Check out the SAP Spotlight Interviews which combine a combination of videos and Q&A format. These blogs help showcase SAP Community experts and advocates. View >>
Elevating SAP Collaboration with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint
Originally published on the SAP Community.
When SAP and Microsoft announced they are building integrations to Microsoft Teams across solutions many of us were inspired. With the new reality of remote and hybrid work, the importance of elevating collaboration has grown significantly.
While the advancements of this integration are impressive, it is important to deploy these solutions the right way to achieve tangible business outcomes.
Since today’s globally distributed workers are no longer confined to office buildings, the “workplace” has transformed into a digital “workspace” allowing colleagues to meet, collaborate, and connect virtually across organizational boundaries. A great user experience is a necessity versus a “nice to have.”
Christian Klein, SAP CEO and member of the Executive Board, said it best that this partnership will address, “New ways of working, collaborating and interacting to completely transform how we operate,” and bring collaboration to the next level.
Collaboration is changing rapidly. Each of us are collaborating more often, increasingly mobile, and working on a schedule that enables us to connect more virtually.
Disparate information kept in silos and organized in ad-hoc ways becomes an impediment to performance and productivity. One of the challenging things to do is to keep Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, along with the SAP portfolio, organized so that the content is valuable to users.
Thoughtful leaders step back and ensure that SAP Collaboration represents how the business works both in the short-term and going forward.
The Information Architecture Pre-Request
Each time you create a new Microsoft Teams you automatically get SharePoint with the Microsoft 365 Apps including Power App, Power BI, OneNote, and Exchange with email and calendaring.
Project teams working with SAP applications such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Digital Supply Chain, SAP SuccessFactors and learning communities, SAP CRM and Customer Experience, Industry 4.0 solutions and/or SAP Activate Methodology should prioritize and implement a well-planned information architecture as a pre-request for a high quality, high-performing intranet, central hub, or group.
It’s important to understand the audience and help them find what they need quickly to support them in getting their work completed efficiently. One expert once referred to it as “help the user get to where they need to go in ONE CLICK versus many clicks and endless folders to assist in completing a task.”
Putting in the time to address Information Architecture helps improve user satisfaction and adoption while reducing information overload.
Customer-Centric Enablement
In this video, “Remove Barriers for Your Sales Teams with SAP and Microsoft it shows the power of the integration,” there are many exciting front-line capabilities, but the power is in the information architecture that supports the tangible outcomes.
Could a sales, marketing, consultant, pre-sales, operations, services or other front-line worker to customers, strategic partners or suppliers have everything they need by primarily using their own individual OneDrive or SharePoint?
Clearly, they need the right resources (“assets”), at the right time for effective engagement including:
- Access – Enable secure private, enterprise, and/or external access.
- Central Hub – Deploy one location for individuals, teams, and the enterprise to find pertinent information.
- Teamwork – Allow for collaboration, chat, video conferencing, calls, meetings, and surveys.
- Content – Ensure easy to find central hub for content, information, contributions, and useful links.
- Components – Leverage multiuse calendars, planning, notebooks, and other tools and web parts.
- Collaboration – Microsoft Teams, comments, surveys, discussion treads, and news updates.
- Communications – Engagement and outreach to bring the audience to the central hub and share news, planning, announcements, updates, and access to key assets.
- Continuity – Plan that the collaboration continues versus the initial excitement and the investment in a quality set-up drop off months later.
When these items are brought together in full or part, the sum is truly greater than the parts.
Digital Transformation Realized with SAP Collaboration
Collaboration is nothing new and yet it remains a critical success factor for every organization.
Enabling workers to leverage and build upon the work of others is a fundamental principle. When team members work in a silo, they reduce productivity and have a higher probability of duplicating efforts.
With SAP Collaboration, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint the goal is to…
- Help elevate workers to take advantage of modern platforms and digital transformation environments
- Increase high quality teamwork, cooperation, and communications
- Impact the value, growth, revenues, services, and outcomes with a focus on exceeding customer satisfaction.
Working together, people feel more connected to their work and their organization.
With these integration capabilities in place, combined with a well-deployed information architecture, users will always have access to the right content at the right time, to find what they are looking for more quickly and consistently, and support their business requirements.
