Everyday Influence

The Authentic Enterprise

I was recently introduced to a whitepaper published by the Arthur W. Page Society called The Authentic Enterprise.  The Arthur W. Page Society is a professional association for senior public relations and corporate communications executives who seek to enrich and strengthen their profession.

The membership of the Page Society consists primarily of chief communications officers of Fortune 500 corporations, the CEOs of the world's largest public relations agencies, and leading academics from the top business and communications schools in the United States who have distinguished themselves teaching corporate communications.

The Authentic Enterprise white paper was published to promote thought leadership and education about challenges and issues that increased transparency bring to managing trust and reputation within the corporation. The paper also looks to define the role and mandate of the communication function and the Chief Communication Officer (CCO) to manage such challenges.

The white paper does a good job articulating a basic and largely realized view of communication challenges today - but falls short of providing a complete perspective that can be used to advance the agenda and the role of communication departments in corporations over the months and years to come.  

 

I assert that ‘authenticity’ is an absolute requisite part of any communication mandate that must be managed BUT in hyper competitive markets (pick one) fueled by a global recession (impacting communication budgets) - authenticity does not pay the bills.  

 

Every communication professional is a steward of brand and reputation, no doubt.  However, the key challenge for communication leaders today is to deliver against increasing pressure to solve bigger problems for our companies.  In the spirit of authenticity, these problems may be associated with managing risk, compliance and transparency, but more times than not it is about helping the company to grow leadership, accelerate sales and increase competitive advantage in our respective markets.  

 

Government regulation of business practices, globalization and democratization of information have certainly made the challenge of managing authenticity more complex, but not to the extent where managing authenticity should be the overriding mandate of the communication department - as the white paper suggests.

 

Much has changed but many things remain the same.

 

In my 14 year career as a communications professional, I have seen marginal advancement in the design and execution of the corporate communication function.

 

Many communication departments today still fight the perception of being mostly associated with the production of press releases and success of the department is determined by the effectiveness of media relations.  This is despite the many other critical areas supported by most communication departments, such as internal communications, analyst relations, investor relations and government relations - to name a few.

 

Business is about people and relationships. 

 

The internal and external audiences that many communication departments are tasked to manage have increased with dramatic scope over the last few years.  Since the rise of the Internet we have gone from the luxury of being able to manage one-to-one relationships with a handful of the ‘most important’ editors, analysts and policy makers, to having to manage relationships with numerous communities, social networks, and crowds of citizen journalists and industry experts of all sorts – which are now starting to blur between internal and external audiences, thanks to Web 2.0 tools.

 

The challenges have grown to be quite phenomenal and formidable for communication departments to manage, indeed.  However, to say that we have lost control (as the white paper suggests) is a cope out.  Communications departments and professionals must adapt to new audience engagement models, practices, technologies, communication tactics, and organizational designs.

 

The industry relationship management component of the communication charter distinguishes the function from all others.

 

Communication professionals (perhaps more than any other function) are best positioned to support a company’s strategic needs in an increasingly transparent and competitive world, based on our innate ability to cultivate positive perceptions and experiences for our company’s products, services, brands, and leadership personalities. 

 

Among other things, the key to managing the scale and unique demands of a growing and dynamic audience (internal and external) requires that we adapt to more interactive programs and strategies that allow for the exchange of ‘insights’ and facilitation of ‘conversations’ that influence both our targeted audiences and the corporation. 

 

Done well, this will improve the valuation of the communication function as we reach and influence vast audiences of shareholders, policy makers, customers, partners, journalists, analysts, and employees in impressive and highly scaleable fashion.   At SAP, the communication department manages relationships with external audiences that have a $54B impact (against a $75B market opportunity) on purchase decisions for business software, annually.  Put into this perspective, the opportunity is ripe and table is perfectly set for communications teams to use the ‘advantage of relationships’ to support company growth (sales and market share) and to advance the competitive position for our companies.

