by Paula Thornton
December 26, 2007 at 2:07 pm
· Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Barriers, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Social Networking
This is in response to a comment from my colleague, Bill Ives, who asked for my thoughts as to the potential shakeout of social networking tools in the Enterprise. Bill has previously reported both on a major software developer, Serena, which has adopted Facebook to REPLACE their intranet (supporting 800 employees — the numbers can matter here) and WorkBook.
There are a number of factors at play here. Which of these are most relevant, depends on the circumstances.
1. Size/Effort/Culture
These are so closely tied together it’s hard to unravel them from one another. The success of social networking technologies depends on adoption and buy-in. The culture of 800 employees can be far more readily influenced, as a collective – particularly when replacing an intranet in total — than situations with the following:
- Thousands of employees. Likelihood of a ‘cohesive’ culture diminishes and increases the effort to implement/adopt, unless it fills a void, or replaces and enhances the value of something already in use (e.g. the results of a people lookup).
- A technology culture with security phobias. Many enterprises would never consider the Facebook path Serena embraced, simply because of firewall/security policies (based on sound rationale or not).
- A social culture that may have pre-conceived notions that the technologies might be non-productive, threatening, or fill-in-the-blank-challenge (we’ve seen this with all 2.0 technologies — because of the perceived ‘control’ factor). This list would also include outright apathy (which is fairly significant in many cultures, both on the ‘permission’ and the adoption side).
2. Degree of Interconnectivity
You can’t really use the term ‘online’ any more to cover all aspects of being ‘connected’. Regardless of device or means of interaction, the value of social networking goes up the more resources are enabled to contact and interact with one another. There are many business models that provide limited means for employees to connect to the company, let alone one another. For a technology company like Serena, nearly everyone is likely ‘connected’ to do their work. But being connected isn’t the same as being interconnected.
Using a computer for mostly ‘offline’ activities (stand-alone applications), is not the same as doing ’shared’ work that is constantly showing updates, where individuals are connected to the ‘pulse’ of the business and can ’see’ exchanges of activities going on. The further away an employee is from a ‘live’ pulse of the company, the less likely a social networking technology will add value, unless it is being leveraged in an intentional effort to connect employees. Connecting people to have conversations and/or debates when they have limited facts is counterproductive.
Many companies are not strategically leveraging their intranets as ‘the face of work’ within their organizations. Employees go there on a ‘have to’ or ‘as needed’ basis. Such environments can reinvent themselves either by replacing or adding a social networking dimension, but then, this was often the justification for many companies implementing portals (aka. collaboration). Such strategies have to be brought together — they’re pieces of the same story (or should be).
3. Interface Saturation
We’ve lived a long history where every application has its own interface. Even though internet browsers brought some degree of continuity to an online experience, its influence over the total experience is limited. Adding another interface is not the goal here; adding a capability is. Exactly how would employees’ ability to network among themselves be increased?
Serena was on the right track replacing their intranet for Facebook because:
- They weren’t competing against themselves for attention, or asking employees to choose an allegiance (what’s set as your ‘home’ page at work?)
- They enhanced Facebook to better meet their own needs (expanding its purpose reinforced their commitment to it)
- [There are a lot more...add yours.]
What about something like Worklight’s WorkBook? My first question would be, what will it replace and/or what will it bring together? Then, how is it different than anything else already in place that offers access to friends, news, groups, or applications, including email? If I can look up the current status of my colleagues today in Outlook, or grab their phone number, why wouldn’t I expect the same interface to give me direct access to ‘more’ about that individual? Or, how will the social networking solution ‘play’ with the conversations already going on via email? How will it replace or divert email exchanges?
Why do I need to have all these competing interfaces asking for my attention, diverting me from my work? Remind me again, what was I doing?
STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERFACE. What are the functions being delivered and how do they fit with all other existing functions?
Let me simply ask companies some very serious questions.
- Social networking is not a technology, although the label can be used to identify unique technology solutions. What do you know about how employees are already interacting with each other (IM, email, phone, text messaging, etc.)?
