NetBase and SAP Join Forces to Deliver Social Media Analytics to Global Enterprises

WALLDORF, Germany and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In order to help global enterprises capitalize on the use of social media data, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and NetBase today announced that SAP will resell NetBase's solutions as the SAP® Social Media Analytics application by NetBase.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO)

SAP Social Media Analytics, sold and supported by SAP as a solution extension product, delivers marketers more accurate real-time analytics for understanding their markets and customers through the social Web. It processes billions of social media posts across millions of sites globally to extract structured insights and metrics that enterprises can use to quickly discover market needs and trends, quantify perceptions about products, services and companies, and effectively track their success in the market.

"The social Web provides marketers with an unprecedented opportunity to transform the way that we understand our consumers and go to market," said Stan Sthanunathan, vice president, Marketing Strategy and Insights, The Coca-Cola Company. "The companies that can listen carefully to what the market is saying, understand these perceptions clearly, and act confidently are the ones that will gain competitive advantage. Hundreds of solutions claim to capture consumer sentiment, but NetBase stands alone in its ability to help us get to the bottom of opinions, emotions and behaviors."

A Reliable Way to Make Smarter Business Decisions Faster
With real-time social insights, SAP customers will now have a fast, reliable way to:

• Rapidly monitor and understand market reaction to new product launches
• Quantify market perceptions about products, services and companies
• More accurately identify strengths and weaknesses in competing products
• Track the success of marketing campaigns
• Discover insights and uncover trends in consumer preferences

"SAP customers have recognized that social media offers them great potential beyond listening to and engaging with their customers," said Sanjay Poonen, president, Global Solutions, SAP. "We believe that sophisticated sentiment analysis is at the core of a variety of business decisions. NetBase offers scalable, more accurate technology; tools that are easy to integrate with SAP solutions; and iterative analysis capabilities that will allow businesses to take advantage of social media as a strategic data source. By teaming with NetBase and other partners, we continue to offer customers increased choice and flexibility through our vibrant global partner ecosystem and further extends SAP's social enterprise strategy."

According to a report written by Zach Hofer-Shall, analyst at Forrester: "Too many companies remain trapped by merely monitoring or passively collecting social media. Few actually reach Social Intelligence: driving their marketing and business strategy using the data that social media creates. Today, companies underutilize social data and often leave it sitting in its own silo... By keeping social media in listening silos, [companies] are missing the biggest opportunity to connect social data with other customer data for deeper Social Intelligence."(1)

Scalable Social Intelligence Platform for Understanding Market Sentiment, Perceptions and Passion
SAP Social Media Analytics is a cloud-based solution that is able to process more than 95 million social media posts per day. It uses an advanced natural language processing (NLP) engine to read and categorize each one of these posts according to the opinions, emotions and behaviors that the market is expressing. Unlike solutions that require the user to specify a subject before collecting data, more than one year's worth of this normalized data is available on demand in ConsumerBase, a massive social intelligence warehouse. Built-in dashboards tap into ConsumerBase to deliver up-to-date metrics that go far beyond social media buzz to contain a detailed breakdown of opinions, behaviors, sentiments, passion intensity and key conversation drivers, compared to the competition, with trending over time. Other tools require users to specify their subject and set up complex linguistic rules before they can begin collecting and analyzing data. With SAP Social Media Analytics, analysts can search ConsumerBase directly and conduct on-the-fly analysis on any subject of interest, applying multiple filters based on time, demographics or insight types and view individual source comments.

SAP and NetBase: Transforming Global Enterprises to the New Consumer-to-Business Operating Model
"Before social media, businesses were in control of their brand messaging," said Peter Caswell, CEO, NetBase. "Now, the market is saying what brands are really about. To keep ahead of the curve, next-generation companies need to adopt a new customer-to-business (C2B) operating model that runs at the speed of social media and can deliver what the market wants. NetBase has invested in the enterprise-ready social intelligence platform that C2B companies need. We are excited to be collaborating with SAP to help them make this transformation globally."

Visit the Ecosystem newsroom for more information on this announcement, including a video, "SAP and NetBase Team to Deliver Integrated Business and Social Analytics to the Enterprise," as well as blogs from Denis Descause, global business development lead for Ecosystem and Channels at SAP, and Lisa Joy Rosner, chief marketing officer at NetBase.

(1) Forrester Research, Inc., "The Road Map To Integrating Social And Customer Data" by Zach Hofer-Shall, October 25, 2011.

About NetBase
NetBase delivers the social intelligence that global enterprises need to make smarter business decisions faster, making it possible for them to become next-generation customer-to-business (C2B) companies. Built on the most advanced natural language processing (NLP) engine, our insight and analysis solutions help decision makers listen carefully to what consumers are saying on the social web, understand their opinions, passions, and behaviors, and act confidently to improve their social media P&L. Serving hundreds of corporate customers, our products were developed in partnership with five of the top 10 CPG companies, including Coca-Cola and Kraft, and are used by leading agencies, including GfK and J. D. Power & Associates. NetBase powers the weekly Sentiment Tracker report in the Wall Street Journal and its solutions are sold globally by SAP AG. For more information, visit www.netbase.com, @Net_Base, our Facebook page, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 176,000 customers (includes customers from the acquisition of Sybase) to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
SAP: Susan Miller, +1 (610) 661-9225, [email protected], EST
SAP: Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, [email protected], CST
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EST; [email protected]
NetBase: Suzanne Chan, Eastwick Communications, + 1 (510) 207-7132, [email protected], PST

SOURCE SAP AG