SAP Leveraging Social Media To Connect With CIOs

With social media taking the world over by storm, it is not unusual to see companies focusing a major part of their energy around leveraging it. In fact, social media strategies have become an inherent part of the overall business strategy of organisations. While it is proven how consumer companies are connecting effectively with their customers through this channel, tech companies are also now trying to figure out how best they can leverage it to connect with their customers, namely the CIOs.

SAP is one such company that has strategically planned to leverage social media to further its customer connect. While presently the focus is largely around the developer community, the company does foresee this channel’s impact on CIO connect in the years to come.

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Social Media Focus Touches India

In India, this year specifically, SAP is going to be applying a lot of learnings from the experience of last year’s ‘Sapphire Now’, which brought together nearly 50,000 customers globally in a simultaneous event that happened in Orlando and Frankfurt. While there were people physically present in both locations, the company added another 30,000 people that touched the experience via online, twitter, facebook, etc.

A lot of what was learnt last year the company is now rolling out into different countries, including India. This year in India, SAP is going to take on one of the largest Tech Eds ever in October. It will also be doing its world tour events and going to apply what it learnt and how to extend into the online communities here in India, and how those people share the experience at the same time.

Social Media For CIO Connect

According to Chuck Mulloy, Head Marketing, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan, as of now social media influences and surrounds the CIO, but there is no one-to-one impact yet. “It’s got some way to go before it has direct business impact on the CIO. Commonly right now most people will spend their social time exploring different areas of interest. Increasingly what you are going to find in corporations cum community groups is that they are discussing initiatives, things that interest, things that will actually change in some aspect the culture of those companies and the core values of those companies move forward. As those communities build the influence in them it will hit the CIOs,” he explains.

Hence, the way SAP is looking at tapping the CIOs via social media is its various events, where there would be an emphasis on creating communities.

“This year as we drive through the series of events that we have, and with more attention on new areas like In memory, Aurora - areas that have a huge interest in the future direction and plans of the CIOs - we’re going to be able to create more communities.” Citing example, Mulloy explains that for instance, for a new launch one can develop a twitter stream or facebook room around it and plant seeds of interest that drive CIOs to a community discussion around how they can share best practices. However, he is quick to add that what one needs to do to get there is first to have a compelling event or something that the CIOs want to discuss.

What’s In A Tool?

Apparently, a lot. What might work for one vertical may not for the other. While Facebook may be the ‘It’ tool for consumer companies, it can be a challenge when reaching out to a community like the CIOs. Hence, the tools will need to be more business relevant.

Mulloy feels that a lot of senior executives are hesitant to tie their business interactions to Facebook because it is perceived as a consumer social engagement tool and there is some risk that has been very well publicised throughout the world about people not maintaining a sense of responsibility knowing how they present themselves on Facebook. “I think the jury is still out on how much it can be used as a business vehicle by the CIOs,” he asserts. However, he adds that other tools like LinkedIn present more opportunities where people present themselves as executives and can be tapped into.

For SAP it will be an ongoing effort identifying the relevant social media tools and channels for reaching out to the CIOs, and the company expects a lot more of these emerging over the next one year. “As social media is evolving quicker than anything we’ve seen, a lot of the channels and tools that will be business differentiators have yet to be defined. We are going to see more of these in the coming six to 12 months,” explains Mulloy.