After web 2.0 technologies experienced a phenomenal expansion and high acceptances among private users, considerations are now intensified to assess whether they can be equally applicable, beneficially employed and meaningfully implemented in an entrepreneurial context. It could be observed that companies with geographically dispersed sites and markets employ social software more intensely than those with a single national headquarter. The particular choice of the platform or technology to be implemented is however strongly dependent on its future business case and field of deployment and should therefore be carefully considered beforehand as the following paper strongly suggests. The
fast-paced rise of social software like weblogs or wikis and the resulting new form of communication via the Internet is however observed ambiguously in the corporate environment. The traditional form of a controllable mass medial and uni-directional communication is increasingly replaced by a highly participative and bi-directional communication in the virtual world, which proves to be essentially harder to direct or control. For a considerable share of companies this turns out to be hard to tolerate.
The use-case of a highly configured standard version of an open source multi-user weblog system for
SAP – the market- and technology-leader in enterprise software – will form the basis for the presentation outlined here. SAP requested the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) to realize such a weblog to support its global internal communications activities. In the current economic environment and with the changes in the SAP leadership, an open and direct exchange between employees and executive board was perceived as being critical to provide utmost transparency into the decisions taken and guidance for the
way forward. Recent discussions about fundamental and structural changes within SAP have clearly shown that need for direct interaction. SAP and HPI therefore agreed to share research, implementation and configuration investments necessary for this project – hereafter referred to as “Point of View”. The platform went online in June 2009, and is at this moment beginning to gain first acceptance among all SAP employees worldwide.
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Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP by Justus Bross
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2. Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP Presented by Justus Broß Paper written byJ. Broß, M. Quasthoff, J. Zimmermann, S. Mac Niven and C. Meinel presented at BlogTalk’09 | Jeju, Korea | September 16th
3. The next 20 minutes... Introduction: Social software & weblogs Corporate weblogs – capabilities and challenges Forms of deployment Success factors, risks and best-practice Case study: Point of View Scope, motivation and vision Configuration of the standardized Design issues Fact sheet Suggestions for further research Conclusion "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion 3
4. Social Software & Weblogs Weblogs belong to the group of “social software”: simple, easy-to-use and flexible applications that not just enable but facilitate cooperative gathering of content Consent among all existing social software tools next to weblogs (e.g. Instant Messaging, Wikis, Forums or multimedia-sharing-platforms) is that the surplus value is generated out of collaborative (social) activity. Social software therefore enables affiliation to (social) networks as well as structuring and channeling of attention towards a certain field of interest. "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion 4
5. Numerous areas of application Individual weblogs (diaries) Educational blogs Political blogs More … Corporate blogs: CEO blog PR blog Internal communications tool Crisis blog Branding blogs … "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 5 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
6. Hype Cycle (2009)for Emerging Technologies "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Source: Gartner (July 2009) Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion 6
7. Corporate weblogsuccess factors Know what you doing, be honest, be prepared, understand the medium (Long-term monitoring, test & try, media-conformity, back-up and emergency plan) Involvement, topicality, institutional backup, good resource planning (Moderation, content-generation) Fitting company values and culture => blogging policies ( IBM Blogging Policy, Sun Policy on public discourses, Weblogs at Harvard: Terms of use) Who, why and for what or to whom? What are the objectives, goals, milestones, target-group, etc.? Overall fit=> social software strategies Technology: security, scalability, etc. "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion 7
8. What’s wrong here? "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 8 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
9. Deployment possibilitiesfor corporate weblogs "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion 9 Sources: Zerfaß (2005), DB Research
17. Daimler blog (Customer relationship blog)Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
18. Scope, motivation and vision for SAP blog “Point of view” Especially in a time of crisis, generating open dialogue is paramount to managing fear and wild speculation Triggers that had generated an atmosphere of uncertainty: The transition of a new CEO the global economic and financial crisis the first lay-offs in the history of the company “Point of View” shall be the first step toward ubiquitous dialogue throughout the company an approach to facilitating open, transparent dialogue is arguably the single most pivotal enabler of internal cultural transformation at SAP. "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 11 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
19. Deployment "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 12 Point of View Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
20. Basic requirements Basic (and requested) blogging functionalities have already been provided by WordPress MU: Ready-to-use, open-source (cheap) and easy to handle CMS Post & comment authoring and moderation Permission and role management Handling of multimedia files within postings Generation of permanent URI (so-called permalinks) for posts and comments Generation of separate statistics for readers and moderators. Bi-lingual support (WPMU) "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 13 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
21. Configuration of the standardized benefit of using a popular blog-system like WordPress MU is that some customization requirements can be achieved by using systems-extensions such as freely available plug-ins or add-ons. A considerable part of the system and its extensions needed to be configured and adapted to fit SAPs functionality-requirements: Display nested ("threaded") view of comments Highlighting selected comments, e.g. in a dedicated area of the Web site Anonymous voting and ranking (requirement by work council) Enhanced search and browsing functionality for postings, comments, and tag keywords – including portal search Authentication issues (SSO, HTTPS, LDAP) Design issues – fitting Ci/CD requirements of SAP, browser compatibilities, barrier-free-programming, etc. "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 14 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
22. Case study: „Point of View“ "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea Barrier-free-programming Single-Sign-On (SSO) Bilingual (MU) Anonymous rating functionality „Highlighted comments“: moderation (back-end) highly customized Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion Design Issues (CI/CD):e.g. Browser compatibility Commenting order: Wok council first, employees, „highlighted comments“ SAP-portal integration 15
23. Initially, participation was slow, and employees waited to see how the channel developed. Following critical statements, people felt encouraged to participate. Platform has begun to take on a life of its own with 128 comments for 1st post alone, even 2 months after it was posted. Around 19,000 employees have visited the platform, and it has clocked up 55000 page views. This far exceeds the initial expectations and shows the need for feedback was indeed very present. An increase in access to the blog via tags has also been identified, a trend expected to grow as more content becomes available. Fact sheet "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 16 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
24. Research suggestions Https-support of Wordpress (e.g. embedment of external video players, authentication issues) Standardized option (plugin) for linking corporate authentication system to Wordpress backend. Language issues (switching, some plugins only in one language) MU vs. SU: Most plugins are developed only focussing on SU. WPMU is constantly behind. "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 17 Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion
25. Contact us Justus Bross, MSc. Int. Business & MBE Scientific Assistant & Doctoral Candidate Hasso-Plattner-Institut | IT Systems Engineering University of Potsdam Campus Griebnitzsee 14482 Potsdam, Germany Tel: +49 (0)331 5509-524 Fax: +49 (0)331 5509-325 Email: Justus.Bross@hpi.uni-potsdam.de Web: www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de Introduction|Corporate-weblogs|Case-study|Research-suggestions|Conclusion "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 18
26. The End Thank You "Implementing a corporate weblog for SAP" presented by Justus Bross (HPI) at BlogTalk'09, Korea 19
