Transparency in the Workplace: The trend toward collaboration and company goal management

Our New York readers may have noticed the Domino’s Pizza billboard ticker in Times Square. Since July 25th, Dominos has been running unfiltered reviews submitted by customers on its Domino’s Tracker website. The bold move, which coincides with new Domino’s TV spots, represents a dramatic shift for a company that in 2009 faced a huge PR backlash when a graphic video made by a few of its employees while on the job went viral on YouTube. That video made national headlines and prompted a video apology by Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle.

The Domino’s Times Square ticker highlights a broader business transparency trend. Instead of striving for the almost unattainable goal of crafting brand image through traditional, top-down marketing campaigns, companies are turning to social media as a way to engage with their customers, partners, and other key audiences.

Adopting an enterprise social software platform can apply the same principle of transparency and engagement to the entire business ecosystem. In doing so, companies position themselves to reap the benefits of improved collaboration and knowledge sharing, aligning employee and company goal management, and more. In the words of Sharon Allen, Deloitte LLP’s Chairman of the Board, “This seemingly simple strategy is the ultimate key to building a productive workforce.”

The first way transparency builds a productive workforce within a company is by breaking down information silos, which, in turn improves collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Instead of keeping information trapped and, perhaps overlooked, in an overloaded inbox, enterprise social software fosters transparency by exposing information to the entire company network (check out this video of our joint NewsGator-Colligo solution for email management + social). In reviewing his own email use, Vinicius de Costa, former Associate Director for Collaboration and Social Business with Kraft Foods, found that more than 90% of his email could be made public without suffering any security or confidentiality repercussions. He then asked the question, “Why keep all that information locked up in the first place?” By transitioning to NewsGator’s Social Sites enterprise social platform, Kraft Foods has “transformed the way people operate” at the company and helped employees achieve higher productivity.

Making work transparent through enterprise social tools also promotes the alignment of employee and company goals. At Unisys, for instance, executives publish everything from their monthly status reports to highlights of a recent client visit to their blogs. Aside from encouraging adoption of the social platform—employees need to have a presence on the Unisys intranet to read the reports—Unisys’s policy “gives senior management a more transparent, and immediate, way of seeing what is going on in key areas of the business rather than waiting for email status reports.”

And these types of policies are just the tip of the business-benefits iceberg. The incorporation of analytics tools will give companies and employees the opportunity to track and interact with their goals in real time. Maybe the Sales Team is focused on delivering $100 million in revenue this quarter. Analytics trackers in the Sales Community could show team members how close they are to achieving this target, along with breaking down how each salesperson has contributed to that effort. Team members can receive instant feedback on their performance, as well as analyze how other star performers in the company are achieving their success. Such alignment of employee and company goals is a boon, as it encourages employees to not only be productive, but to be more effective, engaging most intensely in those tasks that drive the business forward.

Engineering a shift in company policy to greater transparency can be unsettling for some executives. While certain security concerns and requirements may limit the amount of transparency that takes place in some companies or certain parts of the business, business leaders should seek to challenge and redefine what those orthodoxies may be. When Procter & Gamble Co. Chairman Alan G. Lafley set a goal for his organization to source at least fifty percent of its innovations from outside the company in 2001 (up from roughly 10% at the time), he challenged the orthodoxy that the company’s innovation pipeline must be fueled from within. The company has since been able to bring hundreds of new products to the market that had their genesis, in whole or in part, outside P&G. And what about our friends at Domino’s? Only two months after starting their new Times Square campaign, the Domino’s Pizza Tracker received and published nearly 7,000 reviews with an average rating of about 4.25/5 stars. Looks like transparency is working out pretty well.

NewsGator Social Sites – Trend Setting Social Business Solutions

When blazing a new path, someone has to get out in front of the wagon train. There are a lot of labels we place on those who break that new ground - trail blazers certainly springs to mind. Respected industry magazine KMWorld calls them trend-setters and this year, for the fourth year in a row, NewsGator Social Sites made the list.

Since 2003, KMWorld has been issuing an annual list naming companies and products it sees as leading the way in the world of knowledge management and collaboration. NewsGator Social Sites is on the list and we are, of course, thrilled to see our flagship social business software application acknowledged as a leading-edge offering in a very dynamic market. Let me expound on that last part for a moment.

