In a recent global study conducted by CFO Research and sponsored by SAP, finance executives from Europe acknowledge increasing pressure to deliver clear, actionable business insight to their colleagues—just not as much as their peers from other regions of the world.Overall, European...Read More

Millennials are the last generation with a front row seat experiencing the change from analogue to digital. Their youthful eyes saw the world turn global and connected. They were witness to the introduction of the sharing collaborative economy. What can we learn from them?What is a Millennial...Read More

Every business has the potential to be a digital business. More importantly, every business must become a digital business. As the number of smart, connected devices—from phones to cars to wearables—moves toward a tipping point where most work, play, and commerce will have a digital...Read More

The term “customer engagement” is used so often that it can admittedly sound a bit hollow. However, for those of us designing and developing enterprise software, it is a solid, hard-core matter of survival. Whether long-term or short-term, big or small, involving customers in the R...Read More

Ready or not, the world is changing – and your business models and processes must evolve to keep pace.First, anything and everything that can be digitized will be, from your digital reputation that determines how quickly you get an Uber pickup to your toothpaste printed in 3D at home...Read More

By now, most IT leaders have become convinced of the need to move their organizations away from a mindset of delivering functions and features, and move toward a focus that puts the user’s true needs at the center, employing design thinking principles. Discover and Plan - Where to...Read More

By Vivek Bapat, SVP, Global Head of Marketing Strategy, SAPInnovation in the workplace. We hear and talk about it all the time.To stimulate creativity and innovation, many organizations invest significantly in creativity workshops, in hiring inspirational speakers, and in conducting training...Read More

Natively-digital businesses are here and they are disrupting the most fundamental industries that we have come to know over the last 200 years.Consider some of these examples from a previous post:Travelocity changed how we purchase a hotel room. AirBnB is changing the very definition of a...Read More

Retailers have a lot on their plate these days. How to keep up with mobile consumers, connect with Millennials, and tap into social media are just a few of the challenges they are currently tackling.  But are they pulling it all together to deliver the best customer experience possible?Not...Read More

Oil, gas and coal helped power the Industrial Revolution, but humans have to tear up the planet to extract these energy sources. Burning them pollutes the environment, but people can use these power sources whenever they like.Wind and solar power are great because they’re...Read More

The upsides of retail analytics are often better known than the downsides. The upsides: Real-time solutions help retailers:Tailor messages to each of their customers via any channel at any timeBetter view their inventory and financialsOffer a personalized in-person shopping experience &mdash...Read More

Baby formula has an image problem. And it’s been hotly debated around the world for decades.Sales of baby formula in the U.S. have fallen alongside the nation’s birthrate — and an upsurge in breastfeeding, according to Reuters. And the World Health Organization...Read More

 Anti-collision technology may be the biggest technology that enters its own during 2015 — in cars, at least. It’s got a ways to go in different spaces, but it’s already saving lives in others.“Expect more vehicles to be fitted with anti-collision systems that...Read More

Customers today expect consistent and seamless treatments across channels, throughout the customer’s journey.  Savvy marketers appreciate the value of enabling seamless customer engagement across channels.  However, when it comes to developing and executing a transformational...Read More

2013 has been an exciting year for marketers; a year of transformation and empowerment, as marketers took on the challenge to find innovative ways to connect and engage with the digital consumer.  Many focused on gaining better customer insights, and utilized social channels to listen and...Read More

In order to grow, companies realize they must change their strategy to engage with their customers. But doing this requires new technologies to extract insight for personalization and relevance, create amazing experiences both online and in-person and flawlessly execute business ...Read More

In the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to interact with sales leaders in India, China, Singapore and Australia. One thing that everyone agrees is that selling, and more importantly, B2B selling is getting more and more challenging.Buyers are getting more and more...Read More

There’s a lot of buzz lately about Sales Performance Management (SPM), with many interpretations of what SPM is and in turn, what the real business impact is for sales organizations today. Some viewpoints focus SPM on Incentives and Commissions Management. Others center SPM on...Read More

Customer experience management is a holistic discipline involving all functional departments of a company (see examples here and here). However, many companies treat it as a set of “initiatives” limited to customer-facing units of the organization. The use of the...Read More

Sales is often a game of “what have you done for me lately.” This treatment is where sales employees, including their managers, are treated only as good as the last sale. Such treatment dehumanizes a dynamic set of interactions that are inherently human and as old as sales &ndash...Read More

I think somewhere over the rainbow there are folks that believe that their digital life is separate from their “analog” life.Sort of like a misconstrued view that we can be “different” people on different platforms.  Online I am an outspoken, courageous...Read More

In recent years, marketers have been on a blistering pace in search of the next cool digital marketing tools.  Whether they be in social media marketing, digital ad management, community marketing, or mobile marketing, there are certainly a myriad great vendors with compelling solutions...Read More

If you’re a marketer, chances are good you have visibility into marketing-related data, such as who you targeted for which campaign, who responded, and who purchased which of your products. But today, that may not be good enough to develop deeper understandings about your customer. ...Read More

The 700-year-old Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, one of the world’s first shopping malls, might seem to be — figuratively and literally — a different world than Burberry, the renowned  U.K. fashion house. After all, the Grand Bazaar goes back to the Ottoman Empire, while...Read More

Its that time of the year again.   Your company is rolling out the annual employee survey so that management can measure the engagement levels across the entire organization.   Yet, with all the costs and efforts to administer employee surveys, the average employee survey...Read More

Photo: ShutterstockAs the millennial generation continues to grow older and larger – projected to span 75 percent of the global population and workforce by 2025 – many companies and businesses are still figuring out how to best interact with and attract the millennial generation...Read More

With no pun intended for this summer’s hit song by Robin Thicke, the lines between some traditional companies and technology companies as we know them, are blurring at a rapid pace.Some brands are clearly leading the way to digitally transforming their businesses at the very core of their...Read More

Photo credit: Shutterstock98% of innovation projects around the world fail, according to Darrell Mann – a former chief engineer at Rolls Royce and one of the world’s most prolific inventors. You can probably think of several high-profile innovations that didn’t quite make it off...Read More

Photo credit: ShutterstockDisruptive technologies and shifting demographics are redefining the workforce. In response, smart companies are reinventing workplace learning in an effort to make their programs more relevant and effective, and to create a culture that encourages continuous...Read More

Photo credit: FlickerAs we approach the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating path of destruction across the Eastern Seaboard, I recall the extensive aftermath of the storm as millions of people struggled to rebuild and gain access to basic resources such as gas and...Read More

Surprisingly, many companies dread the day their brand is trending on Twitter, especially if it’s due to a product recall or safety issue. Companies are increasingly turning to social media to limit legal risk and maintain consumer loyalty when a product-safety issue arises.Photo...Read More

By Vivek Bapat,Vice President, Portfolio Marketing, SAPThis is an age of unprecedented individual empowerment unlike anything we’ve seen in history. Armed with real-time information, social media and mobile phones, today’s consumers can make or break brands in the blink of an eye. On...Read More

By Erica Clark-Mitchell, Senior Director, Integrated Digital, SAPWhen it comes to innovation, I have two questions. The first is: where do people find inspiration? And the second is: where do people find inspiration? By the first question, I mean what inspires people. We’re all familiar...Read More

(Photo: Taylor Davidson, Clinton Global Initiative) Bill McDermott, SAP co-CEO, (center) joined this year’s Clinton Global Initiative as part of a panel of thought leaders discussing “Vital Resources: Doing More with Less.”I’m going to venture a guess that most people have...Read More

By Tim Minahan, Chief Marketing Officer, SAP CloudPhoto credit: ShutterstockBusiness is moving faster than ever. And real time is no longer enough.To stay ahead of the competition, companies must not only sense the present, but see the future and proactively shape it to their advantage. That...Read More

 A few months ago I wrote, “A 360 Degree Perspective On Customer Engagement,” where I touched upon the 21st century consumer who is always on, always connected, and doesn’t make a move without consulting the internet.When I think about it, that means my three...Read More

By Jenny Dearborn, Vice President, Chief Learning Officer, SuccessFactors – an SAP companyThe Baby Boomer generation pursued pension plans, corner offices and a linear career path. In return, many Boomers committed the duration of their careers to their organization.As they settled into...Read More

Source: ShutterstockAre we in a honeymoon phase for the chief marketing officer? “The tenure of a CMO is less than 2 years,” had been the common refrain for years. That average is up to four, and businesses seem to be in hot pursuit of the CMO. Even though there’s much...Read More

By John Carty, Account Executive, SAP  HANA, Sybase, and Real-Time Data PlatformThe promise — and the challenge — of big data can be summed up in one question: “What could you do if you knew?”The question covers the key insights you and your executives would like to...Read More

By Shawn Price, President, SuccessFactors, an SAP companyExecutives have come to recognize that their most valuable resource is talent. But how can firms best manage this increasingly diverse, widespread and changing resource in line with business objectives?The field of talent management has...Read More

By Jeff Lautenbach, President, Customer, Financials and Suite, SAP CloudWhether you sell to consumers or to business users, the individuals you are trying to reach today are informed, connected and armed with influence. They can switch products, shift brand allegiance, and broadcast their...Read More

By John Ward, Marketing Manager, SAP Patterns are powerful. They’re in numbers, public spaces, and hidden in sales data – and recognizing patterns in the world around us has been changing how we think for centuries.“It is not certain that everything is uncertain,” French...Read More

Massive online open courses (MOOCs) are threatening to knock higher education off its traditional autonomous hill with a far more flexible and accessible learning mode than anyone could ever imagine. The stakes are high and outcomes are unknowable during this early era of experimentation. I...Read More

Traditionally, the CEO has come from just about anyplace but marketing. Companies bent on operational excellence might look to their finance teams or their COO to take the top slot.  Organizations focused on innovation might look to a CTO type.  Those focused on market share fished in...Read More

By David Trites, Marketing Director, SAP Source: Shutterstock Have you ever experienced the thrill of driving a Porsche 911? Just thinking about getting behind the wheel of one gets me excited. And this year there is even more reason to get fired-up about the 911 – it’s...Read More

Big-Data is changing how every company department does business and human resources is no exception. I’ve written about the top ten technology trends impacting HR in 2014, and recently had the chance to talk with Mick Collins, Principal Consultant for SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics and...Read More

Change agent. Entrepreneur. Innovator. Incubator. Good disruptor/friend Chris Heuer calls them “Work Hacks.”  Whatever you call them, disruptors the world over have similar traits.  Good ones – the professionals – have learned skills that help their ideas become...Read More

One of my few pet peeves in life is when I hear someone say “the numbers don’t lie!” While I understand and appreciate the use of fact-based information to support an argument, its application has become overly generalized. People often use numbers as a crutch to support weak...Read More

It’s well established that today’s consumers use multiple channels – mobile, Web, social media, in-store – when engaging with retailers. On any given day, a shopper might research a clothing item online, visit the brand’s Facebook FB -1.79...Read More

Besides being a great time to decompress, spend time with family, or just get away, summertime is a great time to catch up on your reading list.  Few of us want to sit on the beach with a languid tome on corporate organizational principles or a step-by-step guide to great Excel spreadsheets....Read More

It’s that time again when researchers, organizations, and opinion leaders share their predictions on a variety of business and technology topics for the coming year. The Human Resources (HR) industry is no exception, and a group of professionals recently got together at the Annual Society...Read More

By Volker Hildebrand, Global Vice President, CRM Solutions, SAP I’ve had many conversations with business leaders in the last 12 months where this topic came up, and let me tell you, many companies are afraid of how Amazon has changed and will continue to change the competitive landscape...Read More

Research shows that enterprise social software has worked – because it hasn’t been enough about work. Facebook and other social networks are helping foster large, vibrant communities of consumers around the world. Companies are hoping to emulate that success within the organization...Read More

Chipotle was the latest brand to engage in a “fake Twitter hack” marketing stunt, following in the footsteps of MTV and BET a few months ago.  The intention behind these stunts is to clearly boost fans and followers for their brands, but, unfortunately, exposes a...Read More

I’ve written about the path to innovation as an evolutionary journey for high technology companies and their customers and partners. When new technologies like cloud disrupt existing business models, the survivors are those that adapt and evolve as part of an intelligent plan. In other...Read More

Today’s customers are much more knowledgeable and informed than ever before. Increasingly, they are leveraging third-party sources; social media, peer groups, and community sites to gain information that is shaping their perceptions about brands, products, and companies. What’s more...Read More

My colleague Polly Traylor and I have been going to experts inside and outside of SAP to ask the question: How much adaptation in your products and services is needed for global markets, in particular, emerging markets?More than Likes and Dislikes People in the west know instinctively that the...Read More

Although the term is ugly, “datification” is rapidly becoming a big trend in our daily lives. Datification is about taking a process or activity that was previously invisible and turning it into data. That data can then be tracked, monitored, and optimized, leading to new...Read More

Who we think of as “successful” changes as we mature.  When we were kids, it was typically about “fame” or “notoriety.”  Film and pop stars had it all for us.  As we got our degrees and entered the workforce, we viewed “intelligence&rdquo...Read More

Most people might not automatically put SAP and coffee in the same sentence. In fact, SAP’s customers produce more than 82 percent of the coffee and tea that people the entire world drink each day. Now the company has partnered with the Federación de Cafeteros de Colombia on a...Read More

I love riding bicycles. Yet I live in a place (Boston) that’s terrible for cycling, with roads that look like archaeological digs, legions of cranky drivers, and awful weather. What drives all this aberrant behavior (you should see my winter riding outfit – an Eskimo would look...Read More

Remember when you had to drive to the store to buy something? Or what about fighting your way through crowds during the holiday season because there weren’t any other options? Before the e-commerce era, shopping was time-consuming and stressful. It was often difficult to find sought-after...Read More

It’s a time-honored tradition to dismiss established companies when exciting, new technologies appear on the horizon. But knee-jerk predictions about which companies will succeed or fail in response to the news of the day are rarely accurate. They can also have a pesky little problem...Read More

It seems like with every year that passes, customers grow increasingly impatient. Where five years ago we could tolerate waiting 24 hours for a response from a customer service email, we are increasingly living in a real-time world where we want to know the answer right now. Most enterprises...Read More

Since the dawn of sports, an umpire, referee or other official has been on the scene to blow a call. Baseball umpires in particular, have already had a troublesome year and the season is still young. It’s a thankless job and if an umpire does well, no one hears or speaks about it;...Read More

“There are now three certainties in life,” the head of cyber-intelligence for U.K. Security Service MI5 said on the BBC Monday. “There’s death, there’s taxes and there’s a foreign intelligence service on your system.” There are three certainties in...Read More

By Michael Schulze, Senior Vice President & General Manager, SAP I was in Montreal recently for a wedding and marveled at the mix of European and North American culture, from cobblestone streets and video game development studios to horse-drawn carriages and the Grand Prix.  The second...Read More

A few days ago I happened to be watching a re-run of Minority Report, the 2002 neo-noir science fiction starring Tom cruise as “Precrime” Captain John Anderton. As many of you might remember, the movie was set in the year 2054, pretty far out in the future. What is fascinating...Read More

Looking out over the edge of a cliff. That’s what it feels like to be a retail banker these days. Bankers see e-banking providers like Google Wallet and PayPal eating into their core banking business. Retail banks could fight back by becoming one-stop shops for all things financial...Read More

The recent revelations about the United States National Security Agency’s secret surveillance of phone records and personal data from internet companies have stirred up conversations that range from fear-based diatribes against technology to laissez-faire shrugs about the myth of privacy...Read More

Comedian Richard Lewis claims to have coined “the _______ from hell” phrase, but Carnival Cruise Lines has lived it. In 2012, Carnival spent $61 million advertising its “fun ship” brand positioning. But by the end of last year, #cruisefromhell was trending on Twitter...Read More

Recently, myself and my colleague in the SAP Center for Business Insight, Kai Goerlich, got into a debate about the real impact of online shopping on traditional retail business models. Kai, who is Senior Fellow, Thought Leadership, argued that businesses could learn a few lessons from nature...Read More

By Celia Brown, Director, Customer Experience Marketing, SAP I pride myself on being ‘in the know’ when it comes to technology- especially software, mobile, and social media. I spend my days with some seriously geeky brainiacs at SAP and my nights with my husband, who was...Read More

Getting old isn’t easy but a majority of recently surveyed insurance executives believe that an integrated software platform could help rejuvenate everything at their companies from competitive differentiation to customer satisfaction. Over 200 executives primarily from the United States...Read More

In the 1930s, the effects of a bad economy were highly visible: Long bread lines and rickety carts with hand-written signs offerings apples for a few cents apiece. Today, the unemployed often suffer behind closed doors, alone. They have food and a roof over their heads but face a bleak future...Read More

The sport of Basketball is now second to soccer in worldwide popularity and the National Basketball Association (NBA) continues to play a major role in making this global growth a reality. A series of shrewd investments over the years, coupled with simplified branding and feeding the fan...Read More

By Brian Rice, Director, Global Social Media Marketing, SAP At its core, social media provides a platform to connect with family, friends and colleagues, along with the ability to meet new people with shared interests across the world. However, over time there has been a fundamental shift from...Read More

On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in the mix, and now loyalty programs are commonplace across...Read More

On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in the mix, and now loyalty programs are commonplace across...Read More

According to the International Labour Organization, the world needs to create over 500 million new jobs by 2020 to provide career opportunities for people who have jobs now, as well as youth who will join the workforce. But the biggest roadblock to economic growth may well be finding workers...Read More

We all know the factors that have led to economic success in the industrial era: access to land, labor, raw materials, capital, machinery, and (in many cases, anyway) a good idea. Today, all of those traditional advantages are falling away except one: the good idea. We are leaving the industrial...Read More

We all know the factors that have led to economic success in the industrial era: access to land, labor, raw materials, capital, machinery, and (in many cases, anyway) a good idea. Today, all of those traditional advantages are falling away except one: the good idea. We are leaving the industrial...Read More

When SAP’s partner organization invited a select group of SAP BusinessOne partners to follow their personal service advisor (PSA) on Twitter last fall, no one knew what to expect. Eight months later, in the wake of overwhelmingly positive partner feedback, SAP is expanding its “Follow...Read More

San Francisco, the lovely City by the Bay, is generally a safe place to live, especially when compared to other cities of similar size. Homicides are about half of what they were a few years ago, and property crimes have continued to decline as well. With a booming tourist economy and resurgence...Read More

By Brent Cohler, Director, Mobile Product Marketing, SAP On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in...Read More

By Brent Cohler, Director, Mobile Product Marketing, SAP On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in...Read More