 

The white paper is indeed good work by the Page Society as it provides a level-set of important issues that need to be part of every communications management agenda in today’s world.  However, we must remember that modern day communications (as it has evolved from the innovations of Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee in the early 19^th century) helped to advance companies through the industrial revolution in ways that helped to establish new market opportunities and changed the way in which business was done - well before modern day marketing came to exist.

 

As we enter a sea change among industries, the chief communication officer must play a more prominent role in supporting business growth and market advancement.  If not, the communication function will be marginalized by the ‘business driven’ prowess of marketing and other corporate functions and initiatives.

 

Perhaps the ‘next chapter’ of the Authentic Enterprise series might focus on the Advancement of the Authentic Enterprise, providing tangible examples, practical strategies and tactics to help communication professionals at companies of all size, scope and geography be more competitive and strategic in their roles.

Analyst and Influencer Engagement Cycle

When I assumed responsibility for running the analyst relations program at SAP in 2004 I spent a lot of time with the team to define a framework to design and position the use of analyst and IT influencer engagement in corporate strategy and go-to-market activities. One outcome of this exercise was a simple AR engagement cycle that we used to 'plot' and 'plan' analyst engagements relative to corporate and product initiatives.

The framework is based on an engagement cycle that spans from strategic to tactical execution. We found it extremely helpful in educating senior executives and business and product stake holders on how and at what point in our product development and go-to-market activities to engage with analysts and other industry influencers.

I would like to share this with you as a best practice that helped us greatly to position analyst relations (now IT Influencer Relations) at SAP as a strategic component of planning and execution.  I am certain that there are more sophisticated frameworks out there.  Perhaps readers will share their experiences and models of engagement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phase I: Early Internal Alignment and Planning (3-6 months before market rollout)

•       What is it? (Identify specific product and corporate strategy/initiative)

•        Market opportunity

•        Competitive position

•        Implications to existing corporate and product strategies

•        Critical success factors

Phase II: Analyst and Influencer Strategy Development (3-6 months before market rollout

•        Strategic and tactical AR planning (engagement strategy)

•       Analyst and influencer identification (firm and individual)

•       Perception audit

•       Influencer ranking and engagement strategy/plan development

•       Internal stakeholder alignment on influencer program goals (define key performance indicators)

•       Secure executive sponsor and buy-in (commitment of time and budget)

Phase III: Strategic Analyst and Influencer Engagements (2-4 months before market rollout)

•        Influencer validation and alignment (with shortlist of key influencers)

•       Market opportunity and challenges

•       Strategy validation

•       Message and competitive positioning

•       Success factors

•       Key outcome: Influence opinions, research agendas and influencer metrics for success

Phase IV: Broad Analyst and Influencer Education (at time of market roll-out)

•       Syndication of Message

•       Additional analyst and influencer outreach and education (2^nd and n-tier influencers)

•       Sales and Marketing support (promote pre-aligned influencers as 3^rd party experts and supporters – from Phase III)

•       Showcase company of product proof points (promote reference customers and partners, and product execution)

Phase V: Program Maintenance (1-9 months after market roll-out)

•        Continued delivery of proof points (customer, product and partner) 

•        Ongoing briefings (less need for strategic alignment)

•        Continued market education

Stanford Entrepreneurial Series

 Over the last year, I have amassed a great source of business, marketing and leadership podcasts that 
 I listen to on a regular basis which I have found to be extremely helpful in stimulating ideas, provoking 
 thought and grounding me on core principles of marketing and business management. I would like to share 
 one podcast that I have found to be among the best. It is produced by Stanford University and is called 
 the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series.

 On a weekly basis during the spring, fall, winter and summer semesters, Stanford brings in some of 
 their most famous alumni and successful business men and women across a variety of industry segments
 (technology, media,banking/finance, venture capital, bio tech, etc.) to speak to students in entrepreneurial
 studies on their experiences in building and leading companies, in some cases from 'idea' to muti million 
 and billion dollar companies. Yahoo, Google, HP are a few of the highlighted companies. 

 
 The podcast is about an hour long and consists of a 30-45 min presentation by the guest speaker (extremely
 easy to follow via audio) and ends with open Q&A with the live audience. 

