Dive Brief:
- Marriott International, the large hotel chain, chose SAP Jam, a social network platform, in seeking a better way of organizing corporate training and learning – but also gained an enterprise social network, according to an article at Forbes.com.
- SAP’s Jam strategy is the "inverse of how social collaboration software" has often been pitched to organizations – namely as a company-wide communication/collaboration platform and intranet replacement, writes author David Carr, a technology journalist and web and content marketing consultant. Instead, SAP Jam looks to mine "specific business processes" and then "spread" across the organization (hence, the name Jam).
- Carr writes that when used combined with SAP’s Successfactors business unit's learning management system (LMS), Jam gives Marriott's employees a virtual place to connect and learn before a formal training course begins. Lisa O’Donnell, vice president of learning services at Marriott, told Carr that about 20% of the time, a positive side effect is a learning/collaboration community that continues to thrive after the course concludes.
Dive Insight:
O’Donnell told Carr that while training and learning were the initial reason for Marriott choosing Jam, it's also being used more widely for communication and collaboration across business functions such as sales. Acccording to O'Donnell, the software is fairly intuitive but her team also produced an instructional video on how users can set their profile photo – just because having a photo included makes the social experience more engaging.
“By far, the most engaging feature is the ability to use Jam to capture video,” O’Donnell told Forbes. Jam users can deliver a message into their computer webcam, instead of typing. While some executives flinched at creating video without the "benefit of a script or professional lighting,"O'Donnell said, because an ad hoc video comes across as more “authentic,” it’s often “very impactful from an executive leadership perspective.”