“Green” is overflowing in the South Bronx, an economically challenged urban area and the nation’s poorest Congressional district. But the “green” isn’t money – it’s food. And the urban gardeners are high school kids, many of whom are homeless. Led...Read More

It’s been six months since I made the cliché New Year’s Resolution… lose weight, get in shape – you know the drill. This is an annual event for millions of us who sign up for Weight Watchers and gym memberships in early January and are back to former routines by...Read More

As a PhD student at Boston College, we have focused a great deal on both past trends and current developments in social media. As we reflect on the present and the past, I found myself considering the future directions in the field.  A few of these extrapolations are admittedly bolder than...Read More

As a PhD student at Boston College, we have focused a great deal on both past trends and current developments in social media. As we reflect on the present and the past, I found myself considering the future directions in the field.  A few of these extrapolations are admittedly bolder than...Read More

New innovations in mobile and big data make this an exciting time for the world economy, especially for fast growth regions like China. A global survey of IT decision makers revealed that China is one of the four countries most ready to leverage Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology to...Read More

Early in my management career, the HR department sent out a single-question survey which asked how satisfied we were with our jobs on a scale of 0 (very unsatisfied) to 4 (highly satisfied). To my surprise, my group had the lowest average score (2.6) in the company. The HR VP predicted a mass...Read More

Early in my management career, the HR department sent out a single-question survey which asked how satisfied we were with our jobs on a scale of 0 (very unsatisfied) to 4 (highly satisfied). To my surprise, my group had the lowest average score (2.6) in the company. The HR VP predicted a mass...Read More

Every time you purchase a painting, use a hand-made serving bowl, attend a live musical performance, or watch a film, you are supporting a creative economy of artists, performers, and filmmakers that contribute to a more sustainable society. With hundreds of artist, individual, and business...Read More

“It’s true I deceived you but I wasn’t lying.” The statement, spoken brazenly by a work colleague, momentarily floored me. I thought deception and lying were the same thing. A little bit of research suggests there may be a difference. In ‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth...Read More

“It’s true I deceived you but I wasn’t lying.” The statement, spoken brazenly by a work colleague, momentarily floored me. I thought deception and lying were the same thing. A little bit of research suggests there may be a difference. In ‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth...Read More

Though Madison Avenue largely forgets seniors in general, they are now a demographic grossly overlooked on social media.  Those 65 years and older are changing: they are living longer, are more active, and becoming increasingly literate online. Not only does this age group have 47x...Read More

The Industrial Age reinvented productivity. The Information Age reinvented communication. Now man and machine are coming together and it’s even bigger than the Internet. What is it? The Internet of Things! The Internet of Things connects the physical world to the Internet through sensors...Read More

The Industrial Age reinvented productivity. The Information Age reinvented communication. Now man and machine are coming together and it’s even bigger than the Internet. What is it? The Internet of Things! The Internet of Things connects the physical world to the Internet through sensors...Read More

When it comes to sports and analytics, I see two main slices of the pie: the game where it all happens and the operation that supports the organization. There is a lot written about the former; however, the latter may be overlooked because of its distance from where the action takes place...Read More

It’s easy to become jaded and wary of those who rely on words like “innovation”, “transformation” and “engagement” too much isn’t it? So what happens when you come across a story that truly embodies these overused and abused terms? That’s the...Read More

Ever watch those TV infomercials late at night when you’re bored and can’t sleep? Of course you do. And you’re likely to buy things you don’t really need as well. The most fascinating book I’ve read in a long time, ‘But Wait… There’s More,&rsquo...Read More

As technology become more complex, a group of brilliant entrepreneurs is using it to tackle some of the most fundamental human challenges of all time—clean food and water, adequate and affordable health care, accessible education, and the chance to live a better life. These 11 start-ups...Read More

Google used to have a formula for finding the best employees: it screened for high SAT scores and grade point averages. Sounded like a good plan (especially since Google’s two founders demanded it). Unfortunately, it turned out to be dead wrong—not a good thing at a company that...Read More

Many popular phrases have their roots in sports. For example, the cliché “there is no ‘i’ in team” comes from the idea that a cohesive team of players is more likely to win games than a collection of individual superstars. Players are told to focus on the team&rsquo...Read More

In very large U.S. urban areas, the average commuter spends $16 and 52 minutes traveling 32 miles round trip to work each day. For many organizations – and employees that endure long, solo commutes – it all adds up to lost productivity, wasted resources and additional expenses. A...Read More

By Kaan Turnali, Global Senior Director, Business Intelligence, SAP So far in the series, I have charted a course for creating value in the sports and entertainment industry through analytics. I have advocated a holistic approach to paint the full picture that goes beyond the basic game-day...Read More

The business world is ripe for an e-learning explosion as the number of qualified experts can’t keep pace with innovations like mobile, cloud, and Big-Data. Arming employees with the latest skills and knowledge so they can function with excellence is a strategic imperative for every...Read More

By Saswato Das, Head of Thought Leadership Content, SAP Are you ready for Big Data at the big screen? It’s true. Hollywood has discovered Big Data’s talents to determine how to distribute and promote movies. Advertisements viewers see before a movie is screened, and how that...Read More

Image via CrunchBaseBy Charlotte Han, Community Engagement Manager, SAP Last week, Twitter announced a new ad format, Keyword Targeting in Timelines,which means brands can now find potential customers in real-time when purchase intent appears. Here’s an example from Twitter.com...Read More

Ever since my first visit to Rio years ago when I used to jog along Leblon admiring the view, I’ve been struck by the legendary beauty of this beachfront city. Now, it’s the city’s new intelligence that takes my breath away. On a recent visit to Rio’s Center of...Read More

The two wispy slips of paper were far more than just ATM receipts found at a bank in New York. They created a jarring yet simple mosaic of the sprawling gap between rich and poor in the United States. Jim Edwards evaluates two very different ATM receipts on Business Insider. “They...Read More

What would get people to reuse their towels in hotel rooms? The answer might surprise you, as it’s not saving the environment or saving money. People are more likely to reuse their hotel towels if they are told that everyone else is doing it. This variant of the ‘keeping up with the...Read More

The dynamics of a sports organization involve three main forces: the team, the game, and the fan. In essence, the team is the passion that gets the fan fired up, the game is where it all happens, and the fan keeps it alive. Of the three dynamics, the one the sports organizations can control the...Read More

Who are the best marketers out there right now?  Who are the leaders shaping the way businesses interact with their customers and the marketplace?  Big questions, right?  What is more important than “who” is doing it, is “what” are they doing to meet the...Read More

The power of technology to change people’s lives is undisputed, but you also need people who are determined enough to turn crazy ideas into reality. It’s rare enough to run across anyone like that, so I was very excited to meet 50 of them recently at the Global...Read More

We really should stop using the term “supply chain.” “Supply” gives the impression that one company makes something, say a part, and sends it to another, where it sits, like bolts in a bin, waiting, along with many other discreet pieces, to be made into something greater....Read More

Ryan O’Neil, Senior Director of Marketing, SAP In the movies, detectives find themselves up against all kinds of perils: they habitually get stuck up to their neck in quicksand, buried alive in ancient tombs, locked in a flooding boat, or any of a thousand other diabolical traps. It&rsquo...Read More

Last week was a busy one for corruption hunters in New York. A Bronx assemblyman and Republican Party chairman were among those arrested for alleged dirty deeds. “Over the past few days, there have been several charges brought against public officials,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo...Read More

By Sadaf Hossain, SAP Global Private Equity “What’s keeping your board up at night?” Netherlands-based auditor and advisor KPMG asked more than 700 venture capital board members and investors that very question this February. IT and social media was the No. 1 area where the...Read More

By Kurt Bilafer, APJ Regional Vice President, Analytics, SAP  Lego recently became a hot topic of conversation with my son, a huge Star Wars Lego fan.  Lego is the fourth-largest toy company in the world, and here at SAP (and the Bilafer household), we have a special relationship...Read More

By Sylvia Santelli, Social Media Strategist, SAP “Guru,” “expert” and “pro” are titles thrown around too easily in business, technology, social media and everything in between. What’s missing, whether these titles are self-proclaimed or well-deserved, is...Read More

By Kaan Turnali, Global Senior Director, Business Intelligence, SAP Let’s get something out of the way: Nothing replaces the thrill of a championship. It is the measurement that counts most in sports. But the reality is that there are, for example, 32 teams in the NFL. And that means each...Read More

Digitalization is arguably the most cataclysmic event in the history of the written word since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450. In fact, the advent of self-published eBooks has sparked an eerily similar struggle over control and ownership as in centuries past. People...Read More

Last week, in the first installment of my Sports and Analytics series, I detailed how sports and entertainment organizations are similar to industries such as retail or consumer products. In this second installment, I want to expand on this point and discuss key components that are part of a...Read More

How do you find the time for social media? This is the question I get asked probably more than any other. I have four lovely children, a demanding job, a wife with a successful career and more. So how do I find the time to tweet, blog, share, and comment? The answer is simple: I make the time...Read More

All of us would do well with a second bite at the apple, another chance to go back and do it all over again.  Our mistakes, as much as our successes, define us and can help steer us forward today.  With this in mind, here are 10 lessons learned over the last 20 years of doing business...Read More

Over the past several years, we have talked at SAP about how we cannot limit ourselves by merely trying to create a sustainability strategy. Instead, we have been working to make our corporate strategy more sustainable. This month, we hit an important milestone on this journey with the...Read More

This is a time of great upheaval on Wall Street. Regulation is “the biggest factor shaping the future of the financial industry,” Financial News noted Tuesday. Dodd-Frank and Basel III will have firms on both sides of the Atlantic seeking more data granularity faster than ever...Read More

Guest Post by Greg Scandariato, MBA Student at Boston College I still remember sitting in my dorm room at Boston College during the spring of 2004 when Facebook literally first burst onto the scene.  Something that has since become such an integral part of 1 billion lives meant NOTHING to...Read More

I’m seeing companies spend lots of money trying to get customers to talk about their brands and products in social media. For many of these companies, it’s a big waste of money. Let’s be rational about this. What customer wants to tweet to his or her friends about toothpaste...Read More

Just this month, SAP Canada was named one of the 30 Best Employers in my home province of Québec, and our employees were named among the most engaged in the country.  Having just marked my six-year anniversary working for SAP, that’s something to be very proud of. ...Read More

Statistical analysis in sports has been around for a long time, but the topic of sports and analytics has attracted more attention in the last decade. The release in 2011 of the movie Moneyball (based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis, published in 2003...Read More

On Earth Day, 1971, Keep America Beautiful ran the now-famous PSA – “The Crying Indian“- for the first time.  It had a stunning effect on the populace, and shined a much-needed light on the behaviors that cause pollution.  We are faced with a similar watershed moment. ...Read More

CMOs make a strong case that marketing should represent the “voice of the customer” for their companies but, in my opinion, that doesn’t go far enough. We need to represent the voice of the market. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks Coffee famously said: “Customers don...Read More

Regardless of the challenges or benefits millennials pose to society, their culture – which is rapidly becoming our culture – is here to stay. As leaders of industry, we need to seek ways to understand and engage them, to teach and to learn from them. As an organization...Read More

Christchurch, New Zealand is rebuilding after a devastating earthquake two years ago and recovering from the global financial crisis — and it could be losing more than US$1.2 billion to fraud. Of 140 businesses surveyed there, 38 percent had no distinct procedures to combat fraud, Chicago...Read More

For basketball fans, the name John Wooden conjures up images of pure legend. The coach of a dynastic UCLA team, he won 10 national championships, including 7 in a row (1967-1973). He had an almost unbelievable winning streak of 88 straight games. In his own basketball career, Wooden was a 3-time...Read More

If want to hear lots of specific details about a TV show you missed, you’re better off asking a shy person in the office, rather than the loud-mouth talking about it in the break room. That’s because, according to a study by Dutch scientist Camiel Beukeboom, introverts use more...Read More

We are awash in content. It is actually a problem now. As audiences have become more vocal about what they need, brands and businesses have become more active in providing them that “great” content. “Alas” – and you will excuse the vernacular – “most of...Read More

Small businesses account for nearly two-thirds of net new job creation. And they innovate more than large businesses do, generating 13 times more patents per employee. That’s according to AOL founder Steve Case in a recent interview about “Restarting the US small-business growth...Read More

When you ask someone to do something, be sure to include the statement that they are free to choose to do it or not.  Adding this phrase doublesthe likelihood they will do it. A detailed analysis of more than 22K subjects in 42 separate psychology studies demonstrates this startling result....Read More

Just as the democratization of content empowers individuals, so does it impact companies. New technologies are allowing businesses of all kinds to reinvent themselves. Consider the entertainment industry. In the earliest days of movie-making, studios owned everything—the actors, the...Read More

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer used data analytics to justify her company’s ban last week on telecommuting, according to Business Insider. It seems Mayer doesn’t do much without lots of data backing her up. VPN records allegedly indicated that Yahoo! employees were not “working&rdquo...Read More

Recently, my team had our first on-site meeting of this year, and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to fly 1,500 km from Vancouver to Palo Alto and meet them in-person. What got me excited wasn’t just that I’ve never been to Palo Alto, but the thought that I was meeting...Read More

Nebraska Book Company uses cloud technology to successfully swim against the current of failing bookstores. “Barnes & Noble is in trouble,” a headline in The Washington Post stated last week, “but bookstores aren’t doomed just yet.”Strategies for saving the...Read More

Most brands struggle to get appropriate attention for their new ideas.  Typically, new products have a highly orchestrated PR strategy, calling in favors from influencers and media, and drawing crowds by having The Black Eyed Peas or Pearl Jam play at an event. For ...Read More

What was the first fast food company? What was the first credit card company? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t know the answers were White Castle and Diners’ Club. While both companies still exist, they now have relatively small share in what has turned out to be...Read More

The telecommunications industry has come a long way since Lily Tomlin’s iconic skit of telephone operator Ernestine accurately captured the frustrating experience of most customers. Savvy communications service providers (CSPs) have long known they need to move past their core competency (i...Read More

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology has been around for years. Industries like oil and gas, transportation and logistics management rely on it to keep us safe. Medical device manufactures use it to keep us healthy. You and I use it to get to work every day as a distributed network of hundreds...Read More

In a recent post, I urged CEOs to view marketing as a strategic partner, the glue that binds the different parts of an organization together to deliver a consistent, cross-channel consumer experience. A 2012 report from Forrester and Heidrick & Struggles concluded that marketing is...Read More

More than half a million new customers joined South Africa’s biggest bank in less than a year thanks to SAP Mobile Platform, helping unbanked populations meet their banking needs. Almost half of South Africa’s 51 million people earn less than R3,000 ZAR (about $340 USD) per month...Read More

Telcos are sitting on a gold mine of core capabilities and assets, critical for M2M success. In addition to just network connectivity, they have outstanding expertise in large scale service delivery with high reliability and global reach, plus an arsenal of partners for content, apps, specialized...Read More

Big Data can be a life saver, figuratively and literally. We’ve all heard about how Big Data can save time and money, but 87 percent of federal IT officials think that real-time Big Data could save a significant number of lives each year. Lifesavers aren’t much good if rescuers...Read More

In the popular middle-grade novel, Blubber, author Judy Blume relates a truly heartbreaking story of a group of bored fifth graders suddenly taking to tormenting one of the girls in their class. In a space vacated by indifferent and lifestyle-preoccupied adults, Wendy, a shrewd fifth grader,...Read More

Surely you know the song Happy Together – the 1967 chart-topper by the Turtles that ultimately became the band’s only No. 1 hit and its signature song. It’s one of those songs that defines the era of bands with creatively spelled animal names (Byrds, Monkees, Beatles). On first...Read More

How do you get your arms around millions of devices, billions of apps, and trillions of things to end up making money and solving some of the challenges of big data and mobility? SAP’s thought leaders provide insights into what it takes to successfully drive business in a world that has as...Read More

Auto rickshaws are the lifeline for a significant number of commuters in most towns and cities in India. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) As countries experience rapid growth, it is not unusual to see fault lines develop where the old edges up against the new. It is no different...Read More

One good thing about taxes is that they get citizens invested in government — literally. Taxpayers want to be sure that the government spends their money sensibly, but first they must know how their hard-earned cash gets spent. The City of Edmonton works in an open-data and open...Read More

Remember the invisible gorilla video? In an experiment popularized by the book of the same name, volunteers were told to keep track of how many times a basketball was passed between players. While the ball was being tossed, someone in a gorilla suit walked between them in plain view. Very few...Read More

Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose’s new book, Return on Relationship, deftly explores the value of fostering relationships as the new currency for the digital era.  Think you have heard this before?  You probably have – in pieces, but where this book “nails it” is in...Read More

Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose’s new book, Return on Relationship, deftly explores the value of fostering relationships as the new currency for the digital era.  Think you have heard this before?  You probably have – in pieces, but where this book “nails it” is in...Read More

If you are trying to recruit social ambassadors for your business, you will undoubtedly run into the challenge from your colleagues that they don’t know what to write about. And if our business accepts the Social Business imperative, you know we need to grow our army of storytellers in...Read More

When I think about retail today, a song by the band McFly comes to mind. The British “boy band” (italicised because they are actually all pretty accomplished, though disgracefully young musicians) recorded it a few years back, and you really can’t miss the message: “It...Read More

“So why should this organization invest in human capital?”Over the past two decades, HR executives and corporate strategists have been engaging more deeply. Yet when the conversation reaches the point where corporate strategy asks HR this question so bluntly, it usually indicates the...Read More

We all know that consumers are disrupting companies’ business models. One visible example is the increasingly popular practice of “scan and scram” (a.k.a. “showrooming”), in which customers browse in brick-and-mortar stores but use their mobile devices to find better...Read More

What is thought leadership? Like most buzzwords, thought leadership is an often misused and misunderstood term. But what is it really? And why do you need to consider developing and publishing thought leadership. 2013 may finally be the year when content marketing becomes a mainstream ...Read More

Are you feeling empowered that the technology around you allows you more flexibility to manage your work and your life, or are you feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of managing it all?  If you answered “yes” to either of these, you are not alone.  20-somethings are...Read More

Is Twitter going mainstream? Whether you are a Twitter newbie or an old pro, Twitter is still a mystery to a great many business professionals. I think Twitter is an amazing tool! I have been on Twitter for almost 4 years. Just 4 short years! Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent his 1st...Read More

Iran may be behind a massive and sustained campaign of cyber-attacks against numerous Western financial institutions, including Citigroup, Capital One and HSBC, we learned last week. The strikes exploit banks’ Web site encryption, which encode customers’ online transactions to keep...Read More

