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Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Challenges Part Three - Socialtext’s Six Steps to Company-Wide Adoption

This is the third in our series on enterprise implementation issues (see - Overcoming Adoption Barriers for Enterprise 2.0 Initiatives – Part One - Enterprise 2.0 Conference Discussion). In Six Steps to Company-Wide Adoption, Michael Idinopulos, from our business partner, Socialtext, begins with the excellent observation that a year ago, the focus was on individual technologies (wikis, blogs, RSS, etc.) and now we are seeing more comprehensive solutions that integrate multiple technologies into unified platforms for enterprise interactions. This is true for Socialtext 3.0 but also a number of other vendors in the enterprise 2.0 space, validating the Socialtext move.

Michael follows the opportunities opening up with this move as we are also seeing a shift in implementation approaches. With more individual technologies, companies were conducting pilots with individual teams or departments. Now companies are evaluating the more comprehensive solutions for enterprise-wide deployment. So this changes the nature of adoption barriers. Michael provides us with six things to consider when implementing at an enterprise scale. These six steps are consistent with what we discussed in our first two posts in this series but many of them add new material.

Michael begins with the need for a broad range of use cases. Across the enterprise, “different groups will find value in different ways: finding experts, managing projects, surfacing ideas from the field, communicating to staff, building social communities, monitoring competitors, staying in constant contact with customers, etc.” Michael says to encourage diversity to touch as many needs as possible, while looking for common patterns.

He adds the importance of hands-on experiences for new users and the related suggestion to route repeated activities through the new tools. One way to do this is to integrate the new social software with existing legacy systems. He also suggests setting up public communities through the new tools to allow people to share their insights and excitement gained through these hands on experiences. Like any software implementation it is also important to find and support champions of the new tools and new ways of doing things. These are all useful suggestions. Next, I will be turning to the insights found in Enterprise 2.0 Implementation by Aaron Newman and Jeremy Thomas.

Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Challenges – Part Two - Enterprise 2.0 Conference Discussion Continued

As I mentioned in my last post, we are beginning another series on Enterprise 2.0 to go along with our ongoing series on Building the Business case for Enterprise 2.0. This second post continues the summary and commentary on the Barriers to Adoption for Enterprise 2.0 Initiatives discussion thread begun by Susan Scrupski at the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

Nate Nash referred to the conflict between decentralization and central control that enterprise 2.0 tools can raise or elevate. He mentioned the excellent book, The Starfish and The Spider, that addresses this conflict. As Nate points out organizations need to strike the right balance between central control and decentralized innovation. It is achievable.

Lawrence Rosenshein raised six interconnected barriers: lack of senior exec support, too much focus on technology, too little focus on ROI, not enough raining, making sure enough has a personal “win,” and avoid doing too much at once. These are all centered around business alignment issues and none are about technology which seems to be a consistent theme in the enterprise 2.0 space where the technology issues are relatively simple.

Lorenzo Winfrey continues with this theme as he says that, “the biggest challenge I have encountered is making people see the use of these capabilities as value added and not something additional that they have to do.” As Lorenzo pointed out this is common with any radical technology change. Lee White adds that his “approach is to stay away from the terminology and the technology, and just talk to the client about their needs…”

Laurie Buczek links to her post, The Best Social Tools Don’t Make a Social Enterprise, that points to the need to break down silos (se Connectbeam comments above), people will cling to email, keep it simple (if it takes a manual throw it out), and IT needs to lead the way or things will happen anyway. I would add that many enterprise 2.0 tools recognize the email inertia and are email compatible.

Ralph Poole turns the question on its head and writes, “I don't think there are any barriers to adoption. You have to turn the question around and ask what is the right answer to a business problem.” This is a good framing of the issue and takes the focus away from technology and into business issues where it belongs.

Jon Mell linked to his post on Principles of wiki and Enterprise 2.0 adoption. It covers: targeted efforts, senior sponsorship, good internal marketing, support for initial users, accessible, no workarounds, and measure progress. Kevin Jones linked to his blog, Engaged Learning, where he ran a 15 post series on enterprise 2.0 implementation barriers and answers. He includes thoughts on gaining broader adoption after initial implementation. This discussion thread is a rich source of approaches and I recommend looking at the entire thread.

Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Challenges – Part One - Enterprise 2.0 Conference Discussion

We are beginning another series on Enterprise 2.0 to go along with our ongoing series on Building the Business case for Enterprise 2.0. This first post begins with a summary and commentary on the Barriers to Adoption for Enterprise 2.0 Initiatives discussion thread begun by Susan Scrupski at the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

Alex Dunne began by saying that on one hand he has not experienced any reluctance to enterprise 2.0 tools at TechWeb which is not really surprising given the nature of the audience. However, he did say that “user account management of these E2 tools is challenging.” This raises an important issue concerning the potential to create silos by having multiple enterprise 2.0 applications that do not integrate. This is an issue that our business partner, Connectbeam, has recognized and is addressing. See their Connectbeam Social Computing Blog for examples.

Dan Keldsen referenced the important study, AIIM Market IQ Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent, and Integrated. This 2008 study of “441 end users found that a majority of organizations recognize Enterprise 2.0 as critical to the success of their business goals and objectives, but that most do not have a clear understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is.” Sounds like a clear educational opportunity here.

Jay Hariani from BearingPoint shared two challenges that he said are common amongst larger enterprises. This first was "Stakeholder Alignment” and added that “corporate services departments in large organizations (legal, IT, HR) can be terrified of social software” and he cited the post, Get your scary software out of my workplace, that begins with the initial fear of email. The post continues with other new IT initiatives (internet usage, ecommerce) that have been overcome and are widely used. I think the operative word here is “can” as there is room for education and strategic alignment to achieve that same success as the past initiatives cited in the post.