If you click through and read the intro to this year’s list, you’ll see a pre-amble noting the amount of consolidation that has occurred since 2003; blurring what were once clearer product categories and functionalities. As Editor Hugh McKellar notes, “The juggernaut of consolidation keeps charging along, so what were single-point solutions a decade ago now include a broad spectrum of capabilities.” Also on the list is Microsoft SharePoint 2010. If any application on the list embodies the notion of “a broad spectrum of capabilities,” SharePoint would be it. Microsoft’s latest billion dollar business, it covers a lot of ground and does most of it really, really well.

But social business software is special. Capabilities and user expectations in social are often driven from outside the enterprise, in the consumer space where things move fast. Staying abreast of the rapid change in this market is a full time job requiring agility and focus. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 does a good job helping companies break down silos, connect disparate workgroups and improve information sharing among employees. More and more of those same organizations, however, are discovering that NewsGator Social Sites is a simple way to impart SharePoint’s broad spectrum of capabilities with true social business solutions that deliver real benefits – things like microblogging, activity streams, ideation, badging, video, and expertise discovery, to name but a few.

So, yes the lines will continue to blur, that’s the way technology has always trended. But enterprise social computing is the ultimate nexus of humans – the most social of all primates - and technology. The trend in this area is toward constant change. Stay tuned.

Business Longevity – Why Microsoft Will Still Be Relevant in 20 Years & Why That Matters to Your Enterprise Today

Good to Great and Built to Last are two of my favorite business books. Within the in the business analyses, one thing stands out very clearly – it’s very difficult for a company to stay relevant over long stretches of time. Companies like HP, which is featured in Built to Last, demonstrate that staying ahead in the world of technology is probably even more difficult than in other markets.

Microsoft, however, has the business longevity to last and in twenty years, it will still be a daily force in the lives of most people who have access to technology.  Just looking at the current Microsoft BUILD Developers Conference provides some pretty clear support for making this prediction. As a person who creates software products, I think I have a keen understanding of what will give a technology company staying power. I look at business momentum, business confidence and collective intelligence as the key predictors for staying relevant.

One key challenge to staying interesting in the long term is getting a significant enough footprint. With a significant user base, you get good feedback and you get the opportunity to introduce new versions and new offerings with less resistance. This is what I mean by business momentum, and Microsoft has more than anyone. Currently, there are over a billion PC’s in the world. Steve Ballmer told the BUILD Conference attendees that there will be 350 million new Windows devices sold this year.

The story is similar in enterprise products. The last Radicati report I saw showed Exchange handling over 300 million mailboxes and projected to cover nearly 500 million by 2014. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has over 100 million seats in the market. While the press and the stock market seem to favor rapid growth numbers, these numbers tell you about the staying power of Microsoft. That’s business momentum – and it gives Microsoft the ability to make pretty big changes over long periods without having to worry too much about the short term results of those changes. But in the world of technology, having a big position today doesn’t guarantee ongoing relevance unless you’re willing to adapt.

Business confidence comes into the picture when you need to make changes. From a product perspective, every time you change something someone is going to be unhappy. It’s also risky and difficult to make new products. Every new product either fulfills a need that people didn’t know they had (it’s truly a new thing) or does something well enough that they are willing to switch from how they did it before to your new way of doing it. It’s no wonder that a lot of products don’t succeed. When you’re a company the size of Microsoft, the bar for success is pretty high.

The easy thing to do would be to just keep doing the “safe” things – just keep making small changes to Windows and Office.  Instead, Microsoft goes beyond by creating new products and making significant changes to existing ones. Those things don’t always work, and when they don’t Microsoft gets heaps of criticism. Looking at what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8, Azure, and Office 365, it’s clear that they have the business confidence to continue looking at where they must succeed to stay relevant and are making significant investments in those areas.

Having a company with strong and confident leadership gives it the opportunity to act differently than officials elected to short terms. Companies like Microsoft can choose to go down roads that will be bumpy for several years. Business momentum will help your company survive that journey and Business confidence will give you the courage to stay on it. Furthermore, the company’s collective intelligence has to be strong enough to pick which roads to travel in the first place.

A company with business intelligence is able to take in all the information about what is happening across many markets and choose where to make investments. I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with a lot of people at Microsoft. One thing I can say about all of them – they’re smart. They ask good questions, they want to see the data and they think well on their feet. This isn’t a temporary thing. Microsoft hires smart people - it’s part of their process and integral to their culture.
 
