In order to help global enterprises capitalize on the use of social media data, SAP ) and NetBase announced in late December that SAP will resell NetBase's solutions as the SAP Social Media Analytics application by NetBase.

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."