April 5, 2012, paulwriter.com by Aarti Deoskar

SAP India is the fastest growing subsidiary of SAP AG, and Jonathan Becher was in India to understand the industry trends and speak to the influencers and bloggers. Paul Writer also managed to sneak in a few minutes to have a conversation with this Global CMO on tips for blogging and the initiatives at SAP to reach out to the community of developers and bloggers to leverage social media in spreading the Brand SAP. The conversation was short but his viewpoint was interesting…

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 March 14, 2012, Forbes.com by Mark Fidelman

Naturally, watching Oracle struggle leads one to consider whether Ellison shouldn’t just sit this one out, and hand their Social Business strategy over to another Executive.Leading social transformation at SAP is Chief Marketing Officer, Jonathan Becher. By most accounts, Becher is a powerful agent for change, and the center of gravity for the force that is transforming the organization into a Social Business.“He leads by example. He’s not just comfortable with social technologies, he’s proficient and an expert,” explains Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President of SAP Communities and Social Media. “He’s setting an example for everybody else, including our CEOs (they have two) and board members about the value and the benefit that we’re getting from social media and from communities.”

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 March 14, 2012, ZDNet by Dennis Howlett

This jibes well with a recent conversation I had with Jonathan Becher, CMO SAP. He said that SAP is very good at elephant hunting and doing those multi million dollar deals. It doesn’t have a good way of doing small deals. SAP hasn’t figured out how to publish a price list – let alone a price list for dedicated mobile applications. It prefers to arrange complex bundling deals that muddy the waters. In its view there is no point in publishing the price list because it would not be relevant to how deals are struck. There are exceptions but in the conversations I’ve had with SAP, they fight shy of providing definitive information about pricing. The closest I’ve gotten is $50/user/month on mobile CRM. Given the remarks above, that may be misleading.

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 March 5, 2012, accmanpro.com

In this video shot by my JD-OD colleague Jon Reed, Jonathan Becher, CMO SAP gives us some important insights into the many ways in which marketing is changing. During the conversation (flick to 6min 34secs) Becher talks about the contrast between the way he used to buy motor vehicles and the way that happens today. In short he is saying that 10 years ago, he was at the mercy of the dealer. Today, he asserts that the power has shifted to the consumer. He looks at this as evidence of a changing dynamic in the way goods and services are acquired.

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March 1, 2012, Business2Community.com by Liz Brenner

I vividly remember sitting in front of my computer a few years back – TweetDeck was up – my first tweet was in the “compose box” and I was getting ready to click send. I was nervous. What would people think, what would they say, what would be the impact? That first tweet was by far the hardest but once I got going it got easy and the power of social media was clear. I started having real conversations with real people – people I normally wouldn’t have access to.

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February 10, 2012, SAP Community Network by Liz Brenner

I’ve been a part of Jonathan’s marketing organization for several years now and following his journey from marketing leader to CMO has been both exciting and inspiring.  I’ve listened to him address our marketing team, the SAP community, customers and more and regardless of audience, two essential themes always emerge through his words: people and simplicity. Jonathan encourages us to think about our work in terms of people – not business to consumer or business to business – but people to people. He also recommends we simplify the way we work, the words we use and get away from the acronyms that overcomplicate our lives.

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 February 8, 2012 B to B

“For many organizations, content marketing initiatives encourage marketers to generate more content. More content generated through more channels to reach more eyeballs. Quantity over quality. Under the mantra “less is more,’ we’re delivering a personalized Web experience through the Your SAP.com section of our flagship website. This nurturing approach allows visitors to identify key areas of interest across the entire universe of SAP solutions, industries, LoBs [lines of business], services, etc., so that SAP.com can be personalized to their individual needs.

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 February 8, 2012, Social Media Today by Rohn Jay Miller

Todd Wilms has an interesting perspective on the effect of social media on corporations.  As a Senior Director in SAP’s 35-person social media team, he sees both the incredible velocity of change in communications and marketing that he says makes “you feel like the ground is shifting out from underneath you—because it is.”

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February  2, 2012 sap.info by Jennifer Lankheim

In this interview, SAP Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Becher discusses the role of the CMO in the “Brave New World” of modern marketing. SAP.info: Wikipedia defines CMO, rather dryly, as “a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various marketing activities in an organization.” Jonathan, how do you view the role and – more generally – the role of the CMO in these rapidly changing, novel times?

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