Jay continues that many enterprises who spent “millions on ECM or records management tools, IT is not predisposed to fund E2.0 initiative.” The irony is that many of these venders such as Documentum have seen the benefits and are adopting enterprise 2.0 features in order to survive in the changing market. It will take care education but this resistance can be overcome with efforts aligned with business strategies and based on sound business cases.

Jay adds that another barrier is the idea for many employees that "Word and Outlook Are My World." Again this is an education process to make the benefits of transferring to a more open and connected environment. Many, if not most, enterprise 2.0 tools are compatible with the old school applications such as Word and Outlook so these worlds can co-exist.

This is enough for one post. I will continue with more in my next post.

Building Enterprise 2.0 Business Cases Within and Without the Firewall - Index to Posts

We have started a series on building enterprise 2.0 business cases So I want to start this index. As we add more psots, I will update it. We are very interested in your comments and any examples you mgight want to add to the discussion.

As we wrote in part two. Most methods seem to use traditional value oriented ROI methods that focus on improvements to business processes. Start with a business challenge and not software features. This helps ensure that the implementation is aligned with business processes. The balanced scorecard can help develop more robust measures. Use the enterprise 2.0 tools, themselves, to help collect the data. Focus on making the increased interactions within key business process more effective as these interactions are the sweet spot for enterprise 2.0. Here are the posts so far:

Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part One

Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part Two from Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Enterprise 2.0 Business Cases: Part Three – Connectbeam Example

Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part Four from Enterprise 2.0 Implementation book

We have also started to post on eCommerce and social software marketing business cases. here is the first example:

Three Ways to Build a Business Case on Social Networks in Web Marketing

Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part Four from Enterprise 2.0 Implementation book

I have been reading Enterprise 2.0 Implementation by Aaron Newman and Jeremy Thomas. They have a chapter on enterprise 2.0 ROI so I took a look at what they have to say on business cases. The authors created a “fake” company as a case example to illustrate their approach. Basically they used standard IT investment measurement techniques but applied them to enterprise 2.0 benefits. This is similar to what I wrote in Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part Two. There is no need to convince the finance people of a new method of accounting along with the introduction of new benefits. Traditional methods work fine. The trick is targeting realistic benefits and accounting for all the costs. I think the authors do a nice job in their example.

The company installed blogs for senior executive and department manager communication. All employees were given an RSS reader to subscribe to the blogs of their choice. It also implemented wikis for all departments for information sharing and project collaboration. In addition there was a company wide wiki to manage employees information, e.g., benefits, contact information). A company wide social network was created with customizable individual profiles for each employee to help with locating employees with common interests and facing similar challenges.

The costs determined for this effort included: required hardware and software, IT staff time for implementation, IT staff and staff time for required training, and IT staff time for maintenance. I am glad they included training costs. The benefits that were quantified included: 25% reduction in email, increased customer communication and relative impact on sales or planned sales, decrease search time, and increase employee collaboration and its impact on future revenue. The book provides great detail on how these numbers were determined and concluded with a positive ROI of at least 85%, not counting possible additional soft benefits such as better recruiting. The benefits all seem plausible and provide a good model for actual enterprise 2.0 business cases. I recommend taking a look at this book.

As we move deeper into enterprise 2.0 implementations we should be able to document actual business cases. The book, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation, contains good content on a variety of enterprise 2.0 issues and I will cover more in upcoming posts. The Amazon book description accurately says:

“Facilitate collaboration and foster internal innovation by integrating next-generation Web 2.0 technologies throughout your enterprise IT framework. Packed with real-world examples and timesaving tips, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation shows how to use viral and social networking tools to gain the competitive edge. Get full details on managing corporate blogs, wikis, mashups, RSS feeds, tagging and bookmarking data, and RIAs. You'll also learn how to maximize ROI, use Semantic Web technologies, and implement security.”

Susan Scrupski said, "The sector's first how-to guide to cover the essentials of introducing Enterprise 2.0 into your organization. ...A treasure of technical details and proven guidelines for successful implementation...also addresses core business issues that are key to successful adoption.”

Enterprise 2.0 Business Cases: Part Three – Connectbeam Example

Here is the next installment in our series on enterprise 2.0 business cases. Hutch Carpenter at our business partner, Connectbeam, wrote the excellent post, Tangible ROI: How Connectbeam Saved $50,000 for a Company. Here he discussed the value of tying them together a firm's social software applications.

In the specific example, an employee created a wiki page explaining how to get a discount on software. The employee had negotiated a favorable departmental vendor license agreement (VLA). This wiki page was shared on Connectbeam. Other employees in other departments Googled the name of the software application and the wiki page was returned alongside the Google search results. These other employees clicked on the link to the wiki page and learned how to get the $50,000 discount that they would not have know about. Now multiple this known example by all the other probable connections that are made through this social software integration. The saving could be huge.

One of the benefits of social software is transparency. Conectbeam can make this transparency more powerful as it integrates with other enterprise search applications such as Google Enterprise Search and Sharepoint search to provide the social side of information. It enables connections such as the one Hutch described. I have seen many large firms have multiple agreements with the same vendor for software or other services without each department knowing what they other did. These situations can waste both money and time. Integrated social software can clear up these overlaps and result in significant cost savings. Thanks to Hutch for sharing this information. I also recommend looking over other posts in their Connectbeam Social Computing Blog. It is full of useful information.