 
 Some of my best ideas (influence relations, leadership, and business development) have been stimulated 
 by the stories and experiences of the sage business leaders. I highly recommend to anyone with interest in
 business and entrepreneurship to subscribe to this podcast. You can find information about it at 
 Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series.

 

Voice of the Decision Maker: Influencer Ranking

During the design phase of the Industry and Influencer Relations (IIR) program at SAP (in 2006) we conducted extensive research to understand who the decision makers are in our market when it comes to purchasing business software and more importantly who influences these decision makers.  It was a six month project that returned some very interesting results that supported the decisions made in designing the IIR program and team structure.

I would like to share a nugget of information gathered from our research - based on results for the U.S. market.

The charts below illustrate a ranking of the most important influence channels in four distinct views.  The first column outlines an aggregate ranking (based on 500+ responses) of the most important sources of influence - in priority order. The other three columns provide rankings relative to importance by company size (small, medium, large). In the survey, we asked the respondents (qualified decision makers) the following question: “How influential are the following outside sources of information on your business software decisions / recommendations?”

In comparing the rankings by company size, there are a number of very interesting observations to be made.  To no surprise, the experience, counsel and word-of-mouth of one’s industry peers/colleagues rank among the highest source of influence – across company size. The interesting conclusions come when you analyze the separations in the rakings between the groups of 5-10 and 10-15. Below are high-level observations:

• Small and mid market decision makers rank industry analysts and analyst executive programs much lower level than the large market.
  • Observation: No real surprise here as the business and engagement models of most analyst firms do not cater to the needs and budget constraints of small and most mid-sized companies.
• Mid market decision makers rank press (Tech, Job Function, Gen’l Bus.), business software vendor partners & board of directors, higher in influence.
  • Observation:  One conclusion could be that most mid market companies have ‘just enough’ experience and sophistication with business software that the quality of information and insight reported by the media about industry trends, vendor reputation and best practice provide decision makers enough information to form opinions that require less dependency on 1:1 interaction with 3^rd party experts – such as industry analysts.
• Small companies rank most forms of publications (tech/business press, books, etc.) as low on influence, indicating a much higher level of trust to consultants, peers, and software vendors.
  • Observation: Small business owners either don’t have the time to read or the issues relevant to them (related to business software) are not adequately being represented by media (maybe too high-level or not representative of core issues) so they rely more on peers, consultants and other trusted advisors for insights.
• Blogs were ranked lowest for all decision makers (at the time of the research)
  • Observation: I suspect that this may have changed in the last 18 months as more consultants and industry experts have adopted the use of blogs to syndicate their research and insights to fuel their consulting business models.

You can draw additional conclusions from these rankings.  We plan to update the research later this year to track and analyze trends and changes. I suspect that most of the changes will be in the lower half of the rankings, however.

The comparison of the U.S. findings against emerging/growth markets such as China, India, Brazil, Japan, and Russia are very interesting.  Each of the above mentioned countries have very distinct ‘influence ecosystems’ affected by the importance of relationships, culture and politics.  For global or multinational companies doing business in these countries, it is critical not to over or underestimate the cultural and sociopolitical factors when establishing influencer strategies and programs.

The Evolution of Industry and Influencer Relations at SAP – Part Two

This post provides additional background on the Industry and Influencer Relations (IIR) program that I introduced in an earlier post.

Through our research we have found that there are generally three factors of influence that affect any type of decision.  In SAP’s case - three factors that affect a decision to purchase business software.

As an example, let’s say that you are the CEO of a $1m apparel company. Your product is fantastic, you have had great success and you want to expand your business.  You have created a masterful five year plan to increase your apparel and accessory lines, create partnerships with manufactures and retailers, open up boutique retail stores, create an online retail presence, and increase investments in sales, marketing and of course top talented people.

Part of your plan requires investment in a business software solution to help you plan and optimize resources, manage HR, finance, etc. 

