Spreading the SAP Gospel

Historically, SAP has not been well-known outside the business applications and business-to-business worlds. SAP executives lack the marketing braggadocio of their chest-thumping competitors at Oracle. SAP also doesn't have the historical relevance of an IBM, or the Internet Age appeal of a Google.

That fact was confirmed by SAP six months ago, says Westhuizen. SAP surveyed university students in China, Germany and the United States to gauge their understanding and knowledge of SAP: Had they heard of SAP? If so, what does it mean to them? Was it a career option for them? "And then we compared their understanding and the findings to what they thought of IBM, Accenture, Oracle and Google," Westhuizen says.

"We found that we needed to do a lot more work in ensuring that people get exposed to SAP," he says of the results. "Not just when they're joining the workforce but prior to joining the workforce." (Apparently, there is such a thing as being too quiet a company.)

SAP's expansive plan to fill the skills holes in the IT industry targets a couple of key areas where SAP hasn't typically promoted itself and its products, Westhuizen says.

First, SAP is attempting to better market itself and the job opportunities in its ecosystem—working for SAP itself, inside its customers' IT departments, and for systems integrators and consultants—through the Internet and social networking sites and other traditional marketing vehicles. "We've really been trying to drive the message that the SAP ecosystem is a place where you can thrive, where there are opportunities for you," Westhuizen says. "From a marketing perspective we feel like we're starting to get a broader message out there and talk to an audience that we previously didn't talk to."

In the United States and abroad, SAP is also going to the source: bringing its message to colleges and universities and even high schools students who might be interested in tech. Its University Alliance Program has been around for more than a decade, but "it's been a somewhat underutilized asset," Westhuizen says.

The objective of the program, which currently partners with more than 700 universities, is to "seed the market and influence tomorrow's leaders," Westhuizen says. SAP does that by providing SAP systems and applications to the universities' curriculum, exposing students to SAP and "to make sure when people come out of universities that we have our fair share of people having the SAP ecosystem at least as an option when it comes to deciding their future," he says.