Does SAP Have a Social Media Strategy?

A few months ago, an SAP employee who was a well-known Twitter presence left SAP. It was widely reported that this person was part of SAP’s 3,000 person layoff that occurred during that period. What I found interesting (though hardly surprising) was the aftermath to this event on the blogosphere. The subsequent “commentary frenzy,” much of it rampant speculation, reminded me that amidst a blog-and-Twitter-hypefest, the essence of a story can be obscured. At this year’s Sapphire, I had a chance to sit down with a couple of the leaders of SAP's social media presence. My goal? To get a clearer sense of the realities beneath the hype.

Before I share a few thoughts on what I learned in Orlando, it’s important to separate what SAP is doing on the product side versus the community interaction side. On the product side, SAP continues to “socialize” its applications by embedding unstructured data access, customer “sentiment analysis,” and other Web 2.0 approaches across the product line. Other social networking product experiments are underway within SAP, without a formal connection to product rollouts. The product side of social media is *not* the focus of this blog entry. For that side of the issue, Susan Scrupski of ITS Insider has already written a detailed post on her views of SAP’s ongoing “socialization of the enterprise.”

One of the criticisms that came out of the pre-conference blogs was that “SAP doesn’t have a social media strategy.” That much is dead-on accurate. SAP’s aggressive, sometimes frenetic approach to putting flags in the ground of communities like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook is not, in most cases, centrally coordinated as part of a documented strategy. This lack-of-strategy leads to the phenomenon of certain individuals/areas within SAP popping up on Twitter, seemingly at random.

For example, “SAP CRM” is on Twitter, and doing a pretty solid job, in my opinion, of being conversational and not just Tweeting marketing verbiage. But you won’t find SAP SRM, SCM, or PLM on Twitter. I also like what sapbrasil is up to, but there aren’t many geographic equivalents on Twitter currently.

The problem with not having a coherent strategy is that there aren’t many rules of the road or formalized best practices, which leads to the occasional frantic burst as new SAP personalities hop onto Twitter and get a brisk lesson in the differences between pushing product and engaging in conversation. But Twitter has an effective way of self-policing stuff that stinks. Unless you’re a celebrity, if you don’t have either good information or good conversation (hopefully both), no one who matters will follow you.

Yes, the “SAP doesn’t have a social media strategy” argument is fundamentally correct; two of SAP’s leaders in social media voluntarily conceded this in Orlando. But here’s where the blogosphere mostly got it wrong: just because there isn’t an overall strategy doesn’t mean that some of the “legs” of that future table aren’t already well developed, and well run within their context. Consider a key component, perhaps overlooked because of its obviousness: The SAP Community Network, or SCN for short. Despite the inevitable growing pains, SAP is ahead of most enterprise peers when it comes to online community building. A published strategy may be lacking, but six years of trial and error on SCN, from managing wiki disputes to addressing overly commercial blog postings - while 1.6 million members buzz through the site - is far more valuable than a white board exercise.

Beyond SCN, there is the SAP Mentor initiative (disclosure: I am an SAP Mentor). Although the SAP Mentors are not required to be on Twitter, many of them happen to be. To find them, follow @SAPMentors on Twitter, and then browse through the SAP Mentors that Twitter Id is following. SAP Mentors are also active on Facebook and LinkedIn; many of them are SCN stalwarts also. SAP Mentors are an unruly bunch; they can be as tough on SAP as any other blogger or analyst. To empower “evangelists” who do not consider themselves as such, and would probably reject such a term, but who are well informed on SAP trends by virtue of the initiative – that’s a pretty brilliant effort on SAP’s part. I don’t know of an equivalent program at a large enterprise vendor.

Similarly, SAP’s Blogger Relations program, increasingly tied into the Mentor initiative where appropriate, is another means of putting influential voices front and center with SAP executives. These bloggers are a pretty ornery group, not likely be swayed by their arguments with SAP executives, but their work is certainly more informed based on this kind of access. Being part of this program, I can attest to the well-thought philosophy behind it. For what it’s worth, analysts who participate in other enterprise blogger programs have told me SAP is definitely ahead of the curve in this area.

Neither of these initiatives are perfect, but they are examples of how the apparent chaos on the surface can be misleading. It’s always tempting to make fun of SAP when a social media “noob” from inside the company hits Twitter - heck, I’ve done so myself - but it would be unfair to allow such satire to obscure a deeper analysis. In all the criticism I have seen of SAP’s social media efforts, not once have I seen a mention of the SAP Mentor initiative as being relevant to SAP’s social media strategy, but what could be more relevant?

When taken with the other legs of SAP’s social media approach (and I didn’t mention some successful Facebook experiments and a serious - and still growing - connection to LinkedIn), it’s clear that SAP’s lack of a formal social media strategy does not correlate with missing the boat. You could even make the argument that SAP’s willingness to encourage, or at least tolerate, an anarchic edge to these activities is actually a strength.

That doesn't mean that SAP doesn't deserve its share of criticism in this area. Here’s a better target: Why doesn’t the transparency touted in keynotes by executives and board members translate into their own involvement on SCN blogs, and possibly even Twitter? (Exception granted to CTO Vishal Sikka and his SCN blogging). Nor does that transparency necessarily carry over to crucial customer issues, the management of the Enterprise Support rollout being an oft-cited example.

Along those lines, I have personally worked with a couple of SAP product managers in the last year who intentionally avoided getting involved in public conversations about SAP product issues for fear of their own professional standing within SAP. I would hope (and expect) that an internal “employee policy” regarding participation in social media would be another aspect of SAP’s social media strategy that will appear before too long. I hear through the grapevine that one has been “in the works” for months, and may be finalized soon - let’s hope so.

Perhaps those employees’ fears of repercussions for participation weren’t valid, and perhaps those I came in contact with were the exceptions rather than the rule. But in my view, it underscored that there are cultural issues within SAP between those who want to engage in open, transparent conversations (and see their essential value) versus those who perceive such endeavors as time wasting, competitively problematic, professionally risky, or even subversive. That type of criticism against SAP is absolutely fair game, though I could say the same of many other behemoths, including Web 2.0 darlings Google and Amazon, both of which borrow more from the ruthless secrecy of Microsoft than the openness of open source. (Though Microsoft has opened up more than expected in recent months, so I may need another foil soon).

We can add Facebook to the list. The Facebook Terms of Service fiasco was instructive for SAP. SAP announced a new Terms of Service (which they call “Terms of Use” or TOU) for SCN two weeks ago; you may have noticed little controversy. That’s because SAP consulted influential community members behind the scenes, including the SAP Mentors. The result of those intense discussions bore fruit for SAP. You can bet those consultations included talks with SAP Mentor Anne Petterøe, herself instrumental in organizing the groundswell that compelled Facebook to alter its new Terms of Service after a very unflattering public outcry.

This conversation on SAP’s social media direction reminded me that beneath many overhyped blog explosions is a more serious story deserving a more serious analysis – not devoid of criticism, but bolstered by rigorous reporting.