SAP's sustainability site: Will they come?

Business software giant SAP launched an online collaboration site last week to promote dialogue with stakeholders on a range of social, economic, and environmental concerns. The site sits on SAP's new collaboration workspace platform, which enables registered users to post content, communicate with SAP officials and each other, and set up public and private workspaces. 

To get the dialogue going, SAP's vice president of corporate citizenship, James Farrar, has launched a new blog, a stakeholder survey, and, most important, the company's first global report on sustainability.

It's a great idea, and it plays directly to the mission-oriented marketing I wrote about with IBM recently. As noted by Sustainable Life Media, it follows similar efforts by companies including Cadbury and IKEA Canada. 

SAP has a good story to tell on sustainability, and the report does a nice job of telling it. Befitting the company's role as a leading software provider, the report has a dual focus, covering both SAP's internal responsibilities to operate in a sound, ethical, and environmentally responsible manner, and external opportunities and obligations to provide solutions that help clients operate in a similar fashion. 

Even more, providing a real platform for collaboration gives credence to Farrar's claim that SAP sees its sustainability report (itself an important step) as simply the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with stakeholders.

The question now is will they come. Nine days after the launch, the site is pretty thin. One blog post, two documents, and just a few outside comments. The sustainability report has received a number of views, but the dialogue has yet to really begin. 

It's a common problem, of course. You can't just build it and hope they will come. Clearly SAP put enormous effort into creating its first sustainability report and building the collaboration space. The challenge now is to put similar energy into generating interest and traffic to the site, and lively interaction once people get there.