Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 11 February, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, software, Web 2.0 |
In my career, I am lucky enough to meet technologist from all kinds of background, from the geekiest computer scientist to business/IT advisers. Recently, I spoke to a technical architect who commented this – Social software is child’s play, just install it and let employees run wild.
I was pretty shocked when I heard this. I was just thinking, the entire Cisco is banging their bucks on Web 2.0, organisations now are scrambling to understand how this technology can help improve their performance and Forrester / Gartner has dedicated teams trying to understand this fast changing phenomena. All these effort just for installing a software and let employees run wild?
Alot of Enterprise Web 2.0 is not just in the technology itself. I look at the Enterprise 2.0 platform as a car. A car’s objective is to bring people from point A to point B (even though some people buy cars to show off – but that’s not the point). Enterprise 2.0 platform is also the same. It helps brings the organisation to where they want to be – leverage collective intelligence, streamlined communication, real time updates on changes, better knowledge sharing, enhanced collaboration and so on. The benefits are immense! I am not saying that the platform is not important. Just like a car, some people would choose to buy a Toyota / Honda, some will choose to buy a BMW / Audi and some would choose to buy a Porsche / Ferrari. Different car deliver different performance, comfort and features. Different social platform do the same thing too! Its all about how much an organisation is willing to pay, the features they require and the tools that they need.
More importantly, before one purchase a car, one would need to plan their needs, what they want and how much they can afford. There’s a fair amount of planning, requirements gathering and cost calculation involved in the process. Enterprise 2.0 is the same. There are heaps of planning, strategy work, change management and solution design involved. If this is not done properly, the software might not be fit for purpose.
After the purchase of the car, one would need to maintain the car sending it for regular maintenance. Enterprise 2.0 is the same too. Not just the IT support and infrastructure maintenance but also managing virtual teams, information governance and “gardening” the platform. There is a lifecycle around an Enterprise 2.0 implementation. Its NOT just installing a software – its not that simple.
Posted by Sean Lew on under books, IT strategy, social media, Web 2.0 |
I bought this book last year shortly after it was released to the public from Book Depository (which is like 1/2 to 1/3 the price of what is sold at the local Borders). I did not have the chance to read this until last week. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Its an excellent read.
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Buy it here.
When I first saw the title, I was thinking – “Excellent word to use to describe social media and Web 2.0 technologies.” Anyway, for those who are new in this space, the authors defined Groundswell as a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
This book is mainly about how organisations can use the power of social technologies to help organisations achieve their goals. It maps out high level strategies for organisations to folllow and a generic step by step guide to achieving it. This book uses some excellent case studies and uses it well to support their argument. They have leveraged Forrester’s research well and incorporated some good statistics into the book. This is a welcoming change as many results about social media and web 2.0 are still in the form of case studies. Another really nice thing about the book is that it has presented ROI calculations of various technologies a few times and it clearly presented their case extremely well.
This book was focused mainly on Business to Consumer type web 2.0 relationship but it also briefly touched on groundswell within the organisation (internal groundswell).
I would totally recommend this book to anyone who is interested to find out how Web 2.0 can help to communicate, connect and innovate with your customers and how the changing face of corporate marketing.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 5 February, 2009 under Blue Sky Thinking |
I had a conversation today with a colleague and one of the comments made was “The XXX IT implementation was really successful, it has reduced the number of support staff by XX and XX people were retrenched”
The first thing that came to my mind was “well, the support staff and the people who got retrenched would not think that the implementation was successful”
From different perspectives, an IT implementation can be considered a success or a failure. Different stakeholders in the organisation would have a different view of success and how it affects their job and goals. Also, when the system is being implemented, it could be a huge success but as time grows, it created another set of problems – would you consider this as successful? Also, the measure of success and the unit of analysis is another consideration of IT implementation success. Using different ways to analyse, different results can be achieved.
So how is an IT implementation successful? Is it when the combined benefits outweighs the combined cost? If that’s the case then how do one measure the combined benefits and the combined costs?
Sorry I do not have any answers to these questions and I am sure there are more dimensions of success with regards to an IT system implementation. Some food for thought.
Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 3 February, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, General Ranting, Innovation, Web 2.0, Wiki |
The definition and coverage of Web 2.0 has been rather broad and loosely used by many. Sometimes, I get confused with my thoughts on Web 2.0. The amount of terms that are being used is plentiful and sometimes these terms do not have a clear definition. The basic idea of web 2.0 is about social network and collaboration. However, in different settings, different approaches are taken thus different outcomes are achieved. I hope to define some of these terms in a clearer way.
1) Consumer to Consumer (C2) Web 2.0
In C2C Web 2.0, there are a few key applications and tools out there like FaceBook, YouTube, SlideShare, GoogleDocs, Twitter, DIGG , Delicious, Wikipedia and Linux.
The key ideas behind C2C web 2.0 is all about social networking, for example in the case of facebook. To a large degree there are direct user contribution to Wikipedia and Linux where people consciously contribute and add to the body of knowledge within these networks. There are also alot of sharing of information through tools like Slideshare, YouTube and GoogleDocs. These tools allow people to collaborate and/or contribute for their individual purposes.
In general, consumer to consumer is aimed at connecting people with the same friends, same cause or same interest. Collective intelligence is a very strong outcome of such forms of social networking. In many cases, C2C Web 2.0 could be just for leisure purposes.
2) Business to Consumer (B2C) Web 2.0
In B2C Web 2.0, there are some really famous case studies like Lego, Procter and Gamble’s Connect and Develop and GoldCorp. Read these case studies for a better understanding of B2C Web 2.0.
These kinds of Web 2.0 is really getting consumers to contribute and share their knowledge, expertise and/or feelings towards their products or services for the organisation. The organisation can choose to compensate their contributors with a cash reward or not.
3) Consumer to Business (C2B) Web 2.0
There are also many forums out there that helps people solve their issues for any organisation. For example, Whirlpool is a telecommunication forum for Australians where consumers help consumers solve problems that they have with Telco companies. This is a tricky situation as in some instances, problems can be solved using free contribution from users however, it might go the other way where people start ranting and saying bad stuff about the organisation.
4) Business to Business (B2B) Web 2.0
B2B web 2.0 is about how two different and separate organisations can collaborate and share sensitive information about each other for their own specific benefits. For example, in a supply chain, organisations can tightly integrate any two or more organisations together through an online platform and share information not only about their inventory status or production output but also information about key staff, communicate via a communal platform on issues, progress, updates and anything in between.
5) Enterprise 2.0 (Internal Business Web 2.0)
This is all about the internal social networking and collaboration within the organisation. Tools like Jive’s Clearspace, SocialText and Telligent have generally focused on this requirement from organisations.
Web 2.0 within organisations require more governance and control as compared to consumer Web 2.0. The data that is being exchange could also be generally more sensitive and holds some commercial value. Many of such implementations are also done at a global level where there are different teams working on different things and they require some kind of workspace for them to operate in (think of a virtual team). These are just some of the functionality that is not available in consumer Web 2.0.
Consumer web 2.0 is purely voluntary. Users choose to put up what they want and choose what they want to do. Due to the sheer amount of people on the net contributing, sharing and collaborating, one or two less people who are not willing to join the community does not really hurt the community. However, in an Enterprise 2.0 environment, there is generally a limited amount of resources available and organisations need to leverage these resources as much as possible and the more people contribute and share information, the more successful the platform is. Change management is key to the success.
Posted by Sean Lew on under social media, Web 2.0 |
Pretty good slides on Business to Consumer Web 2.0 overview.
Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 1 February, 2009 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy |
I was asked this question a few days back. The question was What is an Enterprise 2.0 implementation? What kind of technology is needed? Which software providers are the best?
My reply to this was very simple. Enterprise 2.0 is not about the technology. Its about getting your people to your final destination which is seamless collaboration, knowledge sharing and collective intelligence.
Even though there are some extremely good technologies and platforms out there like Jive’s Clearspace, SocialText and Telligent which are considered industry leaders by Gartner and/or Forrester, an organisation must clearly understand what they want and how the software fits in to the bigger picture. Personally, I feel that a off the shelf platform can only do that much. Its pretty much like buying a suit, most of the time to get a nice fitting suit, one would generally need to do some alterations – like length of the pants, arm length or even “slimming down” the suit for a more fitted suit.
Focus on the strategy, the requirements and change management.