This isn’t to say that other companies don’t hire smart people, but Microsoft seems to make it a focus.  The one thing that is most certain about companies staying relevant over the next twenty years is that it will come down to making good decisions. And that requires having smart people and an environment where they can apply their collective intelligence to make the necessary shifts in strategy.

The point of this post is not to heap endless piles of praise on Microsoft. It would be impossible for a company the size and scope of Microsoft not to make mistakes or have things go wrong. What I want is to convince business enterprises to determine how confident they are in their strategic vendors – will they stay relevant for the long haul?

Switching vendors for significant parts of how your company operates creates real risk and cost. If you can count on your vendors to stay focused on adapting and adding value, you can feel more assured about the long-term proposition. This creates a small paradox because the company needs business momentum to be viable in the long term while simultaneously maintaining the flexibility to deliver solutions in rapidly evolving markets.

Microsoft appears to answering this in two ways. First, they update their solutions at a fairly rapid pace (handing out Windows 8 tablets to developers less than two years after Windows 7 shipped is quite quick for an operating system). Second, Microsoft integration can maintain an extensive partner and developer ecosystem to add value on top of Microsoft technologies. For instance, an enterprise social computing software company like NewsGator can use SharePoint integration to build a product like Social Sites and enhance Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Microsoft continues to demonstrate the business momentum, business confidence and collective intelligence to stay relevant for the long haul. The message from both the Worldwide Partner Conference and the BUILD Developer Conference is that Microsoft understands executes the key themes it needs to continue to be a force in computer software. That matters to partners like NewsGator, and it matters to the people who buy Microsoft’s products.

In the technology space, I think it’s pretty rare to be able to confidently be able to point out companies that will be major players for decades to come. But based on what I’ve seen, Microsoft is built to last.

Social Tools & Collaborative Thinking – People Are Social Animals

People are social animals. This is widely understood, at least on a superficial level. The extent to which our social interactions structure our behaviors, however, remains, in a large sense, a topic unknown and misconstrued. Paralleled by the rise of a modern computing environment in business and society, new research from cognitive science, social psychology, network science, and education, is displaying deep-seated beliefs about social cognition. The powerful take away — we are much more social than we think.

In NewsGator’s one-hour webinar with Stowe Boyd, a leading advisor in the social tools, and JB Holston, President and CEO of NewsGator, we take an incisive look at why social tools and technologies make us smarter, why adding smart people to smart project teams doesn’t improve performance, and why friendliness in the workplace atmosphere leads to real business results.

“Social” has taken hold of all of us. Already, more than 100,000,000 people use social networks to interact with one another, in a space for more collaborative thinking and more mutual support. Social technologies thrive, in a large sense, due to their collaborative nature, because they allow us to effectively feed off of and learn from the input of other people. “Everything we learn to do in the world, we learn from other people.” Without social as an impetus for innovation, our collaborative thinking is hindered by a more limited and enclosed sense of individualistic thinking.

Having people use social business to share their work and progress with one another makes them smarter, leads to the sensation of time flying, and increases happiness. The end result—a more satisfied workforce and improved performances across the board.

Didn’t have a chance to tune in? We know one viewer did! We’d like to thank Trisha Liu for keeping readers in the know with her live tweets throughout the webinar, and for putting social networking to good use! Here are some of the key points she posted from this webinar:

mor_trisha Trisha Liu: Everything we learn to do in the world, we learn from other people.

mor_trisha Trisha Liu: In business, adding people w/high IQ does *not* make team perform better. Adding people with social sensitivity does.

mor_trisha Trisha Liu: Working in an unfriendly environment is deadly. Risk of stroke and heart attack is higher.

mor_trisha Trisha Liu: When employees throw out manual and solve problems together. happiness, knowledge and better performance follow.

mor_trisha Trisha Liu: Social gestures that people do online pass along same feelings of trust and caring that touch (oxytocin) brings.

Thanks again to Trisha for her helpful tweets, and make sure to check out the webinar yourself to continue our evolving discussion on social cognition!

Google+ Social Network Capabilities and Enterprise Social Software

Since its launch on June 28, Google+, the latest social networking service from Google Inc, has taken the public by storm. Google+ attracted over 20 million unique users in just three weeks, inspiring bloggers and social users alike with its innovative concepts and ambitious scope. So, what explains the explosive uptake of Google+ and as it expands beyond individuals into the enterprise social software sphere, what kind of competition might it pose for NewsGator Social Sites and for other enterprise social platforms?