People-Centric Collaboration Strategy - Rob Koplowitz, Forrester Research

Rob Koplowitz, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Collaboration at Forrester Research recently gave a web seminar on the People-Centric Collaboration Strategy. In this session he discussed on a people-centric collaboration strategy can “dramatically accelerate business processes and reduce cycle times across the organization.” Rob covered how collaboration is being redefined, the critical role of social software, best practices to ensure business results, and examples of how social software is being used, and the business results social software is achieving. The session by sponsored by our business partner, Socialtext, and introduced by Ross Mayfield.

Rob said he likes the way Socialtext approaches the market by identifying real business challenges and value. He mentioned their professional services group to facilitate this makes. The title for Rob’s portion of the session was “Communities drive knowledge continuity.” He said the underlying issue of knowledge management - capturing knowledge – remains vital today. Knowledge workers are our most powerful untapped resource and it is a low effort to do this. At the same time large returns can be achieved for this effort.

Rob mentioned that a measurable ROI was always important for IT investments, especially for systems that impact structured processes. However, the unstructured processes around knowledge workers is harder to measure. So far we have made small investments in this areas such as email. In this area innovation can bring competitive advantage. At the same time, structured processes can be made better by supporting the people working within them to make better decisions.

To this end, 50% of companies were planning to implement enterprise collaboration strategy in 2008 as part of their IT initiatives (10/07 survey). These planned efforts include enterprise 2.0 tools because employees saw how similar tools worked in the broader Web. However, IT needs to get involved to ensure security is addressed. These efforts include weaving collaboration tools around existing processes. Rob focused on bridging the gap between traditional communication tools such as email with social networking tools. These bridging efforts include system integration but also addressing cultural issues around communication.

Rob summarized that knowledge workers are the key competitive differentiation and structured process efficiency. Communities are very good at managing the knowledge capital derived form knowledge workers. The community tools are relatively inexpensive efforts compared to what was down for the structured processes. These are all issues that we work on the clients through our Collaboration practice at Lyons Consulting. I have only hit the highlights so I encourage you to listen to the complete session. Ross Mayfield followed with a discussion on how Socialtext addresses the issues Rob raised.

SmartBrief on Social Media

Here is a free publication from SmartBrief that might be useful. SmartBrief is a free service offering news items on a lot of issues. In a recent survey, their readers expressed a need to get smarter about social media. To meet this request, they have developed SmartBrief on Social Media, a free daily publication for those who want to stay current on events around social media. It tracks emerging technologies, case studies, research and best practices for monetization. I am going to give it a try.

Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part Two from Enterprise 2.0 Conference

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference held in Boston this summer was a great testimonial to the growing importance of the topic. True to the topic the conference also set up some discussion threads, as well as a blog, to promote the conversation beyond the physical event. One of these discussion threads was on Building the Business case for Enterprise 2.0 and it provoked a lively and extensive conversation. I want to share some of the highlights here as part of an ongoing series on enterprise 2.0 business benefits.

After Keri Pearlson started the discussion, Ralph Poole was the first to respond with questions that he would be asking if was a manager looking into enterprise 2.0:

“How will this contribute to creating new revenue with new or existing clients?

How will E 2.0 contribute to efficiencies in the work place and can you quantify the benefits?

What will stop if this new Enterprise 2.0 initiative is implemented, e.g. what are the potential cost savings, what can I stop paying for?

How involved will IT be in this new initiative, have we accounted for all the costs that might occur, like new servers, software, etc.?

I want to get cost out of our systems, will E 2.0 help or will it only overlay more complexity on our organization?”

Ralph goes on to add that he has had good luck with “diagramming critical business process and showing which process steps will be eliminated, or dramatically reduced in terms of time and cost.” This is one of the best practices for developing a business case for any new technology related initiative. There is no reason to not use it for enterprise 2.0. Ralph adds some examples across functions such as faster communication along the supply chain.

In response, Jon Mell shared a blog post, ROI of Social Software, that stressed to need to address ROI issues and not ignore them. Consistent with Ralph, he said to begin with business challenges and not the features of the social software. Business case development with enterprise 2.0 appears to follow many of the standard principles of business case development. This is good and it was a recurring theme in the discussions. Bertrand Duperrin and Rob Gray brought up the Balanced Scorecard as a method to track the broader benefits of enterprise 2.0. In this method the "People/Growth and Learning Perspective" and the "Customer Perspective", will link together and ultimately affect the Financial Perspective.

Rob pointed out the tools within enterprise 2.0 can more effectively collect the data on these benefits such as employee satisfaction, as well as provide a direct impact on the results. I think this is an excellent point. The increased transparency offered by enterprise 2.0 can give better access to the data we need to determine outcomes. Our measurement capability is increased, as well as our productivity.

Damra Muminovic offered insights from a very relevant McKinsey report, Competitive advantage from better interactions. I am familiar with this work and it stresses the increasing importance of interactions as a source of value. It states that “during the next decade, companies that make these activities—and the employees most involved in them—more productive will not only raise the top and bottom lines but also build talent-based competitive advantages that rivals will find hard to match.” It goes on to say that the “best way for executives to begin is to understand the nature of what economists call tacit interactions—the searching, coordinating, and monitoring activities required to exchange goods, services, and information.” The understanding of tacit interactions involves the social side of transactions and it is exactly where enterprise 2.0 or social software is targeted. With the increased presence of interactions within business process, there should be more fertile ground for developing enterprise 2.0 business cases.

