03.08.2009

SAP Community Network

By: Stefan Nicola

SAP.info: Ok, that’s great for companies. But how does the individual user benefit?

Yolton: Individual developers, business analysts, consultants and others usually first engage in order to get an answer to a question, or a solution to a problem. This typically happens in the discussion forums. They soon realize they can further their careers by growing their skill sets and by gaining a reputation through these communities. A large customer recently turned to our community to find an expert to help them implement an SAP portal system. They found a highly qualified expert, who is part of a consulting company and active in our community, and have him leading a major project for them.

SAP.info: How does SAP’s community differ from others in the field?

Yolton: What we do more than others is break down barriers between us and anybody who doesn’t have a SAP badge. We view it as part of our job to make SAP more porous; to remove the constraints between SAP and our ecosystem of customers, partners, bloggers, and thought leaders, to increase the information flow between all of these entities. For example: We have nearly 5,000 people blogging within our community, two thirds of whom are not SAP employees. They’re customers, partners, thought leaders and industry influencers. We know that this level of active engagement, openness, and transparency is unusual, one that differentiates SAP in the market, and ultimately gives us an advantage. Some of the other communities are larger than ours in terms of membership, but the activity level within ours is multiples higher. As a matter of fact, SAP was just recognized as one of the “top ten most-engaged global brands on the web” by a respected pair of analysts in an independent study.

SAP.info: Take, for example, the SAP EcoHub, the community-powered solution marketplace that SAP launched at the end of 2008 …

Yolton: …and a tool our entire partner and customer ecosystem is very excited about. The SAP EcoHub brings together solutions from SAP and our partners into one marketplace. Customers can discover and explore the solutions more easily. But what really sets SAP EcoHub apart is its interactive community aspect. Our customers rate and review the solutions from our partners and from SAP. That way, a prospect company looking for a solution from SAP or one of our partners can make a better-informed purchase decision based on the experiences and opinions of other customers.

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