- How would a ‘new’ function/interface enhance existing social networking and what specific value would/should it add?
- What role does social networking already play to contribute to increased productivity? Where does the ability to connect to one another break down and how does this impact productivity? Will a new technology address this?
- Where does corporate/enterprise social networking end and industry social networking begin? [I existed before I joined my current employer and will exist afterward...my identity is not unique to my employer. My incentive is not to maintain my corporate identity but my industry identity, which may be separate from my alter-ego
]
If you don’t know, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with than making decisions about social networking technology.
And yes, some 2.0 junkies might insist that it should just evolve. There should be an element of evolution balanced with insightful decision. Evolution has a premise: survival of the fittest. ‘Fit’ is not something that happens randomly. Evolution is not equal to random. There are already far too many careful, restricted decisions made that are still quite random (e.g. forced by process, culture, power, naivety, time constraints and combinations thereof).
P.S. To put the value of my opinion in perspective, I advised my husband in the late ’90s that ERPs were not a good stock investment — they ended up being the high-flyers of the market at that time. The problem was that I tied my opinion of the technologies (their lack of robustness/completeness, and/or solid design) to their market potential. I failed to factor in the absence of alternatives to address a serious ‘perceived’ problem at hand. I also failed to adjust for the afore-mentioned randomness factors that drive major technology contracts – not tied to outcome.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Permalink
Paula - Very nice summary of the issues. I think one of the important series of points you made was what about Serena that made it a candidate for Facebook as intranet. Serena themselves recognized some of these factors in their decision process. They added another and that was the need to bring a firm that had been dealing with more traditional enterprise software into their new strategic direction to roll out web 2.0 products. Facebook allowed them to introduce their employees first hand to a web 2.0 approach, at the same time, no one was required to do it. One of the classic mistakes I have seen many times is to assume that just because a technology worked in one situation, it will work in many others. I have seen this with consulting companies who try to make a repeatable service line out of unique situation. I am sure it will happen again in web 2.0, if it has not already happened.
 |
SameerDecember 26th, 2007 at 11:52 pm |
Great post.
I think cherry picking applications based on specific process needs gets you a better chance at succeeding with “social networking”. In the enterprise, its more important to think where ’social’ actually helps an existing technology-enabled process solution. If we break out social networking into discrete pieces and evaluate each against current processes, there’s a better chance at adoption. Social between say sales engineers and sales reps on the same account team is might have legs. Social Networking between Sales people that are competing for the same book of business - not so much. Pick out the pieces that matter to each audience and there’s a treasure of applicability of Socnets capabilities.
Sameer: Interesting that you bring up this point. I sensed a trend and queried some vendors about this and they reflected and realized there was a trend: there is definite buying among special areas and the focus happens to be sales and/or marketing.
But, here’s an interesting scenario that illustrates the short-sightedness of this approach. Say you’re in sales at a major technology firm. You’re working on a pursuit and need insight and/or help from someone inside the company with a specific area of expertise. How do you find them, if the entire company isn’t participating in the ‘community’?
This isn’t the same as being part of the conversation or having access to the ’sales community’, it’s whether or not the individual has an identity that’s searchable across the types of attributes that the sales person is looking for.
Most ‘formal’ corporate data stores have pre-defined attributes (you can only select what’s made available). What happens when the needs are attributes that are the evolving things that aren’t in the pre-defined lists?
The distinction here is not so much about sharing conversations as it is finding the right people to have a conversation with in the first place — typically outside of your immediate circle of influence.
|
SameerDecember 27th, 2007 at 12:51 pm |
Hi Paula
I did not mean to pick on Sales and Marketing - just chose that to illustrate my point. The case you lay out in your comment is pretty much what I am saying - focus on a process-driven approach.
For instance: “You’re working on a pursuit and need insight and/or help from someone inside the company with a specific area of expertise. How do you find them, if the entire company isn’t participating in the ‘community’?”
In my mind that’s a classic example of a process that’s critical to the enterprise that I mention above. Using social networking to facilitate such a meaningful and time sensitive discussion suddenly has business justification to it and the dollars will flow to support it.