How SAP Build Work Zone and Google Analytics Extend Decision Support
Customers often ask, “How do we know our SAP Build Work Zone group, portal/internet, activities are providing 
the best results?”
Many times, executive management and stakeholders want to know how the investments in SAP Build Work Zone are working, and what decisions should be considered to optimize the experience for employees, customers, and partners.
Until we started using the combination of SAP Work Zone admin reports (& dashboards) with Google Analytics the raw data, assets (i.e. documents, videos), experts’ knowledge, and the business process (& models) deployed were extremely hard to measure.
Extending SAP Work Zone to Google Analytics is like “turning the lights on” to help identify audience behavior, understand the engagement with content, and make better business decisions.
Given the rapidly changing nature of an organization using SAP Work Zone, along with both structured and unstructured information, it’s easy to lose track of how to analyze audience behavior in relation to goals and campaign tracking.
Five Overall Benefits
- Achieving deeper data exploration to uncover trends & patterns
- Operationalizing reporting insights to optimize processes and achieve greater impact
- Reducing complexity by understanding what’s working and what needs improvement
- Providing governance to have consistent views both in the real-time and by way of regular reporting (i.e. bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly)
- Delivering high quality insights to executive sponsors and key stakeholders
The first bit of good news is that the SAP Work Zone Collaboration platform does not share employee (or user) profile information with Google Analytics. That gives us all a great sigh of relief when addressing the importance of data privacy and security standards.
Examples of what Google Analytics does very well to enhance the SAP Jam reporting experience:
Real Time Custom Reports – Addressing visitors’ locations, traffic sources, content- Audience – Tracking active users, geo, languages, behavior, new vs. returning, frequency, technology, mobile, devices, user flow
- Acquisition – Measuring channels, sources, campaigns
- Behavior – Understanding the flow, site content (views – what content is most engaging) as well as insights on all pages, exit pages, and problematic pages (i.e. bounce rates) and the time of day that receives the most traffic
When you consider the quantity of assets, data, and traffic on a Jam group, intranet or portal, along with growth and scalability, extending SAP Work Zone to Google Analytics is an essential tool.
With a consistent governance the decision makers (i.e. business leaders, company or group admins) can have a consolidated view, and be in a more informed position, to continuously improve and refine the SAP Jam group(s) or portal/intranet.
Once analyzed, SAP Work Zone decision support may require…
Improving communications (i.e. focusing on outreach & awareness)- Recognizing completeness of content / information (i.e. auditing a holistic vs. fragmented view. What are the audience’s priorities?)
- Improving maintenance (i.e. accountability by content contributors to update or archive old information)
- Assessing process improvements (i.e. ensure the company-wide, line of business or group’s business model is optimized on SAP Work Zone for the audience goals & objectives)
- Leveraging knowledge (i.e. ownership and contribution from experts, mentors, peers)
- Refining the user experience and design (i.e. make it easy for the audience to find what they want quickly and with the most value. Also, eliminate and reduce problem areas.)
When used the right way, SAP Work Zone and Google Analytics are a great combination which should be deployed to support data-driven decisions, metrics to inform executive sponsors and stakeholders, and help make decisions which ensure successful outcomes
Useful Links
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About the Author
 |
Richard D. Blumberg is a SAP Jam Practice leader who works with both SAP and SAP Services. He is the President of World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) providing 29+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building. He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations, innovation, and adoption. |
Blogs
- SAP Jam for social onboarding: How to Improve First Impressions for New Hires?
- Building a Global, Integrated SuccessFactors HR Services Model with SAP Jam
- From Now to the Year 2030 – SAP Jam Collaboration Will Play an Important Role With SAP Leonardo and the Digital Revolution
- 14 Ways to JumpStart #SAPJam Collaboration, Communities or Groups
- Understanding the Lift in SAP Jam Implementations & Adoption
- SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
- The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
- SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
- Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
- The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building
- View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
From Now to the Year 2030 – SAP Jam Collaboration Will Play an Important Role With SAP Leonardo and the Digital Revolution
What is the role of collaboration in the digital age?
The recent SAP Executive Summit 2017 in Italy, the home of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, shared insights on the “4th industrial revolution” to remind us that we can learn from each new wave of progress and change.
