Musings on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston earlier this week.  While the trip started with an 11-hour journey from Denver to Boston (yes, on a direct flight), the remainder of the adventure was highly informative and thought-provoking.  It is a rare occurrence that I am in one place for almost two full days and immersed in the subject of enterprise social computing. 

NewsGator announced Social Sites 3.0 at the show, including capabilities that affirm social computing as the new operating system for business. You can read the press release for more details (insert hyperlink).  We were especially proud as we listened to our customers discuss their real world case studies at several conference sessions.  Much more so than last year's conference, this year's show focused on how social computing is being deployed and adopted within large corporations and government agencies.     

I won't attempt to summarize everything I heard, but the biggest takeaway seemed to be the recommendation that social computing within the enterprise should be used to solve real business problems.  You don't say?  We have known this for a while, which is why identifying appropriate business challenges is Step 1 in our Roadmap to Successful Social Computing Adoption methodology.    A few of the other tidbits I particularly enjoyed:

• People don't share unless there is a trusted connection.
• Connecting people is a fundamental value, even if the ROI associated with it is not concrete.
• Corporate performance metrics should already have line items for collaboration and knowledge sharing.  Social computing just makes those activities easier.
• Executive leaders have to set a good example, but top-down mandates almost never work
• Users might do "stupid" things, but a sound community will police these inappropriate activities.
• Instead of updating your status to reflect what you are doing, update it to reflect what you are learning.

I can't wait until next year when we will hear stories from many companies who will have 12-18 months of experience in this area.  We're looking forward to helping our customers be at the forefront of this rapid evolution to social computing nirvana.

NewsGator Social Sites 2.7 - A Few of My Favorite Things

Last week, NewsGator announced the release of Social Sites 2.7, which includes, among many other great features, a new innovation management capability called Ideas.  As someone who uses our product internally all day every day, I thought I would share my enthusiasm for the features that I am most enjoying.

• Ideas – this is the highlighted feature for this release and its utility is vast.  In the past, I would start a discussion to vet ideas.  Discussions are a great means for collaboration and I still use them heavily.  But, having the ability to easily and quickly start a brainstorming session within an existing community is awesome.    We are now vetting product enhancements from employees using Ideas in our Product Management community.    As mentioned, we used to do this in discussions, but find that we have more participation and can monitor support for any feature request by the number of votes it gets.    Perfect use case!

• Activity Stream Email Digest – my activity stream has become the component that organizes my daily connection to my colleagues, content and communities.  I am a self-proclaimed Activity Stream addict.    I use our pop-up desktop notifier when I am in the office to stay on top of activities.   On the weekends or when I am traveling, I turn on email digesting and can stay abreast of new activities on my iPhone. 

• Easy addition of blogs and wikis to communities – with an easy click on a checkbox, I can add a wiki or a blog to my communities.  As a result, I am now documenting best practices and usage guidelines in a wiki, which is a perfect choice for this use case. 

• NewsGator Usage Dashboard – I’m also digging this new addition to our reporting capabilities.  I can see a graphical representation of usage patterns for communities, users and overall activity for the last 7 days. 

Last week, NewsGator announced the release of Social Sites 2.7, which includes, among many other great features, a new innovation management capability called Ideas.  As someone who uses our product internally all day every day, I thought I would share my enthusiasm for the features that I am most enjoying.

• Ideas – this is the highlighted feature for this release and its utility is vast.  In the past, I would start a discussion to vet ideas.  Discussions are a great means for collaboration and I still use them heavily.  But, having the ability to easily and quickly start a brainstorming session within an existing community is awesome.    We are now vetting product enhancements from employees using Ideas in our Product Management community.    As mentioned, we used to do this in discussions, but find that we have more participation and can monitor support for any feature request by the number of votes it gets.    Perfect use case!

• Activity Stream Email Digest – my activity stream has become the component that organizes my daily connection to my colleagues, content and communities.  I am a self-proclaimed Activity Stream addict.    I use our pop-up desktop notifier when I am in the office to stay on top of activities.   On the weekends or when I am traveling, I turn on email digesting and can stay abreast of new activities on my iPhone. 

• Easy addition of blogs and wikis to communities – with an easy click on a checkbox, I can add a wiki or a blog to my communities.  As a result, I am now documenting best practices and usage guidelines in a wiki, which is a perfect choice for this use case. 

