How important is Social Networking for the SAP Procurement Consultant

[tridip_chakraborthy]

BE SOCIAL (or) BE LEFT BEHIND

Thought leadership is no joke; people say that it comes intrinsic with a personality and more importantly “can’t be driven into an individual”, but “driven by an individual”. According to me, it’s not something that’s out of this world that can’t be demonstrated or practiced. In short, in today’s world with the “Outreach of the Social Networking tools and evangelizing channels, the effort is minimal, where as the interest levels required are high.

Let’s set the base of our Blog by answering a few FAQ's for which our Blog sets the direction for Thought Leadership. Our topic of interest "Social networking for the Procurement Consultant” is the empowering engine that fuels thought leadership.

• What is Thought leadership? 
• Why are we introducing this heavy word?
• What's social networking got to do with SAP Procurement folks?
• Where should I look for and what are those SN channels?
• Should I be aware of such buzz words, or is it something that I need to execute and get out of my way like an SAP transaction? 

Most of the SAP experience that procurement consultants gain on projects, either remain in their intellect or die down in PST formats on Hard disks, seldom do we really try and collaborate and share top notch state of the art project artifacts/learnings/achievements/differentiators, main reason being, they have a very thin line relationship with Intellectual property.

But what about the intellectual property called “Unquote experience”, cant we figure out a way to represent what we achieved and learnt the hard way to be demonstrated in a manner that could mutually benefit the SAP Procurement community. As an SAP consultant, we really need to look beyond deliverables to see the re-use of the deliverable and how it reaches out to the masses.

SDN/BPX

Our one face: The SCN BPX sourcing page (A one stop shop for SAP Sourcing, SAP CLM and redirects to the SAP SRM BPX community)

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx/sourcing

1) FACEBOOK

If you want to express your learnings and be a real thought leader in the SAP Procurement space, here are the channels to evangelize and on-board

Go “Like” SAP Procurement: Your exclusive Facebook page for SAP Procurement

http://www.facebook.com/SAPProcurement

http://www.facebook.com/SAPProcurement

2) TWITTER

“Tweet” about what you think makes a difference: Your exclusive twitter feed for everything you can learn express, delve and spread with minimal to type

Follow @ SAP_Procurement on Twitter.com

http://twitter.com/#!/SAP_Procurement

3) LINKEDIN

Share your thoughts on the Open Communities on Linkedin.com

Join these high traction groups and participate in discussions that are hot and happening across the Procurement suite.

Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/SAP-Sourcing-formerly-Frictionless-commerce-1512897?mostPopular=&gid=...

Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2015188&mostPopular=&trk=tyah

4) SAP EcO Hub

If you have the potential to fix any current gap in the Suite offering, or even build a solution that can help many, you need to be well aware of SAP ECO hub

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/ecohub/solutions?query=sap+supplier+relationship+management

We’ll the remaining are obviously sap.com, sdn, bpx, insider……….lots more, but to start off, it’s definitely rewarding to look beyond your SAP GUI screen or your Portal Front-end

Conclusion

You can be a true SME (Subject Matter expert), only when you collaborate key differentiators to the Community and spread the best practices

You can lead from the front, when you are aware of the latest from the shop; to evangelize via Social Networking prepares you for the bigger role to sell what works for you and the client. (Obviously your core SAP and Procurement expertise would drive the hand-in hand empowerment by Social Networking)

That is a lot of redirects for you to check and get the real crux of what we are saying since the start of the discussion. There is so much out there that can actually drain you off, but what’s slated in the 4 important channels, would keep you with the latest and the best for Content and knowledge collaboration to the SAP Procurement community.

….Happy reading’ n clicking, am waiting to hear your experiences once you’ve clicked the links, visited/followed/liked and added flavor to your Consulting Skills

Cheers, Tridip Chakraborthy