So, where do you start?  You are generally aware of SAP, Microsoft and Sage as vendors but you have no professional experience with any of them - with the exception of basic use of Microsoft office products.

With your limited awareness of these business software vendors you invest time in research and education to support your decision.  You talk to peers in your industry – perhaps through a social network or an industry association; you do an online Google search for information and find research reports and relevant articles in business and trade publications; you may also identify and speak with an analyst or an industry expert for opinion.

The point is that you rely on multiple sources for insight, education and advice to support your decision – often times well before you even speak with a prospective vendor.  In each case, you form an opinion based on the reputation of the vendor through others’ experience - where you have none.

Within the IIR team we have done the homework to understand where decision makers of business software solutions go for insight, education and advice to support their decision and how important those sources are in influencing the decision.

This insight is the basis for the design of the IIR team at SAP.  We have identified and are actively engaging with the individuals – be they bloggers, academics, analysts, or consultants; virtual communities, associations, partners, and groups that have the highest impact on purchase decisions. 

Our engagement model is multi-faceted.

The mission of the IIR team is to enable sales execution and accelerated adoption of SAP’s products and solutions.  We do this by generating positive experience of SAP’s brand, products and reputation within strategic business and IT communities of influence that have a $44B influence on business software decisions, annually.

Below is an example of the influencers we engage with:

• IT Influencers: Industry analysts, developer community, consultants, and bloggers
• Customer Communities: User Groups and peer networks
• Universities: Leading business and IT universities (faculty and students)
• Business Influencers: High-profile business academics, gurus, authors, and social networks
• Partners: Top 20 SAP partners

I ran across a good definition of Influencer Relations some time ago which identifies the function as a systematic way to identify, measure and build bridges with influential people who impact customer perception.

By connecting with key influentials and influencer communities, our hope is that this team will deliver greater value to SAP by establishing influencer relations as a new marketing and communication currency for the business:

• As a catalyst to accelerate larger marketing and sales campaigns
• Through industry collaboration – by connecting senior executives with thought leaders for exchange of insight and our own need for education
• To provide coveted 3rd party validation and recognition of our business strategy, products and overall market leadership.

It is important to note is that there are generally three key aspects that characterize an effective influencer program (source AMA):

• The first involves building deeper, lasting relationships between the company and the influencers.
• The second entails finding specific ways to help every influencer become a vocal and active champion of the company.
• The third is to create a lasting dialogue of mutual benefit.

We are in constant interaction with our influencers and communities providing education and working with them as consultants, advisors and net promoters of our business and product strategy.  Often times we engage with the intent to exchange valuable insights that ultimately influences each of our views.

We also look for every opportunity to expose our influencers to customers in an effort to channel the positive experience of our customers through the influencer’s interaction with decision makers both directly with prospects (as a service) or indirectly (through a blog, book, research report, or at a conference presentation) to support SAP’s position.

We have explored the business and governance model of each influencer group/community around this circle. Each has a very unique and powerful value proposition that factors quite heavily on their engagement with customers and ultimate impact on purchase decisions.  As such, we have established equally unique engagement models to work with and mange the relationships and needs of each group.

We have gone even further to calculate the monetary impact that these influencers have on purchase decisions.  This valuation is based on extensive research to understand how decision makers (with budget authority) engage with influencers to support their decision to purchase business software.  The figures listed in the chart are based on the influence of SAP’s $75B market opportunity.

Here are a few examples of how we engage:

• IT influencers such as industry analysts and consultants make money by providing research, education and advice in which the demand is generally fueled by confusion in the market ☺ They educate customers and prospects through written research, presentations, 1:1 conversations, and through the media. Their expertise and established credibility in the market with customers, vendors, media and the financial community have established them as market makers. Our estimate is that these influencers have a 10B impact on SAP’s market opportunity of $75B.
  
  Early engagement with these influencers allows bi-directional influence of our strategy.  If managed successfully, these influencers will take ownership of our strategy and position. Their ‘ownership’ creates inherent advocacy driven through their own thought leadership platforms allowing them to provide greater insight, education and advice to potential buyers in the market which in the IT industry analyst example - drives business for them.  We are creating win-win partnerships.

