Michelle “CFO” (Cheap Funday Organizer) Wong and Pete Scholtens presented SAP StreamWork at the SAP Vancouver Inside Track event to a room of customers and partners.
As CFO, Michelle needs to gain consensus on important topics such as what kind of event will draw the most participation from people on her team. She also has to do this while not disrupting the work ongoing in her department by mass emailing her team or scheduling multiple meetings. Hence, SAP StreamWork, a convenient, easy to use tool that enables her to gather feedback and make decisions online.
While that’s probably not the real origin of the SAP StreamWork product, it’s a scenario that I relate to as I often also need to gather input from my colleagues and am wary of the disruption that is caused by starting another email string or scheduling another meeting. Pete added to Michelle’s example by sharing some Additional business oriented use scenarios. For example:
A sales team using SAP StreamWork as a deal room to involve a group of internal stakeholders in following a sales opportunity
A Human Resources team who uses SAP StreamWork through the recruiting process to gather and share feedback on candidates in the interview process and to decide on who to hire
An IT organization who uses SAP StreamWork to gather feedback from business stakeholders to make decisions on hardware and software standards
SAP StreamWork seeks to address many of the challenges we face in our daily worklife:
Involving the right people in decision making
Working across time zones
Working with people external to your company’s network
Tracking input and capturing the decisions then sharing the decisions
Ensuring accountability in the decision making process.
SAP StreamWork brings together a collection of tools such as Agendas, Timelines, Polls, Pro/Con tables, SWOT Analysis, Stakeholder Analysis, or Cost/benefit Analysis tools. SAP Streamwork also works with tools from other partners. You can clip data from Evernote or schedule meeting in WebEx right from SAP StreamWork. The open APIs of SAP StreamWork enable partners and customers to push content from other applications to SAP StreamWork or to embed SAP StreamWork in their own portals. Partners can also build new tools that can be integrated into the StreamWork catalog. Developer resources are available online at: https://streamwork.com/developers. You can also checkout SAP StreamWork on YouTube to see an example of the integration of SAP StreamWork with SAP Business Process Management.
Michelle and Pete shared some of the future features of StreamWork. Next up is the StreamWork app for iPhone and Blackberry. SAP StreamWork Enterprise Agent will enable integration with an organizations Active Directory or LDAP Authentication systems. In the demonstration of SAP StreamWork, we saw some of the present tools in use, but we also got a live sneak preview of the Blackberry and iPad integration as Michelle added comments and feedback to Pete’s demo from her mobile tools. We also saw a sneak preview of the Chat capability which will allow users to chat interactively then capture and add their live discussions to an activity.
As an admitted fan of SAP StreamWork it was great to see what’s coming in the future. Like Michelle, I use SAP StreamWork to organize fun events, but I also use SAP StreamWork for each of the projects that I run. Because I don’t have to go through my IT department to set up an activity, it’s fast and easy to set up an activity and invite other project team members to participate. We collect meeting notes, share key project documents, gather feedback, and document our decisions. Not only have I been able to reduce the number of meetings that I schedule, I have fewer of those long email chain discussions clogging my Inbox – and fewer meetings and less email makes my time much more productive. Yay!
So, what am I most looking forward to? SAP StreamWork on my Blackberry is going to give me lots more flexibility to collaborate while I’m not plugged in. I’m also looking forward to the creative ideas from our partners to further integrate SAP StreamWork with other applications I use (Linked In? Facebook? Google Docs? The possibilities are endless).
The SAP StreamWork Basic edition is free and provides users the ability to own up to 5 open activities at a time (unlimited closed activities and unlimited participation in other people’s activities). The professional edition enables a user to own up to 100 open activities at a time. To take a look, go to: https://sapstreamwork.com/
