If you don't know what the cluetrain is, then you need to hop over to www.cluetrain.com and check it out. For now, here is the quick and dirty:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies...
...But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.
However, employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Mostly, they need to get out of the way so intranetworked employees can converse directly with internetworked markets.
Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.
So what does this have to do with SAP and Colgate-Palmolive? Check out this blog post by Dan on SDN about the new Colgate-Palmolive & SAP Imagineering Fellowship that has begun between the two. This is more than listening; SAP has opened up their doors to allow us to work directly with their emerging technologies team. This is a prime example of two companies tearing down their walls and allowing direct conversations.
Why is this a big deal? Companies are so used to operating in their own silos that they don't even remember what the voices of their customers sound like. Often times, a large corporation like SAP has so many products going out, that they never get to see how they all affect the actual users. When SAP brings a big customer on board like Colgate, it allows them to experience first hand what we have, what we are doing, and what we will need in the future. So really, this is not a big deal...It's a HUGE deal. We are not here to work on a specific technology, project, or implementation. Dan sums it up nicely when he says,
The goal of this pilot program is to create an environment where customers, like Colgate, can come and work with SAP’s Imagineering team to help provide a more in-depth understanding of how SAP’s solutions are used in real enterprises and the challenges faced by them. It will also allow us to co-innovate solutions and approaches to those needs, which of course helps both SAP and Colgate align our short and long goals.
Just the relationships that are being built are priceless, so now when you add in all the other goodies, you are golden. In a recent post by SAP HR guru Thomas Otter, his take on innovation by SAP customers is that
We need to do a better job at uncovering and nurturing it, but SDN is a great place to start. Customers telling their own story, in their own words beats a brochure anyday.
Dennis Howlett responds over on AccMan with the question
What has SAP contributed to enable this happy state of affairs?...
Does this mean SAP rocks? No. Individuals doing great things are what rock. Now if SAP could find 100 folk with stories like C-P, I might think about changing my tune. If they appointed a board member tasked and budgeted for innovation and put a number on it, I’d almost be ‘on side.’
As I sit here in sunny Palo Alto, writing this blog entry in the SAP Labs courtyard, I say this is the first step of showing what SAP is contributing to this happy state. These guys at SAP are hungry for knowledge and real experiences from their customers, and we are hungry to give it to them. Just like the cluetrain manifesto states "A powerful global conversation has begun.... the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in." SAP & Colgate all aboard the cluetrain...full steam ahead.
-ewH
