SAP just released their 2009 Sustainability Report and I must say I am impressed. They have really raised the bar for corporate sustainability reporting (CSR). Not only are they one of the top reports in the BI and even the software vendor category, but they’re report is top of the line for all CSR reports.

It opens with a video message from the CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer) Peter Graf, who reports directly to both of the SAP CEOs. His two-minute message gives a high-level overview of their strategy and progress toward sustainability. SAP’s 2009 report takes sustainability reporting to a whole new level by including video clips, interactive metrics in dashboards, and allowing readers to leave comments and feedback. You can see an 7.5 minute overview video here. It was a little hard to find, but I finally found it in the bottom menu, far right under Take a Tour.

SAP is wise, taking a two-pronged approach to sustainability. Not only do they support sustainability internally, through both environmental and social measures, but they also help their customers meet sustainability goals through the solutins they offer. It’s exactly what I’d expect of any BI company.

With this in mind, their report is broken down into three sections: Performance (internal), Solutions (external), and Feedback (engaging readers and stakeholders).

Performance – Each major objective, along with supporting objectives has interactive dashboards that offer filters to explore the data and timeline sliders to change data parameters. For example, the carbon footprint dashboard by default shows the world view but that can be changed to show just EMEA or US. The charts can be switched between pie charts and bar graphs. They even offer quarterly results in addition to the annual report. Finally, you have a choice to download to Excel or print. Nice way to show off their own product functionality.

Solution – SAP has structured their solutions to help companies drive profitability through sustainability. Take a look at their sustainability map which covers most all potential sustainability requirements for an organization. By offering solutions that cover business process management along with metrics and reporting, SAP breaks down the barriers to entry on sustainability programs for their customers. They even include a few case study examples you can read.

Feedback - Sap interviewed hundreds of stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, NGO’s, partners, and analysts, to best understand their priorities for SAP. You’ll see the results in their materiality matrix, where bio diversity was ranked lowest and areas like green house gasses and employee satisfaction ranked highest. You can even create and submit your own materiality matrix and contribute to SAP’s sustainability priorities. It’s a great example of what companies managing sustainability programs should do on a regular basis.

You will also find the unedited letter from their strategic advisory panel that applauds SAP’s efforts, and you see their Assurance Report from KPMG auditors. SAP follows the GRI guidelines and was rated an A+, the highest rating available.

If you’re still new to corporate sustainability and wonder just what a good report should look like, I encourage you to head out and take a look at SAP. They’re truly setting the bar.

You have a great idea. You turned it into a product. It’s going to solve all kinds of problems. The company you work for is great (lucky you). You see it and you want everyone else to see it too.

You want to make sure people know that you have the coolest thing around, so:
• You write a white paper that tells all about your product and its features.
• You write a case study on who bought your product and how they’re using it.
• You write a blog post letting your readers know what a visionary you or your company is
• You produce a Webinar that demos all the features of your product.

It’s natural. When you’re passionate and proud of something, you want to tell the world. But guess what? The world has their own things they care about and you now have to do something that can be very difficult—step into your customer’s shoes and see the world through their eyes.

Your customers live in a world with competing priorities, differing opinions, and tight budgets, yet are being asked to find answers to real business problems. Can you repeat the business problems your customers are dealing with – in their own words? Do you know the constraints they’re up against?

Beneath the business needs that your product may address, you also need to speak to the personal needs of your buyer. Yes, you’re selling to a real person who has his own personal agenda. Make sure you consider these personal needs as well:

• Make my company money
• Save my company money
• Stay employed by making the best decision
• Stay out of jail (compliance)
• Make me successful

The successful vendor or marketer will be the one who knows how to marry the product benefits with real world needs and do so in a way that shows the customer you understand his challenges. It’s the basic solution-based selling over product sales. Most vendors are doing this now, but we all need that reminder to take another look at our messages and make sure it’s all about the customer, not all about me.

Yesterday, I went to a luncheon put on by Qlikview at the Seattle Yacht Club. I love these vendor luncheons, not because of the free lunch (though it was delicious), but to keep up on the BI industry and hear first hand from other BI users and managers.

I really didn’t know much about Qlikview. Oh, I’ve heard the name now and then but still hadn’t heard anything of substance. Turns out they’ve actually been around since the 1993 and have been headquartered in the US since 2005. And, last year IDC named them as the fastest growing company for three years running—which is probably where I heard about them.