Bill McDermott, SAP, CEO, referenced in his keynote at Sapphire NOW the “fourth industrial revolution and an incredible opportunity for companies to re-imagine themselves in this digital age.”
And now with the overwhelming success of Leonardo Live in Frankfurt Germany there is an opportunity to further understand digital innovation and leading-edge solutions with customers, partners, and experts from around the globe.
As we consider the historic and future trends related to the cloud and digital transformation, one of the leading common denominator grows in importance: collaboration.
The Industrial Revolution – A Look Back & Forward
Upon hearing and reviewing these presentations, keynotes, and events, I decided to research the previous industrial revolutions and consider the role of collaboration in respect to connecting people, processes, and technology.
- The first industrial revolution saw the growth of steam power, coal, iron, railroads and textiles
- The second one involved mass production advancements in industry, technology, energy, electricity, petroleum, steel, agriculture, manufacturing and transportation
- The third realized information technology, new energy, and renewable electricity
- Now the fourth is the digital revolution
Collaboration played an important part in each of these industrial revolutions. And now we look forward to the digital age before us and the next big wave of opportunity: SAP Leonardo.
For SAP Leonardo solutions to work at their optimum level there will be many business and IT considerations including a key universal theme = collaboration. Whether addressing all or one of the following: Internet of Things (IOT), Machine Learning, Blockchain, Analytics, Big Data, SAP Cloud Platform, Digital Supply Chain, Leonardo Bridge, and Design Thinking — they all work best when people team together.
Collaboration – A View from the Top
Perhaps Hasso Plattner, SAP co-founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board said it best, “Simplicity, Speed, Collaboration, Security Drive – The Intelligent Future.” During Sapphire NOW he shared a key message about “tapping into the collective intelligence of workers” (Proof point: watch the first 20 seconds of this video, see the orange arrow below where he identified SAP Jam).
SAP Jam Collaboration Plays a Central Role
SAP will continue to invest in SAP Jam as a central component of the digital modular suit. As the value map and roadmap continue to evolve, SAP Jam will play a unique role to enable SAP Leonardo and Digital Transformation. SAP’s Modular Suite highlights the importance of collaboration, SAP Jam Collaboration.
Collaboration has a Purpose & Unique Place in the Digital Age
It all makes perfect sense. Digital Transformation for business and IT requires collaboration to harness the intellect of the entire workforce. Where there is collaboration, individual and group intelligence can be realized to accelerate revenues, growth, value, learning, productivity, and success.
Jobs and successful outcomes, between now, 2030 and beyond, depend on collaboration to address and stay ahead of the rapidly changing marketplace.
Where there is innovation…
When a team redefines a business challenge or opportunity. As SAP and third-party apps and data are used to turn ideas into action. Where rollouts go from pilot programs to scale across the enterprise.
From disparate silos to holistic central hubs of knowledge.
To turn a vision into reality. For the early adopters, business colleagues and lines of business, both internal and external to the organization, who are empowered to transform the business.
For community building.
To gain the competitive advantage.
To accelerate initiatives and create win-wins.
The best bet, both now and as we go to 2030 and beyond, is SAP, SAP Leonardo and for collaboration: SAP Jam.
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Useful Links / References
- Hasso Plattner: Simplicity, Speed, Collaboration, Security Drive “The Intelligent Future”
- Join the SAP Leonardo iFG Community
- SAP Leonardo and The Digital Renaissance
- Video: Running a Live Business with the SAP Digital Boardroom: Hasso Plattner at SAPPHIRE NOW 2017
- SAP CEO Bill McDermott: “Empathy to Action Is a Race Without a Finish Line”
- What’s New in SAP Cloud Platform Integration – Update from the Labs Q1/2017
About the Author
Richard D. Blumberg is a SAP Jam Practice leader who works with both SAP and SAP Services. He is the President of World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) providing 29+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building. He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations, innovation, and adoption.
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Blogs
- Originally Published on the SAP Community >>
- 14 Ways to JumpStart #SAPJam Collaboration, Communities or Groups
- Understanding the Lift in SAP Jam Implementations & Adoption
- SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
- The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
- SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
- Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
- The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building
- View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
14 Ways to JumpStart #SAPJam Collaboration, Communities or Groups
How a Group Admin or Leader Ensures Adoption!
