Bushman: It's a tricky proposition to do that. I come from a consulting background, started my career with one of the larger consulting firms where I was trying to give advice to companies on how to best implement SAP and the other third-party solutions that were tied into their particular project. I look at this from the vantage point of trying to be consultative in all the advice that I give.

I have long participated in similar forums on the internet, other forums where you can ask and answer questions specifically related to SAP. I've always tried to leave information and advice that is not a typical sales pitch, tried to look at it through an end-user's eyes, someone who really has a question, a true problem they're trying to solve. You don't want to be inundated with marketing and sales pitches.

Rather, let's go ahead and answer those questions and give the feedback that an end-user would be looking for and then just mention that, hey, my name is Eric Bushman and I work for Paymetric. Hopefully the user has found that advice helpful, so when it comes time to look for a solution that can handle payment card processing, they know to look for something from Paymetric.

Be a good community member, be a good citizen of the SAP ecosystem, and often that advice is going to help your peers who are working on that same kind of solution. At the same time, let them know you work for a company that has a solution, and they can find you on EcoHub. If they want to go and receive the marketing or sales pitch, they can do so there in a forum that's specifically designed for that type of interaction.

Reed: That's great input. It's not an easy balance to make, but one thing I really heard from your consultative approach is that you're building trust by giving advice of value; the product discussion comes once that trust is built. Would you say that's a good way of describing it?

Bushman: Absolutely, I would. When I look back over some of the interactions I've had with people over the years on these various discussion forums, more often than not it's with someone who has been researching this problem for quite a long time. They may or may not already have a solution in place that is Paymetric solution or a competitor solution.

They're not out there trying to shop for a product that's going to solve their needs necessarily. They're looking out in the internet for a solution that's going to help them with a specific problem they have at that time. If you can offer them that solution and help them with that problem, in my opinion, that's pretty much the best advertising you can offer.

Reed: Another thing about online participation that can be challenging for companies is how much time and resources to invest. And, it's not always easy to measure ROI from our involvement in online communities. Have you found a way to quantify the benefits of EcoHub participation so far?

Bushman: We've participated in EcoHub since it was launched, and since that time, in the last several months we've received several leads through the EcoHub site. Our sales cycle is typically anywhere from 3 to as long as 12 months, so we've not seen any of those particular leads close yet, although some of them have progressed very well in our sales cycle and we expect to obtain closure on many of them very soon.

It's the fact that we now have an additional channel whereby we can source leads from. And in our opinion, these are very highly qualified leads: this is someone who has come out to the EcoHub site specifically looking for a solution like ours to solve a business problem they have. We're receiving a great benefit already just by being able to qualify those leads so highly up front.

Reed: For those who look up Paymetric on EcoHub, what will they find on your landing page?

Bushman: If you go out to EcoHub and you look up Paymetric or you search for a payment card processing solution, you'll find a link to Paymetric's presence on EcoHub where we have uploaded several white papers and marketing literature for you to download. There's also an overview of our solutions.

We have a couple of customer success story quotes listed from customers who enjoy our solution and have left information for others to read. We have, of course, product reviews that have been written by customers, and we have links for some of the blogs we've posted in SDN or BPX.

Not only are you able to come out here and find literature directly related to Paymetric, you can sign up for a demo or watch a demo live. You're also going to be able to link to other relevant information throughout SCN, such as the blogs we've posted in the SDN blog. You can also find information linking to various wiki articles that Paymetric has helped host in the SAP Wiki forums related to electronic bill presentment, payment, tokenization and credit card encryption.

The EcoHub name is a very apt moniker because it truly is a "hub" for each individual merchant to provide links and spokes out to all of the information they provide within the SAP Marketplace.

Reed: Links and spokes - that is a good way of describing how EcoHub is now starting to fit into the broader realm of SCN. Are there any new announcements or breaking news about Paymetric that you want to share with the listeners?

Bushman: Paymetric is going to be presenting at Sapphire this year. You'll be able to find our booth at Sapphire. We look forward to having anyone come by and chat with us about our solutions and our experience with EcoHub, if you'd like to do so as well.

We are going to have several announcements at Sapphire. Hopefully one of them will be that we have recently been awarded our third Pinnacle Award. We've won twice in the past, and we're very proud of that accomplishment. In 2002, we received an award for developing a solution to accept credit cards directly in SAP's financial module. Last year, we received a Pinnacle Award for development of the Enterprise Service Interface for Payment Card Processing with NetWeaver.

This year, we are a candidate for two different areas, both related to introduction of a tokenization solution for security of card numbers within SAP. We'll have announcements related to our tokenization solution, as well as a processing partner relationship we've recently formed; those will be given at Sapphire, and we look forward to seeing everyone there.

Reed: Good stuff. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. Was there anything else you wanted to say about the EcoHub Community or some advice for first-time visitors?

Bushman: The advice I would give is to go check it out. It's a wonderful web site. There are a lot of solutions already listed, quite a bit of feedback from customers who use those solutions, and the little hidden gems that you'll find on EcoHub are those links each of the solution providers has to other information throughout the SCN world where they can find additional information about those particular solutions and their uses within SAP's products.

So go out and look for a solution, but don't dwell solely on the information provided on that site. Follow some of the links and see where they take you. You are bound to find additional information throughout the ecosystem that you can use to help you with the particular business problem you're researching.

Reed: Eric, thank you for taking the time to provide our listeners with an inside view of the EcoHub Community and Paymetric's participation on SCN. We'll look forward to seeing the Paymetric team at Sapphire.

Before we sign off, I do want to make sure our listeners know how to access the EcoHub Community. The direct URL is EcoHub.SAP.com. If you're already a member of BPX, SDN or the SAP BusinessObjects Community, you can access EcoHub through the main horizontal bar next to the other three community tabs. If you're not yet registered with SAP's online communities, you can register for all three communities at the same time and get access to EcoHub through any or all of the three.

Once you're on EcoHub, you can find the third-party solutions like Paymetric simply by typing in the name of the focus of the solution you want, or the name of the vendor, into the EcoHub search engine.

On that note, I'd like to thank our listeners for joining us on this EcoHub Community podcast. With that, this is Jon Reed of JonERP.com signing off. We'll see you online soon at EcoHub.SAP.com.