Many teams – in their rush to build a social business or inbound marketing plan – forget this important first step into a world of social media:  In order to think social, you need to act personal.  Incorporating this thinking into your program will yield you a chance for...Read More

Analytics used to belong exclusively in the realm of the nerds. The tools and the time required to tease insights out of huge volumes of data were incompatible with the real-time needs of customer-facing business people. But with analytical tools that are more user-friendly than ever and...Read More

How do you find inspiration? For many, the simplest ideas articulated in the form of a short quote can help you to think a little clearer, to move a little faster, to work a little harder, to drive toward a loftier goal. So to help you, I have curated a list of what I believe are the 22 best...Read More

After doing this awhile, you get to see the signs of the self-promoter and the quick name-for-themselves artists.  You also – with more rarity – get to meet the real deal.  So, I was very pleased when he agreed to sit down and chat on topics ranging from the new directions...Read More

Imagen de Hola Gourmets 2009 (Photo credit: jlastras) My father was a chef, so I have enjoyed a lifelong love affair with well-prepared and delicious food of all kinds. But I haven’t enjoyed the subsequent battle of the bulge, which had me looking for a quick victory. But I soon...Read More

So your company now has accounts on all the major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Maybe you’re even posting to a Google+, Pinterest, Slideshare or YouTube. These practices, however, are quickly becoming old school as we move beyond the age of social...Read More

Aadhar enrollment center Recently, I saw firsthand how a new “universal identification” program called Aadhar is taking shape in India. It has potential to improve the lives of millions of poor people via Big Data. Aadhar is an ambitious government Big Data...Read More

It’s that time of year when a lot of folks like to make resolutions. New beginnings and all that. Well I’m not gonna take the conventional path here. I mean if you want to lose weight, the steps are pretty simple, right?  Exercise every day, weigh yourself once a week, count...Read More

Targeting specific customers with tailored offers will become a much bigger business in 2013, according to one SAP expert. New technology could help the decades-old concept of personal marketing explode — and make 2013 the Year of the Consumer.Focusing one’s message on a small...Read More

Technological innovation and digitization provide companies the opportunity to develop profitable, new services. Business leaders who want to transform their business models to include radical, new services are very good at expressing their need to escape the commoditization trap, but rarely...Read More

Let’s face it. If you’re in business you have to use email. Even if you’re not in business you have to use email. Well, just about everyone who uses the internet is stuck in the inbox nowadays. People aren’t just checking and sending email – they’re talking...Read More

An off-duty law enforcement officer averted further bloodshed last weekend when she stopped a gunman in a San Antonio cinema. The shooter had already wounded two people and fired upon a marked police car when the officer took action, according to San Antonio Express-News.The yet-to-be...Read More

“Companies that have embraced the future have been rewarded,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said on Mad Money, highlighting SAP’s forward-thinking mindset — and rising stock price. “The company’s last quarter — it was fabulous — it was the best...Read More

In my Marketing Predictions post from last year, I did not break any new ground when I predicted that 2012 would be all about social, content and mobile. I predicted that we would see increased buzz talking about how to become a social business, how to execute content strategy and...Read More

Only the Velvet Underground could provide such bare contrasts between their world of lacerating noise and squalid cityscapes, and many of their peer musicians’ worlds of rainbows and escapist indulgences. Yet even as the Velvet Underground’s career as a group was drawing to a close...Read More

Last year, I reported on the complex logistics surrounding Santa’s Supply Chain. This year, I want to unwrap the broader business model of Jolly St. Nick and how he miraculously delivers the goods year after year.360-degree View: “Children of all ages” Like all successful...Read More

Is cloud computing “bad or risky” for data privacy? Is personal data more “secure and protected” in the cloud? Or less? The impact of cloud computing on data privacy is a complex and sometimes controversial topic. There are a number of misperceptions about data...Read More

“People got a bit lax,” Queen Elizabeth II said last week of the time leading up to the financial crisis. “Perhaps it was difficult to foresee.”The U.K.’s monarch also lamented that her nation’s Financial Services Authority “didn’t have the teeth...Read More

Solving the too-big-to-fail problem in banking just got international. Authorities could seize a Global Systematically Important Financial Institution (GSIFI) — and dismantle it as appropriate — under a joint plan by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank...Read More

The real benefit of social media tools to the enterprise itself lies in the capacity of those tools to capture and analyze that enterprise conversation for relevant insights, connecting it to the business process it relates to. That’s the social intelligence portion that makes it deliver...Read More

They lurk quietly in neighborhood garages and large offices, concocting wild ideas and rolling out new business models and products that can take entire industries by storm.  These companies have big ideas that are driving profound change by challenging the conventional market while making...Read More

“If television’s a babysitter, the Internet’s a drunk librarian who won’t shut up” -Dorothy Gambrill, Cat and Girl, 2005As a youth I lived in a strict house, where television viewing was restricted to one-half hour per day (or a full hour for PBS programs). The...Read More

Today, there are 200,000 small businesses in New York City. Someday, any one of them could become a multinational corporation like SAP, creating thousands of jobs and supporting the global economy in countless ways. Kicking off the SME Summit on Nov. 29 at SAP’s New York offices, the...Read More

Content Strategy is a very confusing topic in business and marketing circles. There are plenty of folks out there trying to define content strategy and differentiate it from traditional marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, social media and search engine optimization. But exactly how...Read More

The other day I wrote about the research we had undertaken in the course of writing The Customer Experience Edgeand four distinct qualities that are critical an outstanding customer experience. Let me go on to say that I’m not alone in asserting that the customer experience is the real...Read More

If you follow the SAP blogs at all closely, you’ll know that the past few weeks have been very exciting for SAP. Todd Wilms wrote about SAP 360 Customer and the unveiling of SAP CRM Powered by SAP HANA. Richard Howells expanded on that 360 degree view of the customers’ world and...Read More

Shoppers already dispirited by the crowds and commodities at the mall this holiday season can take heart—there’s a better way. JustBecause is a new Facebook iPhone app that turns gift-giving on its head, focusing on the product not the recipient or the occasion. With a slogan that...Read More

Speaking to a journalist in 1969 John Lennon offered these insightful, almost prophetic words: “…and the Left Wing talk about giving the power to the people… you know…anybody knows that the people have the power. All we need to do is awaken the power in the people...Read More

Everyone believes that rapidly advancing technology is changing the game, but that’s only half the challenge businesses face. The more significant challenge is this: Digital customers are changing the rules. Armed with smart phones and tablets, today’s customers are digitally...Read More

A gap has always existed between companies and customers. Top management formulates a brand promise, and through messaging, packaging, sales, product/service delivery and other means, it works to fulfill that promise. But as author Michael Hinshaw points out in his book Smart Customers, Stupid...Read More

Trading stood still on more than 200 companies Monday, as a server kept the New York Stock Exchange from publishing quotes for most of the day. Taken alone, this seems like a technical glitch.But combined with earlier problems, such as Knight Capital in August, Facebook in May, BATS in March...Read More

Planning season is well underway and I think it is never to early to look at the Marketing 2012 year-in-review and start to make some predictions for Marketing and Social Businesses in 2013. So here I will lay out my perspective – a narrative really – of what happened in 2012 in...Read More

When done right, effective marketing will generate a quantifiable “multiplier effect.” While social media gets much of the recent credit for this phenomenon, it has existed forever, long before the famous shampoo commercial that explained how happy customers “tell their 2...Read More

Break on Through (to the Other Side) I can hear Ray Manzerek’s analogue keys (pounding bass notes) reverberating through my subconscious as I write this. That riff of intense anticipation as Mr Mojo Risin’ leads us into a primal scream-esque liberation from the world that we once...Read More

Author’s Note: Happy Veterans Day! “The impact of Dodd-Frank for foreign banks is going to be widespread and long-lasting,” according to a recent report by Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent. “The new rules would alter the trading strategies and operations...Read More

“I don’t know what to write about!” If you are trying to recruit social ambassadors for your business, you will quickly run into this challenge from your colleagues. And if you accept the Social Business imperative, you know that we all  need to grow our army of...Read More

By Rani Goel, Senior Director, Analytics Product Marketing, SAP A lot of ink has been spilled relating to big data; countless articles, blog posts and discussions are about how data is growing by leaps and bounds and how companies need the ability to store and manage peta bytes and zeta bytes of...Read More

A boy looks at snack foods and drinks at the Grand Opening of the new Walmart Neighborhood Market in Panorama City, California. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) When a small business gets its first big order it can seem like manna from heaven. But wipe those dollar signs out of...Read More

The original starship Enterprise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Adaire Fox-Martin, SVP Industry Business Solutions for APJ, SAP If we could borrow a line from the suave and dashing Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk to describe the act of innovating, it would be: “To boldly go where no man...Read More

By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, SAP In 1986 Depeche Mode released Black Celebration. A turning point for the band as they left behind the last remnants of electronic pop for an edgier, darker, sound. I loved it. It alienated some but gained so many more new fans with its...Read More

Three in five financial institutions cannot perform real-time reconciliation because they haven’t started working on it for any of their asset classes, according to a recent survey. And they don’t think they’ll be ready to start work on this regulation-essential project before...Read More

Imagine a world in which researchers share data via one massive supercomputer to advance medicine, energy, agriculture … where nations respond in unison to natural disasters … and governments share services around the world. This is what I envisioned as I spoke with...Read More

I confess: I can talk a good game about how mobile tools are revolutionizing the way business is conducted. But I don’t live the dream. When I’m composing my Rhapsodies In Blog about the merits of the mobile workstyle, I’m either in my cubicle at work or (shudder) at home, in...Read More

A revolution has quietly been happening in how enterprise tech is purchased. Being someone who both makes his living writing about what’s happening in enterprises, AND being a member of the marketing department of a software vendor in one of the most cutting-edge locations on the planet,...Read More

After attending a recent conference in New York and hearing some of the brightest social minds in the business and entertainment world discuss their ideas, one thing became very – painfully – clear: social media has reached its apex. It has peaked, and is already on the downward slope...Read More

By Susan Galer, Communications Director, SAP Last weekend I experienced innovation in its truest form. I snagged tickets to see the Video Game Orchestra (VGO) at Boston Symphony Hall. For two hours, I was, as they say, transported to another, better place. Mind you, I am not...Read More

Image via CrunchBaseBy Dan Everett, Senior Director, EIM Solution Marketing, SAP I was speaking with a colleague who is presenting at StrataConf + HadoopWorld this week in New York. His session Tying the Knot Between Hadoop and EDW explores the roles both play in big data projects...Read More

Mobile won’t deliver on the dream of the paperless office, as I argued earlier this week. We’ll read more on our tablets and even smartphones, for sure. But the ability to access and read those files on our devices also whets our appetite to print them, too. According to a...Read More

How does a company move from becoming a promoter of their stuff to a provider of business insights? How do brands become publishers without hiring entire newsrooms full of journalists? Turns out, the answer is simple: take the knowledge, the expertise and the passion of your employees and focus...Read More

If I were a millennial, I would be annoyed with popular media. Whether they are called Millennials, Digital Natives, or Generation Y, people under the age of 30 are typically portrayed as having unrealistically high expectations for their career and over-inflated sense of their...Read More

By Margot Heiligman, SAP CRM Solution Management and Hansen Lieu, SAP CRM Solution Marketing Do you have a team listening to what is being said about your company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and discussion forums?  Better yet, are your social savvy responding to the customer service...Read More

By Tracey Arnish, Vice President of Talent Experience, SAP A few months back I had coffee with an individual who I informally met at a leadership event. This individual was interested in joining my organization and had invited me for a meeting to learn more and share her experience. During...Read More

When Google changed the name of Android Market to Google Play six months ago, I argued that it wasn’t the retreat from the enterprise that it looked like, but actually foreshadowed Google starting up an enterprise app store to complement its fun-focused one. I guess I’ve...Read More

Content Marketing Ads On SAP's Business Innovation When I ask people what they think marketers do or simply “what is marketing?” they almost always say that marketing is some form of advertising or promotion. We all learned the “4 Ps” (Product, Promotion...Read More

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “diversity” as follows: 1: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements :variety; especially: the inclusion of different types of people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization <programs...Read More

Two critical aspects of fast-growing small businesses are constantly running a kind of tortoise-and-hare race: sales and operations. Many companies become so consumed by sales that they fail to see that if operations fall too far behind, it can lead to disaster. Mark Lehew, SAP’s national...Read More

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) A few days ago, New Delhi announced a policy opening India’s notoriously fragmented and inefficient retail sector for a 51% foreign ownership in multi-brand retail (think Wal-Mart) and 100% ownership in single-brand retail (think Niketown)....Read More

Pinball Wizard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Ray Rivera, Director, Solutions Management, Workforce Planning and Analytics, SAP Good analytics is a combination of art and science, where the skillful analyst combines an entire matrix of prior knowledge with good judgment about authentically...Read More

It is becoming increasingly clear that marketers and advertisers have been divided into two camps. There are those that embrace the idea that they are share equal responsibility for their brand with their consumer.  They see themselves as co-brand managers, in a world where customers can...Read More

One aspect of working for a global company that I don’t care for are 5 a.m. conference calls with Europe. But what’s even more frustrating is waking up to my alarm clock at 4:30 a.m. only to discover that the 5 a.m. call was cancelled overnight. Well, what if my calendar could talk to...Read More

Indian students of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (AME) listen to their instructor during a practical training session. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife) I know you’ve heard of tree huggers, but have you ever heard of server huggers? I’ve heard this term used to describe...Read More

September is coming to a close, and so will the spate of back-to-school/child-oriented blog posts from me (I promise). Just…after my coming review of the Fuhu Nabi tablet. And – D’oh! – this post: (Assumes whiny stand-up comedian voice) “Have you...Read More

The tech industry attracts the worst kind of futurists, Clayton Christensen-quoting types who behold shifting paradigms, looming inflection points and disruptive innovations everywhere they look. The futurism business is so competitive these days that technologies get...Read More

Really great sales people have a skill set the rest of us do not natively possess; If you did have those skills, you would weigh your career options differently and probably make a lot more money.  This is not to surmise then that sales people can be replaced.  But, smart organizations...Read More

“Would you like 500 calories, er, fries with that?”Global fast food juggernaut McDonald’s will list the calorie values on its menus across the U.S. next week, giving customers the chance to evaluate their choices. The parallel between this fast food initiative and the...Read More

I read a blog by Thomas Redman in the Harvard Business Review (Make the Case for Better Quality Data) that stated, “It costs ten times as much to complete a unit of simple work when the data are flawed in any way as it does when they’re perfect.” I’ve had many...Read More

There was a ton of news from Apple‘s event today, many of which may have sounded earthshattering to those nattering away on Twitter (raises hand), but upon more reflection, are probably irrelevant to those of us in the enterprise and business worlds.Skittles Rainbow of colors for new...Read More

“Retail and commercial banks should be simple and they should be boring,” Lloyds Banking Group’s chief executive said last week. “The industry must change,” António Horta-Osório told the CBI Scotland annual dinner.Tempting as it may be for the capital...Read More

First, it was the Scandinavian-style Smorgasbord. Later, it was Old Country Buffet. My parents were immigrants who grew up in a time and place where starvation was a reality. Naturally, all-you-can-eat restaurants seemed like one of America’s Greatest Wonders. When I was in...Read More

To prepare for the upcoming holiday shopping season, I’m reading ‘Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)‘ by William Poundstone. Poundstone references a wide variety of psychologies studies that show consumers are unable to accurately estimate fair...Read More

Jonathan Becher, Chief Marketing Officer, SAPOriginally published in the September 24, 2012 issue of FORBES magazine. You’re likely to see the world differently if you spend a few minutes with Jonathan Becher, SAP’s CMO. To Becher, baseball and Olympic sailing are good analogies...Read More

Nothing’s perfect. In creating my map of the 120+ back-to-school iPad and tablet deployments this fall, I learned a few things about what can cause trouble for schools and students. These are good lessons for businesses and other types of organizations thinking about going...Read More

More than a quarter of market participants find its current structure “very weak,” according to a recent TABB Group poll, which indicates that all-too-frequent computerized trading goofs are eroding market confidence. Last month’s Knight Capital tech tragedy killed almost 20...Read More

As part of my research into a forthcoming blog/map showing the largest iPad and other tablet deployments by schools and universities, I also updated my list of the largest publicly-known iPad deployments, including companies, governmental agencies, etc. Notable additions include Hult...Read More

Android often gets criticized for fragmentation. But the connected car market has it beat by a mile, with literally dozens of competing telematics platforms, each with its own code and quirks for developers to wrestle with. At the Charged: Electric Vehicle...Read More

Thanks to Maryann Salerno & Ridley High Football Team for lending equipment.By Ryan Somers, Senior Manager, SAP  It’s that time of year again and the numbers are astronomical! Fantasy football is a $1 billion industry with 27 million people competing annually. Legions of...Read More

By reading the recent press and listening to “the street,” you would think Facebook‘s demise was imminent, Mark Zuckerberg will be stepping down to run a Froyo stand at the Westfield Garden State Shopping Plaza (‘Sup, Paramus?), and that social media has no proven value...Read More

Reflections: Carly Simon's Greatest Hits (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, Web Channel & eCommerce Solutions, SAP“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” sang Carly Simon in her classic pop put...Read More

Oh, there is interest in Pinterest, the visual social sharing site.  But is the site that, in its first month, became the #1 source for referring web traffic (over Google+, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined) a “colossal waste of time,” and “only good as a platform for scrap...Read More

I’ve begun to wonder whether the question, “What’s the ROI on Social?” is a kind of post-modernist Zen koan. It’s one of those questions that is often asked, yet that has no rational answer. Social Media Music, credit: SAP I shared this thought the other day...Read More

Drinking my coffee one recent Saturday morning, I was slightly startled by a headline in the weekend Review section of the Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Customer as a God.” Religious considerations aside, I was at once attracted and repelled. But the snarky headline...Read More

By Claudia Linke, Editor, SAP.info Processes that manage themselves. Products that tell machines what to do next: the next industrial revolution will open up completely new possibilities for the manufacturing industry. A new type of production is about to turn the industrial world on its head...Read More

What do the Southwest Airlines boarding process and the video game Halo have in common? They both rely on swarm intelligence to improve their experience. Swarm intelligence describes the behavior of a population of simple agents whose aggregate behavior exhibits intelligence unknown to the...Read More

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)By Mario Herger, Senior Innovation Strategist, SAP“Fun is just another word for learning” – Raph Koster (Game theorist) When I see my five-year old son’s curiosity as he examines new objects and uses them in new ways, I’m...Read More

