My research and findings about SAP communities

[Former Member]

Hi my name is Badr Bijjou, and I am a MBA student.

I am currently conducting research about SAP communities, this is an amazing time for the Enterprise and I’m having a fantastic time collecting data and interacting with people around this topic. If you are interested in what I have learned so far head over and take a look ( [www.bijjou.de|http://www.bijjou.de] ). If you want feel free to add your input as well, as I collect more and more data I plan to share my results, so others can learn from it as well – first I’ll have to finish my thesis though

Some of the more interesting things I’ve learned so far are from a small SAP community:

SAP community members share valuable information with others, even if they know that there might be competitors. This is quite interesting. Is the SAP community an area free from thoughts about competition?

as well as this little interesting bit of information,

SAP community members have high trust in the SAP brand and fun using it, an aspect which is in my opinion in contrast to the nature and complexity.

Any thoughts on either of those?

Cheers

Badr

[Former Member]

Thank you all for sharing your opinions and provided answers.

Badr

[Former Member]

did the survey. hope that helps. i would like to read about the results one day .-)

[Former Member]

I took your survey, but am not sure what you mean by competitor in the sense of the SDN community.

Rob

[Former Member]

It is the regular case, that the most SAP community members are working for different companies.

These companies might have several intercorporate relationships e.g. some are partners, competitors, buyer -seller relationship etc. . (who knows)

We know that business processes are critical to corporate success, thats why SAP has a good business model :-). So there is a high need in the market for customized SAP solutions. The best solutions require good knowledge. Knowledge is shared in this community for free. Notice: There are some companies who might earn money, for knowledge / information waht you are sharing here.

Example: If you are an SAP consultant you might be interested to get a lot of orders from customers to design and implement a SAP solution. You competitive advantage and unique selling proposition / arguments towards the customer is your knowledge. In regular cases, there more SAP consultants out there. So you are in competition in the regular market (outside the community). But within the community you share your knowledge...

I hope could describe the intend behind...

Badr

[Former Member]

I completed the survey...Interesting...Also I take a look at the results...I'm a SAP die hard fan...So my results should help SAP to get better statistics -:)

BTW...Sure, we are in competition outside the community...But by helping other members, we also get more knowlegde, so it's good to help...

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

Well, I'm not sure I entirely agree. A lot of the competion seems to be from outsourcing firms who have hired completely unqualified people to turn out code. So we help them and if we do a good enough job the outsourcing firms grow and take over new jobs. Who knows? The next one may be...

Rob

[Former Member]

Rob:

Ok, you got a valid point...We learn, but also help lazy people to get their jobs done...

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

Well, that's true, but not really what I meant.

Maybe we're helping lazy people take our jobs.

Rob

[former_member10945]

Survey Complete. Good luck with the MBA.

-d

[Former Member]

Going to do the survey tonight...Don't have access at work...

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Thank you all for taking the questionnaire!!

I hope, that there will be some more people taking the questionnaire, to have a broad feedback of this community. I will share you with you all the results and provide you also with the interpretation of the made findings.

cheers

Badr

[ThomasZloch]

>

> SAP community members share valuable information with others, even if they know that there might be competitors. This is quite interesting. Is the SAP community an area free from thoughts about competition?

Good question, good question. Let me know your results once they're available.

I'm a member since 2004 but have only recently started answering questions. Not sure about the impetus. I extracted some good knowledge from SDN, so maybe it was time to give something back.

Well, it's actually about becoming a points zillionaire and having a good laugh sometimes!

Question to Rob, you're almost at 10K, what motivates you to help people out for many years now?

Greetings

Thomas

[agasthuri_doss]

Hello Badr Bijjou,

I completed your online survey. ( Couple of Good Questions )

Regards

Agasthuri Doss

[Former Member]

@Thomas - actually, I'm over 10K if you take into account Blogs, etc.

Good question - I enjoy a challenge, but I must admit, I get really tired of answering the same questions over and over again, so I may give it up soon.

On the other hand, if there were a forum where people presented unique problems, that would be really interesting, but I'm not holding my breath.

Rob

[ThomasZloch]

>

>I get really tired of answering the same questions over and over again, so I may give it up soon.

That would be sad but understandable.

> On the other hand, if there were a forum where people presented unique problems, that would be really interesting, but I'm not holding my breath.

The ongoing discussion about all the "noise". Most of the time, I am not looking at subjects containing "urgent", that are all in capital letters, or completely vague or repetitive. This gets rid of a lot right away. On the other hand, I have a growing collection of thread watches with the really interesting stuff (by my standards).

Cheers

Thomas

[Former Member]

Completed the survey.

Good luck on the results

[Former Member]

Dear Badr,

I completed the survey questions, although I was expecting something completely different to your research on customers, users, business partners, etc.

Good luck and clean statistics please...

Ni!

[Former Member]

Dear Ni!

Thanks for the feedback and you attendance. I hope you have enjoyed the questions and are amazed positively?! I was really surprised, that the average duration taking the questionnaire was less than 6 minutes, and the people have answered accurately.

Cheers

Badr