Important strategic initiatives, business outcomes and processes, collaboration, content, communications, and/or community building takes “time and effort” to translate onto SAP Jam.
The recent study, “Forrester Total Economic Impact™ of SAP Jam Collaboration for Learning, Onboarding and Employee Development” showcases the impact to cost savings, productivity, operational efficiencies, and overall strategic objectives. Several customers that my team and I work with participated in this study and continue to realize the value highlighted. Together we see on a first hand, daily basis …that it works!
And yet, sometimes a SAP Jam group admin, business owner, or leader needs to consider ways to drive (or “spark”) sustainable growth and momentum for their respective audience. They need to step back, assess, and plan out the priorities. The last thing any of us want to see is that 3 to 9 months after go-live that the group has “zero” activity.
As a result, my team and I, based on hundreds of work experiences and success stories pinpointed a “Top 14” list to help organizations JumpStart their SAP Jam initiatives.
Which of the following are applicable to you and your current or emerging SAP Jam initiative?
Business is complex. And from complexity we want simplicity. It takes a certain skill set to turn the complex into simple. There are business challenges and technical requirements. SAP Jam can be stand alone or integrate with other SAP, SuccessFactors, or 3rd party applications and data. All of these requirements take cross-discipline expertise.
Every quarter their are new SAP Jam releases. New features and capabilities. My team and I welcome the challenge on a daily basis with the multitude of business and IT considerations (& approaches) to help our customers achieve successful SAP Jam implementations and adoption.
At the end of each day, we appreciate the many important and diverse groups we work with to address their challenges and find solutions. It takes both the “science and art” forms to achieve success. No matter how many implementations take place and questions are answered there is always more to address, learn about, and discover.
Consider a 1000 piece puzzle. We work together to put the pieces together.
The Many Attributes of SAP Jam
SAP Jam is compared to other platforms which is fine.
The part that’s comforting is that SAP, SuccessFactors, and the SAP Jam product team are market leaders.
SAP Jam and the attributes it represents rank very high in Analyst reports including:
- Integration – SAP SuccessFactors integration is built in by way of SuccessFactors foundations (previously BizX) (i.e. SuccessFactors Learning / LMS, SAP HCP, SAP CRM, Hybris Cloud 4 Customer, Fiori, S/4HANA, SAP ECC (SD), Document Repositories such as OpenText, Box, etc.) with an excellent Developer and Open API environment (OData). SAP Jam works well with SharePoint, Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint (Web Parts), Outlook Plug-in and YouTube. Public documentation is excellent.
- Social Learning – SAP Jam for Social Learning (Jam + LMS) reduces the cost of training
- Roadmap – SAP Jam is part of the overall SAP roadmap so the enhancements and value continue to grow in leaps and bounds throughout the SAP portfolio. The SAP Jam roadmap is based on customer feedback and provides continuous innovations on a regular basis.
- Admin Controls – Strong Permission Levels… Moderation Levels… Language capabilities built into the platform for the users… Users can be removed (made inactive quickly…)…
- Groups – Enterprise collaboration goes beyond feed conversations. Both structured and unstructured collaboration is available along with sub-groups and auto groups.
- Feed Aggregator – SAP Jam provides a feed aggregator, SAP Jam Activity Hub, that can be used. to follow and chat in Yammer, Connections and Jam which allows for one view without having to log-in to multiple applications..
- Mobile App – SAP Jam Mobile App, which is used for Apple (iOS – iPhone or iPad) or Android, is ready out of the box! No extra programing required.
- OpenSocial Gadgets – Feeds and data can be embedded such as RSS Feeds, Stock Tickers, Countdowns, Facebook, Twitter… Survey Monkey which go into widgets.
- Work Patterns – Admins can leverage templates available, out of the box, to enable repeatable best practice and business processes when creating a group. With work pattern builder, templates can be changed and enhanced easily for custom specific needs.
- ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS…
> SAP has “1” enterprise collaboration platform only which it invests heavily in.
> All the information is in one place (uploaded, linked, or embedded), one enterprise collaboration platform, one “central hub.”