What is Google+?
Google+ infuses social network capabilities into existing Google services, including Gmail, Google Maps, Google Profiles, and Google Buzz, to facilitate increased collaboration and sharing in a condensed space. At first glance, the platform’s structure mimics that of Facebook, with profile pictures and news feeds offered as central features. Google+, however, extends and refines the concepts of presence, connectivity and sharing with innovative features such as Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and Huddles. Here is a brief overview of some of these features:

Circles: enables you to group your friends into more definitive context circles, making it easy to target sharing more specifically by type of connection – family members, school friends, work colleagues, etc.

Sparks: using Google search, this feature locates and suggests videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, tailoring your feed based on your individual activity pattern and historical preferences. 

Hangouts: enable group video chats for all active users. Currently, this feature is limited to a maximum group size of 10 for any particular Hangout at one time.

Why so much hype around Google+?
So, does Google+ really present us with anything new or was the shroud of secrecy surrounding its “invitation-only” trial period the real reason for all the hype? Is Google+ anything beyond effective marketing strategies?

While sifting through my array of BlackBerry mobile applications, the real implication of a “Google+” in the social networking field began to take shape. In one tab, I swept cleanly into my Facebook, where walls and inboxes bridged weak social connections and picture albums packaged up my random moments like keepsakes. Next, I moved to my twitter feed, and news poured in to me with ringing urgency. My email inbox beeped, diverting my focus once again. In three separate applications, I saw different, but oddly similar information scattered before me.

As competition drives social networking platforms to churn out new capabilities, our established networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, are innovating away from rather than towards one another. Why do we waste so much time monitoring different sites used for different purposes when one repository could condense these social network capabilities into a common space?

With Google+, we see a real movement towards that integration—aspects of blogging, twitter, newsletters, and e-mail all incorporated as key features. Google+ has taken what it deems to be the best qualities from multiple networking communities and rolled them into a “single package,” simplifying the process of sharing and connecting with people and topics. This movement towards “simplified sharing” is critical and also something that we at NewsGator have had in place for some time now.

How does this translate to enterprise social software?
The popular consumer constructs offered by Google+ for social are equally, if not more, important to enterprise social software. For any productive organization, the ability to gather and share information, and collaborate in a focused environment is critical. With NewsGator’s Social Sites platform, we’ve been integrating multiple social network capabilities into one efficient stream long before Google+, and our customers actually have the tangible business results to show for it.

Our News Stream allows colleagues to post microblogs, innovative ideas, ask questions, share links, and search for relevant hash tags, all within a common space—streamlining content and expertise discovery. In addition, we let users pull Twitter and LinkedIn feeds directly into Social Sites, eliminating the time wasted in sifting through multiple webpages. And for the ultimate in simplification, NewsGator’s award-winning enterprise social computing solutions integrate seamlessly into existing SharePoint infrastructures to make collaboration for businesses quick and painless.

It’s actually exciting to see Google picking up on a trend we’ve been at the forefront of for years: integrated collaboration platforms simplify sharing, accelerate ideation, and greatly improve end-user satisfaction. So will Google+ succeed? Ultimately, only time and results will tell. In the meantime, NewsGator continues to push the productivity and innovation boundaries of the streamlined enterprise social software platforms.

Winning for the Right Reasons

I’m glad that we aren’t becoming jaded or blasé about all of our industry recognitions, especially with this latest accolade. Frost & Sullivan, a global research firm with a 50 year track record of keen market insight and a unique approach to sorting the players and finding what works for business, has awarded NewsGator its 2011 North American Customer Value Enhancement Award in Enterprise Collaboration Solutions.

Why? Because, social in the enterprise is taking off big time but companies want the least amount of disruption – to their budgets or their employees – and the maximum benefit. After some serious scrutiny, Frost & Sullivan’s analysts determined that that Social Sites 2010 hits that mark dead center.

We know Social Sites 2010 delivers the goods on a technical level. We’re constantly evolving its raft of social collaboration features – from microblogging to expertise discovery and native mobile clients for all the leading platforms – to keep it right in step with the times. What this award underscores, however, is something that makes Social Sites, and our vision for it, unique in the market – unparalleled value.

