[This is the 6th and final post on the SAP Global Report on Culture, Business & Social media. It covers perceptions, of SAP, social media tools and my take on the true killer app for social media.
Tomorrow, I will begin sending out questions to people all over the world to see how social media is impacting their neighborhoods. Here are the links for the prior posts: Part 1, Overview; Part 2, 7 Key Findings; Part 3 Findings by World Region; Part 4, Business Analysis; and Part 5, Communications and Culture. ]
Perceptions of SAP
A good deal of input was received by people with suggestions on what SAP should do regarding social media. The people who were the most knowledgeable about SAP current efforts were the most favorable. But what also became clear was that SAP’s most successful programs were not generally well known.
A few random comments, are reported here. They do not necessarily represent recommended actions.
SAP should:
“Build ERP around social media and not the reverse.”
“Have a Facebook strategy.”
“Use social media to make SAP feel smaller, more nimble and responsive, rather than big, remote and stodgy.”
“Navigate a careful course to ensure it can deliver on customer needs without cannibalizing.”
“The reliance on 30-year-old technologies at premium prices isn’t going to cut it for SAP, Oracle, IBM and others.”
“[My customers] perceive Microsoft Sharepoint as easier to use and collaborate on than SAP Enterprise Portal. “
“Build social media into planning and strategy applications so that people inside the company, but outside of the department, can make suggestions .”
“SAP, like most ERP vendors forgets it is the user experience which matters most..”
“Most of the SAP [social media] efforts have been internal. They haven't told their story.”
“I would like SAP to deliver my services directly to SAP’s client desks. I’m sure, SAP clients would like it as well because their staff would have the information they need delivered [on demand]. The companies advertising their products and services to B2B would like it.”
Tools, Trends & Global Neighborhoods
Just two years ago, there were merely two social media tools, blogs and wikis. Both were text-based. Now there is an entire warehouse of tools, all of which are used in tandem with each other, are remixed or are otherwise customized. Blogs are now filled with images, and film clips. Some tools are not actually tools at all. Social networks, for example, are meeting places. Mobile has more to do with hardware capability than software.
What is of much greater importance is what is done with any tool. A hammer for example, can be used to build or bludgeon. It is mostly the user’s choice. Now there are a great number of users. Social media tools are like any other tools. They are adapted to accommodate existing needs. Small countries like Ireland, Singapore and Estonia use social media to reach larger markets. Scotland uses it in education to help its children leapfrog ahead of where their parents got. Oppressed countries use social media to enable free speech. Tools get remixed, recalibrated and redistributed in new ways at a very frequent pace.
As the focus has moved from tool to application, some tools are simply taken for granted. In our 48 interviews, only one person mentioned RSS or tagging, two of social media’s most ubiquitous tools. Whether you use Typepad or Wordpress for a blog platform has become as relevant as whether you ship packages via UPS or FedEx.
Just one year ago the site and the number of visitors was considered extremely important. There was much talk of the number of visitors at MySpace or YouTube. The general consensus is that such numbers are now less important than had been thought. Social Media sites are rarely spaces for mass consumption. Instead people tend to bop from site to site seeing the same friends and colleagues at each, whether they are sharing photos, reading blogs, watching videos or sharing the virtual community benefits of a social network.
These personal networks are arranged around shared topical interests. The most influential members of these networks are very often the most frequent to contribute valuable or interesting information to it. I call them “Global Neighborhoods.”
Global Neighborhoods have become more important than sites. Most of them are small; usually each has less than 500 members and often, fewer than 50. The influence inside them is overwhelmingly peer-to-peer.
This poses an enormous challenge to traditional marketers accustomed to mass communications. Instead of having mass markets where millions of people can be reached, the world is restructuring into millions of online micro markets where the only way to influence is to join in and through generosity, gain credibility.
The result of the myriad social media tools is a highly decentralized universe where marketing has lost its controls to the market itself.
Youth is the killer app
If one wants to understand what is likely to happen in the next 5, 20 or 50 years, the best way may be to study the habits of children and young adults. They are the Online Generation. They are as comfortable with social media as their parents were with television. YouTube today is better known and more often used than was Big Bird and Sesame Street.
Sites like Webkinz & Club Penguin are starting children into social networking early and possibly changing how they collaborate and connect with people through their lifetimes. Social media becomes a habit that is likely to stay with them through their 50 years or so in the marketplace.
The new professional employee is going to know where he wants to work because of social media, is going to use social media to do his job more effectively than did his or her predecessor and doing so will be as normal a process as using the telephone or email is to older employees of today.
As Ethan Bodnar, a High School student in Connecticut said,
"I want to work at a place that has an office culture that accepted and used social media for work and play. "
He seems to be representative of his generation.
[This concludes the portion of the Survey which I will be posting. The remainder consists entirely of specific recommendations I made to SAP.]
