Hardy: There was a lot of discussion about that. At the time we decided to launch the pilot at Sapphire, we actually started by mapping the communities at the top level to the campuses we had at Sapphire. What was interesting was that we liked the idea initially, but then when we started to try to use it ourselves, we found it not very intuitive at all.

We had lots of discussion about creating a hierarchy of communities that would be simple enough for people to navigate and submit the idea where it belonged the best, and to find something that was relatively straightforward for SAP. What we had in mind from the beginning was to create something simple and very flat; we didn't want to create sublevels, although maybe at some point they're going to be necessary.

We didn't want the site structure to reveal how SAP is organized and all the different products, which is quite complex for a user, especially if you think about the public and the crowd, which has not really used or is very knowledgeable about SAP solutions. That's how we came up with these three different top level communities. So far I haven't heard people complaining about being confused by these.

Of course, at some point we thought that instead of future technology we would talk about innovation. But the whole site was about innovation, so that's why we changed it to technology. The last one, which is a session by invitation only, is the one we are struggling with at the moment. We have not really found the exact or best usage for it, but it might come and we would love to get some insight from the community on how to make this most useful.

Reed: Kuhan, anything to add to that?

Milroy: When you look at the structure, it's definitely the way to find the different types of topics. But you can also use a search. In the sense of just forgetting the structure, the search is intended to really help people dig down once you have lots of ideas and find one that may be relevant to your own. Basically, if there's an idea already there, it may be worth it to first search for that idea and add your vote to it, as opposed to creating a duplicate. If you create duplicates, people will likely start splitting their votes - picking one over the other -which actually creates competition against other ideas.

Reed: One of the key ingredients of success when you build a community platform is responsiveness. When someone posts an idea, they want to see they were listened to. How will SAP respond? How will someone be able to track the progress of their idea?

Milroy: You've hit a key point. That's what we hear a lot about enhancement systems and why they've failed to the point where some customers ask to have it shut down because no one responds. Product solution managers aren't responding to the ideas. One of the biggest reasons is that there are a lot of ideas, and there's just no connection among them.

If you think of, say, 1,000 customers submit 10 ideas, so that's 10,000 ideas. Solution managers have to go in and dissect that. If you look at how Idea Place is structured, 1,000 customers could submit 10 ideas each, but there's likely going to be a lot of overlap in those ideas and the actual amount of ideas is reduced. Instead of submitting ideas that are identical, which would happen in an enhancement system, you'll have one customer submit an idea and many customers will vote on it.

That's a really big change, and we're actually expecting it to be orders of magnitude less than the amount of ideas that are contained in the system. It also forces customers to do some other things as well, like if an idea is close to the idea they have, they can add comments. By adding the comment, they can either extend the idea a little or perhaps strengthen the business case, which again resolves the duplicate issue and makes the task a lot easier for a product manager to get in there.

There are two parts: one is basically providing this collaborative piece, which really helps to bring the community together and allow them to prioritize the ideas. Now that they are contributing to the same idea, they're voting it up, and it gives a kind of top five or bottom five that a solution manager can look at.

When it comes to the solution manager engaging with the model, there are a lot fewer ideas they have to look at in the first place. They see that they're prioritized, so it's a subset of the ones that are already there. Then, of course, the final piece is responding. Instead of responding to 10,000 ideas in an enhancement system, they respond to one idea. All the customers that have voted for or submitted an idea or commented or have just requested a follow up will be notified of any change: if the idea is going to be implemented, if it is under review or if there's a request for more feedback.

It's really kind of streamlining the process within SAP as well to ensure that the idea has the best chance of being considered.

Reed: Will there be a "hall of fame" of ideas that started on Idea Place that were implemented inside of SAP or maybe incorporated into some products?

Milroy: Absolutely. I think there are two key elements. I think just listening to customers is probably the majority of the issue. It's amazing how many customers have just not heard a response from an idea submitted, but that's not the whole piece. There's definitely an expectation that some ideas will be implemented. What we have is a "completed ideas" area. I don't think we have any in there yet because we just launched, but the intention is absolutely that once we have completed ideas, they will be shown in that area and, ideally, we can build that up over time.

Reed: Do you have any final comments or suggestions for new Idea Place visitors as they visit the site and hopefully have an impact on taking it where you want it to go?

Milroy: The first thing I want to mention is that we are starting out. It's a pilot, so we had to prioritize the things we wanted to do. We've kept it very simple, and people will see that once they come in. Second of all, just come to the site and browse around, see the ideas in the system, see what's there.

In addition, Idea Place supports SAP Community Network users, but it doesn't support Service Marketplace user login right now. Service Marketplace users can browse, but if they want to submit ideas they can still go through Service Marketplace today and submit ideas through there. We have had a lot of feedback on that, so that's one I just want to flag to let people know we've heard.

We are looking at adding the Service Marketplace users support a lot earlier than we had initially planned, so that's a big piece. When that comes, start browsing around and sharing ideas, voting and commenting.

Hardy: Since it's a pilot, we have a session for you to give us feedback and help us to improve Idea Place. If you go on the site and do not want to submit ideas for products and solutions you can join one of the sessions that we have under the "Services And Communities" link where you can help us to implement the site and suggest ideas for improving it. This is your chance to influence what we have done with the pilot and make it even more appealing for you.

Our commitment is really to read all the ideas that come and to respond to them. Of course, it's easier now that the site is small, so I encourage any of you who have ideas and want to share some feedback with us on the site or anything else to do that on Idea Place itself.

Reed: Thanks to both of you for joining us today and giving us an inside look at the Idea Place launch. Good luck with the growth of the site. Before we sign off, I want to make sure our listeners know how to access Idea Place. Simply go to ideas.sap.com and follow the login instructions on the top left.

On that note, I would like to thank our listeners for joining us today on this SAP community podcast. This is Jon Reed of JonERP.com signing off. I'll see you online soon at ideas.sap.com.