> Offline access allows users to select content from SAP Jam to and from a local file system via Jam File Sync Client
Summary: SAP Jam is the Best Bet!
Given the investments and attributes of SAP Jam and with a long-time career in the high tech, entrepreneurial, cross-industry, and SAP Ecosystem space, my team and I bet on SAP to make the continuous investments in collaborative enterprise business software as an essential part of the portfolio to support customers.
The value of SAP Jam is both a today and tomorrow decision. Today for what it can deliver and tomorrow for the investments to the roadmap which is based on a 40+ year history of SAP success.
At the end of the day, my team and I enjoy working with a diverse, smart, progressive group of senior executives, leaders, business owners, instructors, group admins, and stakeholders who want to work on a platform, which delivers the most value and impact, to help them and their fellow internal and external colleagues do their jobs and realize the type of outcomes highlighted in the Forrester Study.
The ideas associated with enterprise collaboration have been around for hundreds of years. However, the realization in the cloud with digital transformation are available NOW in full force with SAP Jam.
About the Author
 |
Richard D. Blumberg is a SAP Jam Practice leader who works with both SAP and SAP Services. He is the President of World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) providing 29+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building. He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption. |
Blogs
- Understanding the Lift in SAP Jam Implementations & Adoption
- SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
- The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
- SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
- Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
- The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building
- View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
Featured Link: SAP Jam Collaboration Help Portal
This video highlights the value of turning the complex into a more simple productivity resource.
Understanding the Lift in SAP Jam Implementations & Adoption
Ensuring Success Beyond the Go-Live to Continue the Momentum
As a practitioner of hundreds of SAP Jam and related communities, platforms, collaboration, and transformation initiatives my team and I see many great efforts to support an organization’s strategy, goals, and objectives. Often we are asked to share insights on how to ensure success after the go-live.
Recently, when reading the NY Times best seller, “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough, I was inspired by the story of the “courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly.”
A central part of their success was a formula[1] that they worked out and tested for flight:
Lift = k * V^2 * A * cl
The factors for successful flight address the size and shape of the wing, the velocity of the air flowing over the wing and the density of the surrounding air to address:
- L = Lift
- k = Smeaton coefficient (addresses the relationship between pressure and velocity for objects moving in air. Drag refers to the resistance that the wing generates as it flows through the air.)
- V = Velocity (the higher the velocity the greater the lift)
- A = Wing area (the larger the size of the wing the more lift will be created)
- cl = Lift coefficient (addresses the angles a wing assumes in respect to the flow of air)
In the same way SAP Jam initiatives need to take flight and lift organizational goals and objectives towards impactful outcomes. These factors can be equated to the following:
- L = Increasing revenues, growth, value, profits, learning, innovation by bridging organizational silos with cross-teams working together through common business processes and work patterns
- k = The drag or opposing force that organizations, groups, and employees face when in motion
- V = Speed to market, acceleration to achieve goals and objectives. Velocity is important when things are going well as well as when there are obstacles to overcome.
- A = The greater the “area” and access to knowledge and expertise than the greater impact to an employee’s productivity, quality, value and reach to engage internal & external customers
- cl = The trajectory of an organization based on 4 key factors: revenues, operational efficiencies, cost cutting, and/or recognizing major disruptions in the marketplace
When delivering SAP Jam[2] implementations and adoption initiatives some groups dynamically fly towards their goals and objectives while others are more static (or disparate) in their approach.
>>>The question persists – how to effectively start a SAP Jam group (or enterprise initiative) and sustain value beyond the initial launch? How to ensure it gets off the ground and continues the momentum?
While the factors to ensure “engagement” include “executive sponsorship” and excellent “business ownership” along with “business process accountability” and validating “governance” as well as developing “champions” to expand consistent usability is important, 4 foundational factors must be considered by way of the formula “E = A x C3”
Engagement = Access x (Content x Communications x Collaboration)
These factors are considered as follows:
- Access = The right internal & external audience of owners, stakeholders, and end users have access to SAP Jam including setting privacy settings as needed
- Content = Finding the right information at the right time on an ongoing basis to save time, money and scale to the right audience. Maintaining a 100 day plan for seeded content updates.
