Every Company Is a Media Company: SAP’s Influencer Summit

By Don Bulmer

This year’s (2010) SAP Influencer Summit was not only a successful model for influencer engagement, but an excellent example of Tom Foremski’s quote: “Every Company is a Media Company.” SAP’s amazing team of communication, marketing and business professionals just wrapped up their 2010 Annual Influencer Summit in Santa Clara, California.

The Influencer summit is a marquee event for SAP that dates back to 2001.  And when we started the event (in 2001), the core audience was a small group of elite IT industry analysts representing many of the top research firms in the industry. Over the years the event has evolved tremendously – in scope, size, audience and importance to SAP and now includes a wide range of industry influencers.

The reason for the increase in scope is tied directly to the changing nature of influence in our industry.  People who make decisions to purchase business software and other IT related hardware and services increasingly rely on multiple sources of experts/expertise in the industry to support, inform and shape their opinions - that ultimately influence their purchase decisions. 

Equal to this, the disruptive nature of social media and advancements in collaboration and mobile technologies have drastically changed the way that decision makers access, consume information, engage and collaborate with their trusted sources in the industry. 

The adjustments that we have made to our influencer relations program over the years are tied directly to these forces of change.

A bit of traditional…

The Influencer Summit is one core component of SAP's overall influencer relations program. 

It’s important as it provides us with the opportunity to bring SAP’s top executives, customers and partners together with the most important thought leaders and ‘truth seekers’ in the business software industry.  The core audience of this event represent the most prominent individuals in the IT analyst, academia, media, blogger, business consulting, customer, partner and SAP mentor communities.  Our estimate is that the people who attend this annual summit represent channels to the market that have an estimated $45 billion impact on business software purchase decisions.  It is an audience we respect and value very, very much.