In summary, use traditional value oriented ROI methods that focus on improvements to business processes. Start with a business challenge and not software features. This will help ensure that the implementation is aligned with business processes. The balanced scorecard can help develop more robust measures. Use the enterprise 2.0 tools, themselves, to help collect the data. Focus on making the increased interactions within key business process more effective as these interactions are the sweet spot for enterprise 2.0.

Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0 – Part One

I have been looking into business case examples for enterprise 2.0. Starting with a business challenge or set of challenges in the best way to start with any technology implementation and enterprise 2.0 is no exception. Forrester wrote in a recent report, TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0, “Wikis are most successful when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.” The need for this alignment and sponsorship applies to all Enterprise 2.0 implementations. The business process alignment often provides the opportunity for a business case and the executive sponsorship often demands it. This is a good thing for ensuring success. I found an excellent post, The Business Case for Enterprise 2.0, by Oscar Berg on The Content Economy that addresses this issue. Oscar wrote about three benefit points:

“Travel (and environmental) costs will decrease as a lot of face-to-face meetings can be replaced with virtual meetings.

Efficiency and productivity will increase as we get faster access to the information we need to carry out our tasks (since information will be easier to discover, access, find and share).

We will avoid costly misunderstandings that cause redundant work, rework, bad decisions or delays (since we have the means to communicate more frequently and efficiently with each other).”

I addressed the first point recently (see - Enterprise 2.0 can Save Money and, at the Same Time, Help with Green IT Initiatives). I think the next two also provide good targets and will become more concrete if the task improvements and reduction of “redundant work, rework, bad decisions or delays” are tied to measurable business processes so we can look for improvements. Oscar also offers some useful best practices to increase the possibility of positive impacts on these target measures concluding with taking a “proactive rather than passive attitude towards new opportunities, always assessing value before risk.”

In my next post on this topic I am going to explore a long discussion thread that came on of the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 conference on Building the Business case for Enterprise 2.0. I plan to continue to address this theme in future posts beyond these two.

Enterprise 2.0 can Save Money and, at the Same Time, Help with Green IT Initiatives

A new McKinsey report, How IT can Cut Carbon Emissions, discusses the impact of IT, both bad and good, on the environment. Here is what it says about the potential adverse impact.

“These technologies now account for 0.86 metric gigatons of emissions a year, or about 2 percent of the emissions added to the atmosphere globally. The world’s increasing need for computation, data storage, and communications is driving rapid growth in the emissions associated with such technologies. By 2020, they will account for about 3 percent of all emissions: 1.54 metric gigatons, or twice what the United Kingdom produces today. What’s more, this figure assumes that significant efforts will be made to improve the energy efficiency of devices, components, other equipment, and data centers.”

The report goes to offer ways that this effect might be mitigated. They identified potential annual reductions of 7.8 metric gigatons of carbon emissions by 2020 through effective use of IT. These options include optimizing energy usage in millions of buildings, smart controls to make motor systems in factories more efficient, sensors in grids to monitor the distribution of power more efficiently, smart transportation systems (such as managing complicated trucking logistics), and “dematerializing” physical goods and processes through telecommuting, video conferencing, internet shopping, and more digital content than never gets to a physical mode.

The first ones are all great ways to make physical processes more efficient. I want expand on the last opportunity. Many firms have implemented video conferencing, mentioned above, to cut costs, and this initiative also cuts energy consumption. Enterprise 2.0 brings many more options for virtual collaboration between work teams that are not collocated. There are common workspaces, such as wikis, that promote more effective asynchronous communication. Socialtext is one of our business partners that provides business oriented wikis. They have announced Socialtext 3.0 to offer more context to collaboration.

Other Enterprise 2.0 tools such as Connectbeam, a social networking and social bookmarking application, can make virtual asynchronous communication more effective, reducing the need for people to physically get together and allowing for better use of their time when they do meet. Then there is the integration between synchronous tools such as video conferencing and asynchronous tools such the new Cisco WebEx Connect, a software-as-a-service platform that integrates, presence, instant messaging, web meetings and team spaces with both traditional and Enterprise 2.0 business applications.

We are seeing continued interest in Enterprise 2.0 during the declining economy as these tools can reduce costs. In many cases there is the added return of reducing an organization’s carbon footprint. It is nice to see the double benefit of helping the bottom line and the environment at the same time.

Forrester Report Offers Enterprise 2.0 Advice for KM Professionals

Forrester recently released a 30 page report - Forrester TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0 - Wikis And Social Networks Are Ready To Deliver High Value To Your Enterprise, Q4 2008 by Gil Yehuda with Kyle McNabb, G. Oliver Young, Sara Burnes, Zachary Reiss-Davis. They picked 11 technologies to review: blogs, forums, mashups, microblogs, podcasts, prediction markets, RSS, social bookmarks, social networks, widgets, and wikis.

The report summary says, “No longer new, Web 2.0 technologies solve problems that enterprises have today — but most have not yet used these tools to anywhere near their potential. Waiting for tools to mature seems prudent, but if you wait too long, employees may create their own collaborative environments on the Web. Timing your next move requires you to track the maturity of enterprise Web 2.0 technologies. In a careful examination of the marketplace and trends for enterprise Web 2.0 tools, we reveal that organizations find wikis valuable, forums stable (though underutilized), and report mixed success with blogs. Enterprise social networking tools stand ready to redefine workplace collaboration, adding new value to your organization's content by associating it with peers and experts.”

