Implementing a Wiki within SAP’s CRM Organization

Holger Junghanns, SAP AG

In 2007, I was a member of a project team that was responsible for the implementation of a wiki within the Product & Technology Unit (PTU) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) organization of SAP AG. The goal of this project was to promote knowledge transfer among the different teams involved in the development process of SAP’s CRM application.

Within a six month timeframe, our team introduced a wiki as a central point of access for internal knowledge transfer and collaboration within the PTU CRM. Prior to the wiki roll-out, a pilot user group provided continuous feedback on the prototype. Elements used to foster user adoption included the creation of wiki page templates, including a team page template, a meeting minutes template, and a wiki training cheat sheet, among others.

From a technical point of view, our project team followed SAP IT’s recommendation to comply with the standard for wiki technology within SAP. As a consequence, the PTU CRM wiki is now fully integrated into the existing wiki application within the company. This integration provides access to the wiki via the Single Sign-On capability and user support to ensure performance and sustainability of the system.

In terms of introducing the wiki to the organization, our project team conducted personal training sessions in the major CRM locations, namely Walldorf, Bangalore, Palo Alto, and Montreal. Teams that could not participate in person were provided with training sessions via video conferencing. In support, we linked training material, such as the wiki training cheat sheet, within the wiki, allowing colleagues to access it at their convenience.

One year after the roll out, our CRM colleagues actively use the PTU CRM wiki. Principle use cases include managing projects and meeting minutes on the wiki as well as building team workspaces. The PTU CRM Wiki is now the tenth largest internal wiki within SAP, incorporating more than 1,000 pages, 9,000 page versions, and 130 active contributors. Currently there are more than 1,400 live wiki spaces at SAP with more than 10,000 authors working on more than 100,000 pages. Participants of the WikiSym 2008 can get more details on this project in my WikiFest session.


Holger Junghanns is a business analyst on the Industry Solutions Operations team at SAP AG. He joined the company in April 2007 to write his diploma thesis, “Wiki Technology for Collaborative Knowledge Management in Corporations”. In his current role, he leads a project to implement a wiki in SAP’s Industry Solutions organization. Holger holds a diploma in Business Information Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Network Computing, both from the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology.

One thought on “Implementing a Wiki within SAP’s CRM Organization

  1. Hello Holger,
    I’m in the Product Group in SAP Business Objects and have been involved with managing our wiki (also on the same wiki platform as WIKI@SAP but not yet migrated, in case you were wondering). I’m curious about your experiences of rolling wiki out to teams globally in SAP, particularly how it’s being used for project management (we see our teams increasingly moving to Wiki for that now, because it’s so flexible and easy). Will you follow up via email when you’re back from the Wiki symposium? There would be a few others here interested too.
    Regards
    Jennifer Kelley
    Product Group
    SAP Business Objects

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