They have a nice reporting and analysis product that replaces the need for cubes and their associated processing time. Because all of the data for a particular subject area (created by IT) is in memory, users are not limited to a predefined hierarchy and can move around through the data very quickly. Ok, that’s very cool.

As for marketing, they seem to be doing most things right. They have a very robust website, including lots of available educational resources like white papers, analyst reports, a blog, webinars, and several “how-to” videos. They’re also good at promoting their community with an active Twitter account (@qlikview), a very busy forum, user groups, and even a wiki.

Finally – be still my heart – they even have a corporate social responsibility program. Currently, I only see that they will offer grants for free product, hosting, and training to selected non-profits. It’s a start, though I think they can do much more here.

So my BI friends, have you run across vendors that you should have known but didn’t? Why do you think that is?

I recently read an article on Fortune magazine titled, Oversharing: The Business of Share Buttons. The article captured something I’d been thinking about for quite a while: with so many means to share content, is content sharing becoming diluted?

There are two major players in the “share button” space – AddThis and ShareThis. AddThis offers 271 sharing services to its publishers and ShareThis offers 50 sharing services. 271 services? What the heck are all those share buttons at the bottom of blog posts? I recognize maybe a dozen. What is Kaboodle anyway?

The Fortune author calls these sharing services the long tail of sharing. Not the most popular means of sharing but certainly being used by some folks. As you might expect, Facebook and Twitter make up the bulk of the sharing venues. Even so, the sharing service business continues to grow.

Recently, Google has jumped into the mix with Google Buzz. Michael Calore at Webmonkey says, “Buzz is more than a little bit like Twitter — and a whole lot like Facebook and FriendFeed. Anything you post is automatically sent out to the people on your Google Contacts list you interact with the most. All updates are real-time, and anything you share is open for comments. You can also post privately to a select group of friends.”

As a marketer, I’m concerned about “link overload” causing my prospects and customers to tune out. Yes, I want my content to be seen by as many relevant eyes as possible. But the keyword is “relevant.” Not everyone in the world will need to see or even want to see the content I create. I need to make sure the information I share is targeted to the right audience, by sharing content where they’re most likely to see it. Is that with the Mister Wong button? I doubt it.

I thought it was just me. My daily tweet count is down this year but I attributed that to my suddenly being insanely busy. Busy is good but I do miss the pint-sized social interaction, even if it’s limited to 140 characters. However, I’m wondering if my trend is telling of something more significant.

In January of this year (2010), CNN published an article, “Has Twitter Peaked?” The article actually references the number of visitors to the Twitter site, down 770,000 from its peak in August 2009 of 22 million. These numbers are intriguing since Twitter has had such huge growth in 2009, with several months of double-digit growth.

The author, CNN’s Doug Gross, interviewed Mark Logan of Berkley Marketing, who echoed my own sentiments when he said he wasn’t sure if Twitter has peaked but his own usage has tailed off. Also in line with my own thinking, Logan mentions the “signal-to-noise” ratio and how the early conversations were centered around digital marketing topics and technology, but it has become much broader now.

There is standard model that describes the technology adoption lifecycle. It was developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State College and used to describe how new ideas and technologies spread in different cultures. You’ll recognize the typical bell curve.

So, how do you think the Twitter curve is shaped? My guess is that we’re in the early majority, but I’m not so sure we’ll ever get the late majority or the laggards. So far, none of my friends or family are using Twitter and I don’t expect them to.

Just so you don’t think I’m a Twitter-basher, I will tell you that Twitter has done a lot for me. I’ve met some great folks and won some great new clients. Maybe this post is my unconscious way of apologizing for my lack of tweeting. Tweet me at @BIMarcom.

Remember watching cartoons about Aladdin and the magic lamp? I always hoped I’d find a magic lamp on a beach somewhere and I’d be granted three wishes. Didn’t you wish you could have three wishes too?

Well today I’m setting aside my marketing hat, my BI hat, and my corporate sustainability hat. I’m putting on my customer hat and asking for three wishes I know  your marketing team can grant me.

Here are my three wishes:

1. I want a real relationship with you. I want to know that you are real people. I want to know that your company values align with mine. I want to know you are passionate about what you offer. I want to know you understand my needs and that you care about my success. I want to know how you give back to society. I will look for clues in your blog posts, Twitter tweets, forums, and other forms of social media.