As the Frost & Sullivan team noted when they evaluated Social Sites, companies today are faced with two realities: on one hand, their workforces are more dispersed and mobile than ever and social enterprise computing and collaboration can power a new way of working that keeps teams cohesive and boosts productivity and innovation; on the other hand, times are tight and budgets are under constant scrutiny. Going social has to be a “no drama” event that takes advantage, to the fullest extent, of existing assets. For a very large number of enterprises, that means the journey to social starts at SharePoint and for a growing number it ends with NewsGator Social Sites 2010.

Why? For the reasons Frost & Sullivan noted: Social Sites 2010 runs as a native service directly on SharePoint. An existing investment in SharePoint and all of its enterprise-spanning capabilities becomes a no fuss, no drama upgrade to leading edge enterprise social with Social Sites. No extraordinary IT heroics, no data duplication or specialized systems. This leaves our customers free to focus on best practices in rolling out just the right approach to social that will return the maximum benefit for their organization.

Maybe that’s the best way Social Sites 2010 delivers customer value in social enterprise computing – by letting them focus on the social and not the technology.

NewsGator's "Don't Fight Social Technology, Harness It" Webinar Recap

As Microsoft’s Partner of the Year in 2010, Slalom Consulting knows from firsthand use the power of SharePoint as a pervasive collaboration platform for any business. Its expansion into enterprise social, however, has been more gradual, prompted by the growing social networking demands of its diverse employee population. In our most recent webinar, Don’t Fight Social Technology: Harness it, Internal SharePoint Architect, Michael Cierkowski, and Slalom’s National Solutions Architect Tim Tisdale, take a close look at how Slalom Consulting works and discuss how it uses social technology internally to leverage its existing SharePoint environment.

Watch the short video excerpt below or read on to learn more about how Slalom Consulting is leveraging SharePoint and NewsGator Social Sites to fuel internal collaboration.



Like what you see? View the full webinar now.

Who is Slalom?
Slalom is a national business and technology consulting firm, with diverse practice areas including business management, organization effectiveness, technology enablement, and information management. Founded in 2001, Slalom has over 1,200 employed consultants working across multiple regions, making it an ideal candidate for internal collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Making the decision
Over the years, the largely one-way push of the traditional Internet has given way to a two-way, highly interactive environment in which information sharing occurs on a larger scale and in a highly collaborative space. As sharing increases exponentially and the limits of email as a collaborative tool become glaringly apparent, workers and organizations are embracing new social computing techniques that streamline internal processes while improving communication.

Like many companies, Slalom saw this evolution manifest in the form of knowledge workers communicating with one another using third-party social tools like Yammer and Twitter. Acknowledging the inevitability, and likely benefits of going social, the company began to look for the ideal social platform to offer employees— one that was easy-to-use and increased overall productivity.

Taking Action
To create its ideal platform, Slalom partnered with NewsGator, Microsoft’s 2011 United States Partner of the Year. NewsGator’s Social Sites is the only social computing solution built directly on top of SharePoint. Choosing Social Sites for its social shift gave Slalom an easy way to access advanced social media collaboration capabilities, but within the safe, manageable and familiar infrastructure of its SharePoint 2010 environment. 

New Capabilities
Slalom has used NewsGator to dramatically enhance its existing SharePoint deployment with comprehensive social tools including microblogging, communities, social profiles, mobile clients, badging, recognition, expertise location, and analytics.
And Slalom is continuing to push the boundaries of its social enterprise, with plans to launch Social Sites’ Video Stream and News Stream value-add modules in the near future!

Learning and Evolving
We are proud to report that Slalom is already realizing business benefits from the Social Sites platform! They say numbers don’t lie and Slalom’s are impressive. After rolling out Social Sites, Slalom has seen 214 communities created since last March, with over 7,000 subscriptions activated across hundreds of communities! Looking at trends beyond the numbers, Slalom has seen a surge in community microblogging, increased use of notifications on peer activities, and a spike in subscription activities versus infrequent browsing. Just as we’ve seen with other social enterprise converts, we’re sure that Slalom will continue to learn and evolve in its use of NewsGator to boost the engagement and productivity of its employees.

To learn more about how Slalom Consulting is using social technologies, and seeing real business benefits, please check out our informative webinar. Together, Slalom and NewsGator, the only two Microsoft’s United States Partner of the Year award winners, are proving that the future of work is social and that future is here now!