This is a nice snapshot of the Enterprise 2.0 platform at Booz Allen Hamilton by Walton Smith (@walton3, http://twitter.com/walton3 ). Walton and his team are doing an awesome job on connecting people and surfacing collective intelligence while improving business processes. I encourage people to read the part above and soak it in, “wanted the system to be people-centric rather than document-centric”. If you put people first, the rest will follow.

I worked on the Hello Platform and must say the “data integration” is a key part of its success. We focused on data integration to save time and money by integrating existing information and systems. This integration improved the user experience by reducing user data entry. I believe nobody wants to enter the same data over and over again. Displaying related information also leads users on the path of discovery. It is important to also have system integration from the platform, important data should be in sharable formats.

I also worked with the team to create the “Colleague Connections” feature. I modeled this from “Twitter Follow”, but added support for tags. The interface was well thought out and intuitive, which lead to rapid adoption ( over 10,000 connections in 7 days ). The added tag data gave users information about how they are perceived by their colleagues. Providing a simple way for colleagues to connect gives employees an easy way build relationships on their path to discovery.

Social Bookmarking is a super simple way to support information integration. Connecting these social bookmarks (links) to people and communities is an instant way to add value. External and internal bookmarks can be added in less than 60 seconds. The use of “Linked Data” seems to be overlooked, I believe this is due to its simplistic nature. I recommend watching this TED Talk video from Tim Berners-Lee on “Linked Data”. This area of the platform could use additional work. A developer on the team has many answers for a vast improvement, I hope someone listens.

Funny how “Forums” was not part of the original plan. The forums feature is a threaded discussion board and receives the most traffic on the platform. This is a great example of why you don’t put tools before people and why measurement is important. There are many reasons why this area receives the most traffic and this comment is not the best time to go into the reasons. One comment I can share right now is, “Design for adoption”. This is the key thought for converting random users into passionate members. I can not claim all the form features as original ideas, I used an open source solution and skinned it to fit the look and feel of the platform along with some feature modifications.

Communities are a valuable part of this platform, but people are the most valuable part of this Enterprise 2.0 solution.

I am looking forward to your next part on Adoption. I am a big fan of “The 2.0 Adoption Council“. People can also get ahead of the curve by learning how to design for adoption. I recommend reviewing information from Joshua Porter, especially his book: Designing for the Social Web, he also shares information on SlideShare & YouTube. I also hope to hear about “Measurement” in the near future. My favorite person on measurement is KD Paine.

I am no longer with Booz Allen, but I am thinking forward about scalability and cloud computing.

Thanks to Bill and Walton for sharing,
Daniel Hudson

Cannot wait to read the other pieces!