LCG eCommerce & Collaboration Blog

Toby Ward’s Intranet Blog

Toby Ward is the Founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media . He also writes the excellent Intranet Blog. It covers intranet best practices, case studies, and news, as well as Toby’s thoughts on the field. He recently shared the highlights of the Gartner’s magic quadrant for intranet portals. First this is a consolidating and shrinking market, as only 12 enterprise portal vendors remain on Gartner’s latest magic quadrant for “horizontal portal products.” 

Toby summarized some of Gartner’s findings: Mashups, lightweight composite applications based on Web-oriented architectures (WOAs), could emerge as alternatives to horizontal portal frameworks for creating enterprise Web environments. There will also be increased interest in Web 2.0 and by 2011, Gartner expects at least 10% of new enterprise portal projects in the Global 2000 to use open-source horizontal portal frameworks. Toby said he is surprised that more organizations are not using portals. His own intranet 2.0 study reveals that only 10% of respondents (some 230 respondent organizations thus far) use portal products to run their intranet. 

The Gartner portal quadrant reports similar results as Toby’s 2006 version of the Portal magic quadrant, with except of BEA, now part of Oracle. It seems that consolidation has mostly peaked. The big players continue to be IBM and Microsoft with Oracle and SAP trailing and then further behind are a lot of smaller vendors, along with Sun. The good news for enterprise 2.0 is the first Gartner finding above - lightweight composite applications based on Web-oriented architectures (WOAs), could emerge as alternatives to the portal players. This is consistent with what I am seeing with our clients.

Check out Toby’ blog as there is a lot more good content. A recent post covered common myths about wikis: everyone contributes, it is easy, and information is always at hand. These are goals but they are not achieved automatically. You need good coaching and clear responsibilities. It is not always necessary for everyone to contribute, team members can be simply readers. However, you do want to make the wiki the channel for communication that everyone goes to and this is not automatic. As Toby reports, Dorthe Jespersen and the J. Boye report, Wiki in the Enterprise , offers four over-arching recommendations for deploying wikis on the intranet: 

Organizational readiness. Organizational culture is a critical factor for success in wiki projects. Organizations must be comfortable with sharing information and debating openly. 

Setting expectations. Before deploying a wiki organizations should assess the commitment actually required, both from management and employees. 

Getting adoption. Adoption of the wiki will not happen by itself; rather it can be supported through a prepared launch followed by training. 

Content creation. To tackle problems with structure running wild and quality of content, employ training, guidelines and dedicated wiki managers. 

These are all great suggestions. There is much more sound advice on his blog. 

eCommerce Innovations Blog – Great Resource from Demandware

Demandware is one of our business partners.  They provide a very flexible ecommerce platform that combines simplicity with control.  Their Active Merchandising™ optimizes online sales by supplying a blend of controlled automation to better manage all aspects of merchandising through a SaaS solution.

They also write the eCommerce Innovations Blog as a “resource to help guide you through the often troubling waters of ecommerce.” The Demandware bloggers include Stephen Schambach, Executive Chairman, Jamus Driscoll, Vice President of Marketing, Scott Todaro, Senior Director of Product Strategy, and Julian Chu, Director of Client Success.

The blog offers a lot of good advice. For example, Does Free Shipping Sell? By Scott Todaro. This was one of the first promotions to get people to buy online and over come the barrier of additional costs for online purchasing.  The problem is that is passes these additional costs back to the retailer.  In addition, customers usually do not see the impact on price until they check out. Scott says, “At that point in the transaction, discounting is a wasted effort unless the retailer is experiencing high shopping cart abandonment (rates of over 45%). To inspire conversion, free shipping must be offered earlier in the sales process, well before a customer makes a purchasing decision and well before they hit the checkout button.”  He goes on to conclude, ‘in short, you need to make free shipping part of a larger promotion strategy where you segment your customers based on value.” In other words, you need to be smart in how you implement this promotion. Demandware also offers strategy consulting services. 

There is a much more on the blog and I encourage you to take a look. 

Enterprise 2.0 Related Blogs – Part Three

Enterprise 2.0 is being covered by an increasing number of bloggers. We have listed so of them in our side bar. Here is a brief description of the each blog, largely taken form the blog itself. The statistics listed with each blog will continue to evolve and represent a snapshot in time. Here are the last third. The others were covered in prior posts.

Michael Sampson blog on effective collaboration in the enterprise, virtual teams, and globally distributed work processes - Technorati reports 443 blog reactions and an authority of 125. Google reports 55 inbound links.

Dennis Howlett – Irregular Enterprise - ZDNet/Enterprise Applications Consulting - Google reports 410 inbound links. Technorati has 488 blog reactions and an authority rating of 238.

Column 2 – Sandy Kemsley - “BPM, Enterprise 2.0 and technology trends in business.” Google reports 599 inbound links. Technorati has 377 blog reactions and an authority rating of 105.

The Social Software blog, one of a large number of Weblogsinc blogs. Technorati reports 356 blog reactions and no authority rating. Google reports 1,860 inbound links.

