Today’s marketplace is a blend of reality — the things we perceive with our five senses — and augmented reality — the things we perceive enhanced by relevant information. Everywhere we look there are analytics and opinions expressed by people around events, objects, products, and services. Public sentiment analysis (PSA) can allow for a near error-free prediction that polls have struggled to provide. In the 2008 presidential election in the US, PSA statistics based on Twitter feeds provided an accurate prediction of the election outcome. A study in 2010 by Carnegie Mellon was able to accurately predict the consumer confidence levels in the US on 7 billion to 9 billion Twitter responses each day, aligning with other studies published weeks and months later. Marketing analysts are looking more and more to PSA methods and blends of high-performance analytics to gain faster and more accurate insight into consumer trends and public opinion.

Collaboration environments represent small microcosms of organizations within society. Using collaboration tools across a broad cross-section of teams, stakeholders, and end users creates a multi-level viewpoint on the acceptance or resistance to new ideas, projects, organization initiatives, or even the leadership skills of management. These sentiments expressed in polls, discussion forums, and comments create the opportunity to accelerate or re-position activities proactively before failure dictates that management do so reactively.

The Need for Sentiment Analysis in Strategy

Imagine the ability to look at strategy and to be able to gauge the relative success of a program or activity based on preliminary feedback from society, the customer marketplace, or your own organization. Corporations can monitor the effectiveness of brand management marketing campaigns and how to target them based on Internet opinion of recalled or new products. Governments have been using tactics based on PSA approaches to detect the relative levels of terrorist group chatter across the Internet from broad analysis of many sources. Figure 1 illustrates a step-by-step approach to determining sentiment, which can be reflected in these activities:

1. Pose a question: Understanding how public opinion on a key issue or a trend may have an impact on future events or conditions. For example, how does public sentiment consider the national mood of health care reform? You can create a query and pose a question to determine the sentiment of the audience.
2. Scour sources for opinion: Web-based search engines and other analytic tools can identify the source and nature of opinions (positive or negative) and the location and possible identification of the maker of the opinion, including the natural language of opinion information (for example, is the opinion based in the Americas using English, or in Germany using Arabic?).
3. Analyze the findings: Considering the source of the information, come to an understanding of what these opinions mean. For example, could this indicate a positive or negative opinion toward health care reform? Comparisons to other poll-gathering information could be used to corroborate the findings.
4. Make or adjust action: Key to change management principles, many societies and organizations have the ability to adopt change in certain key amounts. In the case of action against potential national security threats, assets that could be committed elsewhere may require redeployment. In the case of an automotive recall, it could suggest the level or themes of a proposed brand management advertising campaign.

Figure 1

Step-by-step process for developing and leveraging PSA

Being able to use sentiment analysis as a signpost of how to commit resources plays a vital role in management decision making for strategic initiatives as well. SAP StreamWork is a collaboration environment that can enable large enterprise conversation, including opinion on projects, investments, and product development programs. I’ll show you how to use SAP StreamWork objects inside strategy programs, with the strategy programs managed using SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management.

Use SAP StreamWork to Gauge Sentiment on Strategic Projects

SAP StreamWork allows for quick collaboration in an enterprise social media framework that is both real time and push centric. Real-time access functions such as chat, discussion threads, project reporting (similar to other project micro-site environments), and document exchange enable users to actively engage all dimensions and issues of project work. The push-centric features, which allow notifications to be sent to other project members, poll user responses, and gauge enterprise opinion, allow SAP StreamWork to be highly proactive relative to other Web-based collaboration environments.

For strategic initiatives and projects that are defined by them, SAP StreamWork allows you to do the following when used with SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management:

• Formulate strategic scenarios and trade-offs. Team members can apply collaborative and decision-making tools of SAP StreamWork to develop and prioritize business scenarios and risk mitigation plans. They can also add structure to the process of defining and approving strategic objectives, key performance indicators (KPIs), and program initiatives to ensure alignment among key stakeholders and assigned owners.
• Harness social and project networks within the enterprise. Enterprise teams often work in different physical locations, and with SAP StreamWork, dispersed teams can collaborate on the identification and analysis of business challenges and determine the best course of corrective action. Using the Web-enabled platform, they can extend problem solving and issue resolution to internal and external actors in team and value-chain environments (for example, development of inorganic intellectual property and product creation).
• Create stronger governance and accountability. Strategic owners and stakeholders can use SAP StreamWork to create visibility and transparency with the right tools to communicate, manage, and share key insights into their areas of responsibility. You can link multi-sponsored strategic initiatives between decision-makers, subject matter experts, and best practice leaders within the organization to ensure greater cohesion and organization performance.

