendees and standing room only ttp://www.flickr.com/photos/marilynpratt/sets/72157604973589422/ with 7 sessions delivered by and for the community and with incredible customer satisfaction; definitely a repeat for next year !
And we only have started; we are already planning the next year with many new elements and exciting community projects, value and engagement. My next blog will be a collection of highlights and links that the BPX team suggested. Thanks for all your continued support, engagement and passion. Happy holidays.
