Saying Goodbye After Eight Amazing Years at SAP

[SOURCE: Andrew Hurley © 2011, used according to Creative Commons License]
“It feels right. But it’s emotional. Saying goodbye to anything you’ve done that long is hard.” –Angela Ruggiero

 

There is no better music for a reminiscent mood to than RUSH “Time Stand Still”

With a mix of sadness and excitement, I say goodbye to my colleagues at SAP this week after more than eight amazing years. Its no easy task to write a succinct goodbye blog with so much to reflect upon. So I will just focus on saying thanks to the incredible teams, customers, and partners I’ve had the honor to work with. While I name many people in this blog, there’s no way I can name everyone that deserves a thank you. So please contact me later and I’m more than happy to reminisce with you and thank you privately.

SAP is a company like no other. Between the amazing breadth of applications and technologies it’s developed and acquired over the years and the close strategic relationships it’s fostered with many of the world’s most successful brands, SAP well deserves the success it’s earned.

My time at SAP coincides with its transformation from traditional ERP vendor into a cloud services company. During that time I had a chance to hone my marketing skills by working with the world class marketing teams under CMOs Marty Homlish and Jonathan Becher.

I think of my time at SAP in four distinct epochs:

1. Helping SAP get saas-y by bringing SAP Business ByDesign to market
2. Guerrilla marketing for SAP Business Process Management
3. Going back to the cloud
4. Being assimilated by SAP HANA

Helping SAP Get SaaS-y with SAP Business ByDesign

 

[SOURCE: © 2014 Greg Chase]
I still have my original photo badge from when I first joined SAP eight years ago.

What Can Companies Expect from Crowd Funding and Crowd Sourcing?

[SOURCE] Crowds gathered in a Mall in UK.

Originally posted at SAPHANA.com.

Whenever new Internet-based business models are invented, some quickly create new kinds of companies – like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter.  Others mature more slowly such as in the case of crowd funding and crowd sourcing. Crowd funding is finding funding for projects, products and companies from strangers on the Internet with companies such as Kickstarter, IndieGogo, and AngelList helping crowd funding mature. Crowd sourcing is sourcing work or creative ideas from strangers on the Internet with companies such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and 99 Designs successfully showing different models of crowd sourcing.  These concepts have been around since the beginning of Web 2.0, but enterprises are still trying to understand how these might fit into their existing businesses.

Having been involved with SAP’s first crowd sourcing programs, the SAP HANA Idea Incubator, and the SAP Idea Place, I’ve run firsthand into the many different expectations that people have about these concepts. Most understand some of the benefits they might receive, but not the corresponding duties they have to making their project a success. Similarly, I think involving a crowd has some far reaching benefits that only some have set up their campaigns to fully realize.

 

Labor is Obsolete

“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”

St. Francis of Assisi

Labor as we knew it is obsolete. It has been for a while. Sure, vestiges of its greatness still exist in certain sectors, especially in civil service. We all still enjoy many of the workforce customs and regulations that organized labor helped put into place – people-friendly perks governing how employers treat workers. But the sway Labor enjoyed from the 1950’s until the 1980’s has lapsed.

Female workers in an H. J. Heinz can factory stamping out end discs (the discs that fit on either end of each can).
[SOURCE] Public domain.

It Still Takes People to Solve the Really Hard Problems

This blog is inspired by the article “Slow Ideas” in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande which discusses how some innovations spread swiftly, but many important ones are much slower, mostly because they involve changing people and culture.

“Slow Ideas” starts off with a history lesson of the adoption of anesthesia versus antiseptics, both incredibly novel advancements in medicine discovered in the mid 1800’s. Anesthesia turned out to be adopted much more quickly than antiseptics simply because it had immediate, obvious benefit to a surgeon’s experience. Imagine not having to rush through a treatment on a thrashing painful patient. Antispectics, on the other hand, provided a benefit to patients that was only realized over many days, and was dependent on many factors being made antiseptic, and later, sterile.

Reenactment of first etherized operation.
[SOURCE] This image is in the public domain due to its age.

Before the Social Media Marketing Settlers Arrived…

My first blog on this site, and one that still characterizes my approach to marketing – nurturing and building the community around your company or cause.

The Geek Marketing Blog

I am a marketer that engages in social media and blogging professionally. I figure the occasion of Social Media Week in San Francisco is as good a time as any to launch my own personal blog.

Let me start off with a rant that you might hear from your grandfather who had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways:

Back in the old days, before blogs were called blogs, before the term Web 2.0 had been coined, and back when social networking seemed useful only for illegally downloading copyrighted music, we called the precursor to social media “community building” or “community marketing”.

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The Amazing Cottage Economy of Indonesia

During my recent visit to Medan Indonesia, one impression that struck me was the amazingly rich number of cottage businesses, especially along the main roads. Within a couple of blocks, you can literally find nearly any kind of consumer retail business, grocery or food stand, and even some manufacturing.

Common residential / retail home in suburban Medan. Newer buildings have newer construction techniques, but basic architecture remains the same.
[SOURCE: © 2013 Greg Chase – According to Creative Commons License, use with attribution.]

Bali and the Double-Edged Sword of Globalization

I recently returned from a month-long trip in South East Asia that included a week in Bali. The whole trip was an amazing experience that will be fodder for a couple of more blogs. However, some of my biggest impressions were made in Bali:

1. How well Bali still retains its unique culture and background
2. How rapidly certain parts are being homogenized and paved over by the usual global resort and shopping brands.

Barong fights Rangda in a Balinese traditional dance performed by professional dance company.
[SOURCE:] © 2013 Greg Chase, under Creative Commons License, use with attribution.

Barong and Rangda costumes being delivered via parade between local Balinese temples as part of festival.
[SOURCE:] © 2013 Greg Chase, under Creative Commons License, use with attribution

If Resilience Was Called Abundance, We’d All Love It

Cross posted from my guest blog at Vtricity.

When was the last time you heard the term Resilience? Was it when you took high school physics class? Unless you have a job of planning for worst possible circumstances, you rarely even confront the term in day-to-day usage. Even talking about resilience probably feels morbid, like buying life insurance or planning your will.

Thinking resiliently: are ducks really flood-proof chickens?

[SOURCE: © PopTech, used according to Creative Commons License]

Definition of RESILIENCE

1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

How Community Marketing Creates High Value Relationships

One of the most potent marketing programs a company can run is to foster and engage with the community of customers and partners that surrounds their company. Done right, this can create high value relationships for everyone within the community, and with the company.

The World Has Ended, And So Begins A New World

 

 

You might not have noticed but the world has officially ended. According to Mayan calendars, and doomsday politics, it’s all over.

[SOURCE: © Tim Green, used under creative commons license]