WALLDORF — On its own, social collaboration in the workplace is a nice idea, but unless it is connected to a business process, it is little more than that. A year ago, SAP AG transformed social collaboration with the launch of the SAP Jam social software platform and social business processes, and the world’s leading businesses have caught on. With more than 10 million subscribers, SAP Jam is the leading enterprise collaboration solution and the only social platform that enables companies to collaborateⁱ across the entire business process, where and when people need it — in their applications, on mobile devices or directly in SAP Jam.

Today, SAP is again pushing the envelope on innovation with work patterns, pre-built collaborative processes that give companies the 360-degree view into critical workplace activities needed to make more informed decisions rapidly and to act on them to deliver results. Work patterns can be applied to key operational processes that touch customers, employees and partners. The first work patterns support collaborative sales and service processes with the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application.

Connecting the Dots
The first functionality of its kind on the market, work patterns combine expertise, content, problem solving and templates with applications and real-time data from business systems. Because of the intelligent integration, constantly changing data is always current and relevant, allowing SAP Jam to recognize and interpret the data as well as expose related documents, people and projects. Employees can choose from a list of work patterns provided in SAP Jam that connect the dots to help them achieve the following:

• Obtain a complete picture of the situation or project at hand
• Have access to experts who can help execute effectively
• Create a fast and repeatable approach for work and quickly drive it to completion
• Flexibly change processes to meet the needs of the work

“Whether it’s to manage account planning or devise a sales strategy, onboard a new team or be mentored, the way we work today involves leveraging data, content, process and people,” said Sameer Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Social Software, SAP. “Work patterns in SAP Jam are designed to bring these elements together to significantly accelerate performance.”

Innovative companies like Marriott International, Kaeser Kompressoren and TELUS Communications, Inc. are using SAP Jam to help drive business results.

For its global associates and industry partners, Marriott is combining SAP Jam with applications from SuccessFactors, an SAP company, to support learning and knowledge sharing within the enterprise. The company is also using SAP Jam to put forth best practices, gather and rank ideas and turn the decision-making process around immediately.

Kaeser Kompressoren is following suit: “As our sales cycle continues to shrink, SAP Jam is playing an important role in helping us quickly build a bridge from the first client contact through to the offer,” said Falko Lameter, chief information officer, Kaeser Kompressoren. “Because SAP Jam is a cloud solution, we can easily integrate our partners and SAP processes — such as SAP CRM — allowing us to share information and gather insight from across the business.”

While work patterns is a market-first strategy, SAP Jam customers have been involved as co-innovators for this and other ongoing innovations.

“At TELUS, our goal is to push the needle with consistent innovation, and participating in the customer council for SAP Jam has helped us achieve this,” said Dan Pontefract, head of Learning and Collaboration, TELUS Communications. “Through our strong relationship with SAP, we’ve been able to see our feedback reflected in the product road map, and are excited about the strategic direction of SAP Jam and the inclusion of work patterns.”

The first pre-built patterns were made available on November 14 and bring together SAP Jam with data and objects from SAP CRM to support account planning, opportunity management, deal rooms and service requests for sales and service professionals.

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom.

For more information, press only:
Dorit Shackleton, +1 (604) 889-7841, dorit.shackleton@sap.com, PST
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EST; press@sap.com
Rachel Leamon, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (617) 912-5411, rachel.leamon@bm.com, EST

ⁱIDC MarketScape: Worldwide Social Technology in Integrated Talent Management Vendor Analysis 2012, doc #236025, June 2012