By Jacqueline Vanacek Big data offers a grand challenge to reinvent major sectors of the US economy like healthcare, retail, energy and manufacturing. In my recent conversation with Deputy Director Thomas A. Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OFSTP), he defined...Read More

Catadores are the heart and soul of ASMARE, an association of hundreds of recycling professionals located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the reason the organization was created 22 years ago. They are also the reason that I’ve spent nearly four weeks in southeastern Brazil, creating an...Read More

Pink Floyd—The Wall (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, Web Channel & eCommerce Solutions, SAP“Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone home?” sings Roger Waters in this classic track...Read More

A barber shop would seem an unlikely place to collect business wisdom.  Yet I have a story to tell of a little barber shop with lessons for any “commodity” business that wonders how they can differentiate and succeed. My story begins 15 years ago when I first moved to San Jose...Read More

High-tech training has obviously been around for years and infiltrated many sports. But the London 2012 Olympics is a showcase for how mobile has also infiltrated modern athletics. One reason is the way the Olympics is a one-every-four-years showcase for certain kinds of individual sports. In...Read More

Most sports fans know that home teams have an advantage over visiting teams even though they have never seen any hard facts that prove it.  While fans believe in the home field advantage, they hotly debate the reason for its existence.  Over the years, I’ve heard a variety of...Read More

No generation is just a single dimension or can be defined by a single thing. However, there are certain trends with every generation, and our newest to tackle the business world is no different. I am in constant awe and amazement at the levels of intelligence and poise possessed of so many...Read More

IDC has been surveying mobile developers for the past two years. In mid-May, it polled more than 3,500 developers in a survey sponsored by platform vendor and SAP partner, Appcelerator, to gauge their feelings about Apple versus Google in the enterprise, their interest in Windows 8/Microsoft...Read More

(Photo credit: Wikipedia) In the first two blog posts of this series, I discussed the huge opportunities that the Olympics bring to businesses (Fourth Place at the Olympics Is The Loneliest Place In The World) and the supply chain challenges that they face (The Logistics Of The Olympics Is A...Read More

(Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)By Vinay Iyer, Vice President, Global Solution Marketing, SAP I recently complained on Facebook about having to do the dishes by hand when my dishwasher was in its death throes. Several sympathizers posted consoling comments. My Mother-in-law, though...Read More

 Next week I’ll be in China for our second annual customer meeting. One of the things that makes this event special is we didn’t try to export the US version to China but rather built an event ground up for China.  As Chinese consumers gain affluence, we expect them to act...Read More

I interviewed Rick Blatstein, founder and CEO of OTG Management, who says lending iPads calms travelers, “electrifies” the vibe of his airport restaurants, and raises sales. Blatstein is a former nightclub owner who got into the airport restaurant business in the mid-1990s. Before...Read More

The other week my colleague Vinay Iyer posted a blog that looked at how a company might use social media to improve its relationships with their customers. Some companies are already doing this, but it’s also clear that some companies also have a learning curve here about what constitutes...Read More

Everyone’s suffered through an unpleasant encounter with a member of your company’s technical help desk. Some young, would-be Alpha Geek who sarcastically overwhelms you with jargon while he – and it’s always a he – condescends to fix your laptop or printer. I...Read More

I recently vented on Facebook about having to wait (and wait) for a certain company’s customer service team to get their act together to fix my broken dishwasher. After I endured several excruciatingly long waits in the telephone queue, the repair technician finally arrived one bright...Read More

What if you could tap the untold reams of data you have floating around your organization to solve a major problem – and you could do it in a fun, low-cost way? If you follow the lead of NetFlix and Kaggle, you can do just that. In an intersection of three of the biggest catch phrases of...Read More

How do three of the world’s most recognized brands approach digital and social media? Blair Christie, CMO of Cisco; Jonathan Becher, CMO of SAP; and Ann Lewnes, SVP of Global Marketing for Adobe weigh-in on their journey leading their organizations and what surprises they had along the way....Read More

Whether it’s forward thinking or sheeple behavior, but 13 groups applied to manage Web addresses ending in .app, revealed ICANN today. According to the Uber-Registrar, .app was actually the most popular domain name (aka generic Top-Level Domain name, aka gTLD) sought after in...Read More

The amount of data being produced is so overwhelming it’s hard to be shocked by the numbers anymore. Recently, I heard that the sheer volume of data created by U.S. companies alone each year is enough to fill ten thousand Libraries of Congress. These amazing numbers raise an important...Read More

The other week I flew from Prague to London. Or, rather, I sat. Mostly I sat. When the four-hour delay due to weather was announced in Prague, a collective groan went up. The fellow next to me sighed and said, “This happens every week. Four hour delay; blame it on the weather. And just you...Read More

Have you noticed the plethora of fairy tale remakes or reinterpretations lately?  Everywhere you turn around in popular media you see an evil queen, a virgin heroine, an unsuspecting hero, or a wised mentor helping to overcome the forces of darkness.  Is it coincidence, or an allegory...Read More

Clint Eastwood at Cannes (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Clint Eastwood is the world’s greatest brand manager. This is not one of those “Life lessons I learned from Caddyshack,” or “Everything I need to know about business I learned from coaching 1st grade soccer&rdquo...Read More

Is your organization stuck in social quicksand?  Is social not delivering the payoff you once hoped it would?  Have you read every Twitter Best Practices article on Mashable until you are now dreaming in “Top Ten” lists, but to no avail? Well, you only need to change the way...Read More

Last week I had words with an automotive customer service rep named Anne. The “run flat” tires on my car had proven to be a spectacular failure. Instead of enabling Mrs. Leaper to get home safely after a run-of-the-mill puncture, they fell apart—and I mean that literally&mdash...Read More

Today’s retail business is a real-time, information-driven enterprise. Every customer interaction and movement of a product through a distribution network is measured and used to refine pricing strategies, update inventory decisions and tailor customer incentives on websites, email and...Read More

Think social media is just being used by large companies for gaming or brand awareness? Think again.  Dow is on a mission to utilize social channels to make science a compelling career choice for millennials and the next generation. Their strategy for doing so: letting scientists speak for...Read More

This week’s Decoded Fashion conference revealed that New York’s fashion designers are increasingly savvy users of technology, especially for creating engaging customer experiences — but the industry faces more wrenching change in the future. Organized by former journalist Liz...Read More

The lighting, colors, materials, variety of common areas and the extensive use of glass help give the building a high-energy, dynamic atmosphere. Cubicle farms continue to live long and prosper and have become the de facto method to organize millions of corporate employees. But in a world...Read More

Those of you who know my evangelistic tendencies vis a vis CRM solutions may be shocked at the title of this week’s blog. What? Could Leaper be suggesting that CRM is not in itself the be-all and end-all? No, it’s not. I rather like to think of CRM as the embrace-all, the make-sense...Read More

I seem to be on a Richard Branson roll.  Earlier this month I wrote about how I thought Branson’s banking endeavors would benefit from a focus on the kind of personalized customer service that he’s brought to Virgin Atlantic. Subsequently, Flavio Martins at themana.gr took up...Read More

Small businesses are in many ways the lifeblood of the economy. They hold the key to economic recovery around the globe because of their role in driving innovation and creating jobs. Historically, small businesses and entrepreneurs, particularly those in the high tech space, have driven...Read More

When Richard Branson and the Virgin Money team joined forces with Wilbur Ross to bail out the UK’s Northern Rock bank, a lot of the pundits took note and started to wonder if Branson might have as disruptive an effect on banking as he’s had on airlines. Can he drive down pricing...Read More

By now, the New York Times article has been widely-circulated and discussed of how Target uses predictive analytics to figure out, based on purchasing patterns, whether women are pregnant and then mails them coupons for relevant items – timed to specific stages of the pregnancy -- well...Read More

If you follow the media industry you will note significant announcements every week. From new tablet devices, to distribution deals and methods, there is increasing uncertainty in not only the distribution models but fundamental questions like “how am I going to make money from my content...Read More

Of the top 100 brands, how many of them call you a customer?  Take a look and do a quick count (I’ll give my answer at the end). Now, for how many of these brands do you advocate?  Do you justify your purchases to your friends, ask that they adopt your brand-of-choice, or do you...Read More

I believe every manager is a member of three teams:1. The people that report to that manager. This is usually what someone means when they refer to “my team.”2. The external stakeholders in other departments they work with every day. For example, marketing is often considered part of...Read More

The first person I knew who saw it was an art gallery friend-owner in San Francisco back in 2000.  He used to tell me that he could no longer tell by looking who was going to come in and buy.  Some of his biggest sales were to people who looked like college drop-outs, unsuccessfully...Read More

Having traveled the path with CRM for as long as I have, I am keenly aware of what constitutes both the peaks and the valleys of customer service. CRM has evolved brilliantly, and that has raised the standard for service delivery. We expect good, are delighted by the extraordinary, and are...Read More

If you have been following Social Media Week around the globe these last few days, you would have seen some of the world’s best known brands, thought-leaders, and social media advocates come out to voice their ideas, share their opinions, go on rants, and predict the future.  While...Read More

Social Media Week 2012 is now at the half way point.  Today, top brands like Cisco, NVIDIA, and analysts from Altimeter joined me and colleagues from SAP to continue the great conversation.  Hosted at SAP, the event brought luminaries, practitioners, and thought-leaders from more top...Read More

Last week, we took a few days to host what we called the Customer Experience Innovation Workshop, here at SAP in Palo Alto. We were joined by some of the best thinkers in the business -– Lior Arussy, Ray Wang , Henry Chesbrough and Michael Krigsman -– along with business people from...Read More

There’s nothing revolutionary about gauging consumer opinion, except when you use social media to help. Incorporating properly distilled data from the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn offers investors access to an exponentially broader slice of the population. Imagine going from a survey of...Read More

I am at a conference in New Orleans, where here the term “blackout” (referring to the SOPA protest site blackouts of Wikipedia and others) has a different meaning in the Big Easy and usually comes with some commemorative beer mugs and some party beads. I was lucky enough to hear...Read More

Are you feeling particularly empowered as a customer or consumer these days? You should! The evolution of technology over the last five decades has fundamentally shifted the position of the customer as we move into a decade of social business.  It is no longer aboutB2B or B2C or B2B2C; it...Read More

Picking “the rise of the Social OS” as his #1 tech trend for 2012, Wells Fargo senior tech analyst Jason Maynard and his team have released a list of Top 12 Tech Trends for the year that also features “The Internet Is Not Dead.” I’ve known Jason for many years and...Read More

SAP loves to drink its own champagne. My parent company is not only one of the leading enterprise mobility vendors with 17.5 million mobile users, but its internal deployment of mobile devices, software and apps is a role model for the rest of the Fortune 500. I caught up with CIO Oliver...Read More

Have you ever met anyone who really gets you? OK, now how about a brand?  One that understands you – knows what you need – relates to you?  If you have ever stayed at a Four Seasons property, you probably know that feeling.  So, how does an established luxury brand...Read More

Compared to, say, a cameraman in a war zone, tech writers have it pretty good. The worst injury we can suffer is a stiff back from an especially long product keynote. The biggest job hazard is having our bad predictions thrown back at us, either by readers, or, in my case, by myself. Not all...Read More

So, who among your customers is on your Christmas shopping list this year? Or – whoops! — should you be wishing them a happy Chanukah instead? Not sure? How about giving them something nice but religiously neutral? Looking to your CRM solution for answers to questions like this may...Read More

Product and service delivery has dramatically changed the way businesses operate. In every walk of life, commodities are immediately delivered over the air and to the end user’s device of choice. If we like a song on the radio, we’re more prone to download it to our MP3 player than...Read More

Over the past couple of decades, drive-through lanes have become the dominant sales stream for McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, which account for about two-thirds of McDonald’s domestic revenue. But what are the options in densely crowded cities around the world in which space is at...Read More

I can remember when customer relationship management (CRM) was the shiniest new toy in the IT bag of tricks. I was working with Tom Siebel and some of the smartest executives in the industry and we felt like we were ahead of the curve. Back then, contact management systems were the...Read More

Be forewarned: you are entering the land of the “baseball analogy” to describe why blogging is exactly like the book “Moneyball” and movie of the same name.  So, here it is: Blogging is about getting on base, not swinging for home runs. Blogging is about getting...Read More

I travel a lot, so I have become something of an aficionado of airlines and airline services. As we all know, I’m something of an opinionated commentator on the subject of CRM solutions, too. What amazes me is what utter failures so many airlines can be when it comes to fostering strong...Read More

  No one can argue with Google, ISIS, Visa and MasterCard – mobile wallets are coming fast and in various flavors. Issuing banks, credit card providers, wireless carriers, handset makers, Near Field Communications (NFC) chipset and terminal providers, trusted service managers and...Read More

“THERE IS ONLY ONE BOSS. THE CUSTOMER. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”  – Sam Walton (Walmart) Clearly, no business can exist without customers. That’s why every company needs to figure...Read More

As I start to write this, it’s that odd day in the States known as Black Friday. While respectable Brits are toiling away in their offices (thinking about the future of CRM solutions, in my case), huge numbers of Americans are engaged in a pre-dawn holiday shopping frenzy. Millions of...Read More

Gartner likes to publish the Top 25 Supply Chains every year. Unfortunately, there’s one supply chain the esteemed analyst firm continues to overlook. And it just so happens to be the greatest supply chain success story of all time. I’m talking about The Santa Claus Supply Chain...Read More

When the IT boss won’t invest in tools that empower workers and boost their productivity, is it time to raise your voice? When mobile tools are treated as ‘executive jewelry’ available only to corner office-types, doesn’t that inequality create “We are the 99...Read More

Your iPhone 12 is finally here, and it’s ringing. Quick: What do you know about the caller? Is it a customer? If so, what is your CRM system telling you about this customer—right there on the screen, even while the phone is ringing? After all, a customer is calling; you have a...Read More

I vividly remember when it happened.  It was not so long ago in a month called July when I was asked at a cocktail party the inevitable fallback question “So, what do you do?”  I immediately begin to brace for their reaction as I say “I am a professional, full-time...Read More

The amount of data is doubling every year. Information from devices, machines and social data, (think Big Data) creates an entirely new set of challenges and reinforces the fact that data will continue to grow exponentially for the foreseeable future. Naturally, the demand for tools like business...Read More

Games: a destroyer of productivity, an enabler for procrastinating employees, right? Not always. In fact, letting – nay, encouraging – your workers to install and play games like Angry Birds can actually boost your mobile deployment’s ROI. That’s what Coca-Cola Bottling...Read More

We tend to, collectively, think of social media as either “personal,” ”political,” or “commercial.” “Personal” is connecting with old friends from high school, or sharing your love of your beer can collection (for some people it will...Read More

Making data and analysis tools available to all takes the rhetoric out of decision making. Almost half of the population of Pakistan is under the age of 19. Think about that for a moment; what would life be like here, if half the people in this country were under 20? When you dig deeper into...Read More

True story:  I think we don’t get to where we are in life without help from our mentors.  I have had a few really good ones in my life, but my first one was my teacher, my friend, and my pastor.  He was the first to speak to me as an adult and he taught me a good first life...Read More

As I look forward to the holiday season (yes it is hurtling towards us again), I now do all of my planning, negotiating and actual shopping from the comfort of my armchair. And as a result, my buying habits have changed over the past few years. I no longer buy CD’s, I buy Apple ...Read More

While Halloween is all about reveling in the macabre, there’s nothing scary about the $6.86 billion consumers plan to spend on the 2011 Halloween season. This spook-tacular figure comes from National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2011 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey...Read More

In response to new market forces such as globalization, product commoditization, industry consolidation, and the global explosion of data, many industries are redesigning their business models and launching new connected services. But monetizing these new services can prove to be nearly...Read More

For Kenny Jahng, an online media consultant in Livingston, New Jersey, there has been no shortage of ‘aha’ moments affirming the educational value of his kids’ iPad 2. Seeing his 10-year-old daughter chat with an after-school tutor live via the tablet. Watching the 22-minute...Read More

Many CRM systems are still built as though one-size-fits-all. That’s not terribly surprising: In the early days, having any kind of CRM system was better than having no CRM system at all, so a one-size-fits-all approach was acceptable. There were features originally designed to support...Read More

Have you ever made dinner reservations at multiple restaurants and then forgotten to cancel the ones that you didn’t use? While multiple reservations might be convenient for diners, no-shows cost restaurants thousands of dollars per month.  The most common way to reduce these losses...Read More

Interested in social media for your business?  So many of us are searching for how to use social media in our organizations – whether they are large global enterprises or small local businesses.  As we move into having a big finish for 2011 and planning for 2012, there are few...Read More

Out of the blue, a customer rings up and asks his account representative, “Can you deliver two million widgets by Tuesday of next week?” There’s a moment’s pause, and then the rep says, “Yes!” So here’s the interesting question: Is this an instance of...Read More

This whole thing started at a playground. True story!  While letting my little boy climb on a retired railroad engine – black and shiny and ominous in its stillness – I was struck that when you get up close, you see vast number of levers, dials, valves, and raw equipment...Read More

Although mobile commerce continues to grab increasing shares of the holiday shopping market, most of Google’s largest advertisers are blowing their chances of fully exploiting that trend because they don’t have mobile sites. In spite of the fact that “Google’s research...Read More

A clash of the titans, featuring names like Google, Apple, Verizon and American Express, is now underway.  What are these giants, representing internet services, devices, mobility and financial services, battling for?  They all want to hold your wallet for you… your electronic...Read More

Satisfying Customers- and Developing Advocates Executives in any industry will tell you that they sincerely care about their customers—after all, satisfied customers are the source of a company’s long-term success. But as they face the daily challenges of designing new products...Read More

I recently attended a digital media conference in with several well-known brands and companies openly discussing their social solutions.  As we talked through sessions, over coffees, dinners, and into the wee hours of the night, 3 viewpoints came up time and again.  We will call this ...Read More

Can the powerful and positive emotions that occur when playing games be harvested for the business world? It’s a thorny question and a radical idea that is gaining traction, especially at this year’s SAP TechEd conference held in Las Vegas. Opening keynote speaker Jane McGonigal, a...Read More

The Internet being what it is, I should disabuse you now of any notion that this is a conversation about getting into bed with your customers—unless, of course, you manufacture beds. But even then, the kind of customer intimacy I’m talking about is not a matter of Biblical knowledge...Read More

In a recent global study conducted by CFO Research and sponsored by SAP, finance executives from Europe acknowledge increasing pressure to deliver clear, actionable business insight to their colleagues—just not as much as their peers from other regions of the world.Overall, European...Read More