ReadWriteWeb quotes Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research on the report team, who stated that despite there being a lot of buzz about the consumer market for web 2.0 applications, "the greatest opportunity today for vendors is in the business-to-business collaboration space". It goes on the add that the report indicates that “the cultural resistance" to social networks will "eventually break, allowing workers to connect with like-minded colleagues and enabling a collaboration channel that previously didn't exist in the enterprise." On wikis, ReadWrite Web wrote that “Forrester noted that users have already reported success with wiki projects and it expects this to grow even more. Wikis are most successful, said Forrester, when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.”

This last statement is certainly true for all Enterprise 2.0 implementations, not just wikis. I would add that the implication for this success factor is that tools that, by their nature, can more closely align with business processes will be the most successful. The two tools that Forrester promotes the most fall into this category. Wikis can become team collaboration workspaces for business processes and social networking can help connect the dots within an organization to smooth the flow of information within a business process. One the other hand, blogs can be a useful communication channel, especially to the world outside the organization, but they are more of a broadcast medium than one that fits within a business process.

The report indicates that much of the success for implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools lies in the non-technical issues such as sponsorship, governance, cultural change and business alignment. These are all areas where we at Lyons Consulting work with our clients to help these tools achieve their potential.

Forrester also issued a related report for enterprise 2.0 vendors, Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0, using the same methodology. Both Toby Ward and Bill Ives provided extensive comments on this version of the Forrester report. Toby said his study on Intranet 2.0 reveals similar findings about the adoption rate and usefulness of these technologies – and why some companies aren’t bothering to adopt them. You can get a copy by participating in the study. See his post for details.

Enterprise 2.0 Governance – Suggested Best Practices

I want share with you some thoughts on governance issues with enterprise 2.0 that I will be offering at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 – Integrating Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise Conference in Rome. The increased use of social media within organizations and its resulting transparency certainly raises governance issues as I covered in my last post - Six Reasons to Have an Enterprise 2.0 Governance Policy. Enterprise 2.0 offers the kind of easy and effective technologies that business units are clamoring for. However, the potential for exposure of sensitive information or theft of intellectual property runs high, as do concerns about noncompliance with corporate or third-party requirements.

Simply clapping down on social media destroys the possibilities for enhanced performance and innovation it offers. Simply letting things run wild opens up unnecessary risks. IT doesn't want to own the "content" and business doesn't  want to own the "plumbing." Some squabbles around governance tend to happen when new technologies and applications emerge rapidly where neither business nor IT has figured out the strategy jointly.

In this post I will address three issues: participant privacy, participant behavior, and managing personal and professional time. In each case I will start will some options and then offer some best practice alternatives. 

Possible ways to ensure participant privacy: ban social application all together, tightly guard information, and/or create and implement a privacy policy. Best practice alternatives include: conduct a risk/reward assessment, make privacy an integral part of social application implementations, develop and post your privacy policy, educate participants on privacy, implement and manage privacy measures, and plan for responding to privacy policy infringements. There is not need go without the powerful communication that can result from social software. However, like any communication channel some regulations can take out the risks. 

Possible ways to govern participant behavior: forbid social application participation, set extensive rules and controls, and/or allow it and see what happens. Best practice alternatives include:provide both policy and purpose statements, conduct both individual and group human monitoring as well as automated monitoring, Then continue to fine both the rules and the monitoring of these rules. 

Possible ways to manage personal and professional time include: block access to social applications and/or track and manage online behavior. Best practice alternatives include: empower individual managers, guide managers through scenarios, educate them on risks and opportunities, listen to their opinions/insight, leverage their insight to update leadership on best practices, ensure managers are following established rules and guidelines, continue to reassess these guidelines in light of what managers observe. 

The overall theme is to take and educated and balanced approach to reap the rewards of social applications while minimizing the risks. What have been your experiences with establishing governance with the new social applications?

Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Rome

Steve Krol, VP of Professional Services for Lyons Consulting Group, was invited to speak at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 – Integrating Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise Conference in Rome, Italy December 3- 5. Steve’s presentation focuses on tapping the business potential of social computing and other Web 2.0 technologies in a corporate environment. Other speakers include: Mike Ferguson, Colin White, Ed Yourdon, Stephanie Lemieux, and Tony Byrne. 

In the past, collaboration technologies were deployed in an intranet or portal solution, but would often fall short on their promises because the tools were often one-dimensional forms of communication. But with social computing and Web 2.0, it also means going beyond that to build a vibrant, rich, open, two-way communication platform to allow the dynamic, and unfettered, exchange of ideas. The result is a knowledgebase that can be used and mined for many purposes including improving operational efficiency, reducing training or service costs, finding new sources for innovation, or building customer loyalty. 

There is a lot of hype around Web 2.0 and social computing, and while it provides some powerful tools, if not implemented properly they can be seen as low value and non beneficial. Creating a strategy that identifies which tools should be implemented and how they should be implemented is critical to success. This presentation will discuss the philosophy and technology of Web 2.0 and present cases for why the Enterprise should be adopting this approach. Secondly, the presentation will cover how these technologies can be implemented and provide a comparison of some of the most widely used tools in the marketplace.

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. 

The 2008 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software is Out

Ross Mayfield of Socialtext recently posted, on the 2008 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software. It showed positive results for our business partner, Socialtext. Ross wrote that Socialtext is the only vendor to be in the Visionary quadrant for the second year in a row. Thirty three vendors were judged to be Niche Players. The remaining five are Atlassian, IBM, Jive, Microsoft and Socialtext. It requires a purchase to see this report so I can only give the link to the Gartner site if you want to see more. Ross said that no vendor is in the Leader quadrant. This is a goal and opportunity for everyone. 

