Archive for Enterprise 2.0
by Joe McKendrick
August 20, 2011 at 11:06 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Software, SOA, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, User Revolution, Web 2.0
I have been covering and reporting and analyzing the business technology scene for more than 25 years now.
And every couple of years or so, a new technology “revolution” would spring up. Not the stale, overhyped prior revolution that had just passed — but a new, exciting revolution.This time, things would be different. This new revolution would change the way we thought about technology. This revolution would change the business. This revolution would bring the power of information technology to the masses. A revolution unlike any other revolution that ever came before it. The most incredible, unbelievable, paradigm-shifting revolution ever. Yada, yada. Promises, promises. Here are a few revolutions:
- In the late 1980s, it was client/server computing — sticking a PC in front of a larger computer.
- In the late 1990s. it was Web computing — sticking a browser in front of a network.
- In the late 1990s, it was dot-coms — sticking a browser in front of a store.
- In the early 2000s decade, it was Web services and XML — sticking standardized code in front of an application.
- In the late 2000s decade, it was cloud — sticking a cloud in front of everything.
- And lots of revolutions in between — usually sticking something in front of something else.
Note on the above list: some would call these techniques “putting lipstick on a pig.”
And when I would come home for dinner at night, or saw friends over the weekend, nobody would ask me what I was up to, and eyes would glaze over if I attempted to tell them. I wouldn’t even attempt to begin to explain to people what I had been writing about all day long. What’s so revolutionary about speeding up a purchase order process or building a rules engine that reduced exception reporting? What’s revolutionary about displaying 3270 “green-screen” code within a terminal emulation window? (Good stuff every business should pursue — but not something that will make you the life of the party.)
Then, one day a couple of years ago, I came home — and found my daughters (tween and teen) actively participating in the revolution. The social networking revolution. An information-technology revolution had finally hit home, and in a big way. Unlike the decades of vendor pronouncements about revolution, this one was real. The old order was being driven out — by employees and children of employees.
I knew this time, it was different. So, my daughters may someday ask me: “What did you do in the Social Networking Revolution, Daddy”*? I will tell them about the writings my colleagues and I did here at the FastForward site. And where the revolution took us.
Social media was more than a platform or a new mode of computing — it was a new way of connecting, of doing business, of leading nations, of working, of making friends and renewing friendships. But, for purposes of this site, first commissioned in December 2006, the theme was to explore to unfolding new world of Enterprise 2.0 in work and business settings. Consider where the social revolution has taken us in just a few short years:
Personal outsourcing: For the first time, employees all up and down the line have access to information they need to do their jobs better, advance companies, and advance their careers. John Schmidt so accurately described it as “personal outsourcing.” Unlike the traditional model for outsourcing — firms contracting out functions or processes to an outside firm — “individuals are starting to outsource their problem-solving and their own professional development,” he says. “They’re leveraging things like wikis, blogs, other collaboration events to collaborate in real-time with other individuals.” IT professionals go to Google, Wikipedia, and other online sources of support, Schmidt says. “They write out their question in their blog and look for their community to respond and help them. …they extended their network of peers to outside the four walls of their company. …they’re taking their problems and their professional challenges to the world.”
Economic revitalization and opportunity: Social networking and E2.0 provides a vast new array of tools for seeking out new markets, as well as managing through the tough times. Companies have means to better leverage the knowledge coursing through their corporate veins to turn around distressed lines of business. Employees have tools to ride through tough times, by staying well-connected with their professional networks and potential employers — even after they have been laid off. They no longer have to be powerless victims of recessions. (I called it the LIFT phenomenon — LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.) Employers have a resource to identify key talent to build their organizations.
Improving the quality — and joy — and therefore productivity — of work: The 9-to-5 rut had been withering on the vine for a number of years, and social networking is putting the final stakes in the industrialized, command-and-control model of management. Productivity is not something that occurs in a cubicle between 9 and 5, it’s something that comes in “bursts.” Social networks and E2.0 give everyone the flexibility and connectivity to respond to those bursts. In the process, the lines between work and personal life have not only just blurred — they’ve disappeared completely. Some Gloomy Guses say that’s not a good thing, and that employers will exploit it. I say it’s a real good thing. People should be proud of their work, and have the passion raging within them to want to pursue it, think about it, and embed it into their lives. Good riddance, 9 to 5.