Millennials are the last generation with a front row seat experiencing the change from analogue to digital. Their youthful eyes saw the world turn global and connected. They were witness to the introduction of the sharing collaborative economy. What can we learn from them?What is a Millennial...Read More

Every business has the potential to be a digital business. More importantly, every business must become a digital business. As the number of smart, connected devices—from phones to cars to wearables—moves toward a tipping point where most work, play, and commerce will have a digital...Read More

The term “customer engagement” is used so often that it can admittedly sound a bit hollow. However, for those of us designing and developing enterprise software, it is a solid, hard-core matter of survival. Whether long-term or short-term, big or small, involving customers in the R...Read More

Ready or not, the world is changing – and your business models and processes must evolve to keep pace.First, anything and everything that can be digitized will be, from your digital reputation that determines how quickly you get an Uber pickup to your toothpaste printed in 3D at home...Read More

By now, most IT leaders have become convinced of the need to move their organizations away from a mindset of delivering functions and features, and move toward a focus that puts the user’s true needs at the center, employing design thinking principles. Discover and Plan - Where to...Read More

By Vivek Bapat, SVP, Global Head of Marketing Strategy, SAPInnovation in the workplace. We hear and talk about it all the time.To stimulate creativity and innovation, many organizations invest significantly in creativity workshops, in hiring inspirational speakers, and in conducting training...Read More

Natively-digital businesses are here and they are disrupting the most fundamental industries that we have come to know over the last 200 years.Consider some of these examples from a previous post:Travelocity changed how we purchase a hotel room. AirBnB is changing the very definition of a...Read More

Retailers have a lot on their plate these days. How to keep up with mobile consumers, connect with Millennials, and tap into social media are just a few of the challenges they are currently tackling.  But are they pulling it all together to deliver the best customer experience possible?Not...Read More

Oil, gas and coal helped power the Industrial Revolution, but humans have to tear up the planet to extract these energy sources. Burning them pollutes the environment, but people can use these power sources whenever they like.Wind and solar power are great because they’re...Read More

The upsides of retail analytics are often better known than the downsides. The upsides: Real-time solutions help retailers:Tailor messages to each of their customers via any channel at any timeBetter view their inventory and financialsOffer a personalized in-person shopping experience &mdash...Read More

Baby formula has an image problem. And it’s been hotly debated around the world for decades.Sales of baby formula in the U.S. have fallen alongside the nation’s birthrate — and an upsurge in breastfeeding, according to Reuters. And the World Health Organization...Read More

 Anti-collision technology may be the biggest technology that enters its own during 2015 — in cars, at least. It’s got a ways to go in different spaces, but it’s already saving lives in others.“Expect more vehicles to be fitted with anti-collision systems that...Read More

Customers today expect consistent and seamless treatments across channels, throughout the customer’s journey.  Savvy marketers appreciate the value of enabling seamless customer engagement across channels.  However, when it comes to developing and executing a transformational...Read More

2013 has been an exciting year for marketers; a year of transformation and empowerment, as marketers took on the challenge to find innovative ways to connect and engage with the digital consumer.  Many focused on gaining better customer insights, and utilized social channels to listen and...Read More

In order to grow, companies realize they must change their strategy to engage with their customers. But doing this requires new technologies to extract insight for personalization and relevance, create amazing experiences both online and in-person and flawlessly execute business ...Read More

In the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to interact with sales leaders in India, China, Singapore and Australia. One thing that everyone agrees is that selling, and more importantly, B2B selling is getting more and more challenging.Buyers are getting more and more...Read More

There’s a lot of buzz lately about Sales Performance Management (SPM), with many interpretations of what SPM is and in turn, what the real business impact is for sales organizations today. Some viewpoints focus SPM on Incentives and Commissions Management. Others center SPM on...Read More

Customer experience management is a holistic discipline involving all functional departments of a company (see examples here and here). However, many companies treat it as a set of “initiatives” limited to customer-facing units of the organization. The use of the...Read More

Sales is often a game of “what have you done for me lately.” This treatment is where sales employees, including their managers, are treated only as good as the last sale. Such treatment dehumanizes a dynamic set of interactions that are inherently human and as old as sales &ndash...Read More

I think somewhere over the rainbow there are folks that believe that their digital life is separate from their “analog” life.Sort of like a misconstrued view that we can be “different” people on different platforms.  Online I am an outspoken, courageous...Read More

In recent years, marketers have been on a blistering pace in search of the next cool digital marketing tools.  Whether they be in social media marketing, digital ad management, community marketing, or mobile marketing, there are certainly a myriad great vendors with compelling solutions...Read More

If you’re a marketer, chances are good you have visibility into marketing-related data, such as who you targeted for which campaign, who responded, and who purchased which of your products. But today, that may not be good enough to develop deeper understandings about your customer. ...Read More

The 700-year-old Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, one of the world’s first shopping malls, might seem to be — figuratively and literally — a different world than Burberry, the renowned  U.K. fashion house. After all, the Grand Bazaar goes back to the Ottoman Empire, while...Read More

Its that time of the year again.   Your company is rolling out the annual employee survey so that management can measure the engagement levels across the entire organization.   Yet, with all the costs and efforts to administer employee surveys, the average employee survey...Read More

Photo: ShutterstockAs the millennial generation continues to grow older and larger – projected to span 75 percent of the global population and workforce by 2025 – many companies and businesses are still figuring out how to best interact with and attract the millennial generation...Read More

With no pun intended for this summer’s hit song by Robin Thicke, the lines between some traditional companies and technology companies as we know them, are blurring at a rapid pace.Some brands are clearly leading the way to digitally transforming their businesses at the very core of their...Read More

Photo credit: Shutterstock98% of innovation projects around the world fail, according to Darrell Mann – a former chief engineer at Rolls Royce and one of the world’s most prolific inventors. You can probably think of several high-profile innovations that didn’t quite make it off...Read More

Photo credit: ShutterstockDisruptive technologies and shifting demographics are redefining the workforce. In response, smart companies are reinventing workplace learning in an effort to make their programs more relevant and effective, and to create a culture that encourages continuous...Read More

Photo credit: FlickerAs we approach the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating path of destruction across the Eastern Seaboard, I recall the extensive aftermath of the storm as millions of people struggled to rebuild and gain access to basic resources such as gas and...Read More

Surprisingly, many companies dread the day their brand is trending on Twitter, especially if it’s due to a product recall or safety issue. Companies are increasingly turning to social media to limit legal risk and maintain consumer loyalty when a product-safety issue arises.Photo...Read More

By Vivek Bapat,Vice President, Portfolio Marketing, SAPThis is an age of unprecedented individual empowerment unlike anything we’ve seen in history. Armed with real-time information, social media and mobile phones, today’s consumers can make or break brands in the blink of an eye. On...Read More

By Erica Clark-Mitchell, Senior Director, Integrated Digital, SAPWhen it comes to innovation, I have two questions. The first is: where do people find inspiration? And the second is: where do people find inspiration? By the first question, I mean what inspires people. We’re all familiar...Read More

(Photo: Taylor Davidson, Clinton Global Initiative) Bill McDermott, SAP co-CEO, (center) joined this year’s Clinton Global Initiative as part of a panel of thought leaders discussing “Vital Resources: Doing More with Less.”I’m going to venture a guess that most people have...Read More

By Tim Minahan, Chief Marketing Officer, SAP CloudPhoto credit: ShutterstockBusiness is moving faster than ever. And real time is no longer enough.To stay ahead of the competition, companies must not only sense the present, but see the future and proactively shape it to their advantage. That...Read More

 A few months ago I wrote, “A 360 Degree Perspective On Customer Engagement,” where I touched upon the 21st century consumer who is always on, always connected, and doesn’t make a move without consulting the internet.When I think about it, that means my three...Read More

By Jenny Dearborn, Vice President, Chief Learning Officer, SuccessFactors – an SAP companyThe Baby Boomer generation pursued pension plans, corner offices and a linear career path. In return, many Boomers committed the duration of their careers to their organization.As they settled into...Read More

Source: ShutterstockAre we in a honeymoon phase for the chief marketing officer? “The tenure of a CMO is less than 2 years,” had been the common refrain for years. That average is up to four, and businesses seem to be in hot pursuit of the CMO. Even though there’s much...Read More

By John Carty, Account Executive, SAP  HANA, Sybase, and Real-Time Data PlatformThe promise — and the challenge — of big data can be summed up in one question: “What could you do if you knew?”The question covers the key insights you and your executives would like to...Read More

By Shawn Price, President, SuccessFactors, an SAP companyExecutives have come to recognize that their most valuable resource is talent. But how can firms best manage this increasingly diverse, widespread and changing resource in line with business objectives?The field of talent management has...Read More

By Jeff Lautenbach, President, Customer, Financials and Suite, SAP CloudWhether you sell to consumers or to business users, the individuals you are trying to reach today are informed, connected and armed with influence. They can switch products, shift brand allegiance, and broadcast their...Read More

By John Ward, Marketing Manager, SAP Patterns are powerful. They’re in numbers, public spaces, and hidden in sales data – and recognizing patterns in the world around us has been changing how we think for centuries.“It is not certain that everything is uncertain,” French...Read More

Massive online open courses (MOOCs) are threatening to knock higher education off its traditional autonomous hill with a far more flexible and accessible learning mode than anyone could ever imagine. The stakes are high and outcomes are unknowable during this early era of experimentation. I...Read More

Traditionally, the CEO has come from just about anyplace but marketing. Companies bent on operational excellence might look to their finance teams or their COO to take the top slot.  Organizations focused on innovation might look to a CTO type.  Those focused on market share fished in...Read More

By David Trites, Marketing Director, SAP Source: Shutterstock Have you ever experienced the thrill of driving a Porsche 911? Just thinking about getting behind the wheel of one gets me excited. And this year there is even more reason to get fired-up about the 911 – it’s...Read More

Big-Data is changing how every company department does business and human resources is no exception. I’ve written about the top ten technology trends impacting HR in 2014, and recently had the chance to talk with Mick Collins, Principal Consultant for SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics and...Read More

Change agent. Entrepreneur. Innovator. Incubator. Good disruptor/friend Chris Heuer calls them “Work Hacks.”  Whatever you call them, disruptors the world over have similar traits.  Good ones – the professionals – have learned skills that help their ideas become...Read More

One of my few pet peeves in life is when I hear someone say “the numbers don’t lie!” While I understand and appreciate the use of fact-based information to support an argument, its application has become overly generalized. People often use numbers as a crutch to support weak...Read More

It’s well established that today’s consumers use multiple channels – mobile, Web, social media, in-store – when engaging with retailers. On any given day, a shopper might research a clothing item online, visit the brand’s Facebook FB -1.79...Read More

Besides being a great time to decompress, spend time with family, or just get away, summertime is a great time to catch up on your reading list.  Few of us want to sit on the beach with a languid tome on corporate organizational principles or a step-by-step guide to great Excel spreadsheets....Read More

It’s that time again when researchers, organizations, and opinion leaders share their predictions on a variety of business and technology topics for the coming year. The Human Resources (HR) industry is no exception, and a group of professionals recently got together at the Annual Society...Read More

By Volker Hildebrand, Global Vice President, CRM Solutions, SAP I’ve had many conversations with business leaders in the last 12 months where this topic came up, and let me tell you, many companies are afraid of how Amazon has changed and will continue to change the competitive landscape...Read More

Research shows that enterprise social software has worked – because it hasn’t been enough about work. Facebook and other social networks are helping foster large, vibrant communities of consumers around the world. Companies are hoping to emulate that success within the organization...Read More

Chipotle was the latest brand to engage in a “fake Twitter hack” marketing stunt, following in the footsteps of MTV and BET a few months ago.  The intention behind these stunts is to clearly boost fans and followers for their brands, but, unfortunately, exposes a...Read More

I’ve written about the path to innovation as an evolutionary journey for high technology companies and their customers and partners. When new technologies like cloud disrupt existing business models, the survivors are those that adapt and evolve as part of an intelligent plan. In other...Read More

Today’s customers are much more knowledgeable and informed than ever before. Increasingly, they are leveraging third-party sources; social media, peer groups, and community sites to gain information that is shaping their perceptions about brands, products, and companies. What’s more...Read More

My colleague Polly Traylor and I have been going to experts inside and outside of SAP to ask the question: How much adaptation in your products and services is needed for global markets, in particular, emerging markets?More than Likes and Dislikes People in the west know instinctively that the...Read More

Although the term is ugly, “datification” is rapidly becoming a big trend in our daily lives. Datification is about taking a process or activity that was previously invisible and turning it into data. That data can then be tracked, monitored, and optimized, leading to new...Read More

Who we think of as “successful” changes as we mature.  When we were kids, it was typically about “fame” or “notoriety.”  Film and pop stars had it all for us.  As we got our degrees and entered the workforce, we viewed “intelligence&rdquo...Read More

Most people might not automatically put SAP and coffee in the same sentence. In fact, SAP’s customers produce more than 82 percent of the coffee and tea that people the entire world drink each day. Now the company has partnered with the Federación de Cafeteros de Colombia on a...Read More

I love riding bicycles. Yet I live in a place (Boston) that’s terrible for cycling, with roads that look like archaeological digs, legions of cranky drivers, and awful weather. What drives all this aberrant behavior (you should see my winter riding outfit – an Eskimo would look...Read More

Remember when you had to drive to the store to buy something? Or what about fighting your way through crowds during the holiday season because there weren’t any other options? Before the e-commerce era, shopping was time-consuming and stressful. It was often difficult to find sought-after...Read More

It’s a time-honored tradition to dismiss established companies when exciting, new technologies appear on the horizon. But knee-jerk predictions about which companies will succeed or fail in response to the news of the day are rarely accurate. They can also have a pesky little problem...Read More

It seems like with every year that passes, customers grow increasingly impatient. Where five years ago we could tolerate waiting 24 hours for a response from a customer service email, we are increasingly living in a real-time world where we want to know the answer right now. Most enterprises...Read More

Since the dawn of sports, an umpire, referee or other official has been on the scene to blow a call. Baseball umpires in particular, have already had a troublesome year and the season is still young. It’s a thankless job and if an umpire does well, no one hears or speaks about it;...Read More

“There are now three certainties in life,” the head of cyber-intelligence for U.K. Security Service MI5 said on the BBC Monday. “There’s death, there’s taxes and there’s a foreign intelligence service on your system.” There are three certainties in...Read More

By Michael Schulze, Senior Vice President & General Manager, SAP I was in Montreal recently for a wedding and marveled at the mix of European and North American culture, from cobblestone streets and video game development studios to horse-drawn carriages and the Grand Prix.  The second...Read More

A few days ago I happened to be watching a re-run of Minority Report, the 2002 neo-noir science fiction starring Tom cruise as “Precrime” Captain John Anderton. As many of you might remember, the movie was set in the year 2054, pretty far out in the future. What is fascinating...Read More

Looking out over the edge of a cliff. That’s what it feels like to be a retail banker these days. Bankers see e-banking providers like Google Wallet and PayPal eating into their core banking business. Retail banks could fight back by becoming one-stop shops for all things financial...Read More

The recent revelations about the United States National Security Agency’s secret surveillance of phone records and personal data from internet companies have stirred up conversations that range from fear-based diatribes against technology to laissez-faire shrugs about the myth of privacy...Read More

Comedian Richard Lewis claims to have coined “the _______ from hell” phrase, but Carnival Cruise Lines has lived it. In 2012, Carnival spent $61 million advertising its “fun ship” brand positioning. But by the end of last year, #cruisefromhell was trending on Twitter...Read More

Recently, myself and my colleague in the SAP Center for Business Insight, Kai Goerlich, got into a debate about the real impact of online shopping on traditional retail business models. Kai, who is Senior Fellow, Thought Leadership, argued that businesses could learn a few lessons from nature...Read More

By Celia Brown, Director, Customer Experience Marketing, SAP I pride myself on being ‘in the know’ when it comes to technology- especially software, mobile, and social media. I spend my days with some seriously geeky brainiacs at SAP and my nights with my husband, who was...Read More

Getting old isn’t easy but a majority of recently surveyed insurance executives believe that an integrated software platform could help rejuvenate everything at their companies from competitive differentiation to customer satisfaction. Over 200 executives primarily from the United States...Read More

In the 1930s, the effects of a bad economy were highly visible: Long bread lines and rickety carts with hand-written signs offerings apples for a few cents apiece. Today, the unemployed often suffer behind closed doors, alone. They have food and a roof over their heads but face a bleak future...Read More

The sport of Basketball is now second to soccer in worldwide popularity and the National Basketball Association (NBA) continues to play a major role in making this global growth a reality. A series of shrewd investments over the years, coupled with simplified branding and feeding the fan...Read More

By Brian Rice, Director, Global Social Media Marketing, SAP At its core, social media provides a platform to connect with family, friends and colleagues, along with the ability to meet new people with shared interests across the world. However, over time there has been a fundamental shift from...Read More

On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in the mix, and now loyalty programs are commonplace across...Read More

On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in the mix, and now loyalty programs are commonplace across...Read More

According to the International Labour Organization, the world needs to create over 500 million new jobs by 2020 to provide career opportunities for people who have jobs now, as well as youth who will join the workforce. But the biggest roadblock to economic growth may well be finding workers...Read More

We all know the factors that have led to economic success in the industrial era: access to land, labor, raw materials, capital, machinery, and (in many cases, anyway) a good idea. Today, all of those traditional advantages are falling away except one: the good idea. We are leaving the industrial...Read More

We all know the factors that have led to economic success in the industrial era: access to land, labor, raw materials, capital, machinery, and (in many cases, anyway) a good idea. Today, all of those traditional advantages are falling away except one: the good idea. We are leaving the industrial...Read More

When SAP’s partner organization invited a select group of SAP BusinessOne partners to follow their personal service advisor (PSA) on Twitter last fall, no one knew what to expect. Eight months later, in the wake of overwhelmingly positive partner feedback, SAP is expanding its “Follow...Read More

San Francisco, the lovely City by the Bay, is generally a safe place to live, especially when compared to other cities of similar size. Homicides are about half of what they were a few years ago, and property crimes have continued to decline as well. With a booming tourist economy and resurgence...Read More

By Brent Cohler, Director, Mobile Product Marketing, SAP On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in...Read More

By Brent Cohler, Director, Mobile Product Marketing, SAP On May 1, 1981, American Airlines revolutionized the travel industry, launching the AAdvantage frequent flier program, the original, modern-day customer loyalty program. Competitors quickly followed suit, hospitality companies joined in...Read More