• Equal to the IT Influencers there are very important individuals, communities and social networks that have significant affect on the agendas of business level leaders in the c-suite such as the CEO, CFO, COO and GMs.  These groups of decision makers have very specific needs when it comes to looking at trends in their industry be it retail, banking, or any of the many manufacturing vertical markets.  We have identified the people and communities that drive thought leadership and consult with business decision makers at the highest levels.  Our engagement model here shares many similarities to the way we engage with IT influencers: early and constant.

• Customer communities and peer groups have the highest influence on purchase decisions, largely based on the credibility of their experience (as customers) using and implementing our solutions.
  
  As previously mentioned, there are 30+ SAP User Groups around the world that represent about 80% of our installed base of customers. One-by-one we are building powerful relationships with these communities which vary in size from the 2000+ companies that make up the Americas User Group, to the 250+ SAP customers that make up our user group in Brazil.  What is interesting about the group in Brazil is that this relatively small number of member companies (SAP customers) represents well over 60% of Brazil’s GDP.  This is an impressive statistic that underscores the power and influence of community – no matter the size or geography.
  
  Peer groups (in large part) exist because they want to be heard and ensure that their interests are well represented in corporate and development priorities and decisions. They want to show their ability to wield influence and affect policy and engagement.  They also gather for the very important purpose of networking and sharing best practices.
  
  Significant challenges quickly come about if a company ignores or mismanages these important groups – that are organized by a shared purpose of influence.  The biggest being backlash in media and affects of negative word of mouth that can be viral and destructive if not well managed.

• Partners wield significant influence on customer purchase decisions.  As much as we would like, our customers’ IT landscape are not homogeneous. Our customers and prospects work with and rely upon a number of IT vendors to support their success.  The Partner Communications program is designed to support SAP’s most strategic partners and partner programs that fuel the highest revenue opportunities within SAP’s ecosystem.  Our objective is to gain maximum communication value out of these partnerships by executing joint and integrated (with the partner) communications campaigns to drive thought leadership, awareness, and general education of the joint value – allowing SAP the opportunity to ‘catch draft’ off of our partner’s invaluable brands and activities - and vice versa.

• Universities play a very unique and important role in the ecosystem of influence.  They are in fact the most strategic community around this circle. With an understanding of the power that ‘experience’ has in influencing decisions - the purpose of the university alliance program is to build SAP experience into the next generation of business and IT decision makers and leaders - at the core of their pre-professional education.  We do this by providing universities with access to SAP systems for teaching and working with them to develop business and IT curriculum.  The program generates skilled graduates that help to secure the investments of SAP customers and partners (as they are hired on).  These students will also evolve to become important IT and business influencers and thought leaders in their own right - which fuels the circle of influence.

If there is interest, I will provide (with appropriate detail) additional case examples and engagement scenarios associated with our programs.

Power of Crowds: Experiences in Community Management

The definition of community in Wikipedia is:

• A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

I would add to this that effective social and professional communities nurture conversation, networking, peer education and thought leadership.  Whether virtual or physical, the best communities are those that act with a purpose based on common interests.

As noted in the Wikipedia definition a community is like any living organism.  It requires nurturing, constant attention and is most sustainable when grown organically. 

Much like any major corporation, SAP supports and hosts a number of ‘community’ initiatives and programs.  It seems that every department and business unit within SAP ‘has one’ these days.

Each community has a unique design and scope that is segmented to bring people together by issues (industry value networks, industry advisory councils, etc.) by role (CEO, CIO, and Developer networks) or general audience (customer – user groups; partners; analysts; bloggers).

Below are four examples of communities at SAP:

• The best known and most famous community at SAP is the SAP Developer Network (SDN) – an online community for SAP developers. Over the past four years SDN has grown to become one of the most vibrant and active communities within SAP – and an exemplar of what other communities within SAP strive for.  It has grown organically from 0 to well over 1.1 million people world-wide.  It is 100% self managed and user regulated.  Thousands of posts per day and thousands of unique visitors each week. It is a place for developers to share information and seek advice. The average response time to questions and posts is about 18 minutes. It is a very rich source for information and insight.
  