Ross reported that since the first Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software came out a year ago, Socialtext 3.0 has shipped, including Socialtext People, Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext Workspace. In addition, SocialCalc and Socialtext Signals are currently in Beta.  

Socialtext 3.0 is a trio of applications: Socialtext People, Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext Workspace. Socialtext People builds upon the wiki foundation to provide expertise location and offers social networking. It offers integration with LDAP and Active Directory so companies can make their corporate directories social. Socialtext Dashboard provides personalized and customized dashboards for people and groups. With Socialtext Workspace, people do their work on group-editable web pages that are visible to others. It is an easy-to-use enterprise wiki. 

SocialCalc is a fully functional spreadsheet. Socialtext Signals is social messaging for the enterprise, connected with context. This is Twitter for the enterprise. It is in private customer beta. The two new tools are fully integrated with the Socialtext product suite. I am impressed with this growing enterprise 2.0 platform. 

Forrester Webinar: How to Create a Winning Collaboration Strategy

Our business partner, Socialtext will sponsor an upcoming webinar on How to Create a Winning Collaboration Strategy. Ross Mayfield, President, Socialtext will offer a demo. Rob Koplowitz, Forrester Principal Analyst, Enterprise Collaboration will discuss how to get dramatic business results from your collaboration strategy by making it people-centered. The event will occur on Wednesday Nov 19th, 10am Pacific, noon Central time. We highly recommend this free event. Register at the Socialtext site. 

The event is described as follows. A wholesale shift in mindset about what defines collaboration has led to the new people-centric collaboration strategy. A people-centric collaboration strategy can dramatically accelerate business processes and reduce cycle times across the organization. In this webinar you’ll learn how to anchor your collaboration strategy around the people-centric components, and gain the competitive advantage this promises. In this session you will learn: How collaboration is being redefined. The critical role of social software. Best practices to ensure business results. Examples of how social software is being used, and the business results it is achieving.

Pros and Cons of SaaS from Bradley Breuer

I have already posted what Bradley Breuer, Senior GIS Manager
in Walgreen’s Corporate Strategy Division, shared with us about Wkis at Walgreen’s at the recent Lyons Consulting Group’s Enterprise 2.0 Breakfast. He also provided his view on the pros and cons of SaaS based on their experience with the SocialText wiki. Once again, here is the summary of his experience in his own words. I think he provides a useful summary of the issues and most importantly, it is based on real experience. We greatly appreciate his contributions.

We use the SaaS model for our Socialtext wiki for a number of reasons, which I detail below. It is important to know that our wiki is hosted offsite by Socialtext (though they do offer the 'appliance' model).

Very fast to deploy, weeks or days sometimes

To a business unit, the price tag is appealing

Support and training from an external company can be more effective and efficient than internal support

No need to hire or grow talent to understand and manage the new technology

Frequently the software company has very good professional services, and offers a lot of advice for free

Frequent releases meaning the software is constantly being updated and improved

Some would argue the total cost of ownership is lower - but I question that

IT security - they are always concerned about the security protocols in place

Integration with single sign on can be challenging

Integration with other systems can be hard

If governance is lacking, there is a high likelihood that different business units will select different vendors reducing economies of scale and interoperability

Software stability - are the releases always stable?

Risk involved with not knowing the physical location of data at any given time - is it in a single server at a single location, or is it dispersed or replicated elsewhere

Frequently you are dealing with small start up companies - will they be around for more than 5 years? Can you expect a long term relationship? With the pace of changes in the web 2.0 market, there is real risk.

Connectbeam Offers a Solution to the Enterprise 2.0 Content Silo Issue

Rob Milks, Vice President of Sales, Eastern US at
Connectbeam, presented at our Lyons Consulting Group’s Enterprise 2.0 Breakfast on October 16.  The title of his session was - Information Delivered Where you Work. He began by covering some research from Accenture on finding information within the enterprise. Enterprise users spend a quarter of their time searching for information. When they find it, 50% say the information is of no value.  In addition, 59% say they do not see information that would be helpful to them and 36% say there is too much information making it harder to find the right information. 

He went on to say that the use of enterprise 2.0 tools has the potential to make this problem worse. If not connected, these tools can create scattered silos of information in multiple applications (e.g., blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc.).  Rob said that Connectbeam addresses this challenge in two ways. First, it tracks content by firm experts independent of where it is created and aggregates it into a single corporate tag repository. This repository covers content from both enterprise 2.0 tools and legacy applications. Second, Connectbeam uses this single corporate tag repository to provide an information and expert discovery hub within the firewall that disseminates content across the enterprise, breaking down the silos.

Hutch Carpenter discussed this same issue on the Connectbeam blog in his post, Fix the Enterprise 2.0 Silo Issue. He writes that there is a layer of metadata, of employee judgment in the creation and sharing of knowledge, that is not captured in typical enterprise search engines. This data includes: who created or saved the information, tags to provide richer meaning (how was this information useful), and groups to put the information in context. Hutch said that if you can capture this information, you can create a connected layer of social information that opens new possibilities for employees. That is what Connectbeam does through the central hub described by Rob. 

They also have connectors with some of the major enterprise search tools such as Google Enterprise Search and FAST, as well as Sharepoint search. For example, integration with Sharepoint allows for the inclusion of social context data with the isearch results Sharepoint normally provides (see their post on Connectbeam Release 2.2). After conducting a search, the standard Sharepoint response comes back in the left column of the screen. On the right side, additional contextual information is seamlessly delivered through Connectbeam. You can see a list of related tags, related users, and related bookmarks. Clicking on any of these links brings you to additional relevant information about the social context of the search.

