Drinking the Kool Aid, part 3

I wrote about our own experience with Crowdcast here and here. My main thesis was that, in order to be viable, collective intelligence tools must support decision makers first and foremost. After all, it’s their challenges we’re striving to address. This realization was the impetus behind our Executive Dashboard, which I describe here and also on our website.

This feature was unveiled last week during the keynote at SAP’s GRC 2010 conference in Orlando. The keynote was presented by Narina Sippy, SVP and GM of SAP’s Governance, Risk, and Compliance solutions. The theme of her address was arming yourself for risk in your business. She told a great cautionary tale about Toyota’s recent debacle, interviewed John Hummer of Hummer Winblad, and then introduced Ranga Bodla and our own Mat Fogarty to demo the products. They presented a compelling story about a pharma company managing its risks with GRC, while keeping a finger on the pulse of the organization with Crowdcast. The presentation couldn’t have gone over better.

We took advantage of our bully pulpit at the conference to announce Crowdcast’s formal relationship with SAP. Indeed, this development is hugely validating for our space in general and for Crowdcast in particular. I believe that our charter of supporting decision makers is a big part of the story.