Add new comment

I have read this article on Forbes that i found interesting, see below for my cut out version or else you can click on the link at the bottom of the page for the full article.

SAP’s Humanize-the-Brand Initiative

It’s not hard to see what’s driving SAP’s transition into a social business. Becher and his team are sweeping employees into their social gravity field, a powerful force that started with Becher’s lead-by-example management style.

“He’s deep into conversations in the marketing community, responds to customers and employees over Twitter, and makes himself very accessible,” said Carmen O’Shea, who runs SAP’s Marketing Innovation Lab. “His ability to lead by example and his uncomplicated accessibility really makes people want to go the extra mile.”

And what better person to create a ‘humanize-the-brand’ initiative than Becher? Given most people’s inclination to associate SAP with ERP, Becher wants to change that perception to a more accurate one. “Less than one-third of license revenue is ERP in some countries, in NA it’s only one-fifth our business. Our largest market category is analytics, by far. Nothing else is even close. Our fastest growing category is mobile. In fact, every time you send an SMS, most of those go through our networks,” explained Becher.

And what better way to ‘humanize the brand’ than to give people the forum to tell their own stories?

“What are the stories you’re telling about SAP?” Becher asked me, as if I should have had one ready. “We’re going to fix those stories that claim we’re a German ERP company that’s expensive. It’s not ‘Adidas runs SAP’. It’s Jill Foley telling the story about how she helped transform the organization by doing X,Y and Z.”

The benefits these changes will produce — both for SAP’s reputation and brand image — should be obvious. So why aren’t more of the Fortune 500 doing the same?

Converting Social Engagement Activity to Big Sales

Yes, it turns out that monitoring Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social networks is financially rewarding. Even for the enterprise. Naysayers take note.

Minutes before a board meeting, Becher was watching the #SAP hashtag on Twitter and using SAP technology to filter sentiment when he, “saw a tweet from a guy in Utah that said, ‘I’m really pissed off at SAP. I’ve been trying to buy software from them for weeks and I can’t get anybody to give my credit card to.’” Within seconds Becher responded, “Send me a DM (Twitter terminology for private message) and I’ll give you a call and I’ll solve the problem for you.”

A few tweets, a phone call and three days later, the man made a purchase with SAP.

How many CMOs in the Fortune 500 do you know that can say they’ve done the same sort of thing? Not many.

click on link to see full article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/03/14/saps-new-social-cmo-...