• In the world of SAP Global Communications (where I sit) we also have a number of community initiatives.  One of the highest profile community efforts is the management of 30+ SAP User Groups from around the world that represent about 80% of our installed base customers.
  
  The user groups vary in size from the 2000+ companies that make up the Americas User Group, to the 250+ SAP customers that make up our user group in Brazil.  What is interesting about the group in Brazil is that this relatively small number of member companies (SAP customers) represents well over 60% of Brazil’s GDP.  This is an impressive statistic that underscores the power and influence of community – no matter the size or geography.
  
  Going back to the definition of community and the principle of 'purpose' - we have found that many ‘self organized’ communities (e.g. customer user groups) often organize to bring their collective voices together, just to be heard.  They want (in large part) to ensure that their interests are well represented in corporate and development priorities and decisions. They want to show their ability to wield influence and affect policy and engagement.
  
  Significant challenges quickly come about if a company ignores or mismanages these important groups – organized by the shared purpose of influence.  The biggest being backlash in media and affects of negative word of mouth that can be viral and destructive if not well managed.
  
• Through our University Alliance program we also manage a community of universities that number well over 800 (globally) and educate over 150,000 students each year.  I consider this to be one of the most important and strategic communities that my team is responsible for.  The purpose of the university alliance program at SAP is to enrich the minds and experience of the next generation of business and IT leaders who will become users of SAP technology and decision makers at our customer and partner companies, worldwide. Over the next year we will establish an online network for university professors and students as a place to better connect with SAP, our customers and partners.  Here is a good article just published by eWeek about this program.
  
• The final community that I will highlight is myventurepad.com.  This is one of the industry’s first B2B social networking portals for small business owners.  MyVenturepad.com was launched in November, 2007, and features moderated online conversations that address the crucial issues facing small business owners today. In addition to leveraging social media to attract new customers, the site aims to significantly enhance the SAP brand experience and perception in the small business community by creating and managing conversations with key bloggers and potential customers.
  
  SAP is the founding sponsor of the site, which was developed and built by Social Media Today, LLC, a company that creates networked conversations around business topics, including leading site for social media, SocialMediaToday.com. We are working directly with Social Media Today to manage the MyVenturepad.com site and to identify and attract the most informed business influencers to the site to advise on small business issues. Members of the site can get the best available insight about start-ups, funding and finance, taxes, marketing, and more in one location; but more importantly, they can comment, share and rate posts, connect with bloggers and other members, and even blog themselves.

With these examples, it is important to state the obvious that communities offer rich opportunities to gather market insights to validate business opportunities and roadblocks.  You just have to listen!!!

By bringing communities closer to your business and engaging in conversations you will not only gain invaluable insights, you will also secure loyalty and trust - which will open the doors to mutual influence and win-win engagements.

In order to maximize the relationship with your communities it really is important to understand why the community exists and how it operates (what is their mission/charter; governance structure; communication design; etc.) and establish an engagement strategy that helps to enrich their charter while at the same time secures your ability to contribute and influence.

Working with Influencers to Create Market Opportunities

Throughout my career I have had great success working with industry influencers to identify, create, and redefine market opportunities for my employers.

Drawing back on a few underlining themes in my previous posts - success here hinges on the ability to understand the objectives, business model, and strategy associated with the ‘business idea.’  Examples of some key questions to explore are:

• What is the problem or market need, to be addressed?
• How does our product or service solve the problem/address the need?
• What is the significance of this problem in the market (low, moderate, high)?
• Who are the people/organizations directly/indirectly affected by the problem?
• How will we deliver the product or service (channel/OEM; direct; region specific; focus on vertical industries; etc)?
• Who makes the decision to purchase the product/service and how are they influenced?

These are examples of some basic ‘exploratory’ questions that will help identify the types of influencers to engage with as you establish a strategy to create/redefine a market opportunity for your company’s business idea.