“Green” is overflowing in the South Bronx, an economically challenged urban area and the nation’s poorest Congressional district. But the “green” isn’t money – it’s food. And the urban gardeners are high school kids, many of whom are homeless. Led...Read More

It’s been six months since I made the cliché New Year’s Resolution… lose weight, get in shape – you know the drill. This is an annual event for millions of us who sign up for Weight Watchers and gym memberships in early January and are back to former routines by...Read More

As a PhD student at Boston College, we have focused a great deal on both past trends and current developments in social media. As we reflect on the present and the past, I found myself considering the future directions in the field.  A few of these extrapolations are admittedly bolder than...Read More

As a PhD student at Boston College, we have focused a great deal on both past trends and current developments in social media. As we reflect on the present and the past, I found myself considering the future directions in the field.  A few of these extrapolations are admittedly bolder than...Read More

New innovations in mobile and big data make this an exciting time for the world economy, especially for fast growth regions like China. A global survey of IT decision makers revealed that China is one of the four countries most ready to leverage Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology to...Read More

Early in my management career, the HR department sent out a single-question survey which asked how satisfied we were with our jobs on a scale of 0 (very unsatisfied) to 4 (highly satisfied). To my surprise, my group had the lowest average score (2.6) in the company. The HR VP predicted a mass...Read More

Early in my management career, the HR department sent out a single-question survey which asked how satisfied we were with our jobs on a scale of 0 (very unsatisfied) to 4 (highly satisfied). To my surprise, my group had the lowest average score (2.6) in the company. The HR VP predicted a mass...Read More

Every time you purchase a painting, use a hand-made serving bowl, attend a live musical performance, or watch a film, you are supporting a creative economy of artists, performers, and filmmakers that contribute to a more sustainable society. With hundreds of artist, individual, and business...Read More

“It’s true I deceived you but I wasn’t lying.” The statement, spoken brazenly by a work colleague, momentarily floored me. I thought deception and lying were the same thing. A little bit of research suggests there may be a difference. In ‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth...Read More

“It’s true I deceived you but I wasn’t lying.” The statement, spoken brazenly by a work colleague, momentarily floored me. I thought deception and lying were the same thing. A little bit of research suggests there may be a difference. In ‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth...Read More

Though Madison Avenue largely forgets seniors in general, they are now a demographic grossly overlooked on social media.  Those 65 years and older are changing: they are living longer, are more active, and becoming increasingly literate online. Not only does this age group have 47x...Read More

The Industrial Age reinvented productivity. The Information Age reinvented communication. Now man and machine are coming together and it’s even bigger than the Internet. What is it? The Internet of Things! The Internet of Things connects the physical world to the Internet through sensors...Read More

The Industrial Age reinvented productivity. The Information Age reinvented communication. Now man and machine are coming together and it’s even bigger than the Internet. What is it? The Internet of Things! The Internet of Things connects the physical world to the Internet through sensors...Read More

When it comes to sports and analytics, I see two main slices of the pie: the game where it all happens and the operation that supports the organization. There is a lot written about the former; however, the latter may be overlooked because of its distance from where the action takes place...Read More

It’s easy to become jaded and wary of those who rely on words like “innovation”, “transformation” and “engagement” too much isn’t it? So what happens when you come across a story that truly embodies these overused and abused terms? That’s the...Read More

Ever watch those TV infomercials late at night when you’re bored and can’t sleep? Of course you do. And you’re likely to buy things you don’t really need as well. The most fascinating book I’ve read in a long time, ‘But Wait… There’s More,&rsquo...Read More

As technology become more complex, a group of brilliant entrepreneurs is using it to tackle some of the most fundamental human challenges of all time—clean food and water, adequate and affordable health care, accessible education, and the chance to live a better life. These 11 start-ups...Read More

Google used to have a formula for finding the best employees: it screened for high SAT scores and grade point averages. Sounded like a good plan (especially since Google’s two founders demanded it). Unfortunately, it turned out to be dead wrong—not a good thing at a company that...Read More

Many popular phrases have their roots in sports. For example, the cliché “there is no ‘i’ in team” comes from the idea that a cohesive team of players is more likely to win games than a collection of individual superstars. Players are told to focus on the team&rsquo...Read More

In very large U.S. urban areas, the average commuter spends $16 and 52 minutes traveling 32 miles round trip to work each day. For many organizations – and employees that endure long, solo commutes – it all adds up to lost productivity, wasted resources and additional expenses. A...Read More

By Kaan Turnali, Global Senior Director, Business Intelligence, SAP So far in the series, I have charted a course for creating value in the sports and entertainment industry through analytics. I have advocated a holistic approach to paint the full picture that goes beyond the basic game-day...Read More

The business world is ripe for an e-learning explosion as the number of qualified experts can’t keep pace with innovations like mobile, cloud, and Big-Data. Arming employees with the latest skills and knowledge so they can function with excellence is a strategic imperative for every...Read More

By Saswato Das, Head of Thought Leadership Content, SAP Are you ready for Big Data at the big screen? It’s true. Hollywood has discovered Big Data’s talents to determine how to distribute and promote movies. Advertisements viewers see before a movie is screened, and how that...Read More

Image via CrunchBaseBy Charlotte Han, Community Engagement Manager, SAP Last week, Twitter announced a new ad format, Keyword Targeting in Timelines,which means brands can now find potential customers in real-time when purchase intent appears. Here’s an example from Twitter.com...Read More

Ever since my first visit to Rio years ago when I used to jog along Leblon admiring the view, I’ve been struck by the legendary beauty of this beachfront city. Now, it’s the city’s new intelligence that takes my breath away. On a recent visit to Rio’s Center of...Read More

The two wispy slips of paper were far more than just ATM receipts found at a bank in New York. They created a jarring yet simple mosaic of the sprawling gap between rich and poor in the United States. Jim Edwards evaluates two very different ATM receipts on Business Insider. “They...Read More

What would get people to reuse their towels in hotel rooms? The answer might surprise you, as it’s not saving the environment or saving money. People are more likely to reuse their hotel towels if they are told that everyone else is doing it. This variant of the ‘keeping up with the...Read More

The dynamics of a sports organization involve three main forces: the team, the game, and the fan. In essence, the team is the passion that gets the fan fired up, the game is where it all happens, and the fan keeps it alive. Of the three dynamics, the one the sports organizations can control the...Read More

Who are the best marketers out there right now?  Who are the leaders shaping the way businesses interact with their customers and the marketplace?  Big questions, right?  What is more important than “who” is doing it, is “what” are they doing to meet the...Read More

The power of technology to change people’s lives is undisputed, but you also need people who are determined enough to turn crazy ideas into reality. It’s rare enough to run across anyone like that, so I was very excited to meet 50 of them recently at the Global...Read More

We really should stop using the term “supply chain.” “Supply” gives the impression that one company makes something, say a part, and sends it to another, where it sits, like bolts in a bin, waiting, along with many other discreet pieces, to be made into something greater....Read More

Ryan O’Neil, Senior Director of Marketing, SAP In the movies, detectives find themselves up against all kinds of perils: they habitually get stuck up to their neck in quicksand, buried alive in ancient tombs, locked in a flooding boat, or any of a thousand other diabolical traps. It&rsquo...Read More

Last week was a busy one for corruption hunters in New York. A Bronx assemblyman and Republican Party chairman were among those arrested for alleged dirty deeds. “Over the past few days, there have been several charges brought against public officials,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo...Read More

By Sadaf Hossain, SAP Global Private Equity “What’s keeping your board up at night?” Netherlands-based auditor and advisor KPMG asked more than 700 venture capital board members and investors that very question this February. IT and social media was the No. 1 area where the...Read More

By Kurt Bilafer, APJ Regional Vice President, Analytics, SAP  Lego recently became a hot topic of conversation with my son, a huge Star Wars Lego fan.  Lego is the fourth-largest toy company in the world, and here at SAP (and the Bilafer household), we have a special relationship...Read More

By Sylvia Santelli, Social Media Strategist, SAP “Guru,” “expert” and “pro” are titles thrown around too easily in business, technology, social media and everything in between. What’s missing, whether these titles are self-proclaimed or well-deserved, is...Read More

By Kaan Turnali, Global Senior Director, Business Intelligence, SAP Let’s get something out of the way: Nothing replaces the thrill of a championship. It is the measurement that counts most in sports. But the reality is that there are, for example, 32 teams in the NFL. And that means each...Read More

Digitalization is arguably the most cataclysmic event in the history of the written word since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450. In fact, the advent of self-published eBooks has sparked an eerily similar struggle over control and ownership as in centuries past. People...Read More

Last week, in the first installment of my Sports and Analytics series, I detailed how sports and entertainment organizations are similar to industries such as retail or consumer products. In this second installment, I want to expand on this point and discuss key components that are part of a...Read More

How do you find the time for social media? This is the question I get asked probably more than any other. I have four lovely children, a demanding job, a wife with a successful career and more. So how do I find the time to tweet, blog, share, and comment? The answer is simple: I make the time...Read More

All of us would do well with a second bite at the apple, another chance to go back and do it all over again.  Our mistakes, as much as our successes, define us and can help steer us forward today.  With this in mind, here are 10 lessons learned over the last 20 years of doing business...Read More

Over the past several years, we have talked at SAP about how we cannot limit ourselves by merely trying to create a sustainability strategy. Instead, we have been working to make our corporate strategy more sustainable. This month, we hit an important milestone on this journey with the...Read More

This is a time of great upheaval on Wall Street. Regulation is “the biggest factor shaping the future of the financial industry,” Financial News noted Tuesday. Dodd-Frank and Basel III will have firms on both sides of the Atlantic seeking more data granularity faster than ever...Read More

Guest Post by Greg Scandariato, MBA Student at Boston College I still remember sitting in my dorm room at Boston College during the spring of 2004 when Facebook literally first burst onto the scene.  Something that has since become such an integral part of 1 billion lives meant NOTHING to...Read More

I’m seeing companies spend lots of money trying to get customers to talk about their brands and products in social media. For many of these companies, it’s a big waste of money. Let’s be rational about this. What customer wants to tweet to his or her friends about toothpaste...Read More

Just this month, SAP Canada was named one of the 30 Best Employers in my home province of Québec, and our employees were named among the most engaged in the country.  Having just marked my six-year anniversary working for SAP, that’s something to be very proud of. ...Read More

Statistical analysis in sports has been around for a long time, but the topic of sports and analytics has attracted more attention in the last decade. The release in 2011 of the movie Moneyball (based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis, published in 2003...Read More

On Earth Day, 1971, Keep America Beautiful ran the now-famous PSA – “The Crying Indian“- for the first time.  It had a stunning effect on the populace, and shined a much-needed light on the behaviors that cause pollution.  We are faced with a similar watershed moment. ...Read More

CMOs make a strong case that marketing should represent the “voice of the customer” for their companies but, in my opinion, that doesn’t go far enough. We need to represent the voice of the market. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks Coffee famously said: “Customers don...Read More

Regardless of the challenges or benefits millennials pose to society, their culture – which is rapidly becoming our culture – is here to stay. As leaders of industry, we need to seek ways to understand and engage them, to teach and to learn from them. As an organization...Read More

Christchurch, New Zealand is rebuilding after a devastating earthquake two years ago and recovering from the global financial crisis — and it could be losing more than US$1.2 billion to fraud. Of 140 businesses surveyed there, 38 percent had no distinct procedures to combat fraud, Chicago...Read More

For basketball fans, the name John Wooden conjures up images of pure legend. The coach of a dynastic UCLA team, he won 10 national championships, including 7 in a row (1967-1973). He had an almost unbelievable winning streak of 88 straight games. In his own basketball career, Wooden was a 3-time...Read More

If want to hear lots of specific details about a TV show you missed, you’re better off asking a shy person in the office, rather than the loud-mouth talking about it in the break room. That’s because, according to a study by Dutch scientist Camiel Beukeboom, introverts use more...Read More

We are awash in content. It is actually a problem now. As audiences have become more vocal about what they need, brands and businesses have become more active in providing them that “great” content. “Alas” – and you will excuse the vernacular – “most of...Read More

Small businesses account for nearly two-thirds of net new job creation. And they innovate more than large businesses do, generating 13 times more patents per employee. That’s according to AOL founder Steve Case in a recent interview about “Restarting the US small-business growth...Read More

When you ask someone to do something, be sure to include the statement that they are free to choose to do it or not.  Adding this phrase doublesthe likelihood they will do it. A detailed analysis of more than 22K subjects in 42 separate psychology studies demonstrates this startling result....Read More

Just as the democratization of content empowers individuals, so does it impact companies. New technologies are allowing businesses of all kinds to reinvent themselves. Consider the entertainment industry. In the earliest days of movie-making, studios owned everything—the actors, the...Read More

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer used data analytics to justify her company’s ban last week on telecommuting, according to Business Insider. It seems Mayer doesn’t do much without lots of data backing her up. VPN records allegedly indicated that Yahoo! employees were not “working&rdquo...Read More

Recently, my team had our first on-site meeting of this year, and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to fly 1,500 km from Vancouver to Palo Alto and meet them in-person. What got me excited wasn’t just that I’ve never been to Palo Alto, but the thought that I was meeting...Read More

Nebraska Book Company uses cloud technology to successfully swim against the current of failing bookstores. “Barnes & Noble is in trouble,” a headline in The Washington Post stated last week, “but bookstores aren’t doomed just yet.”Strategies for saving the...Read More

Most brands struggle to get appropriate attention for their new ideas.  Typically, new products have a highly orchestrated PR strategy, calling in favors from influencers and media, and drawing crowds by having The Black Eyed Peas or Pearl Jam play at an event. For ...Read More

What was the first fast food company? What was the first credit card company? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t know the answers were White Castle and Diners’ Club. While both companies still exist, they now have relatively small share in what has turned out to be...Read More

The telecommunications industry has come a long way since Lily Tomlin’s iconic skit of telephone operator Ernestine accurately captured the frustrating experience of most customers. Savvy communications service providers (CSPs) have long known they need to move past their core competency (i...Read More

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology has been around for years. Industries like oil and gas, transportation and logistics management rely on it to keep us safe. Medical device manufactures use it to keep us healthy. You and I use it to get to work every day as a distributed network of hundreds...Read More

In a recent post, I urged CEOs to view marketing as a strategic partner, the glue that binds the different parts of an organization together to deliver a consistent, cross-channel consumer experience. A 2012 report from Forrester and Heidrick & Struggles concluded that marketing is...Read More

More than half a million new customers joined South Africa’s biggest bank in less than a year thanks to SAP Mobile Platform, helping unbanked populations meet their banking needs. Almost half of South Africa’s 51 million people earn less than R3,000 ZAR (about $340 USD) per month...Read More

Telcos are sitting on a gold mine of core capabilities and assets, critical for M2M success. In addition to just network connectivity, they have outstanding expertise in large scale service delivery with high reliability and global reach, plus an arsenal of partners for content, apps, specialized...Read More

Big Data can be a life saver, figuratively and literally. We’ve all heard about how Big Data can save time and money, but 87 percent of federal IT officials think that real-time Big Data could save a significant number of lives each year. Lifesavers aren’t much good if rescuers...Read More

In the popular middle-grade novel, Blubber, author Judy Blume relates a truly heartbreaking story of a group of bored fifth graders suddenly taking to tormenting one of the girls in their class. In a space vacated by indifferent and lifestyle-preoccupied adults, Wendy, a shrewd fifth grader,...Read More

Surely you know the song Happy Together – the 1967 chart-topper by the Turtles that ultimately became the band’s only No. 1 hit and its signature song. It’s one of those songs that defines the era of bands with creatively spelled animal names (Byrds, Monkees, Beatles). On first...Read More

How do you get your arms around millions of devices, billions of apps, and trillions of things to end up making money and solving some of the challenges of big data and mobility? SAP’s thought leaders provide insights into what it takes to successfully drive business in a world that has as...Read More

Auto rickshaws are the lifeline for a significant number of commuters in most towns and cities in India. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) As countries experience rapid growth, it is not unusual to see fault lines develop where the old edges up against the new. It is no different...Read More

One good thing about taxes is that they get citizens invested in government — literally. Taxpayers want to be sure that the government spends their money sensibly, but first they must know how their hard-earned cash gets spent. The City of Edmonton works in an open-data and open...Read More

Remember the invisible gorilla video? In an experiment popularized by the book of the same name, volunteers were told to keep track of how many times a basketball was passed between players. While the ball was being tossed, someone in a gorilla suit walked between them in plain view. Very few...Read More

Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose’s new book, Return on Relationship, deftly explores the value of fostering relationships as the new currency for the digital era.  Think you have heard this before?  You probably have – in pieces, but where this book “nails it” is in...Read More

Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose’s new book, Return on Relationship, deftly explores the value of fostering relationships as the new currency for the digital era.  Think you have heard this before?  You probably have – in pieces, but where this book “nails it” is in...Read More

If you are trying to recruit social ambassadors for your business, you will undoubtedly run into the challenge from your colleagues that they don’t know what to write about. And if our business accepts the Social Business imperative, you know we need to grow our army of storytellers in...Read More

When I think about retail today, a song by the band McFly comes to mind. The British “boy band” (italicised because they are actually all pretty accomplished, though disgracefully young musicians) recorded it a few years back, and you really can’t miss the message: “It...Read More

“So why should this organization invest in human capital?”Over the past two decades, HR executives and corporate strategists have been engaging more deeply. Yet when the conversation reaches the point where corporate strategy asks HR this question so bluntly, it usually indicates the...Read More

We all know that consumers are disrupting companies’ business models. One visible example is the increasingly popular practice of “scan and scram” (a.k.a. “showrooming”), in which customers browse in brick-and-mortar stores but use their mobile devices to find better...Read More

What is thought leadership? Like most buzzwords, thought leadership is an often misused and misunderstood term. But what is it really? And why do you need to consider developing and publishing thought leadership. 2013 may finally be the year when content marketing becomes a mainstream ...Read More

Are you feeling empowered that the technology around you allows you more flexibility to manage your work and your life, or are you feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of managing it all?  If you answered “yes” to either of these, you are not alone.  20-somethings are...Read More

Is Twitter going mainstream? Whether you are a Twitter newbie or an old pro, Twitter is still a mystery to a great many business professionals. I think Twitter is an amazing tool! I have been on Twitter for almost 4 years. Just 4 short years! Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent his 1st...Read More

Iran may be behind a massive and sustained campaign of cyber-attacks against numerous Western financial institutions, including Citigroup, Capital One and HSBC, we learned last week. The strikes exploit banks’ Web site encryption, which encode customers’ online transactions to keep...Read More

