France has a plan to put the latest 2.0 technology at the service of its citizens called Le France Numérique 2012. It outlines how the government intends to:

• Provide everybody access to digital networks and services
• Develop and provide new digital services
• Grow the number and usage of digital services by companies, government departments, and individuals
• Modernize the governance of the digital economy

As part of the plan, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French Deputy Minister for the Development of the Digital Economy launched a call last spring for innovative web initiatives. One of the selected projects, led by SAP Research, is called ARSA (“Analyse des Réseaux Sociaux pour les Administrations”, social network analysis for government authorities).

The project uses the Social Network Analyzer (SNA) technology from the SAP Business Objects Innovation Center to improve collaboration and government transparency in the public sector, laying the foundations for “Administration 2.0”.

A press conference this morning in SAP’s Paris headquarters hosted by Vincent de Poret outlined the project’s goals. Gilles Logeais, the Research Director for SAP Research France, explained that the two-year, €1.3M project will be carried out in partnership with the town of Antibes on the French Riviera, chosen as a representative mid-sized French town, with around 75,000 inhabitants and a wide variety of public services.

With help from students of the prestigious Ecole Centrale Paris engineering school, and a local cloud computing platform partner, Euclyde, the team will research how best to use social network analysis technology for government departments and local authorities, in order to:

• Optimize collaboration within public-sector organizations
• Improve transparency and convenience for citizens accessing services (who does what)
• Improve the ability of public-sector organizations to understand and react to the needs of citizens (who needs what)

Vincent de Poret, Cedric Ulmer, Alexis Naibo, and Gilles Logeais of SAP

Alexis Naibo of the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center gave a demonstration of the SNA technology, explaining how it can import data from a wide variety of sources including internal business applications, corporate databases, and external interfaces. Once the data has been gathered, people can search for experts and discover relationships using an intuitive interface.

Today’s organizations are increasingly complex, with frequent reorganizations and many cross-functional teams and initiatives. The result is that the standard corporate hierarchy, which is often the only relationship information available, rarely reflects how people really work together. Many people today are active members of professional social networks such as LinkedIn or Viadeo, and want it to be as easy to find an internal contact as it is externally.

SNA has the potential to gives a more complete, 360 degree view of collaboration in the organization, leveraging the knowledge already embedded in corporate applications such as human capital management, customer relationship management, and project management systems.

The prototype makes it easy to understand existing relationships between people in much the same way that traditional business intelligence systems help organizations understand data stored in their corporate systems.

Unlike consumer-oriented social network tools that only support one type of relationship between individuals (“I know X”) and a limited, predefined collection of data attributes, SNA supports multiple different types of relationships between both individuals and groups, and organizations can easily adapt and extend the information and links contained in each individual’s profile.

Anything technology that touches on relationships between people requires sensitive handling, and SNA is designed to meet all the technical, legal, and organizational requirements for data security and governance, by incorporating fine-grained control over information access. In addition, the platform is designed to fit seamlessly into existing environments, supporting standards such LDAP and Google’s OpenSocial, and with integration to mobile devices and corporate email accounts.

Alexis explained that the prototype has been implemented as a beta project within SAP and has proved very popular with employees. As a standard part of the internal company portal, all SAP’s approximately 50,000 staff have access to the solution, and it is used thousands of times each week.

An open SNA demonstration is available online for anybody would like to understand the technology, at http://sna-demo.ondemand.com

SAP is still investigating how best to package and commercialize the SNA prototype, but there has been considerable interest from potential customers, notably as a seamless part of specific SAP business vertical and functional applications.

Cedric Ulmer, the research project lead for SAP, explained that town of Antibes, like any other organization, needs to work as efficiently as possible, but as a public organizations must also be as transparent as possible with its citizen customers. The first phase of the project will be to adapt the SNA technology to the town’s particular needs. Cedric cited some applications that might be of interest, such as:

• Understanding the complex links between the local authority and the many different suppliers that compete for public contracts, and the relationship between those different suppliers
• How the local authority can best collaborate with the wide range of different local associations (sporting associations, business groups, etc.) to meet the broader needs of local citizens

Other articles:

• A social network for the French Administration, by SAP (in French) (Google Translate version)
• SAP wants to build a social network for the French Administration (in French) (Google Translate version)
• SAP and Antibes implement social networking (in French) (Google Translate version)

Antibes image adapted from original photo by Valeria Cerutti

We’re strong believers in collaboration, and your participation will make this event exceptional. Please share your passion, your latest project/discovery or pet peeve in or around the SAP (Eco)System.