Jack Vinson – Knowledge Jolt with Jack. He writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, and product management. - Google reports 621 inbound links. Technorati has 349 blog reactions and an authority rating of 23

Jim McGee – McGee’s Musings – writes about knowledge management and more with a great tag line - “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” - Dorothy Parker - Google reports 1,010 inbound links. Technorati has 300 blog reactions and an authority rating of 74.

Susan Scrupksi – ITinsider - covers the Enterprise 2.0 sector of the next generation web. Google reports 888 inbound links. Technorati has 277 blog reactions and an authority rating of 63.

Thomas Vander Wal - Personal InfoCloud “covers the Enterprise 2.0 sector of the next generation web.” Technorati reports 204 blog reactions and an authority of 72. Google reports 281 inbound links.

Enterprise 2.0 Related Blogs – Part Two

Enterprise 2.0 is being covered by an increasing number of bloggers. We have listed so of them in our side bar. Here is a brief description of the each blog, largely taken form the blog itself. The statistics listed with each blog will continue to evolve and represent a snapshot in time. Here are the second third. The last third will be covered in subsequent posts.

Ben Worthen – WSJ Biz Tech Blog - Wall Street Journal on technology. Google reports 3,090 inbound links. Technorati has 3,349 blog reactions and an authority rating of 1,550. Google reports 766 inbound links.

Fast Forward - Sponsored by Fast, a Microsoft subsidiary, “aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges.” Google reports 1,020 inbound links. Technorati has 2,732 blog reactions and an authority rating of 316.

Dion Hinchcliffe – ZDNet blog by key architect and writer on enterprise 2.0. Google reports 2,950 inbound links. Technorati has 2,711 blog reactions and an authority rating of 468. Google reports 1,640 inbound links.

Fast Company Blog – “Fast Company magazine's staff Weblog that offers new ideas, addresses business news and current events, shares useful Web resources and tools, and highlights crucial conferences and news services.” Technorati reports 2,649 blog reactions and a rating of 234. Google reports 3,290 inbound links.

Andrew McAfee - Harvard Business School professor who writes about enterprise 2.0 but also has a lot of good material on the relationship of IT and business that can provide excellent content to comment on. Google reports 1,300 inbound links. Technorati has 2,028 blog reactions and an authority rating of 466.

Bill Ives – Portals and KM – “This blog shares ideas and hopes to generate discussion on enterprise 2.0, business blogs, web 2.0 and knowledge management to provide value to organizations through practical applications..” Google reports 1,520 inbound links. Technorati has 2,060 blog reactions and an authority rating of 180.

Luis Suarez - an IBM social media evangelist who wrote a great series on getting rod of most of his email. . Google reports 1,710 inbound links. Technorati has 1,048 blog reactions with a rating of 245.

Mike Gotta – “Collaborative Thinking is a personal blog of Mike Gotta, a Principal Analyst at Burton Group. Topics covered include collaboration, communication, and social software technologies as well as organization dynamics.” Technorati reports 581 blog reactions and a rating of 130. Google reports 1,340 inbound links.

AppGap provides “work 2.0 news, views, and reviews.” It is sponsored by Intuit Quickbase. Technorati reports 512 blog reactions and an authority of 140. Google reports 442 inbound links.

Enterprise 2.0 Related Blogs – Part One

Enterprise 2.0 is being covered by an increasing number of bloggers. We have listed so of them in our side bar. Here is a brief description of the each blog, largely taken form the blog itself. The statistics listed with each blog will continue to evolve and represent a snapshot in time. Here are the first third. The others wil be covered in subsequent posts.

TechCrunch was “founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. TechCrunch is co-edited by Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld.” Technorati has 141,377 blog reactions and an authority rating of 23,975. Leading tech review blog. Google reports 15,800 inbound links.

Mashable by Pete Cashmore – It cover “all that is new on the web.” Google reports 6,790 inbound links. Technorati has 108,230 blog reactions and an authority rating of 15,487.

ReadWriteWeb – is a leading web news source - Technorati has 41,727 blog reactions and an authority rating of 8,706. Google reports 7,200 inbound links.

Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – by Larry Dignan, Sam Siaz, Tom Steinet-Threkeld “deliver must-read insight and commentary for discriminating tech buyer.” Technorati has 12,231 blog reactions and an authority rating of 2,736. Google reports 2,000 inbound links.

Nick Carr - Rough Type Nick is author of the Big Switch on the cloud and Does It Matter? - on Information technology. Google reports 3,980 inbound links. Technorati has 8,627 blog reactions and an authority rating of 1,741.

Jeremiah Owyang is a well read Forrester analyst. Technorati has 8,627 blog reactions and an authority rating of 2,101. Google reports 3,690 inbound links.

Chris Brogan is a “ten year veteran of using social media and technology to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals.” He is also a cofounder of PodCamp. Google reports 2,870 inbound links. Technorati has 8,312 blog reactions and an authority rating of 2,348.

Programmable Web covers mashups and APIs. It had 3382 recorded whe we last looked and 935 APIs. Google reports 1,670 inbound links. Technorati has 7,129 blog reactions and an authority rating of 749

Valeria Maltoni – Convention Agent – “connecting ideas and people – how talk can change our lives.” It covers a range of technology and management issues. Technorati has 5,085 blog reactions and an authority rating of 571. Google reports 2,580 inbound links.