During the holiday season, I’ve been digging out a few of my most watched videos of the year and posting them on JonERP.com. This video, on "Making the Business Case for SAP Mentors," is my best attempt to date to capture the impact of the SAP Mentor Initiative - at least on my own work. I taped this video prior to the SAP Influencer Summit on December 8, 2009 in Boston. This was a late night video project, and I took three shoots - this one was the winner. We were asked to submit a video on a compelling story from the SAP ecosystem with a business case - something with real meaning to SAP customers. I believe the SAP Mentor Initiative is such a story - during this video, I make my case.

We were given a three minute limit on the videos - I went just over. It was not an easy job to make my case for SAP Mentors and then to provide a relevant business context in such a short time. Obviously being a part of the initiative I am biased, but I believe there is a real story here and one that in my view deserves more exposure, and has real relevance to customers and partners looking to build more effective communities that can help them to better anticipate trends and take pro-active approaches to issues related to service, product design, public relations, brand reputation, etc.

Of course, SCN is hardly just about Mentors. SCN welcomes a range of contributors with different time commitments. Craig Cmehil has done a good job of outlining what I refer to in the video as SCN’s "Spheres of Influence." That means there are many roles to play here and many valued contributors. The sum of all this is what I personally consider to be SAP’s greatest competitive strength currently. I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot the video, but I hope some of this came across.