2. I want you to help me be successful. I need to fully understand my challenge, including the business impacts. I need to learn better ways to do things, including best practices. I want to know how others have been able to overcome challenges and be successful. I need you to help educate me with credible and objective information. I need you to help me justify my business case. I will look for this in your white papers, case studies, data sheets, articles, webinars, e-books, and other educational content and tools.

3. I want to be able to find you when I need you. I want to easily find the information I need. I want my questions answered quickly. I want you to communicate in ways relevant to my needs. I want you to know who I am when I call. I will look for a well-designed, organized, and complete website, regular newsletters, targeted e-mails, trade show presence, search engine results, and most of all: contact information that leads me to a real person.

Rather than standing in the middle of the marketing department and looking out, I encourage you to walk over and stand in your customer’s office and look out. How do they see you and your company? Does your brand personality show through? Are you approachable? Do you offer a variety of content to help meet their educational needs?

If the magic genie could grant you three wishes (not necessarily marketing or business related), what would they be?

“It’s not easy being green.” – Kermit the Frog

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I’d write about something green—specifically, green washing. No this isn’t what happens when your three year old accidentally leaves a green crayon in his pocket and it goes through the wash.

According to Greenwashing Index, “Green washing is when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact.”

I found this on SourceWatch: The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines green wash as “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.” Ouch!!

Now, as marketers, we should absolutely be letting the world know about our efforts to create environmental sustainability. But, our efforts must be in the context of our overall environmental impact. We can’t be bragging that we recycle all of our shipping cardboard when we package our own goods in non-recyclable materials.

Today’s consumers have knowledge at their fingertips. Smart consumers will be looking at your company to see what kinds of claims you make about being environmentally friendly and what you do to back up those claims. Here are some areas they will be looking for (marketers take note and test your own green marketing!):

• Is there information available on the corporate website to back up ads or press releases? Perhaps even a sustainability section?
• Research where the money is going. Does the company support lobbyists or PACs that are in conflict with their claims to be environmentally friendly?
• Search the Internet for opposing views, or those who might have a “beef” with the company.
• Do the ads mislead with words or graphics? Is the green claim vague or hard to prove? Does the ad exaggerate the claim?
• Does the ad or claim leave out information that makes the company seem greener than it is? Do they try to divert attention from something else the company does?
• Does the company backup green claims with objective information and metrics? Do they publish a sustainability report?
• Is their messaging consistent over time? Some companies make a big deal about starting an initiative only to have the funds pulled and reprioritized to other business efforts later.

Consumers will continue to educate themselves about harms to the environment and will continually push companies to become more earth friendly. Corporations will need to prove themselves just to stay competitive, but must do so with honesty—not just for shareholders and consumers, but for the ultimate stakeholder—planet earth!

Happy Earth Day!

Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. They’re wondering which activities they should be participating in. “Should we be blogging and tweeting?” “Should we have a Facebook page?” “What about LinkedIn? Should we be there too?” These are typical of the types of questions that are heard whenever new techniques are introduced.

Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. The study looks both at marketing activities and how the marketing spend is split amongst those activities. Of course, it’s no surprise that Forrester finds social media to be the hot new marketing tool.

Looking at B2B social media efforts in 2009, the study shows:

• 68% have set up group pages on social networking sites
• 55% use Twitter for marketing
• 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008)

While these statistics are interesting, even surprising in some cases, she cautions that they represent what marketers are doing—not necessarily what is working. In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. What isn’t defined is the term “highly effective.” But I think the point made is that social media tactics still have a ways to go before they produce the returns of more traditional marketing tactics such as e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales.

Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. She states pretty strongly that marketers must get these right before adding social media to the mix.

As for marketing spend, most marketers cut spending across all activities, and their 2009 budgets looked the same as 2008. Not a huge surprise given the sting of the recession. She mentions that while trade show activities are down, these types of events still take up an average of 20% of the marketing spend. This is followed by traditional tactics like print ads, executive events, direct mail, and PR, which consumed between 10% and 13% of the budget.

Boiling this all down, she advises marketers to rethink their marketing mix and take bigger risks when allocating marketing budget for online efforts. She says that even though digital and social media efforts will not overtake traditional outbound communications anytime soon, marketers can no longer ignore the shift as customers move more into the social media space.

