Unlocking the Business Value of Social Tools for the Enterprise

Unlocking the Business Value of Social Tools for the Enterprise

Jas Dhaliwalhttp://www.thewebpitch.com

While we were sleeping…

The Internet Changed

New Terms

RSS

UGC

Mashups

Wiki

Blog

Social Networking

Tagging

Twitter

Web 2.0

Are You Part of a Social Network?

Are you a member of any of the following?

Facebook, Linked-In, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut etc.?

Authored a blog(s)?Used a feed aggregator?

Created a YouTube video?Watched a YouTube video?

Used a social bookmarking tool?Contributed to, or edited a Wikipedia page?

Tweeted?

“The chances are, that your customers are doing any one of the those activities right now. More importantly, they may be using

web tools to discuss your brand”

Recent Internet Trends

Four major trends at play

1. Social Networks are changing the way we think, interact

and view business.

2. The applications you thought to be “consumer services” will be inside the enterprise.

3. The rise of user generated content is upon us like a tidal wave – and its coming to your business

4. The age and demographic profile of your users / customers / employees has shifted

Trend # 1

The Rise of Social Networks

The Rise of Social Networks

Why are social networks important to business?

If you scratch the surface of any business, you’ll find two very

different organisations.

• The formal organisation - the one that can be represented by the boxes of an org chart.

• The informal organisation - the one shaped by the day-to-day interactions of employees – conversations in hallways or in airport lounges, exchanges of messages through email, IM and voicemail, conversations over a squash game.

McKinsey QuarterlyHarnessing the power of informal employee networks, 2007Lowell L. Bryan, Eric Matson, and Leigh M. Weiss

Networks in your Organisation

How it works•People connect to each other•Six degrees of separation•Informal

1) I am linked to ->

-> to you

--->You are linked to her ->

-> to him…

Social Networks in your Organisation

1) I share my data ->

-> with you --->

-->You share your data ->

---> with him

How it works•People share objects | watch others•Connections through objects•Social info streams: emergence of popular, interesting items

Social data in your Organisation

Why should I care?

Most corporate IT systems are geared to the needs of the formal organisation and ignore the informal one.

In the “formal organisation” software like Oracle and SAP are “Enterprise Applications” that are designed through elaborate, top-down processes.

The “informal organisation” is served, instead, by simpler, personal software … "comfort apps" like e-mail, IM, PowerPoint, Excel, and discussions by the coffee machine.

Ok, Where’s the problem ?

“Most of the really useful information that

flows through a company never gets

captured or broadly shared by employees.”

What happens if someone leaves?

Knowledge is hard to replace

Coca-Cola, for example, estimated that the departure of just one experienced marketing manager could cost millions of dollars due to the loss of critical marketing and client knowledge.

More broadly, the costs of recruiting and filling vacancies, lost productivity, and training is estimated to range from 30% to 150% of an employee’s salary

“The company essentially loses the

ability to truly harness, capture, and

learn from the knowledge its

employees create”

The Value Proposition

“Social tools shape themselves to their users rather than

forcing the users to adapt to preset specifications.”

“They do what corporate systems so often fail to do. They

allow the sharing of valuable information easily.”

Case Studies

Web 2.0 +

Employee profiles (internal version of MySpace) which provides the basics such as title, contact information, etc as well as video, notes, blog, roles, expertise, instant messaging, video messaging.

Social bookmarking: “We’re going to use social bookmarking to allow us to take the pulse of the organisation” 

Advantages

• Significantly faster closing and integration of acquired companies such as closing the WebEx acquisition in 8 days. 

• Reducing expenses and carbon footprint by reducing business travel.

• Faster business unit development.  Cisco grows one new emerging technology business unit about every 3 months. 

Wikis  “A lot of the collaborative work that goes on amongst project teams has really benefited from the use of wikis and discussion forums; the ability to have people interact much more quickly, much more immediately on the web has been

very powerful for us.”, Fred Killeen

Web 2.0 +

“No company will build or sustain a competitive advantage unless it capitalises on the combined power of individualised workers and social dynamics.”

Gartner Group also predicts that Web 2.0 tools will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2010.

TREND # 2

The Cluetrain Manifesto

95 Theses

1. Markets are conversations. 2. Markets consist of human

beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Naked Conversations

2008 - 100 Million + ?

The Rise in Blogs

The Rise in Blogs

The Rise in Blogs

TREND # 3

But what about my Intranet?

The intranet is (should be) “The Social Hub” of your enterprise

However, Intranets have not lived up to expectations:

• Workers not using Intranets for work• Today, few add value to the organisation• They are getting bigger and more expensive to run• Ineffective for knowledge management• More information is being created every day and not filtered• Who is ultimately responsible for controlling the content?

A little more Cluetrain

43. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute policies and other corporate information that workers mostly ignore.

44. The best intranets are built bottom-up by engaged individuals co-operating to construct something far more valuable: an intranet-worked corporate

conversation.

45. While this scares companies, they also depend heavily on intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to

"improve" or control these conversations.

Living together in harmony

“Intranet 1.0” is a centrally planned means of gaining access to approved documents, forms and applications. It’s a top-down communication system.

“Intranet 2.0” as a concept, is a series of social tools that support the spontaneous capture of corporate knowledge. It’s a bottom-up communication system.

TREND # 4

Your Customer Evangelists?

Customer Evangelists ?

Which companies are using Web 2.0 tools?

Your Competitors ?

““There is a way forward to leverage There is a way forward to leverage the power of the Web 2.0 technology, the power of the Web 2.0 technology, connect people within your company connect people within your company and engage customer evangelists to and engage customer evangelists to your brand. your brand.

How?

Social Tools New web technologies can help:

• To empower users to collaborate, retain, share, and re-surface

content online

• To provide a platform for individuals to share opinions and

experiences

• To help streamline project management internally

• To expose a new audience to a brand in a fresh and

innovative way

• To empower employees and customers to participate in the topic-

driven discussions that people are already having about your brand

Research. Evaluate blogs, wikis, forums and social bookmarking for your Enterprise. Conduct a trial using “free tools”, such as WordPress, or buy Community Server.

Observe. Look at your business data trends. How is information stored and retrieved in your business? Take a hard look at your Intranet. Is it really serving the original business need?

Think. Social Media tools, are not just another iteration of a collaboration suite. They bring in a fresh wave of thinking.

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