Paula,
You are absolutely right… it is all about interconnectivity and productivity, not so much the specific technology.
The value of web 2.0 applications in the enterprise lies in the ability to bridge the gap between the consumer experience and the workplace routine. That is the WorkBook premise, relying on the following major trends:
1. People are increasingly adopting cool technology at home (IM, personalized home pages, Facebook, etc.). This is especially true of the younger, more tech-savvy generation.
2. These same folks come to work and are frustrated by their enterprise computing experience. Examples include using arcane application interfaces, being overwhelmed by email sent to too-large distribution lists, finding information, etc. This has been well documented; see for example, an excellent report that quantifies the cost of this frustration - The Hidden Costs of Information Work, Susan Feldman, IDC research report #201334, April 2006.
3. There is a mega-trend (Gartner calls it “irreversible”) around the consumerization of enterprise IT. Certainly a part of this involves employees “bringing” their consumer tools to work. A recent Yankee Group survey found that 86% of corporate end users (not IT executives) already use at least one consumer technology in the workplace (Holbrook, Josh, Yankee Group, Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management, 17 October 2007).
When you add it up, what this means is that organizations have to respond to their employees’ desire to use consumer computing tools that are convenient and comfortable for them. The bottom line is that no specific technology is the solution, but rather all technologies are the solution. In other words, WorkBook does not seek to replace any existing means of employee-employee or employee-organization interaction. It brings together employees who are already spending time on Facebook, and helps optimize their interactions, thereby increasing productivity – all within the firewall.
A simple example is a developer team working on an upcoming product upgrade release. Using WorkLight’s WorkBook application, the team can form a group surrounding this project, share relevant news regarding competing technologies, search for relevant experts within the organization, discuss application data, etc. This presents the company with an added level of collaboration among team members over a platform that is naturally appealing to the workers – the social network.
I also agree with you on the saturation of interface – the modern workspace has become quite a cluttered environment. One of our main guidelines is to sidestep the interface and focus on real needs within the organization.
Regards,
Yonni
Yonni Harif | Marketing Manager
WorkLight | T +972.9.961.5225 | M +972.54.250.0767 | yonni@myworklight.com
WorkLight™ - Consumerizing the Enterprise Computing Experience™
Yonni: Great to have you as part of the conversation. Good to see that some vendors are leveraging sound research to inform their offerings.
There’s something I’m curious about. In a smaller environment, getting rampup to Facebook might be somewhat minor. In a corporation where upwards of 75% of the resources don’t currently have a Facebook account, the effort would be significant.
If I were in a decision-making role and looking to optimize the effort of the employees, I’d want a solution that would be adding significant value beyond collaboration/interaction and reliance on individual investment in maintaining an identity. Are you now or will you plan to add functions that automate the creation of identity through synthesis of their works (e.g. internal crawls/inventory of content authored by individuals)?
Paula,
Thanks, it’s great to be here
You raise a valid question, what about big companies where facebook has yet to tap into the corporate/social dialogue? From what we have seen, Facebook and similar social networks are already a reality in the enterprise world, whether employers are actively promoting it (e.g. Serena) or not. WorkBook would enable these corporations to stay ahead of the game, and join the E2.0 bandwagon.
Just as a reference, a few months ago there was a bit of blog action surrounding Facebook’s penetration into Microsoft. In July, The Sean Blog noted that there were over 17,000 MSFT employees on Facebook. Today, a quick search reveals that there are over 25,000 employees signed on to the social network. That’s a 47% increase in just 5 months. Google’s network has also increased from 5,500 in July to 7,600 employees today, currently making up about 72% of its workforce. This is the reality we observe in corporate America.
Also, in WorkLight products we’ve gone beyond collaboration tools as you noted, enabling Web 2.0 navigation through complex applications such as ERP and CRM to access data in a customized self-service manner. We’ve found that having this capability has real business value for customers.
Best, Yonni
» Subscribe to the RSS feed for these comments
HTML-Tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