Many teams – in their rush to build a social business or inbound marketing plan – forget this important first step into a world of social media:  In order to think social, you need to act personal.  Incorporating this thinking into your program will yield you a chance for...Read More

Analytics used to belong exclusively in the realm of the nerds. The tools and the time required to tease insights out of huge volumes of data were incompatible with the real-time needs of customer-facing business people. But with analytical tools that are more user-friendly than ever and...Read More

How do you find inspiration? For many, the simplest ideas articulated in the form of a short quote can help you to think a little clearer, to move a little faster, to work a little harder, to drive toward a loftier goal. So to help you, I have curated a list of what I believe are the 22 best...Read More

After doing this awhile, you get to see the signs of the self-promoter and the quick name-for-themselves artists.  You also – with more rarity – get to meet the real deal.  So, I was very pleased when he agreed to sit down and chat on topics ranging from the new directions...Read More

Imagen de Hola Gourmets 2009 (Photo credit: jlastras) My father was a chef, so I have enjoyed a lifelong love affair with well-prepared and delicious food of all kinds. But I haven’t enjoyed the subsequent battle of the bulge, which had me looking for a quick victory. But I soon...Read More

So your company now has accounts on all the major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Maybe you’re even posting to a Google+, Pinterest, Slideshare or YouTube. These practices, however, are quickly becoming old school as we move beyond the age of social...Read More

Aadhar enrollment center Recently, I saw firsthand how a new “universal identification” program called Aadhar is taking shape in India. It has potential to improve the lives of millions of poor people via Big Data. Aadhar is an ambitious government Big Data...Read More

It’s that time of year when a lot of folks like to make resolutions. New beginnings and all that. Well I’m not gonna take the conventional path here. I mean if you want to lose weight, the steps are pretty simple, right?  Exercise every day, weigh yourself once a week, count...Read More

Targeting specific customers with tailored offers will become a much bigger business in 2013, according to one SAP expert. New technology could help the decades-old concept of personal marketing explode — and make 2013 the Year of the Consumer.Focusing one’s message on a small...Read More

Technological innovation and digitization provide companies the opportunity to develop profitable, new services. Business leaders who want to transform their business models to include radical, new services are very good at expressing their need to escape the commoditization trap, but rarely...Read More

Let’s face it. If you’re in business you have to use email. Even if you’re not in business you have to use email. Well, just about everyone who uses the internet is stuck in the inbox nowadays. People aren’t just checking and sending email – they’re talking...Read More

An off-duty law enforcement officer averted further bloodshed last weekend when she stopped a gunman in a San Antonio cinema. The shooter had already wounded two people and fired upon a marked police car when the officer took action, according to San Antonio Express-News.The yet-to-be...Read More

“Companies that have embraced the future have been rewarded,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said on Mad Money, highlighting SAP’s forward-thinking mindset — and rising stock price. “The company’s last quarter — it was fabulous — it was the best...Read More

In my Marketing Predictions post from last year, I did not break any new ground when I predicted that 2012 would be all about social, content and mobile. I predicted that we would see increased buzz talking about how to become a social business, how to execute content strategy and...Read More

Only the Velvet Underground could provide such bare contrasts between their world of lacerating noise and squalid cityscapes, and many of their peer musicians’ worlds of rainbows and escapist indulgences. Yet even as the Velvet Underground’s career as a group was drawing to a close...Read More

Last year, I reported on the complex logistics surrounding Santa’s Supply Chain. This year, I want to unwrap the broader business model of Jolly St. Nick and how he miraculously delivers the goods year after year.360-degree View: “Children of all ages” Like all successful...Read More

Is cloud computing “bad or risky” for data privacy? Is personal data more “secure and protected” in the cloud? Or less? The impact of cloud computing on data privacy is a complex and sometimes controversial topic. There are a number of misperceptions about data...Read More

“People got a bit lax,” Queen Elizabeth II said last week of the time leading up to the financial crisis. “Perhaps it was difficult to foresee.”The U.K.’s monarch also lamented that her nation’s Financial Services Authority “didn’t have the teeth...Read More

Solving the too-big-to-fail problem in banking just got international. Authorities could seize a Global Systematically Important Financial Institution (GSIFI) — and dismantle it as appropriate — under a joint plan by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank...Read More

The real benefit of social media tools to the enterprise itself lies in the capacity of those tools to capture and analyze that enterprise conversation for relevant insights, connecting it to the business process it relates to. That’s the social intelligence portion that makes it deliver...Read More

They lurk quietly in neighborhood garages and large offices, concocting wild ideas and rolling out new business models and products that can take entire industries by storm.  These companies have big ideas that are driving profound change by challenging the conventional market while making...Read More

“If television’s a babysitter, the Internet’s a drunk librarian who won’t shut up” -Dorothy Gambrill, Cat and Girl, 2005As a youth I lived in a strict house, where television viewing was restricted to one-half hour per day (or a full hour for PBS programs). The...Read More

Today, there are 200,000 small businesses in New York City. Someday, any one of them could become a multinational corporation like SAP, creating thousands of jobs and supporting the global economy in countless ways. Kicking off the SME Summit on Nov. 29 at SAP’s New York offices, the...Read More

Content Strategy is a very confusing topic in business and marketing circles. There are plenty of folks out there trying to define content strategy and differentiate it from traditional marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, social media and search engine optimization. But exactly how...Read More

The other day I wrote about the research we had undertaken in the course of writing The Customer Experience Edgeand four distinct qualities that are critical an outstanding customer experience. Let me go on to say that I’m not alone in asserting that the customer experience is the real...Read More

If you follow the SAP blogs at all closely, you’ll know that the past few weeks have been very exciting for SAP. Todd Wilms wrote about SAP 360 Customer and the unveiling of SAP CRM Powered by SAP HANA. Richard Howells expanded on that 360 degree view of the customers’ world and...Read More

Shoppers already dispirited by the crowds and commodities at the mall this holiday season can take heart—there’s a better way. JustBecause is a new Facebook iPhone app that turns gift-giving on its head, focusing on the product not the recipient or the occasion. With a slogan that...Read More

Speaking to a journalist in 1969 John Lennon offered these insightful, almost prophetic words: “…and the Left Wing talk about giving the power to the people… you know…anybody knows that the people have the power. All we need to do is awaken the power in the people...Read More

Everyone believes that rapidly advancing technology is changing the game, but that’s only half the challenge businesses face. The more significant challenge is this: Digital customers are changing the rules. Armed with smart phones and tablets, today’s customers are digitally...Read More

A gap has always existed between companies and customers. Top management formulates a brand promise, and through messaging, packaging, sales, product/service delivery and other means, it works to fulfill that promise. But as author Michael Hinshaw points out in his book Smart Customers, Stupid...Read More

Trading stood still on more than 200 companies Monday, as a server kept the New York Stock Exchange from publishing quotes for most of the day. Taken alone, this seems like a technical glitch.But combined with earlier problems, such as Knight Capital in August, Facebook in May, BATS in March...Read More

Planning season is well underway and I think it is never to early to look at the Marketing 2012 year-in-review and start to make some predictions for Marketing and Social Businesses in 2013. So here I will lay out my perspective – a narrative really – of what happened in 2012 in...Read More

When done right, effective marketing will generate a quantifiable “multiplier effect.” While social media gets much of the recent credit for this phenomenon, it has existed forever, long before the famous shampoo commercial that explained how happy customers “tell their 2...Read More

Break on Through (to the Other Side) I can hear Ray Manzerek’s analogue keys (pounding bass notes) reverberating through my subconscious as I write this. That riff of intense anticipation as Mr Mojo Risin’ leads us into a primal scream-esque liberation from the world that we once...Read More

Author’s Note: Happy Veterans Day! “The impact of Dodd-Frank for foreign banks is going to be widespread and long-lasting,” according to a recent report by Boston-based research and consulting firm Celent. “The new rules would alter the trading strategies and operations...Read More

“I don’t know what to write about!” If you are trying to recruit social ambassadors for your business, you will quickly run into this challenge from your colleagues. And if you accept the Social Business imperative, you know that we all  need to grow our army of...Read More

By Rani Goel, Senior Director, Analytics Product Marketing, SAP A lot of ink has been spilled relating to big data; countless articles, blog posts and discussions are about how data is growing by leaps and bounds and how companies need the ability to store and manage peta bytes and zeta bytes of...Read More

A boy looks at snack foods and drinks at the Grand Opening of the new Walmart Neighborhood Market in Panorama City, California. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) When a small business gets its first big order it can seem like manna from heaven. But wipe those dollar signs out of...Read More

The original starship Enterprise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Adaire Fox-Martin, SVP Industry Business Solutions for APJ, SAP If we could borrow a line from the suave and dashing Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk to describe the act of innovating, it would be: “To boldly go where no man...Read More

By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, SAP In 1986 Depeche Mode released Black Celebration. A turning point for the band as they left behind the last remnants of electronic pop for an edgier, darker, sound. I loved it. It alienated some but gained so many more new fans with its...Read More

Three in five financial institutions cannot perform real-time reconciliation because they haven’t started working on it for any of their asset classes, according to a recent survey. And they don’t think they’ll be ready to start work on this regulation-essential project before...Read More

Imagine a world in which researchers share data via one massive supercomputer to advance medicine, energy, agriculture … where nations respond in unison to natural disasters … and governments share services around the world. This is what I envisioned as I spoke with...Read More

I confess: I can talk a good game about how mobile tools are revolutionizing the way business is conducted. But I don’t live the dream. When I’m composing my Rhapsodies In Blog about the merits of the mobile workstyle, I’m either in my cubicle at work or (shudder) at home, in...Read More

A revolution has quietly been happening in how enterprise tech is purchased. Being someone who both makes his living writing about what’s happening in enterprises, AND being a member of the marketing department of a software vendor in one of the most cutting-edge locations on the planet,...Read More

After attending a recent conference in New York and hearing some of the brightest social minds in the business and entertainment world discuss their ideas, one thing became very – painfully – clear: social media has reached its apex. It has peaked, and is already on the downward slope...Read More

By Susan Galer, Communications Director, SAP Last weekend I experienced innovation in its truest form. I snagged tickets to see the Video Game Orchestra (VGO) at Boston Symphony Hall. For two hours, I was, as they say, transported to another, better place. Mind you, I am not...Read More

Image via CrunchBaseBy Dan Everett, Senior Director, EIM Solution Marketing, SAP I was speaking with a colleague who is presenting at StrataConf + HadoopWorld this week in New York. His session Tying the Knot Between Hadoop and EDW explores the roles both play in big data projects...Read More

Mobile won’t deliver on the dream of the paperless office, as I argued earlier this week. We’ll read more on our tablets and even smartphones, for sure. But the ability to access and read those files on our devices also whets our appetite to print them, too. According to a...Read More

How does a company move from becoming a promoter of their stuff to a provider of business insights? How do brands become publishers without hiring entire newsrooms full of journalists? Turns out, the answer is simple: take the knowledge, the expertise and the passion of your employees and focus...Read More

If I were a millennial, I would be annoyed with popular media. Whether they are called Millennials, Digital Natives, or Generation Y, people under the age of 30 are typically portrayed as having unrealistically high expectations for their career and over-inflated sense of their...Read More

By Margot Heiligman, SAP CRM Solution Management and Hansen Lieu, SAP CRM Solution Marketing Do you have a team listening to what is being said about your company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and discussion forums?  Better yet, are your social savvy responding to the customer service...Read More

By Tracey Arnish, Vice President of Talent Experience, SAP A few months back I had coffee with an individual who I informally met at a leadership event. This individual was interested in joining my organization and had invited me for a meeting to learn more and share her experience. During...Read More

When Google changed the name of Android Market to Google Play six months ago, I argued that it wasn’t the retreat from the enterprise that it looked like, but actually foreshadowed Google starting up an enterprise app store to complement its fun-focused one. I guess I’ve...Read More

Content Marketing Ads On SAP's Business Innovation When I ask people what they think marketers do or simply “what is marketing?” they almost always say that marketing is some form of advertising or promotion. We all learned the “4 Ps” (Product, Promotion...Read More

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “diversity” as follows: 1: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements :variety; especially: the inclusion of different types of people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization <programs...Read More

Two critical aspects of fast-growing small businesses are constantly running a kind of tortoise-and-hare race: sales and operations. Many companies become so consumed by sales that they fail to see that if operations fall too far behind, it can lead to disaster. Mark Lehew, SAP’s national...Read More

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) A few days ago, New Delhi announced a policy opening India’s notoriously fragmented and inefficient retail sector for a 51% foreign ownership in multi-brand retail (think Wal-Mart) and 100% ownership in single-brand retail (think Niketown)....Read More

Pinball Wizard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Ray Rivera, Director, Solutions Management, Workforce Planning and Analytics, SAP Good analytics is a combination of art and science, where the skillful analyst combines an entire matrix of prior knowledge with good judgment about authentically...Read More

It is becoming increasingly clear that marketers and advertisers have been divided into two camps. There are those that embrace the idea that they are share equal responsibility for their brand with their consumer.  They see themselves as co-brand managers, in a world where customers can...Read More

One aspect of working for a global company that I don’t care for are 5 a.m. conference calls with Europe. But what’s even more frustrating is waking up to my alarm clock at 4:30 a.m. only to discover that the 5 a.m. call was cancelled overnight. Well, what if my calendar could talk to...Read More

Indian students of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (AME) listen to their instructor during a practical training session. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife) I know you’ve heard of tree huggers, but have you ever heard of server huggers? I’ve heard this term used to describe...Read More

September is coming to a close, and so will the spate of back-to-school/child-oriented blog posts from me (I promise). Just…after my coming review of the Fuhu Nabi tablet. And – D’oh! – this post: (Assumes whiny stand-up comedian voice) “Have you...Read More

The tech industry attracts the worst kind of futurists, Clayton Christensen-quoting types who behold shifting paradigms, looming inflection points and disruptive innovations everywhere they look. The futurism business is so competitive these days that technologies get...Read More

Really great sales people have a skill set the rest of us do not natively possess; If you did have those skills, you would weigh your career options differently and probably make a lot more money.  This is not to surmise then that sales people can be replaced.  But, smart organizations...Read More

“Would you like 500 calories, er, fries with that?”Global fast food juggernaut McDonald’s will list the calorie values on its menus across the U.S. next week, giving customers the chance to evaluate their choices. The parallel between this fast food initiative and the...Read More

I read a blog by Thomas Redman in the Harvard Business Review (Make the Case for Better Quality Data) that stated, “It costs ten times as much to complete a unit of simple work when the data are flawed in any way as it does when they’re perfect.” I’ve had many...Read More

There was a ton of news from Apple‘s event today, many of which may have sounded earthshattering to those nattering away on Twitter (raises hand), but upon more reflection, are probably irrelevant to those of us in the enterprise and business worlds.Skittles Rainbow of colors for new...Read More

“Retail and commercial banks should be simple and they should be boring,” Lloyds Banking Group’s chief executive said last week. “The industry must change,” António Horta-Osório told the CBI Scotland annual dinner.Tempting as it may be for the capital...Read More

First, it was the Scandinavian-style Smorgasbord. Later, it was Old Country Buffet. My parents were immigrants who grew up in a time and place where starvation was a reality. Naturally, all-you-can-eat restaurants seemed like one of America’s Greatest Wonders. When I was in...Read More

To prepare for the upcoming holiday shopping season, I’m reading ‘Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)‘ by William Poundstone. Poundstone references a wide variety of psychologies studies that show consumers are unable to accurately estimate fair...Read More

Jonathan Becher, Chief Marketing Officer, SAPOriginally published in the September 24, 2012 issue of FORBES magazine. You’re likely to see the world differently if you spend a few minutes with Jonathan Becher, SAP’s CMO. To Becher, baseball and Olympic sailing are good analogies...Read More

Nothing’s perfect. In creating my map of the 120+ back-to-school iPad and tablet deployments this fall, I learned a few things about what can cause trouble for schools and students. These are good lessons for businesses and other types of organizations thinking about going...Read More

More than a quarter of market participants find its current structure “very weak,” according to a recent TABB Group poll, which indicates that all-too-frequent computerized trading goofs are eroding market confidence. Last month’s Knight Capital tech tragedy killed almost 20...Read More

As part of my research into a forthcoming blog/map showing the largest iPad and other tablet deployments by schools and universities, I also updated my list of the largest publicly-known iPad deployments, including companies, governmental agencies, etc. Notable additions include Hult...Read More

Android often gets criticized for fragmentation. But the connected car market has it beat by a mile, with literally dozens of competing telematics platforms, each with its own code and quirks for developers to wrestle with. At the Charged: Electric Vehicle...Read More

Thanks to Maryann Salerno & Ridley High Football Team for lending equipment.By Ryan Somers, Senior Manager, SAP  It’s that time of year again and the numbers are astronomical! Fantasy football is a $1 billion industry with 27 million people competing annually. Legions of...Read More

By reading the recent press and listening to “the street,” you would think Facebook‘s demise was imminent, Mark Zuckerberg will be stepping down to run a Froyo stand at the Westfield Garden State Shopping Plaza (‘Sup, Paramus?), and that social media has no proven value...Read More

Reflections: Carly Simon's Greatest Hits (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, Web Channel & eCommerce Solutions, SAP“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” sang Carly Simon in her classic pop put...Read More

Oh, there is interest in Pinterest, the visual social sharing site.  But is the site that, in its first month, became the #1 source for referring web traffic (over Google+, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined) a “colossal waste of time,” and “only good as a platform for scrap...Read More

I’ve begun to wonder whether the question, “What’s the ROI on Social?” is a kind of post-modernist Zen koan. It’s one of those questions that is often asked, yet that has no rational answer. Social Media Music, credit: SAP I shared this thought the other day...Read More

Drinking my coffee one recent Saturday morning, I was slightly startled by a headline in the weekend Review section of the Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Customer as a God.” Religious considerations aside, I was at once attracted and repelled. But the snarky headline...Read More

By Claudia Linke, Editor, SAP.info Processes that manage themselves. Products that tell machines what to do next: the next industrial revolution will open up completely new possibilities for the manufacturing industry. A new type of production is about to turn the industrial world on its head...Read More

What do the Southwest Airlines boarding process and the video game Halo have in common? They both rely on swarm intelligence to improve their experience. Swarm intelligence describes the behavior of a population of simple agents whose aggregate behavior exhibits intelligence unknown to the...Read More