- Communications = Sharing updates about SAP Jam and the respective initiative to the audience based on a 30/60/90 day and beyond plan
- Collaboration = Posting discussions, questions, ideas, comments, and decision-making tools such as polls to encourage two-way dialogue
As mentioned in the blog, “SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals” often groups play a few of the keys but the more advanced aspects of SAP Jam take time, trial and adjustment, and a combination of business and IT work experiences. The how-to’s of turning SAP Jam on or picking up the basics in the User Guides are helpful but most administrators, power users, content & community managers, and their users seek more by way of SAP Jam tips and insights.
Like the Wright brothers obsession to fly, SAP Jam takes dedication.
It takes both the “science and art” forms to achieve success. No matter how many implementations take place and questions are answered there is always more to address, learn about, and discover. With new product releases, which happen approximately every 2 months, there are new capabilities, innovations, and investments to take advantage of on a regular basis in the cloud.
So whether it’s your very important SAP Jam group (or enterprise rollout / initiative) or the Wright Brothers taking flight, the key is to consider the right factors for achieving lift (i.e. during implementation “and” beyond go-live including adoption).
When the right formula is applied with the right combined skills and best practice work experiences are put in place than success can be achieved both in the short and longer-term.
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Footnotes:
[1] National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “Lift Equation of the Early 1900” – http://wright.nasa.gov/airplane/liftold.html
[2] Important Note: SAP Jam is a unique market leading platform and solution. It seamlessly integrates social business capabilities into existing (& planned) business process. SAP has made SAP Jam an integral part of the SAP portfolio of products and solutions addressing:
- All lines of business centric vs. CRM as the primary
- One SAP Jam vision vs. multiple roadmaps which have overlaps
- SAP’s proven 40-year history of business software, processes, and market leadership
- Collaborative ecosystem (Out of the Box – i.e. OpenText, Box, SharePoint, etc.)
- Application integration (i.e. OData, REST APIs) by utilizing the SAP Jam Developer Center
- Integrated platform as a foundational principal vs. a standalone which increases costs
- Internal & external SAP Jam group capabilities & templates which easily set-up
- Structured collaboration to support problem solving, issue resolution, and decision making
- Screen and video capture
- Mobile App alignment with SAP Jam Page Designer provides out of the box mobile capabilities
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About the Author
Richard D. Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) provides 25+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building. He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption.
WSS is a SAP Service Partner for SAP Jam and long-time supporter of the SAP Community Network and the SAP Ecosystem.
Prior Blogs:
– SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
– View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
– The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
– SAP Jam Work Patterns: The Big $ or € &/or ¥ Game Changer for a New Product Launch!
– SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
– Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
– The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building
SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
The Importance of SAP Jam Implementation & Adoption Expertise
The rewards of using SAP Jam are awesome! Getting to the point where business and IT value is realized takes time, logic, dedication, and expertise. Successful SAP Jam implementations and adoption requires many considerations, some of which are often overlooked.
It reminds me of the day when my family got a piano from my in-laws house for our son. While other children and friends would bang on the keys he wanted to play meaningful songs at an early age. There were adult friends and teachers who remembered playing a bit growing up (or knew a few songs) but could only offer a few ideas around how to play the piano beyond the basics.
Only when we got an expert piano teacher (on the second try) who had the style and skills which were complimentary to his interests did we see his enjoyment and piano playing skills soar forward.
For my team and I working with leading customers and business units around the globe we see that no two SAP Jam implementations are alike. Like a snow flake each one has its own unique work patterns based on their customers, industry, lines of business and culture.
As a result we must be agile and dig deep on each engagement to address a wide range of skills, requirements, work experiences which range from HR, Learning, Onboarding …to Sales, Marketing, Services, Commerce and Customer Engagement …to Communications, IT, Procurement, Operations, Communities of Practice, and User Experiences …to working within a wide range of SAP and 3rd Party Apps and related Management Information System (MIS) environments …to the ability to write, provide visual consistency, and program management …as well as help turn complexity into …simplicity.
There are a number of best practice guidelines to consider:
Consideration #1 – Getting Started!