The next step is to research and qualify potential influencer partners.

You will likely need to work with a mix of influencers to effectively educate the market (on the identified problem) and advocate your solution as the best way to solve/address it (e.g. issues-based thought leaders, business gurus, customers, partners, media, academia, bloggers, consultants, community leaders, professional associations, etc.). 

It is important to engage with a core group of the most important influencers as early as possible to help validate the market opportunity, your business approach, and to validate your overall messaging and positioning platform.  This early engagement will help to harden your strategy as you prepare to ‘go-to-market.’  The further in advance you engage the greater your ability to secure buy-in and advocacy from the core set of influencers. 

It is also important to understand the business and influence models of each influencer type (how do they make money and how do they educate the market?) and create appropriate forms of partnership that provide incentive for them to work with you.  As an example, traditional IT industry analysts make money on subscription to research, revenue from events, consulting engagements with customers, and general 1:1 advisory meetings.  Analysts educate the market through written research, presentations, 1:1 conversations, and through the press.  Every influencer type has a varied business and influence model that is important to understand as you determine your specific engagement strategy.

Early engagement allows bi-directional influence of the ‘idea.’  If managed successfully, your influencers will take some ownership of the ‘idea’ and your ability to address the market need.   Their ‘idea ownership’ creates inherent advocacy driven through their own thought leadership platforms allowing them to provide greater insight, education and advice to potential buyers in the market which in the IT industry anlayst example - drives business for them.

By doing this right, you will enable your company’s efforts to grow a great business. 

No mater what industry you are in, this is an approach that will lend itself to great outcomes.

The Evolution of Industry and Influencer Relations at SAP - Part One

To expand upon the mention in my inaugural post, I am the VP of Industry and Influencer Relations at SAP.  This is a relatively new 'title' and group that resides in SAP's Global Communication department.

In 2006, we conducted an exhaustive evaluation of our communication practices, org design, programs, processes and engagement strategies to understand the changes required to better support SAP's 2010 business strategy.  In a nutshell, the 2010 strategy is designed to double SAP's addressable market to a $75B opportunity.

Through the evaluation we found (to no suprise) that our structure and many practices and engagement strategies were based on outdated models that were inadequate to support the company's evolved growth strategy.

There are a number of important functions represented within Global Communications at SAP: Investor Relations, Government Relations, Employee Communications, Media Relations, etc.  As part of our reorganization, I was asked to lead a new group called Industry and Influencer Relations. 

Following the evaluation, we entered the next phase of reorg activities. The design process for what eventually evolved into the Industry and Influencer Relations team (which is the only aspect of the reorg that I will focus on) was guided by the fundamental question of: What problem are we really trying to solve? 

In answering this question, we determined that the charter of the new program should be to influence the awareness, reputation and experience of SAP (products and services) with business and IT decision makers in the industry.

To this end, we commisioned research to identify the IT and business decision makers in our industry and understand the dynamics of how they are influenced (e.g. where do they go for research, advice and education to support their decisions). 

We used social networking technologies to map the flow of influence up and through the decision maker.  We were surprised to find that a number of our assumptions on decision making authority and influence were challenged. 

Today, the mission of the Industry and Influencer Relations team is to enable sales execution and the accelerated adoption of SAP’s products and solutions by generating positive experience of SAP’s brand, products and reputation within strategic business and IT communities of influence (globally).

There are five dynamic teams that operate under the umbrella of Industry and Influencer relations, at SAP.  Each has a unique mission and a value proposition that stands very strong on its own:

o    IT Influencer Relations (evolution of traditional AR)

o    Business Influencer Relations

o    Customer Communities (e.g. User Groups)

o    Integrated Partner Communications

o    University Alliances

Each program utilizes a balanced mix of social media principles, technology, and 1:1 relationship practices to reach scale and effectiveness.

Using innovative research techniques we have found that the combined channels (above) that the Industry and Influencer Relations team manages has a $40B impact on purchase decisions world-wide (based on SAP's target $75B market opportunity).