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)By Mario Herger, Senior Innovation Strategist, SAP“Fun is just another word for learning” – Raph Koster (Game theorist) When I see my five-year old son’s curiosity as he examines new objects and uses them in new ways, I’m...Read More

By Jacqueline Vanacek Big data offers a grand challenge to reinvent major sectors of the US economy like healthcare, retail, energy and manufacturing. In my recent conversation with Deputy Director Thomas A. Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OFSTP), he defined...Read More

Catadores are the heart and soul of ASMARE, an association of hundreds of recycling professionals located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the reason the organization was created 22 years ago. They are also the reason that I’ve spent nearly four weeks in southeastern Brazil, creating an...Read More

Pink Floyd—The Wall (Photo credit: Wikipedia)By Jamie Anderson, Director, Global Solution Marketing, Web Channel & eCommerce Solutions, SAP“Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone home?” sings Roger Waters in this classic track...Read More

A barber shop would seem an unlikely place to collect business wisdom.  Yet I have a story to tell of a little barber shop with lessons for any “commodity” business that wonders how they can differentiate and succeed. My story begins 15 years ago when I first moved to San Jose...Read More

High-tech training has obviously been around for years and infiltrated many sports. But the London 2012 Olympics is a showcase for how mobile has also infiltrated modern athletics. One reason is the way the Olympics is a one-every-four-years showcase for certain kinds of individual sports. In...Read More

Most sports fans know that home teams have an advantage over visiting teams even though they have never seen any hard facts that prove it.  While fans believe in the home field advantage, they hotly debate the reason for its existence.  Over the years, I’ve heard a variety of...Read More

No generation is just a single dimension or can be defined by a single thing. However, there are certain trends with every generation, and our newest to tackle the business world is no different. I am in constant awe and amazement at the levels of intelligence and poise possessed of so many...Read More

IDC has been surveying mobile developers for the past two years. In mid-May, it polled more than 3,500 developers in a survey sponsored by platform vendor and SAP partner, Appcelerator, to gauge their feelings about Apple versus Google in the enterprise, their interest in Windows 8/Microsoft...Read More

(Photo credit: Wikipedia) In the first two blog posts of this series, I discussed the huge opportunities that the Olympics bring to businesses (Fourth Place at the Olympics Is The Loneliest Place In The World) and the supply chain challenges that they face (The Logistics Of The Olympics Is A...Read More

(Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)By Vinay Iyer, Vice President, Global Solution Marketing, SAP I recently complained on Facebook about having to do the dishes by hand when my dishwasher was in its death throes. Several sympathizers posted consoling comments. My Mother-in-law, though...Read More

 Next week I’ll be in China for our second annual customer meeting. One of the things that makes this event special is we didn’t try to export the US version to China but rather built an event ground up for China.  As Chinese consumers gain affluence, we expect them to act...Read More

I interviewed Rick Blatstein, founder and CEO of OTG Management, who says lending iPads calms travelers, “electrifies” the vibe of his airport restaurants, and raises sales. Blatstein is a former nightclub owner who got into the airport restaurant business in the mid-1990s. Before...Read More

The other week my colleague Vinay Iyer posted a blog that looked at how a company might use social media to improve its relationships with their customers. Some companies are already doing this, but it’s also clear that some companies also have a learning curve here about what constitutes...Read More

Everyone’s suffered through an unpleasant encounter with a member of your company’s technical help desk. Some young, would-be Alpha Geek who sarcastically overwhelms you with jargon while he – and it’s always a he – condescends to fix your laptop or printer. I...Read More

I recently vented on Facebook about having to wait (and wait) for a certain company’s customer service team to get their act together to fix my broken dishwasher. After I endured several excruciatingly long waits in the telephone queue, the repair technician finally arrived one bright...Read More

What if you could tap the untold reams of data you have floating around your organization to solve a major problem – and you could do it in a fun, low-cost way? If you follow the lead of NetFlix and Kaggle, you can do just that. In an intersection of three of the biggest catch phrases of...Read More

How do three of the world’s most recognized brands approach digital and social media? Blair Christie, CMO of Cisco; Jonathan Becher, CMO of SAP; and Ann Lewnes, SVP of Global Marketing for Adobe weigh-in on their journey leading their organizations and what surprises they had along the way....Read More

Whether it’s forward thinking or sheeple behavior, but 13 groups applied to manage Web addresses ending in .app, revealed ICANN today. According to the Uber-Registrar, .app was actually the most popular domain name (aka generic Top-Level Domain name, aka gTLD) sought after in...Read More

The amount of data being produced is so overwhelming it’s hard to be shocked by the numbers anymore. Recently, I heard that the sheer volume of data created by U.S. companies alone each year is enough to fill ten thousand Libraries of Congress. These amazing numbers raise an important...Read More

The other week I flew from Prague to London. Or, rather, I sat. Mostly I sat. When the four-hour delay due to weather was announced in Prague, a collective groan went up. The fellow next to me sighed and said, “This happens every week. Four hour delay; blame it on the weather. And just you...Read More

Have you noticed the plethora of fairy tale remakes or reinterpretations lately?  Everywhere you turn around in popular media you see an evil queen, a virgin heroine, an unsuspecting hero, or a wised mentor helping to overcome the forces of darkness.  Is it coincidence, or an allegory...Read More

Clint Eastwood at Cannes (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Clint Eastwood is the world’s greatest brand manager. This is not one of those “Life lessons I learned from Caddyshack,” or “Everything I need to know about business I learned from coaching 1st grade soccer&rdquo...Read More

Is your organization stuck in social quicksand?  Is social not delivering the payoff you once hoped it would?  Have you read every Twitter Best Practices article on Mashable until you are now dreaming in “Top Ten” lists, but to no avail? Well, you only need to change the way...Read More

Last week I had words with an automotive customer service rep named Anne. The “run flat” tires on my car had proven to be a spectacular failure. Instead of enabling Mrs. Leaper to get home safely after a run-of-the-mill puncture, they fell apart—and I mean that literally&mdash...Read More

Today’s retail business is a real-time, information-driven enterprise. Every customer interaction and movement of a product through a distribution network is measured and used to refine pricing strategies, update inventory decisions and tailor customer incentives on websites, email and...Read More

Think social media is just being used by large companies for gaming or brand awareness? Think again.  Dow is on a mission to utilize social channels to make science a compelling career choice for millennials and the next generation. Their strategy for doing so: letting scientists speak for...Read More

This week’s Decoded Fashion conference revealed that New York’s fashion designers are increasingly savvy users of technology, especially for creating engaging customer experiences — but the industry faces more wrenching change in the future. Organized by former journalist Liz...Read More

The lighting, colors, materials, variety of common areas and the extensive use of glass help give the building a high-energy, dynamic atmosphere. Cubicle farms continue to live long and prosper and have become the de facto method to organize millions of corporate employees. But in a world...Read More

Those of you who know my evangelistic tendencies vis a vis CRM solutions may be shocked at the title of this week’s blog. What? Could Leaper be suggesting that CRM is not in itself the be-all and end-all? No, it’s not. I rather like to think of CRM as the embrace-all, the make-sense...Read More

I seem to be on a Richard Branson roll.  Earlier this month I wrote about how I thought Branson’s banking endeavors would benefit from a focus on the kind of personalized customer service that he’s brought to Virgin Atlantic. Subsequently, Flavio Martins at themana.gr took up...Read More

Small businesses are in many ways the lifeblood of the economy. They hold the key to economic recovery around the globe because of their role in driving innovation and creating jobs. Historically, small businesses and entrepreneurs, particularly those in the high tech space, have driven...Read More

When Richard Branson and the Virgin Money team joined forces with Wilbur Ross to bail out the UK’s Northern Rock bank, a lot of the pundits took note and started to wonder if Branson might have as disruptive an effect on banking as he’s had on airlines. Can he drive down pricing...Read More

By now, the New York Times article has been widely-circulated and discussed of how Target uses predictive analytics to figure out, based on purchasing patterns, whether women are pregnant and then mails them coupons for relevant items – timed to specific stages of the pregnancy -- well...Read More

If you follow the media industry you will note significant announcements every week. From new tablet devices, to distribution deals and methods, there is increasing uncertainty in not only the distribution models but fundamental questions like “how am I going to make money from my content...Read More

Of the top 100 brands, how many of them call you a customer?  Take a look and do a quick count (I’ll give my answer at the end). Now, for how many of these brands do you advocate?  Do you justify your purchases to your friends, ask that they adopt your brand-of-choice, or do you...Read More

I believe every manager is a member of three teams:1. The people that report to that manager. This is usually what someone means when they refer to “my team.”2. The external stakeholders in other departments they work with every day. For example, marketing is often considered part of...Read More

The first person I knew who saw it was an art gallery friend-owner in San Francisco back in 2000.  He used to tell me that he could no longer tell by looking who was going to come in and buy.  Some of his biggest sales were to people who looked like college drop-outs, unsuccessfully...Read More

Having traveled the path with CRM for as long as I have, I am keenly aware of what constitutes both the peaks and the valleys of customer service. CRM has evolved brilliantly, and that has raised the standard for service delivery. We expect good, are delighted by the extraordinary, and are...Read More

If you have been following Social Media Week around the globe these last few days, you would have seen some of the world’s best known brands, thought-leaders, and social media advocates come out to voice their ideas, share their opinions, go on rants, and predict the future.  While...Read More

Social Media Week 2012 is now at the half way point.  Today, top brands like Cisco, NVIDIA, and analysts from Altimeter joined me and colleagues from SAP to continue the great conversation.  Hosted at SAP, the event brought luminaries, practitioners, and thought-leaders from more top...Read More

Last week, we took a few days to host what we called the Customer Experience Innovation Workshop, here at SAP in Palo Alto. We were joined by some of the best thinkers in the business -– Lior Arussy, Ray Wang , Henry Chesbrough and Michael Krigsman -– along with business people from...Read More

There’s nothing revolutionary about gauging consumer opinion, except when you use social media to help. Incorporating properly distilled data from the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn offers investors access to an exponentially broader slice of the population. Imagine going from a survey of...Read More

I am at a conference in New Orleans, where here the term “blackout” (referring to the SOPA protest site blackouts of Wikipedia and others) has a different meaning in the Big Easy and usually comes with some commemorative beer mugs and some party beads. I was lucky enough to hear...Read More

Are you feeling particularly empowered as a customer or consumer these days? You should! The evolution of technology over the last five decades has fundamentally shifted the position of the customer as we move into a decade of social business.  It is no longer aboutB2B or B2C or B2B2C; it...Read More

Picking “the rise of the Social OS” as his #1 tech trend for 2012, Wells Fargo senior tech analyst Jason Maynard and his team have released a list of Top 12 Tech Trends for the year that also features “The Internet Is Not Dead.” I’ve known Jason for many years and...Read More

SAP loves to drink its own champagne. My parent company is not only one of the leading enterprise mobility vendors with 17.5 million mobile users, but its internal deployment of mobile devices, software and apps is a role model for the rest of the Fortune 500. I caught up with CIO Oliver...Read More

Have you ever met anyone who really gets you? OK, now how about a brand?  One that understands you – knows what you need – relates to you?  If you have ever stayed at a Four Seasons property, you probably know that feeling.  So, how does an established luxury brand...Read More

Compared to, say, a cameraman in a war zone, tech writers have it pretty good. The worst injury we can suffer is a stiff back from an especially long product keynote. The biggest job hazard is having our bad predictions thrown back at us, either by readers, or, in my case, by myself. Not all...Read More

So, who among your customers is on your Christmas shopping list this year? Or – whoops! — should you be wishing them a happy Chanukah instead? Not sure? How about giving them something nice but religiously neutral? Looking to your CRM solution for answers to questions like this may...Read More

Product and service delivery has dramatically changed the way businesses operate. In every walk of life, commodities are immediately delivered over the air and to the end user’s device of choice. If we like a song on the radio, we’re more prone to download it to our MP3 player than...Read More

Over the past couple of decades, drive-through lanes have become the dominant sales stream for McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, which account for about two-thirds of McDonald’s domestic revenue. But what are the options in densely crowded cities around the world in which space is at...Read More

I can remember when customer relationship management (CRM) was the shiniest new toy in the IT bag of tricks. I was working with Tom Siebel and some of the smartest executives in the industry and we felt like we were ahead of the curve. Back then, contact management systems were the...Read More

Be forewarned: you are entering the land of the “baseball analogy” to describe why blogging is exactly like the book “Moneyball” and movie of the same name.  So, here it is: Blogging is about getting on base, not swinging for home runs. Blogging is about getting...Read More

I travel a lot, so I have become something of an aficionado of airlines and airline services. As we all know, I’m something of an opinionated commentator on the subject of CRM solutions, too. What amazes me is what utter failures so many airlines can be when it comes to fostering strong...Read More

  No one can argue with Google, ISIS, Visa and MasterCard – mobile wallets are coming fast and in various flavors. Issuing banks, credit card providers, wireless carriers, handset makers, Near Field Communications (NFC) chipset and terminal providers, trusted service managers and...Read More

“THERE IS ONLY ONE BOSS. THE CUSTOMER. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”  – Sam Walton (Walmart) Clearly, no business can exist without customers. That’s why every company needs to figure...Read More

As I start to write this, it’s that odd day in the States known as Black Friday. While respectable Brits are toiling away in their offices (thinking about the future of CRM solutions, in my case), huge numbers of Americans are engaged in a pre-dawn holiday shopping frenzy. Millions of...Read More

Gartner likes to publish the Top 25 Supply Chains every year. Unfortunately, there’s one supply chain the esteemed analyst firm continues to overlook. And it just so happens to be the greatest supply chain success story of all time. I’m talking about The Santa Claus Supply Chain...Read More

When the IT boss won’t invest in tools that empower workers and boost their productivity, is it time to raise your voice? When mobile tools are treated as ‘executive jewelry’ available only to corner office-types, doesn’t that inequality create “We are the 99...Read More

Your iPhone 12 is finally here, and it’s ringing. Quick: What do you know about the caller? Is it a customer? If so, what is your CRM system telling you about this customer—right there on the screen, even while the phone is ringing? After all, a customer is calling; you have a...Read More

I vividly remember when it happened.  It was not so long ago in a month called July when I was asked at a cocktail party the inevitable fallback question “So, what do you do?”  I immediately begin to brace for their reaction as I say “I am a professional, full-time...Read More

The amount of data is doubling every year. Information from devices, machines and social data, (think Big Data) creates an entirely new set of challenges and reinforces the fact that data will continue to grow exponentially for the foreseeable future. Naturally, the demand for tools like business...Read More

Games: a destroyer of productivity, an enabler for procrastinating employees, right? Not always. In fact, letting – nay, encouraging – your workers to install and play games like Angry Birds can actually boost your mobile deployment’s ROI. That’s what Coca-Cola Bottling...Read More

We tend to, collectively, think of social media as either “personal,” ”political,” or “commercial.” “Personal” is connecting with old friends from high school, or sharing your love of your beer can collection (for some people it will...Read More

Making data and analysis tools available to all takes the rhetoric out of decision making. Almost half of the population of Pakistan is under the age of 19. Think about that for a moment; what would life be like here, if half the people in this country were under 20? When you dig deeper into...Read More

True story:  I think we don’t get to where we are in life without help from our mentors.  I have had a few really good ones in my life, but my first one was my teacher, my friend, and my pastor.  He was the first to speak to me as an adult and he taught me a good first life...Read More

As I look forward to the holiday season (yes it is hurtling towards us again), I now do all of my planning, negotiating and actual shopping from the comfort of my armchair. And as a result, my buying habits have changed over the past few years. I no longer buy CD’s, I buy Apple ...Read More

While Halloween is all about reveling in the macabre, there’s nothing scary about the $6.86 billion consumers plan to spend on the 2011 Halloween season. This spook-tacular figure comes from National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2011 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey...Read More

In response to new market forces such as globalization, product commoditization, industry consolidation, and the global explosion of data, many industries are redesigning their business models and launching new connected services. But monetizing these new services can prove to be nearly...Read More

For Kenny Jahng, an online media consultant in Livingston, New Jersey, there has been no shortage of ‘aha’ moments affirming the educational value of his kids’ iPad 2. Seeing his 10-year-old daughter chat with an after-school tutor live via the tablet. Watching the 22-minute...Read More

Many CRM systems are still built as though one-size-fits-all. That’s not terribly surprising: In the early days, having any kind of CRM system was better than having no CRM system at all, so a one-size-fits-all approach was acceptable. There were features originally designed to support...Read More

Have you ever made dinner reservations at multiple restaurants and then forgotten to cancel the ones that you didn’t use? While multiple reservations might be convenient for diners, no-shows cost restaurants thousands of dollars per month.  The most common way to reduce these losses...Read More

Interested in social media for your business?  So many of us are searching for how to use social media in our organizations – whether they are large global enterprises or small local businesses.  As we move into having a big finish for 2011 and planning for 2012, there are few...Read More

Out of the blue, a customer rings up and asks his account representative, “Can you deliver two million widgets by Tuesday of next week?” There’s a moment’s pause, and then the rep says, “Yes!” So here’s the interesting question: Is this an instance of...Read More

This whole thing started at a playground. True story!  While letting my little boy climb on a retired railroad engine – black and shiny and ominous in its stillness – I was struck that when you get up close, you see vast number of levers, dials, valves, and raw equipment...Read More

Although mobile commerce continues to grab increasing shares of the holiday shopping market, most of Google’s largest advertisers are blowing their chances of fully exploiting that trend because they don’t have mobile sites. In spite of the fact that “Google’s research...Read More

A clash of the titans, featuring names like Google, Apple, Verizon and American Express, is now underway.  What are these giants, representing internet services, devices, mobility and financial services, battling for?  They all want to hold your wallet for you… your electronic...Read More

I recently attended a digital media conference in with several well-known brands and companies openly discussing their social solutions.  As we talked through sessions, over coffees, dinners, and into the wee hours of the night, 3 viewpoints came up time and again.  We will call this ...Read More

Can the powerful and positive emotions that occur when playing games be harvested for the business world? It’s a thorny question and a radical idea that is gaining traction, especially at this year’s SAP TechEd conference held in Las Vegas. Opening keynote speaker Jane McGonigal, a...Read More

The Internet being what it is, I should disabuse you now of any notion that this is a conversation about getting into bed with your customers—unless, of course, you manufacture beds. But even then, the kind of customer intimacy I’m talking about is not a matter of Biblical knowledge...Read More

Satisfying Customers- and Developing Advocates Executives in any industry will tell you that they sincerely care about their customers—after all, satisfied customers are the source of a company’s long-term success. But as they face the daily challenges of designing new products...Read More