- Understanding the business requirements
- Enabling overall usability
- Translating the business process to SAP Jam
- Ensuring relevance by way of content / communications
- Utilizing dynamic widgets vs. static text and images
- Assessing Change Management
- Ensuring participation
Consideration #2 – ROI & Value
Pinpoint the SAP Jam Return On Investment (ROI) and business drivers important to your organization centered around “Time” “Money” and “People” scalability to ensure measurable (“quantifiable” and “qualifiable”) gains.
Consideration #3 – Differentiators
SAP Jam is a unique market leading solution. It seamlessly integrates social business capabilities into existing (& planned) business process whereas as other 3rd party platforms are focused on the tools. SAP has made SAP Jam an integral part of all SAP solutions addressing:
- All lines of business centric vs. CRM as the primary
- One SAP Jam vision vs. multiple roadmaps which have overlaps
- SAP’s proven 40-year history of business software, processes, and market leadership
- Collaborative ecosystem (Out of the Box – i.e. OpenText, Box, SharePoint, etc.)
- Application integration (i.e. OData, REST APIs) by utilizing the SAP Jam Developer Center
- Integrated platform as a foundational principal vs. a standalone which increases costs
- Internal & external SAP Jam group capabilities which easily set-up
- Structured collaboration to support problem solving, issue resolution, and decision making
- Screen and video capture
- Mobile App alignment with SAP Jam Page Designer provides out of the box mobile capabilities
Consideration #4 – Roles & Responsibilities
When addressing an SAP Jam initiative the executive sponsor, business owner(s), and project leader must consider 3 key roles including:
- Administrator(s) (or Power Users)
- Content Manager(s) (& Contributors)
- End Users
While one SAP Jam tactical action can be straight forward. Each action has a consequence on another aspect of the project or initiative.
For those of us who watch (or remember) Star Trek and Spok’s 3D chess game, each move has an impact to another chess piece which may be on the board you are working on or another. It takes a lot of SAP Jam experience to address these moves which have important relationships to other business processes.
A successful SAP Jam implementation addresses 5 phases:
- Preparation
- Realization
- Verification
- Launch
- Post Go-Live
It takes vision, leadership, teamwork, compelling business outcomes, and passion to build any successful community which meets either face-to-face or virtually. SAP Jam requires the same consideration to achieve successful implementations and adoption.
Whether its learning how to play the piano or SAP Jam, it takes multi-dimensional expertise to ensure that all the “keys and pedals” are optimized.
SAP Jam has many self-evident, out of the box templates and capabilities that are excellent, but to gain the full advantage it takes the right skills, work experiences, and expertise to achieve the highest level of success.
— About the Author
Richard D. Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) provides 25+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building. He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption.
WSS is a SAP Service Partner for SAP Jam and long-time supporter of the SAP Community Network and the SAP Ecosystem.
Prior Blogs:
– View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
– The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
– SAP Jam Work Patterns: The Big $ or € &/or ¥ Game Changer for a New Product Launch!
– SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
– Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
– The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building
Originally posted on the SAP Community Network – full blog >>
Building Partner Networks with SAP Jam
This article is reproduced from the Oct-Nov-Dec 2014 issue of SAPinsider (SAPinsiderOnline.com). Read the entire special report on social collaboration. View this attachment (4th page) or visit SAPinsiderOnline.com.
Building Partner Networks with SAP Jam
by Rich Blumberg
Launching new products such as automobiles is both exciting and challenging, especially when you consider the complexity of connecting a manufacturer with its dealer network. Launch success depends on full visibility; timely training and certification; as well as clear sales, marketing, and go-to-market execution (see Figure 1). World Sales Solutions (WSS) understands the manufacturer-to-dealer complexity as this services organization is regularly called on to assist manufacturing and service companies in making these necessary connections.