Because SAP StreamWork is cloud based, connection to the public environment may be as simple as creating an account at www.streamwork.com and logging in. You can use the account as an object link — a means to connect SAP StreamWork to another environment — into SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. To do this you need to link your SAP StreamWork account and your tasks in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. Current Ramp-Up plans call for SAP StreamWork connectivity to be an established option inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management as part of the application options (Figure 2).

Figure 2

SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management options can be set to include a global setting to connect to SAP StreamWork

Once the application settings in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management have been established to allow SAP StreamWork, a menu ribbon appears on the top of the screen to allow for the authorization of the SAP StreamWork account in the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management planning environment (Figure 3). Once authorized, your SAP StreamWork account prompts you for acceptance of the link to SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management when you next log in. Do not forget to authorize it — if you don’t, the connection doesn’t work. Once you authorize, the two applications are connected and bi-directionally share information, notifications, and objects.

Figure 3

Authorize SAP StreamWork as part of SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

Now that your SAP StreamWork account is connected to your SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management portfolio, you can bring objects (such as activities, projects, discussion forums, tasks, and polls) into your strategy cockpit, as well as build out your particular program execution. For example, consider the director of marketing for a major fashion apparel industry manufacturer. This individual is responsible for several KPI-driven performance objectives, which can be seen in the strategy map inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. He can select Organize from the SAP StreamWork ribbon command line and a dialog box opens where he is prompted for an action (Figure 4). He then selects Create Activity as an option, whereby the SAP StreamWork dialog interface prompts for specific task information relative to the objective — in this case an activity or project defined in SAP StreamWork.

Figure 4

Create an SAP StreamWork task inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

The information captured inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management creates a corresponding task inside the SAP StreamWork project environment (Figure 5). From that point, he can then invite and assign other users to participate in the SAP StreamWork task as part of a larger project environment or as a single task objective.

Figure 5

SAP StreamWork task created as part of a KPI-driven SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management objective

Once inside SAP StreamWork, you can invoke active discussion group areas, polls, questionnaires, and other sentiment analysis tools. You can use these measures to correspond to the strategic objectives and KPIs inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. The fashion industry director may pose a question to a project team, group of suppliers, or to executive stakeholders to gauge opinion before action is taken. This is very helpful when phone calls and teleconferences across multiple time zones make 1:1 communication difficult. Figure 6 provides an example of a discussion question posed to a stakeholder group by a director inside SAP StreamWork.

Figure 6

Discussion question used to gauge enterprise sentiment for a strategy initiative

Users inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management can select Update from the SAP StreamWork ribbon menu and all postings to the connected account are updated automatically (Figure 7). Comments appear based on alignment to particular KPIs inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management.

Figure 7

Comments from SAP StreamWork appear in the Scorecard KPI Overview in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

Once the project team member selects the comment, the information is displayed. This shows the nature of the post inside SAP StreamWork and the discussion thread, sentiment, or information added to the specific project and initiative (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Expanded comment illustrating sentiment and information from SAP StreamWork project inside SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

William Newman

William Newman, MBA, CMC is managing principal of Newport Consulting Group, LLC, an SAP partner focused on EPM and GRC solutions. He has over 25 years of experience in the development and management of strategy, process, and technology solutions spanning Fortune 1000, public-sector, midsized and not-for-profit organizations. He is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) since 1995, qualified trainer by the American Society of Quality (ASQ) since 2000, and a trained Social Fingerprint consultant in social accountability since 2012. William is a recognized ASUG BusinessObjects influencer and a member of SAP’s Influencer Relations program. He holds a BS degree in aerospace engineering from the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA and an MBA in management and international business from the Conrad L. Hilton School of Management at Loyola Marymount University. He is a member of the adjunct faculty at both Northwood University and the University of Oregon with a focus on management studies and sustainability, respectively.

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You may contact the author at wnewman@newportconsgroup.com.

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