Here’s a short list of some of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 sessions planned:

• Adobe Flash and SAP- changing the user experience – Andre Salazar. ABSTRACT
• Envision the Future of the Business User Workplace — Matthias Zeller. ABSTRACT
• Cloud Computing at SAP — Frank Stienhans. ABSTRACT
• Spark – Enabling Grassroots Innovation inside of SAP– Rebecca Sowards-Emmerd, Will Gardella. ABSTRACT
• Assemble your Tribe. Enterprise Community Building in the 21st Century. Mark Patrick Finnern. ABSTRACT

And I’d particularly like to point out the BusinessObjects Community Session by Laurent Bride of the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center, who will be showing off the latest Web 2.0 prototypes:

Please come and join to learn about the latest trends in Business Intelligence and see live demos of the newest BusinessObjects Innovation Center prototypes including "Social Network Analyzer", "Business Objects Explorer on the iPhone" and more!

In addition, I’m told that many of the sessions will be recorded and made available via SAP Connect, so you’ll be able to “participate even if you can’t make it to the event.

Ted Ueda, a Senior Engineer with SAP BusinessObjects Technical Customer Assurance, has posted a great piece explaining how to use the SAP BusinessObjects Social Network Analyzer Web Services API to extend functionality and integrate with other applications.

I’ve posted the screen shots and a one-line description below. For more explanation and the code samples, checkout Ted’s blog posting.

Java Desktop App Integrating SNA with Google Maps:

Display a refined list of users on a map

.NET Desktop App Sorting Email Address Based on Relationships

Rank emails by how “close” they are to you in your networks.

If you think SNA would fill a role within your organization, try it out at http://sna-demo.ondemand.com, check out the Web Services API, and provide feedback!  We’re always looking to improve our products, and any comments, suggestions, enhancement request you may have would be more than welcome.

In the year and half since OpenSocial’s public launch, there are now over 700 million end users of OpenSocial applications across numerous social sites (containers) around the world. With OpenSocial’s proven global success in traditional social applications, the enterprise software community has now begun to realize its potential and build innovative solutions that cater to the enterprise. Join us for a session centered on how the enterprise software development community is successfully bringing social concepts and technology into the enterprise. Key enterprise players will present and demonstrate how they’ve successfully used OpenSocial software to build new social solutions.

The SAP BusinessObjects Social Network Analyzer (SNA) prototype from the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center uses an ATOM-based RESTful API inspired from Open Social but extended to cover enterprise requirements and richness. It is used to communicate between the SNA client and the “Relationship Analysis Server”, as illustrated below.

If you’re a partner (VAR, OEM) or an application developer and are interested in the API, or would like to build a new client for the Relationship Analysis Server, the documentation is available for download. It explains how a specific client can login, search for entities, and extract profiles networks and paths from the Relationship Analysis Server using simple HTTP requests. See the example page below for more information.

Enterprise social network analysis is clearly an essential part of getting a real return on investment on Web 2.0 technologies within organizations — something that has so far proved difficult.

Today, the “way organizations work” typically has little to do with the official department structures. Organizations are becoming increasingly networked and collaborative, with flat hierarchies, multiple reporting relationships, and a focus on cross-functional initiatives.

Tools like the social network analyzer can help illuminate the “real” organizational structures that are driving the business — and this is essential if we’re to deliver on the promise of translating high-level strategy into low-level execution through aligned objectives.

My company, SAP, has been undergoing extensive reorganization over the last few years — partly because it’s simply the nature of the technology business, but also because of the large BusinessObjects acquistion, and as a reaction to the recent economic downturn.

We have implemented the social network analyzer prototype within our own organization, and users have reported that it’s an extremely valuable tool for discovering links with co-workers. If you find yourself on a call with someone you haven’t yet met, you can not only look up their traditional employee profile, but also find out what other links exist between you, such as the common contacts you both work with. 

As with any new technology, getting the full benefits will require changes to way companies work. In particular, there will have to clear ownership of “network relationshp management” within organizations: ensuring that all the right people in the right teams are working together as they should.

This is perhaps a great opportunity for the human resources role to be able to really show the value of people and their interactions to the overall functioning of the company.

Enterprise social network analytics is a step towards the future of “business user applications”, and we should expect to see variants of this type of functionality embedded in almost every corporate application.

When I was growing up, my father always insisted that “business was all about relationships” (I didn’t pay much attention, sadly). But relationships can be complicated, so if you want to have a head start figuring out how your company works, download the prototype and start giving us feedback on how to make it better!

(OK, so I know puns are the lowest form of wit… apologies)

There have already been lots of products available to visualize public social networks such as Twitter. But up until now, there hasn’t been any technology designed from scratch to let people analyze corporate network relationships. ESN lets you import and aggregate all the corporate relationships between people that are already recorded in your business applications, such as:

• Management hierarchies from your human resources system
• Data on who worked on which deals, from your sales force automation system
• Partner, customer, and partner supplier contacts along your supply chain system
• People who work on similar transactions within your operational systems

If appropriate, this data can then be supplemented with other opt-in relationship data from employees, such as instant messenger contacts, twitter contacts, etc.

Features

SNA can accept relationship information from any system, using a simple, open format (e.g. name of object 1, name object 2, type of relationship, category data) and stores it in a relationship-centric database structure. Once the information is stored, it can be used to filter and browse the connections between people. (In fact, it could be used for any kind of relationships between entities — companies, products, chemicals, etc.)