The same functionality can be added to Google Enterprise Search.  I think this a great innovation that links enterprise 2.0 capabilities to traditional enterprise applications. It also further breaks down the information silos within an organization.

Wikis at Walgreens – Bradley Breuer

Bradley Breuer, Senior GIS Manager
in Walgreen’s Corporate Strategy Division, recently presented at Lyons Consulting Group’s Enterprise 2.0 Breakfast. Here is the summary of his experience in his own words. We greatly appreciate his contribution.

Since Walgreens launched a wiki to its corporate strategy division in summer 2007, it has grown to include 17 workspaces and approximately 3,700 pages. In any given month, there are between 15,000 - 20,000 page views and 3,000 - 5,000 contributions from a user group of about 100 people.

Initially launched to help on board knowledge workers more effectively, it has grown to support a range of tasks including: Knowledge Management, Communication, Integration, Collaboration, Training, and Project Management. The wiki is used by groups ranging from consumer research, mergers and acquisitions, market strategy, and technology groups.

Corporate strategy is working on a strategy to successfully roll out the enterprise grade wiki to a larger group of corporate and store employees to promote better collaboration, information transparency, innovation, project management, and expert identification.

Plan, Plan, Plan: Clearly define the goals and objectives and how they will be measured. Don't just create a wiki to solve communication or collaboration problems, and expect that people will use it. People think Wikipedia just grew organically without planning - WRONG. Your planning efforts are the single most important thing to ensure adoption and success. Involve opinion leaders at all levels of planning - from strategic to execution level.

Seed Grass Roots Efforts: Get top management buy in, encourage them to 'seed' efforts rather than impose from the top down. Use viral marketing to generate buzz and demand for the tool. It has to be something people want to use, not have to use. You won't succeed if you don't have buy in from the grass roots users.

Content is king. No one is interested in a blank slate without any content. Create high value content early on, and involve opinion leaders who will evangelize to others. Early in the project focus on creating content and structure to set the tone for how you want the wiki to be used. Be sure to reward high value contributions on an ongoing basis.

Here is more about wikis at Walgreens.

Increasing Employee Productivity in a Down Market Through Enterprise Collaboration

Many companies are concerned with how the down turn in the economy might impact their revenues so they are looking more closely at expenses. Investments have to demonstrate value and those that lead to both innovation and cost savings are especially appreciated. Hutch Carpenter recently provided a useful post on this topic, Economic Downturn: Putting a Dollar Figure on the Value of Enterprise 2.0 for Companies. He begins by referencing a post from Jevon MacDonald on the Fast Forward blog.  In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. In this post Jevon points out that the low cost enterprise 2.0 tools can help unlock the hidden value in organizations by promoting social interactions to increase productivity.

Hutch describes how this can occur. He sites an Information, Technology and Information Worker Productivity report by researchers at MIT, BU and NYU. As the report abstract states, they “analyzed both project-level and individual-level performance using: (1) direct observation of over 125,000 e-mail messages over a period of 10 months by individual workers (2) detailed accounting data on revenues, compensation, project completion rates, and team membership for over 1300 projects spanning 5 years, and (3) survey data on a matched set of the same workers' IT skills, IT use and information sharing.”

The researchers found “statistically significant relationships among social networks, technology use, completed projects, and revenues for project-based information workers.” Better social networks lead to increased productivity. In addition, asynchronous information seeking promotes multitasking while synchronous information seeking over the phone shows a negative correlation. Enterprise 2.0 strongly supports both social networking and doing it in an asynchronous manner.

The study also allows us to project gains as employees with a more diverse social network generated higher revenue for their firm. In addition, employees more at the center of social networks generated higher revenues. It even puts a project dollar figure as those at the center of social networks by one standard deviation generated on average $76,000 greater revenue output per year. In addition, one standard deviation increase in network diversity is associated with approximately $83,000 greater annual revenue output.

These two attributes are ones that play into the sweet spot of enterprise 2.0 social networking tools.  They allow you to both develop a broader and more diverse social network within your firm, they also increase the volume of social networking around business issues, allowing those at the centers of networks to play a more influential role. Our business partner, Connectbeam, provides an excellent tool to support these factors. Hutch describes how this works in his post.

There are many ways that enterprise 2.0 can increase employee productivity through increased sharing of the collective wisdom of the organization.  The tools are generally much lower cost to both purchase and implement than the older generation of enterprise tools.  Their goal is to bring out more from employees my opening up more avenues for enterprise collaboration. 

Increasing Collection of Research on Enterprise Collaboration: Part Three –Forrester’s Cautionary Tale and Today’s Market

Forrester is amongst the leaders in promoting the enterprise collaboration market and the broader enterprise 2.0 concept. More recently, Oliver Young provided the cautionary report, Vendors: Prepare For Falling Prices For Enterprise Web 2.0 Collaboration And Productivity Apps. Here he writes, “The enterprise Web 2.0 market is experiencing an explosion of activity among enterprises seeking collaboration and productivity improvements. While that explosion is placing Web 2.0 technology in the hands of millions of knowledge workers, cutthroat competition, commoditization, bundling, and subsumption are all offsetting the associated license revenue growth. How bad will it get? Forrester expects that most Web 2.0 tools will experience falling average deal sizes over the next five years, with some deal sizes dropping by more than half. Product managers must take steps today to manage increasingly competitive times ahead.”