WSS relies on the SAP Jam developer program to provide its customers with a social collaboration platform that bridges the gap between manufacturers and dealers with a central hub that:
- Brings together a company’s marketing, sales, service, and cross-team staff with external parties such as advertising agencies and key suppliers
- Provides formal learning and certification using SuccessFactors Learning Management System (LMS) or SAP Learning Solution
- Delivers informal learning (via SAP Jam) such as sales best practices among dealers or quick access to experts
- Onboards new partners and employees expediently to ensure the shortest time to revenue by optimizing SAP Jam
- Supports strategizing and decision making among the entire network for product innovation, including integration with SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), SAP Cloud for Customer, or third-party innovation management systems
- Enables coordination among the entire network for product or new service launches, including large-scale activities requiring visibility into events, tasks, and deliverables
The SAP Jam Developer Program:
Extend Existing Investments and Drive New Revenue
Customize
- Develop work patterns (custom processes)
- Add pre-built third-party apps
Integrate
- Bring SAP and third-party app data into SAP Jam with OData
- Collaborate with documents from content management systems
- Embed SAP Jam in your business apps
Extend
- Build collaborative customer apps on SAP HANA Cloud Platform
- Add capabilities with OpenSocial
- Incorporate third-party capabilities (gamification, for example)
SAP Jam helps align companies with their partner networks to drive efficiencies that save time and money based on the volume and scalability of their network, boosting return on investment (ROI). To use auto manufacturing as an example, each dealer has the opportunity to access SAP Jam to engage with its local sales and service staff for receiving training, learning best practices, finding experts, keeping up with regulations, managing rollout of sales and marketing plans, and sharing feedback from customers.
“As a partner, the SAP Jam developer program presents market-first options for solving complex business problems such as enabling more successful automotive product launches,” says Richard Blumberg, President and CEO of WSS. “We can now create new work patterns or bring business data directly into SAP Jam from our customers’ existing SAP or third-party systems to support customer-specific processes. This has helped us position unique social collaboration services to our customers with a strong ROI.”
News Alert: World Sales Solutions, LLC Becomes an SAP Services Partner Focusing on SAP® Jam
Accelerating Sales, Marketing, Services and Innovation to Support Customers
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) announced today that it has joined the SAP® PartnerEdge® program as an SAP services partner. WSS will focus on the SAP Jam social software platform together with the SuccessFactors Talent Management Suite as well as SAP Jam with the SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application for on-premise, cloud, and social-network-inspired collaboration.
“SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, continue to lead the way in enterprise social software (ESS), with SAP Jam having experienced a growth rate of over 850 percent year-over-year,” said Richard D. Blumberg, president of World Sales Solutions. “Our team welcomes the opportunity to share insights with our customers’ senior executives and their teams to help achieve quick and tangible results. Customers benefit from our work experiences in delivering successful private and public communities ranging from 30 to 300,000+ participants and representing important products and solutions seen around the globe.”
The WSS team provides a quick start program for the deployment of SAP Jam to help customers address specific ESS requirements around top priorities and compelling business issues. While there are many ESS tools in the marketplace, the unique combination of SAP Jam plus SAP applications, such as the SAP Cloud for Customer solution and SAP CRM powered by the SAP HANA® platform, provides a competitive advantage for organizations to establish a 360° view of their customers.WSS also works with sales, marketing, services, and innovation cross-teams to orchestrate adoption around best practices, productivity gains, cost savings, and measurability which helps deliver bottom-line revenue results.
About World Sales Solutions
Founded in 2004, World Sales Solutions, LLC (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com), a business development professional services organization, supports the world’s leading businesses, universities, and organizations to help achieve dramatic increases in revenues, profits, growth, and value. Over the last 8+ years, WSS has provided services to organizations that use SAP solutions. As an SAP services partner and member of the SAP PartnerEdge program, WSS supports enterprise social software delivery and best practices for using SAP Jam.
SAP, PartnerEdge, SAP HANA and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.
All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.
Media Contact: Diem Lam, World Sales Solutions, +1 610-745-4514, [email protected]
News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com
Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
Background: This blog is the second in a series which began with the acclaimed post, “The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative: Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building.”
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Recently, I came across an impressive McLaren race car which triggered thoughts about the similarities between sales teams and race car drivers. The “SAP Speeds Up – McLaren Formula One” video provides insights on the importance of “split second and informed decisions” to impact short-term results and future outcomes.
Since that unexpected sighting of a very cool car, I began to ponder how this performance model might be applied to cross-teams and collaboration to help impact revenues and bottom-line business results.
This question came to mind…
How can organizations apply tools such as SAP Jam to win their respective races?
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