Return on investment: A hotly debated topic. But the ROI is there. McKinsey & Company, for one, did countless studies the past few years that proved it. A couple of years back for example, they published the results of a survey of nearly 1,700 executives from around the world which paints a highly positive picture of the business returns being seen from E2.0 deployments. Close to seven out of ten respondents (69%) report that their companies “have gained measurable business benefits [italics mine], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.”
It’s been close to five years that we have been covering the revolution — a real revolution — at this site. And it’s only just begun.
(*By the way, the title of this post is a paraphrase of the 1966 movie “What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?” in which a bunch of soldiers in World War II hosted a street festival in an Italian town. One could say social networking is a global festival of sorts.)
by Bill Ives
August 19, 2011 at 3:15 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Media
Recently, I received a review copy of Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies by John P. Girard, Cindy Gordon, and JoAnn L. Girard. I have known Cindy for some time and we have done work together on several occasions, including several writing efforts so I had high expectations for this work. The book argues that after some false starts, four critical enablers have converged to make virtual business opportunities a reality: social technology, visionary leadership, an increasing recognition of the value of a collaboration culture, plus virtual worlds. They define virtual business as follows: “A virtual business provides innovative solutions to new and traditional business challenges by exploiting social technology, leadership, and collaboration in both the real and virtual words.”
The book examines four virtual business strategies that are showing promise. The “any place, any time” strategy provides high quality service 24/7 through bypassing traditional geographic challenges. The “people know best” strategy looks at crowd-sourcing the wisdom of every-day people. The “everyone has a stake” strategy allows organizations to take advantage of their stakeholders’ views. Finally, the “real in the virtual world” strategy enables real businesses to sell their wares in the virtual world.
The book provides case examples and best practices. They look at both successes and failures in this new market and make some bets on the future. They conclude that virtual business is here to stay and firms need to develop a strategy to take advantage of this new market or risk their demise.
One strong example is the transformation from printed books to e-books. I am reading a virtual version of their book now. The authors report that on Christmas Day 2009, consumers purchased more Kindle books than physical books through Amazon, a virtual store itself. Now the iPad is booming with Apple selling more tablets than PCs both in terms of volume and revenue – and the iPad is much cheaper. It takes e-reading to new heights and provides connectivity to so many other possibilities. For example, it becomes that much easier to sharing insights from what you are reading or look up related information from other sources. Publishers who recognize this trend will be in position to ride the new wave and those that do not will be ridden over.
This new world will change many things including jobs. The authors note that many of the top jobs of 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are now faced with preparing our children for jobs that do yet exist and to solve problems that are yet unknown. This uncertainty has always been the case to some extent but it has become a much stronger factor. I saw from another source that in 1986 75% of the knowledge that a worker needed was stored in workers’ heads but by 2006, that number was estimated to be 9%. We need new ways of providing the remaining 81% and the virtual world opens up an opportunity for this also through social software.
by Joe McKendrick
August 8, 2011 at 11:37 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Media
As we’ve been discussing here at this site for some time, there are tangible business benefits being realized from adoption of social media platforms as part of a comprehensive Enterprise 2.0 strategy.
However, this is a message that is not getting through to small businesses.
Hiscox, an insurance company. recently surveyed US small business leaders on their social media usage and found that many weren’t using these important channels to promote their businesses and products. Only 12% of businesses described social media promotion as a must and nearly 50% of respondents aren’t using social media at all.
For those that did use social media for their business, 19% use Facebook, 15% use LinkedIn, and 4% use Twitter.
Traditional modes dominate small business communication. Nearly two in five respondents said word-of-mouth was the main way they got business, and another 42% cited word-of-mouth in combination with other marketing promotions.