We will see how today’s troubled market with impact this.  Many companies will be looking for ways to reduce expenses and virtual collaboration is certainly one.  Jevon MacDonald picks up on this theme in his post, In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. He notes that while traditional enterprise vendors such as SAP have reported falling revenues, “a panacea for investors and customers is emerging with the nascent enterprise social software industry.” Jevon goes on to quote Tim Eby, a board member of National Public Radio and the manager of NPR station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio. “The effective use of wikis, internal blogging that invite comments, Twitter, and social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us bring a flow of needed ideas and innovation at a time when all organizations are seeking to improve efficiencies, customer relations, and loyalty. There’s no better time than an economic downturn to consider embracing these tools within an organization.”

The other impact of market troubles that may help the enterprise collaboration tool adoption is the likely increased interest in innovation in tough times. Companies should be more open to change. Bill Ives in his post, Awareness Report Shows Significant Rise in Enterprise Social Media - Will It Continue?,  mentioned a recent blog post by Jonathan Schwartz the Sun President and COO and long time blogger. In this post, Innovation Loves a Crisis, provided a memo he shared with Sun’s leader about the role of technology in helping with the current economic crisis, Innovation Loves a Crisis. Jonathan writes that many businesses will be most open to change now. He wants Sun to help its customers achieve greater innovation and boost productivity in response to economic challenges that many face. Let’s hope both the need for cost reduction and innovation will continue to drive the enterprise collaboration market. 

Increasing Collection of Research on Enterprise Collaboration: Part Two – Forrester on How to Succeed in the Growth Market

In another sign of what the future holds for Web 2.0 in business, the Forrester survey found a clear preference among CIOs for buying a full suite of Web 2.0 tools from a large, established vendor. 74% of CIOs said they'd be more interested in investing in Web 2.0 if all the tools were offered as a suite, and 71% said they'd prefer the tools to be "offered by a major incumbent vendor like Microsoft or IBM [rather than] smaller specialist firms like Socialtext, NewsGator, MindTouch, and others." Web 2.0 startups hoping to make inroads in the enterprise market, even among mid-sized firms, will continue to face big challenges, particularly as the larger vendors release their own suites of tools or incorporate them into existing products. You can bypass the CIO on a small scale, but it's difficult to bypass the CIO when it comes time for a company to standardize on a particular product and vendor.”

Here is some sage advice from Nick and it is consistent with both Forrester reports, as well as what I am seeing in the market as we talk with our clients. However, as the market matures, there will factors such as consolidation and price competition. Then there is the impact of recent economic troubles to consider. My next post in this series picks up on a more recent Forrester report and what others are saying about the impact of today’s market on enterprise collaboration. 

Review of the Increasing Collection of Research on Enterprise Collaboration: Part One – Forrester on Market Growth

As we begin this blog on enterprise collaboration and ecommerce, I want to outline some of the research findings in these areas, beginning with enterprise collaboration. This post begins series on enterprise 2.0 research reports, starting with a three part series on some of the relevant work that Forrester has produced.

I want to start with sizing the market. This study has been out for a few months but it gives us a good baseline for our subsequent discussions. According to the Forrester research report, Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, vendors large and small developing Web 2.0 products for the enterprise are chasing a market that will reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013. That figure represents an annual compound growth of 43 percent over the $764 million projected for 2008.  "In aggregate, Forrester believes that enterprise Web 2.0 technologies represent a fundamentally new way to connect with customers and prospects and to harness the collaborative power of employees," the researchers wrote.

Not surprisingly, the larger companies with distributed workforces are the ones investing most heavily in collaborative and social software applications. Smaller companies, where collaborating on a project with marketing or IT is often a matter of simply walking across the office, are the lowest proportional spenders on Web 2.0 applications for the enterprise. In arriving at its estimate of total spending, Forrester only considered companies with 1,000 or more employees.

Sarah Parez at ReadWriteWeb gave us more details on the Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast report.  She notes that they excluded consumer web tools like Facebook and Twitter.  This is a smart move to avoid confusion in the counting. As I mentioned, above the biggest play is with larger enterprise. 51 % of global firms are buying enterprise 2.0 tools, while only 20% of small firms (6 to 99 employees) were buying them at the time of the study.  There is a direct linear trend increase from the smallest to largest firms.

Looking at the source of this increase, Forrester finds the greatest gains will be in social networking tools with mashups, RSS, wikis, blogs, widgets, and podcasting following in that order.  All of these tools address enterprise collaboration from different feature points. Collectively they will have the biggest impact.  I have more recently seen a trend toward integrated suites so it may be harder to separate out these tools for revenue purposes.  Whatever the source and whatever the final count, this report and others indicates that the new enterprise collaboration tools are real players. Newer studies have only confirmed this as we shall see.

For example, Forrester’s Ted Schadier adds to this discussion on why enterprise collaboration tool use will grow in his report, Distributed Teams Need Real-Time Collaboration Tools. He summaries the report as follows, “To get work done, distributed and B2B teams need real-time collaboration tools that replicate the power and experience of face-to-face meetings and support "pervasive" interactions. Fortunately, real-time tools are getting better. Presence shows team members' context; instant messaging (IM) moves the dialog to mobile devices; Web conferencing allows video and document sharing; and telepresence delivers face-time quality.” 

However Sarah Parez cautions, “one of the main challenges of getting Web 2.0 into the enterprise will be getting past the gatekeepers of traditional I.T. Businesses have been showing interest in these new technologies, but, ironically, the interest comes from departments outside of I.T. Instead, it's the marketing department, R&D, and corporate communications pushing for the adoption of more Web 2.0-like tools.”  This is a theme that I will pick in part two of this series, Part Two – Forrester on How to Succeed in the Growth Market.