Social Business Design is a new concept that my colleagues and I have been talking about at our new company.

Earlier today I posted an quick intro to Social Business Design on my own blog which explains a bit about each of the four archetypes of a social business.

I thought it would be worthwhile to dive in a bit deeper here on the FastForwardBlog because I always get such good, and candid, feedback from everyone here.

Diving in to Social Business Design: The Dynamic Signal
The concept of the “real time enterprise” is not new. The idea that organizations can compete more effectively through faster decision making and streamlined operational efficiencies has been applied in all types of organizations. Measurement is at the center of a social business design and the ability to measure an organization in real time will be critical to the future health of a social business, this is why data availability will be critical and why the Dynamic Signal will be the new organizational backbone.

In the past the concept of a real-time enterprise was driven by data integration and other projects which focused on re-factoring existing enterprise systems and processes in order to generate large amounts of real-time data. While the concept was sound, these projects, such as Enterprise Application Integration exercises, have been estimated to have failure rates as high as 70%.

The interesting thing about the nature of these projects is the rigidity of their design and implementation. The same systems-level design discipline that needed to be applied to application integration flowed through the entire project and resulted in very few tangible or personal outcomes for the end user. Many projects have also been extremely rule and process focused, which always seemed counter-intuitive to me.

This systems and data approach resulted in a view of the real-time enterprise which was almost entirely application and process based. In retrospect it is easy to understand why this happened: It was the first time in history that systems were available to generate this level of data and the prospect of intelligently linking these data creation software and systems was exciting.

In the past we wanted to create data buses in order to connect systems together. We thought that if we could standardize rules, share data and integrate interfaces then we would be home free. The proof is in the pudding however, and the world is sadly a much messier place than we imagined.

The concept of the Dynamic Signal is a conceptual step beyond the Enterprise Service Bus and introduces data interchange with a distinctly social approach. While traditional data buses have been designed to ship data between applications and have put systems at the center, a Dyanmic Signal is a user-first approach to data generation which means that events are generated primarily based on user actions and interactions, but there is still room for systems-level participation in the stream.

The Perfect Dynamic Signal
Developing the perfect Dynamic Signal for an organization is one half design work and one half implementation. Designing a Dynamic Signal does not mean just creating a stream of data and events, but defining the user-relevant outcomes and identifying how those can be leveraged.

The perfect dynamic signal will combine existing enterprise data sources and will allow for user-created events to be added to the stream. These sources should include outside services as well as internal sources. I have seen a few really interesting enterprise systems lately which take different approaches to integrating third parties such as Facebook, Twitter and cloud based services like Salesforce and Webex.

Adding the Metafilter
Creating the Dynamic Signal infrastructure for an organization means that all people in the enterprise can understand what is happening and they can contribute to those activities just-in-time when needed. This presents a new problem however: Filter Failure. Overloaded inboxes, thousands of tweets, millions of events and data points all fly by and the user is often left with very little ability to filter, prioritize, share or collaborate on those items.

A Metafilter, when added to a Dynamic Signal, is a key component of ensuring that a Social Business infrastructure is manageable and customizable by the user. Metafilters can be simple and straightforward filters, but they can also be dynamic and highly integrated content managers which can be built by individual users or through Ecosystem participation. It is through the use of an enterprise ecosystem that we can leverage social network and work related data to create stronger metafilters.

Will we get to the real time enterprise?
It would be easy to dismiss a Dynamic Signal approach to building a Social Business as doomed for failure based on the success rates of past IT based information management projects, but it would be a mistake.

For the first time we are seeing a complete set of ideas emerge which are applicable on both a strategic and implementation level. The four major archetypes of Social Business Design can be integrated to move past simple data interchange and in to a world of work in which end-users are in control and through which they can collaborate in real time. Without this framework it was easy to miss the need to develop strong ecosystems and intelligent metafilters in addition to a dynamic signal.

I am looking forward to being able to start talking about some fantastic case studies which illustrate these concepts, and welcome any insights or experience you might have in developing a real time enterprise system.