When all respondents were asked about how they felt about using social media for their business: 12% describe it as a must, they do it all the time; 24% do it when they have the time; and 14% indicated they don’t know enough about it.
by Bill Ives
August 8, 2011 at 3:35 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, IT Department, State Street Bank
State Street Corporation is known for banking and one of the reasons that Boston is a financial services hub on global scale. They are also looking ahead to predict how technology will impact their industry and released its Vision Report. The report, “The Evolving Role of Technology in Financial Services,” looks at the impact of forthcoming advances in three specific areas: analytics, electronic trading and regulation, as well as portfolio allocation and modeling.
The report looks at the impact that next generation technology such as cloud computing is expected to have on the industry. According to the report, investors will obtain significant benefits through greater automation and capacity on demand, accelerated time to market of innovative new products — including custom analytics and data — greater security and strengthened client service.
It opens with this statement: “Technology has long played a key role in the financial services industry. Today, however, a number of new and rapidly accelerating trends are emerging that promise to usher in an entirely new paradigm. Information technology can no longer simply be an “add on” at the periphery of the business, but rather must be deeply embedded at its core.” It has come a long way from simply counting beans.
State Street’s Vision report also explains that, unlike today, the financial services industry will soon deploy increasingly sophisticated, forward-looking technology tools and analytics that will enable investors to understand and model actual precursors of performance. For example, instead of today’s simple descriptions related to risk position and market stability, investors will soon be able to see more acute and intricate insights and the actual factors that contribute to those risk positions. These factors alone, the report states, will have reverberating impacts on the habits, business processes and decision-making of institutional investors around the globe.
The report is divided into three main sections:
Technology with a Purpose: The Next Generation Today section discusses the integration of risk and return technology by investment service providers to address asset managers and asset owners’ growing need for more detailed portfolio analytics, process transparency, risk management and dashboards to improve the speed and kind of information they are receiving and their access to it.
Using Technology to Adapt to the New Regulatory Environment section examines the review of electronic trading by regulators following the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Technology has been at the forefront in enabling the exponential growth of electronic trading and has become the only solution to effectively meet the challenges inherent in new trading regulations.
Portfolio Allocation and Modeling — Look at the question: Technological Arms Race? And explores technology’s solutions to meet today’s leading global asset management challenges, including market crowding, pricing inefficiencies, risk and rebalancing.
The report states the drivers of the changes they cover include several factors. One is clients’ demand for more and faster information, greater transparency, and improved risk management. We can certainly use all of these, especially the last one. Another is that the perceived value of data has fundamentally shifted. This was the theme of several session sat the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference (for example see: My 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference Notes: Big Data Analytics for Social Media).
In addition, the globalization of the workforce, which has led to around-the-clock schedules, the acceptance of open source-based strategies and the use of multiple procurement partners, is also an important factor. Taken together, these changes have set the groundwork for the emergence of a new business and IT model that will likely disrupt conventional thinking about the roles and capabilities of IT systems within financial services.
by Joe McKendrick
July 31, 2011 at 1:07 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking
News has just broken that the people of Iceland have just produced a draft of a new constitution – developed collaboratively via social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
The Althing, Iceland's Social Media-Savvy Parliament. Photo: Wikimedia
Iceland had its share of financial debacles in recent years, and, as a result, decided it needed to re-invent its government to incorporate a better system of checks and balances. However, the new constitution isn’t being written by a group of men holed up in a room somewhere — it’s an open process involving the latest social networking tools and technology.
A 25-member Constitution Council drafted the new constitution by engaging Iceland’s 318,000 citizens through social media sites, which helped keep everyone up to date on the document’s progress, as well as solicit feedback. The Constitutional Council posted daily interviews with delegates, and meetings were broadcast live on the council’s webpage and on Facebook. There were also schedules for all meetings, all minutes from meetings of groups, the Board and the Council as well as the Council’s work procedures. The webpage also has regular news from the Council’s work as well as a weekly newsletter.
If social networking tools can help transform a nation, imagine what it can do for a company.
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