Pretzel Logic – Social and Collaborative Business

April marks my one-year anniversary at SAP.

It’s been an incredible ride to say the least. I’m a lucky guy – I came to SAP to help build out its products and go-to-market in the social and collaborative software category. But what I really I got was a chance to get in on the ground floor of a unique opportunity to participate in shaping SAPs place in the larger software category with SAP Cloud.

Our mantra has always been clear that social is not a destination but a critical enabler to established performance KPIs and that’s what driven our product strategy and our value proposition to customers. We started not with social but with the state of our customers businesses – both challenges and opportunities to drive revenue, lower cost and mitigate risk. And then identified the needed dance between data, business process, content and people. And executed like mad against that strategy culminating in a re-launch in last year.

Thanks to the efforts of an incredible cross-functional team we doubled our growth in 2012. The sheer tenacity and close partnership between SAPs amazing cloud and on premise application development teams has been something to write home about. I was warned numerous times about how impractical cross-functional collaboration can be. But the lines between transactions, process and collaboration have been blurred forever and the customer demands a default process + social experience, now. And the teams made it happen.

I’ve always been straight forward with respect to my opinion about the various strands of “social business”, here. But the role of social and collaborative constructs to truly accelerate performance in the enterprise has never been more critical. I’ve covered this on this blog for 4 years now and in my past roles but after working closely with customers and with numerous internal industry and products groups at SAP, you truly get an appreciation for the role that systems of record play every day but also the gaps that remain in day to day work for your customers, your employees and your partners.

The power of connected networks, the availability of business and process context in the cloud or on premise or both is extremely powerful. This is why I was attracted to a company rooted in business process. As an industry, we’re just starting to understand how to leverage this. SAP has given me the opportunity to go really deep on this subject – understanding how for instance, thousands of contingent retail employees, or floor staff at casinos need to be on boarded and enabled at scale, or the costs of ramping up sales teams, the power of customer networks thanks to SAP SCN community efforts, or how the white spaces in tight fraud management processes or in transportation and logistics can expose unmitigated risk. And against that backdrop, where social collaboration can move the needle and where it can’t and with cloud economics in mind. I could go on and on.

I’m really privileged to be able to do what I do and especially at a time when the re-wiring of enterprise software to focus on getting work done (as opposed to a list of features) is only now underway.

A big thanks to our team and the teams we work with across SAP, every day.

Phase 1: Check.

A personal note.

I’ve accepted the role at SAP for Global Vice President, Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Solutions.

In the fall of 2011 I began to chart the next chapter of my career. I’ve had an amazing run over the last 10 years. Since 2002, well before the dawn of social networking, I’ve had the chance to lead teams that managed large scale transformation initiatives for some of the most well known organizations to blend process, intelligence and collaborative approaches and technology, to accelerate performance. As we saw the entry of new social and collaborative technologies in 2006 and the advent of the social customer, an opportunity arose to help articulate why connected enterprises matter, why it’s finally within reach and how to get the Business part right in Social Business. Along with my colleague, the super smart Oliver Marks, I got to help organizations execute on their business objectives under the Sovos brand.

Now it’s time for me to get in front of what I think the next incarnation of people-centric customer, partner and employee experiences will entail.

Many of you are familiar with my strand of social in the enterprise, as seen on this blog, client work and on stage at industry events. As I wrote last week, the first innings of social in the enterprise is over. Those organizations that are pre-disposed to experimentation have done so. And a good many have seen the light through the work of some amazing practitioners and leaders who have given social and collaborative constructs a shot. Yet at a majority of organizations, executives who generally invest in concepts and technology only when they easily see direct and obvious impact on performance objectives haven’t yet had their “aha” moment. And if they were tempted by the promise around social business, many are still looking for that bridge that practically takes them from a world designed around structured process to one that gets them to blend collaboration at every step of business tasks and processes and in a way that drives revenue and margin, lowers cost and mitigates risk.

Why SAP

My assessment of what it would take to execute this – specifically, aligning core business activity, data, process and exceptions with the right people and insights at the right places, quickly winnowed down the list of organizations that could most logically make this transition a reality for customers. With a pedigree in core business process, business intelligence and industry solutions, and a decisive go forward strategy that now includes real time processing, cloud and mobility, SAP’s product and solution portfolio is one of the few that affords the needed canvas to improve how we engage with customers and partners and how work really gets done internally. The right design will come from the proper infusion of collaborative constructs right where business context emerges for individual users at every customer – a) not just inside or along side but across applications that power complete each business activity, b) when and where real time business intelligence emerges, and finally, 3) at the right (device agnostic) points of consumption. Each of these contextual elements are core to SAP’s portfolio of offerings today – both directly and via its partners.

My work in this market over the years has given me a clear sense of what a product portfolio needs to offer to deliver what I describe above. And as important, the kind of program design follow-through to make sure customers can truly change how they connect employees with each other and to customers and partners. I’ve got a superb team that I’ve already started to get to know over the last few days. I’ll say more about our plans over the weeks and months to come.

Thank You

Over the last 6 months, I’ve made some big bets personally on what I think the future of social in the enterprise will really entail and I discussed this with a range of folks. Some helped validate my thinking on the overall software market at the early stages and others when it came time to pull to trigger. You know who you are. I can’t thank them enough for taking the time. I will post separately on this in the next few days.

Finally, I want to thank John Schweitzer, SVP, SAP, Sanjay Poonen, President, SAP and Chakib Boudhary, SAP’s Chief Strategy Officer. Each created a very open environment that allowed for both radical and practical thinking with respect to what can be, as we talked about my potential role and SAPs ambitions.