Personally, I expect to see even more of this marketing shift as 2010 sees a lift out of the recession and business returns to a (new) normal. Also contributing to this shift will be the increased ability to measure and see positive results. Something that has been slow to come.

What does your company think about social media marketing? Have they dipped a toe in the water? Have they seen positive results? Love to hear from you!

As some of you already know, I’m quite interested in the linkage between corporate sustainability, also known as corporate social responsibility or CSR, and business intelligence. There’s a very logical place for BI teams, processes, and technologies in CSR.

CSR wraps the traditional, profit-making business efforts in ways that reduce their impact on both the environment and society. This is often referred to as the triple-bottom line-balancing financial, social, and environmental ROI.

Each company’s sustainability goals will be unique. Manufacturers may look at reducing fuel consumption through optimizing shipping routes. Hoteliers may look both at recycling guest waste and hiring from the local community. Builders may look to use more renewable building materials.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was formed to create a common framework for companies to report voluntary reporting of economic, environmental, and social activities. It doesn’t specify what to report, but rather how to report. The GRI has adopted strategies to promote standards and provide assurance to stakeholders. These include consultation panels, internal audits, and independent reviews.

Though CSR metrics are not always easy to measure, companies should make sure the metrics they gather are both suitable and available. The metrics should be objective, relevant, complete, and consistently measurable.

Today, many large, well-known companies are producing annual corporate sustainability reports. These are actually done in a very similar fashion to the “annual report.” Companies use these reports to inform shareholders and communicate with the public to:

• Demonstrate their interest in the environment, their employees, and the communities they serve
• Show their commitment to human rights and fair labor policies
• Promote transparency with employees, shareholders, government regulators, and NGOs
• Enhance or protect their brand or reputation
• To grow shareholder value

Some of the companies reporting include Nike, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, AT&T and Intel. There are even more in the GRI featured report list. Take a look at some of these reports. I think you’ll find them fascinating and you’ll see the depth in which they’ve been able to establish metrics for CSR.

As a BI practitioner, consultant, or vendor, it’s time to start planning how you can support CSR. Are you being given a seat at the table? Can you help the CSR team think differently about gathering data for hard-to-measure metrics? Perhaps a CSR scorecard is in order to provide ongoing visibility.

More companies are realizing they can no longer selfishly think only of their profits. Stakeholders are beginning to demand they reduce their impact on the environment and contribute to social justice both with employees and the community.

What will be your role?

They say content is king. But anyone with a good Internet connection can publish content. In fact, the Internet allows anyone to market themselves as an expert. This funny video mocks just how easy it is. Warning: there are a few cuss words tossed in.

So, how do you separate the “wanna-be” experts from the real thing?

Do your homework. Get to know the person or the company. Read their content and understand their motivation.
Here are a few areas that experts tend to excel in:

• Blogs – Does the expert post content regularly—at least weekly? Is it full of buzzwords or does it actually say something that provokes your thinking? Jim Harris’s OCDQ Blog does just that, as does Ted Cuzillo with his Datadoodle blog.
• Websites – Does the expert offer helpful, educational content? Teradata has one of the largest resource libraries available on their site.
• Twitter – Does the expert stay top of mind with meaningful tweets? Kognitio, Initiate, Tableau, and Composite Software have discovered the power of Twitter.

Finally, you can feel pretty certain that you’re listening to an expert if they’ve published a book. Yes, anyone can self publish, but it takes quite a bit of discipline to produce a couple hundred pages of content. Some of my favorite experts who’ve published books are:

Jill Dyche (@jilldyche) “Customer Data Integration” “CRM Handbook” and a few others!
Phil Simon (@philsimon) “Why New Systems Fail” and “The Next Wave of Technologies”
Mike Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) “Writing White Papers”
Casey Hibbard (@casey_hibbard) “Stories that Sell”

Of course, anyone who does all of these things has raised their credibility as an expert—as all of the book authors do.

As a person or company that would like to be perceived as an expert, are you publishing content (big or small) on a regular basis? Is it quality content? Do you provide supporting facts to back up your opinion? Are you committed?

Love to hear who you think are good examples of experts who know how to use the Internet as a publishing medium to share their knowledge.