The research and reorganization process that we went through was very enlightening and renewing.  It set the stage for creating a new ‘reality’ for communications at SAP with a more strategic purpose.

In future posts I will break down the value proposition of each team and share some of the insights that we learned as we moved from design to implementation – resulting in the creation of new engagement models, best practices, resource and operational design, and metrics for managing each component of the influencer program (above).

Establishing Value and Sponsorship with Executive Stakeholders

The best way to secure engagement and support from your stakeholders is to establish trust based on the value of ‘what you do’ as core to enabling their success.

I learned long ago that if you want to have a seat at the table and be viewed as a strategic contributor to the business you must shift the perspective in how you view your role - to one of value and enablement.

As an example – in my early days as an AR manager it was very easy to look at my role as a ‘function’ of working with analysts.  The problem of associating yourself solely to your function is that you tend to execute in a very transactional way (executing briefings, consulting sessions, inquires and report review). 

It was not until I looked at my role in a slightly different capacity that I began to scale significant support from the senior most management of my company. 

I began to look at analyst relations as a ‘process’ and sought to understand how I can use the process of working with analysts and other influencers to enable success of the stakeholders across the value chain of my company.

 

To do this effectively, you must first have mastery of your function (rules of engagement; interaction scenarios; and best practices of relationship management).  Then you must seek to understand the challenges, goals and objectives of your stakeholders across the value chain of your business: strategy, sales, development, business development/partners, services/support, etc. 

Once you understand the goals, challenges and opportunities at each level of the business, you can then establish programs and deliverables that through the process of working with influencers - enable success.

There is a value proposition that can be created for each link in your company’s value chain.  You just have to ‘think’ about it.

By shifting your perspective, to a ‘process view’ no matter your ‘function’ (media relations, analyst relations, marketing, etc.) you will be able to facilitate high impact programs and conversations that enable great success for your business and each important stakeholder, across the chain.

This is the best way to institutionalize your value and gain the much needed support and investments to scale even greater success for your companies.

Influencer Relations Metrics

There are many perspectives on which metrics and key performance indicators to use to support new era influencer relations programs. Metrics are by-and-large extremely important as they help to represent the true value of programs. I don’t proclaim to be the expert on metrics and KPIs (just ask any member of my team). I have experimented and used a number of approaches however that in many ways are better described as KPIs. An example, using traditional analyst relations.  It is common practice to track the following:

• Tonality of written research
• Survey-based analyst perception audits
• Company positions in key research (MQs and Waves)
• Analyst media quotes

These are good KPIs to support the effectiveness of program execution but they do not support the most strategic metric (if you are a sales driven business J) of actual influence on deals won and lost.

I suggest that influencer relations pros work to establish a metrics model that integrates with your company’s sales process. For instance:

• Pipeline Analysis:  Leverage your company’s CRM or sales management tools to understand which (if any) influencers are impacting your deals. 
  
  This allows you to map the influence of analysts directly to sales – the ultimate metric to secure strong executive support of time and budget to support the execution of your programs – as well as helps you understand where to appropriate your time and tier/rank the influencers with whom you work with.
  
  
• Win/Loss Analysis: Integrating key questions into your company’s process for tracking win/loss intelligence will provide you with the definitive impact (positive or negative) of influencers in your company’s deals.
  
  
• Analyst Events:  If your company sponsors analyst events (e.g. Gartner Symposium) it is important to work with your field marketing or sales operations organization to track leads gathered from these events – through the pipeline:
  • How many prospects entered your pipeline as a result of the event?
  • How many prospects that were already in your pipeline (who also attended the event) resulted in closed deals?

This approach is good to use with all influencer types (media, peer associations, partners, etc.).to understand who your prospects are relaying upon for research, education and advice to support their decisions.

The information gathered from these metrics will help you to effectively rationalize which influencers you should work with and why.  My bet is that you will find that many of the assumptions that you currently use to tier your influencers and appropriate resources against (people, budget, executive time) are not geared to the enabling the sales effort in the most effective ways.