The enterprise software business is witnessing formulaic changes that will play out over the next decade and beyond. Today’s hot topics may well be SaaS, (big) data, social, mobile and whatever’s next. But fundamentally, it boils down to this: Employees, Partners and end Customers of software buyers are looking for a more meaningful, networked experience that positively impacts their 9-5 work day. Traditional measures of per seat and per user subscription will remain but what’s really underway in both the consumer and enterprise world is a race to power every hour of the end participant in a way that resembles how they want to work or play, yet ensuring meaningful outcomes. Looked at this way, you can easily see how traditional enterprise software caters to a fraction of the end users interaction needs between 9-5. The rest of that 9-5 time often involves substandard and fragmented engagement to meet stated goals. All of this means that the total addressable market for software is far larger that previously imagined and more importantly, those of us focused on purpose-driven systems of engagement will end up powering the majority of our customers, employees and partners time online.  It’s this coming change that really excites me to get to work.

The formal announcement from SAP is here.

News articles by Dennis Howlett, Paul Greenberg, Vijay Vijayasankar and Alan Lepofsky on the announcement.

On to the next chapter. I’m so, so stoked.

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P.S Going forward, the content here won’t change all that much. I actually plan to write even less about technology and more about what made this blog popular in the first place – how social and collaborative concepts can accelerate operational and financial performance.

P.P.S I’m a cook and white asparagus is a Walldorf specialty. -)

Just a personal update to tell you that I’ve decided to relinquish my membership with Constellation Research Group, Inc.

Late last year, Oliver Marks and I became members of Constellation with the intention of complementing consulting on enterprise social and collaboration business, with wider research.

Given my focus on longer form planning and follow through work, and the growing need for ecosystem collaboration by organizations, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to successfully wear two hats and do justice to the analyst side of the house. And to be fair to Constellation, it’s best that Ray and the team find full time research analysts for this work.

I’ve met some really smart folks over at Constellation and I have huge respect for the individuals who make up the team. Ray’s pulling together a growing line up of new analysts and has an array of initiatives under way including The SuperNova Awards and new geographical market entries.

As far as this blog and my other extracurricular activities are concerned (event/conference speaking, etc.), nothing changes. Since 2009, I’ve blogged and spoken about the promise and impact of social and collaborative business based on what we see in the trenches at end customers, and innovation in enterprise software. That continues….

I have a few commitments that I’m wrapping up before I set sail but it’s been a lot of fun getting to know and hang out with the team. Ray and I depart as friends and we’ve agreed to look out for each other.

Update: Ray’s post, here.

If you have any questions about this or Constellation Research, drop me an email.

- Sameer | @sameerpatel

Enterprise 2.0 vs. Social Business

Image Design Credit: My sister, Zia.

I started engaging on the social web exactly two years ago. Unlike most “veterans”, when I dipped my toes into the proverbial participatory pond, I started the other way around. Twitter first, then blog. Which might seem inconsequential but there’s an interesting dynamic there. I don’t want to get all Match.com on you but getting to know people based on conversations first is pretty awesome. You get to know people based on personality, bi-directional engagement and all on very open, public mediums where cosmetics can’t hide much.

What I cherish most has been the relationships I have built over the last two years. Last week at a conference, I mentioned to a few folks that Twitter is “friendship lead gen”. That sounds crass but its not.  Twitter for me is a giant pool of potential relationships but more importantly, a self selecting qualifier of where meaningful relationships can be formed.  Relationships that are characterized by not only friendships but professional respect, inspiration and constant learning.

And as I think of that, I do believe that we all make interesting decisions about who to engage with and how. We all have our ways of vetting out where meaningful relationships can be established. At the speed of a Tweet, a DM or a group IM, I know where the best answers are, those I can call at 3 am if I’m in a pinch in many parts of the world, and yes, those that will smack me on the head if I ever veer off the practical pragmatic path in my analysis.

And so I give thanks here to those I have gotten to know but more importantly :

• Those who engage openly and who mercilessly qualify the data and thoughts they put into my social stream
• Those that really help others by explaining not just the ‘what’  in their analysis but the ‘why’ and sometimes, the ‘how’
• Those that don’t think they’re cats whiskers
• Those that have integrity and don’t lose their souls as career paths and allegiances morph
• Those that collectively and implicitly weed out the un-authentic drivel that is, thankfully, so easy to detect on the social web
• Those that don’t join the ranks of parties who sell 2.0 but themselves employ the very 1.0 tactics that we tell our customers will not work anymore

I’d like to believe that I do all of the above myself but I’ll let you judge.

When I was considering joining my father in his business years ago, he made a comment that I remember clearly (not sure but this may not be his phrase):

“If both of us always agree, one of us is unnecessary”

That pretty much sums up my relationship with those I’ve become closest to on the social web and where I’ve taken these relationships offline and even to the dinner table in my home. The deepest relationships have been formed because we agree and then unabashedly share and celebrate the best thinking but also because we don’t, yet seek the best alternatives to what we think is the best solution.

And with this post, I’ve now added a new tag called  “soppy” to my blog sidebar. : –)

Happy thanksgiving to you and yours.

On Dec 2nd, distinguished faculty members from Babson College (my Alma Mater) – MBA Dean Raghu Tadepalli and Dr. P.J. Guinan, professor of technology, operations, and information management will present research on the use of Social Media in the Enterprise in San Francisco.

Ragu is someone I’ve come to know recently and I keep in touch with some of my professors there and speak with them about research in the areas of Social Media, Knowledge Networks and Ecosystem Collaboration. So I’m thrilled to see an event of this caliber taking place here in the Bay Area.

Included in this research presentation is a detailed study of Cisco’s collaborative and social media efforts (embedded below) .

I’m really looking forward to the event and hope to see you there. More info here and registration details here.

Guinan Cisco (1)