SAP Makes a Move on End Users with Collab and Analytics

Business software make SAP is targeting business users and entrepreneurs in particular with a number of newly announced initiatives that rely heavily on partnerships.

The firm revealed an update for the SAP StreamWork enterprise sharing app, introducing integration with Mikogom, a different kind of collaboration service that has the potential of introducing a lot of added value. What’s new is that users can now schedule and host video conferences or ‘cyber meetings’ from within the software, rather than using an alternative service from a competing vendor.

The second thing that the update brings is iPad support. There’s now a tablet-optimized StreamWork client available on the App Store that includes all the major capabilities of the standard edition.

“Business workers are tired of using multiple, separate social collaboration solutions that are disconnected from the environments they know and use every day,” said Sameer Patel, global vice president and general manager, Social Software Solutions, SAP. “To truly enable people to solve problems more rapidly and make business-critical decisions, they need to be able to work with the tools and applications they already have.”

SAP is not targeting the traditional business user exclusively – entrepreneurs also became a focus this week when the company announced a couple of new partnerships. One is a joint effort with Endeavor to develop an analytical dashboard that will visualize the impact that the more prominent entrepreneurs make on the latter’s niche community. The second one in turn is a team-up with Ahoka Changemakers, another entrepreneur community that is hosting a contest that asks participants, who can be either individuals or organizations, to submit business strategies.

The end user seems to be flavor of the month for SAP. Just a few days ago Success Factors added a number of features to its BizX suite with the goal of improving user experience.