There are three main tabs available in the interface:

The “Refine” Tab

You can easily choose where to start the network analysis by filtering people on any criteria available in the underlying data base, such as geography, role, project, company, etc. SNA automatically aggregates and displaysdata about the chosen group. For example, you could filter using the name of a customer account. SNA would then display all the people who had some connection with that account, and a breakdown of their profile (by job title, for example). Groups of people (such as regular committees or existing cross-functional project teams) can also be represented and included in the network. When you click on an individual, you can see their details, as collected from multiple systems.

The “Explore” Tab

By clicking on any individual, you can view the relationships they are part of. By changing the drop-down menu, you can switch between different types of relationship (“reports to”, “worked on project with”, etc.), and choose different types of representation (standard organization chart, circular view, etc.)

The “Connect” Tab

The “connect” tab lets you determine the shortest number of relationship steps between various individuals, across the various different types of relationships available in the system.

At any time, you can collect people in the “clipboard” area by right-clicking their names. You can then email these people, or export their names (and other relevant details) to any other system.

The Benefits

SNA brings corporate business intelligence to the world of social networking. It can be used to augment and extends any existing enterprise 2.0 or social media strategies: helping locate experts in the organization, build communities, manage employee talent, or reorganize business processes. It’s ideal for collecting people to work on cross-functional teams or analyzing relationships with your customers or suppliers across the whole organization.

SNA can be embedded into any other application. Providing this type of collaboration functionality is a key part of the next generation of “business user” applications that use technology to help transform the daily processes of business people just as ERP systems have transformed operational processes over the last two decades.

Next Step: Try it Yourself!

SNA is a prototype today, and is covered by the standard licensing terms of the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center. Your feedback is strongly encouraged: what functionality needs to be added? What are the key areas where this technology could be the most useful. You can access and use the software yourself, using the SAP BusinessObjects OnDemand platform, at sna-demo.ondemand.com.

Please send your comments directly to SAP BusinessObjects innovation center.

SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center has just unveiled a prototype of some great new Web 2.0 technology called Social Network Analyzer (SNA). It aggregates existing enterprise data to display and discover organizational relationships. It provides the missing link between social networking platforms and enterprise information systems, by letting organizations leveraging data available in corporate information systems.

SNA helps jump-start social networking within the organization by letting you import and aggregate all the corporate relationships between people that are already recorded in your business applications, such as:

• Management hierarchies from your human resources system
• Data on who worked on which deals from your sales force automation system
• Partner, customer, and partner supplier contacts along your supply chain
• People who work on similar transactions within your operational systems

If appropriate, this data could then be supplemented with other opt-in relationship data, such as instant messenger contacts, twitter contacts, etc. It’s a great step towards bringing Enterprise 2.0 into reality.

How Does it Work?

SNA can accept relationship information from any system, using a simple, open format (e.g. name of object 1, name object 2, type of relationship, category data) and stores it in a relationship-centric database structure. Once the information is stored, it can be used to filter and browse the connections between people. There are three main tabs available in the interface:

The “Refine” Tab

You start analyzing the network by filtering using on any criteria available in the underlying data base, such as geography, role, project, or company. SNA automatically aggregates and displays data about the chosen group. For example, you could filter using the name of a customer account. SNA would then display all the people who had some connection with that account, and a breakdown of their profile (by job title, for example). Groups of people (such as regular committees or existing cross-functional project teams) can also be represented and included in the network. When you click on an individual, you can see details collected from multiple systems.

The “Explore” Tab

By clicking on any individual, you can view the relationships they are part of. By changing the drop-down menus you can switch between different types of relationship (“reports to”, “worked on project with”, etc.), and choose different types of representation (standard organization chart, ego-centric view, etc.)

The “Connect” Tab

The “connect” tab lets you determine the shortest number of relationship steps between various individuals, across the various different types of relationships available in the system.

At any time, you can collect people in the “clipboard” area by right-clicking their names. You can then email these people or export their names (and other relevant details) to any other system.

What Are the Benefits?

SNA augments and extends any existing enterprise 2.0 or social media strategies: helping locate experts in the organization, build communities, manage employee talent, or reorganize business processes. It’s ideal for collecting people to work on cross-functional teams or analyzing relationships with your customers or suppliers across the whole organization.

SNA can be embedded into other applications. Providing this type of enterprise social networking and collaboration functionality is a key part of the next generation of “business user” applications that use technology to help transform the daily processes of business people just as ERP systems have transformed transactional  processes.

Next Step: Try it Yourself!

SNA is a prototype today, and is covered by the standard licensing terms of the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center. Your feedback is strongly encouraged: what functionality needs to be added? What are the key areas where this technology could be the most useful? You can access and use the software yourself, using the SAP BusinessObjects OnDemand platform at sna-demo.ondemand.com.

Please send your comments directly to SAP BusinessObjects innovation center.