• NewsGator Usage Dashboard – I’m also digging this new addition to our reporting capabilities.  I can see a graphical representation of usage patterns for communities, users and overall activity for the last 7 days. 

NewsGator Unveils Updated Social Sites 2.7 Introduces New Innovation Management Features

This morning NewsGator announces the unveiling of Social Sites 2.7 -- the latest version of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007-based enterprise social computing product -- with groundbreaking new functionality for enterprise social computing: innovation management.  Called Social Sites Ideas, this new solution captures, vets and advances fresh, new employee suggestions for improving business results.  This feature is ideal for product development, cost reduction programs, business process improvements, customer service enhancements, going 'green' and more.

Social Sites Ideas makes it easier than ever for employees to offer new ideas for consideration throughout an entire organization.  Colleagues can "vote up" and add detailed comments to an idea they like, invoking the wisdom of the crowd.  Employees are notified of relevant new ideas, votes and comments.  The best ideas are then promoted to management for final review and implementation.

Social Sites Ideas is the only innovation management solution fully integrated into an enterprise social computing environment.  Crucially, then, innovation is made an organic part of the social computing workflow, not a siloed application, with noteworthy actions reported in activity streams. 

As NewsGator Vice President of Products, Brian Kellner explains, “all companies have great ideas, but only the organizations that have an easy, established process for identifying, evaluating and advancing them can truly benefit from those ideas.  That’s innovation. Since all computing is becoming social, enterprise social computing and Social Sites in particular are natural platforms for innovation management. Social Sites Ideas adds the necessary structure to drive the innovation process without adding a costly new enterprise application.”

Indeed, Kevin Dehoff, Booz Allen Vice President, declared in 2007 with respect to the company’s Global 1000 Innovation study that, "with increased competition leading to thousands of new products being released every year, companies must improve their innovation processes to succeed.” Disciplined processes around ideation, project selection, product development and commercialization are indicators of success, the report found.

Using Social Sites Ideas, employees can view or search proposed innovations within individual communities or across them all, and can filter by an idea’s popularity or status. Managers can blog about the progression of ideas through the discussion and implementation phases, and user profiles include a history of ideas that the user has proposed. Organizations can create private communities, or “campaigns,” for confidential idea cultivation in closed groups. Any community can further collaborate on new ideas in dedicated wicks.

Owen Allen, Microsoft Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint ISV partners, says that "Social Sites Ideas is a good example of the type of social business application that can be built on top of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to help an enterprise enhance their competitive position.”

Other new features in Social Sites 2.7 include:

• Activity Stream Email Digest: Users can now stay connected to enterprise social networks via enterprise or mobile email through an email digest that reports colleague and community activities every 24 hours.
• New Web Parts: display a social network graph of a user’s implicit professional relationships; a list of the colleagues following a particular user; and, for administrators, user activity over the past 30 days.
• New community features: Community creators can add blog, wiki and announcement modules to communities, and site administrators can add or limit these additions.
• A simple yet powerful RSS reader: Users can easily read, mark, tag, clip, rate and initiate discussions around stories in their own feeds or in those that are centrally managed by the NewsGator Enterprise Server.

For more information about Social Sites Ideas and Social Sites 2.7, visit http://www.newsgator.com/business/socialsites/default.aspx.

Also, you can read the press release in its entirety here.

  

McKinsey: "Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work"

Earlier this month, McKinsey & Company released a story called "Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work."  Since NewsGator has been fortunate to work with many leading-edge companies and thinkers on enterprise social computing and Web 2.0 features for the enterprise, we believe we have a great understanding of this space, and we also totally agree with McKinsey & Company's positive assessment of the importance of Web 2.0 tools for the enterprise.

For one, we concur with McKinsey's assessment that "Web 2.0, the latest wave in corporate technology adoptions, could have a more far-reaching organizational impact than technologies adopted in the 1990s -- such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management." (Note: see clickable image at above.)  They rightly suggest that the latest Web 2.0 tools for enterprise "have a strong bottom-up element and engage a broad base of workers."

We believe that they're also correct to opine that "earlier technologies often required expensive and lengthy technical implementations, as well as the realignment of formal business processes."  And their suggestion that -- "the new tools are different.  While they are inherently disruptive and often challenge an organization and its culture, they are not technically complex [and I might add, or expensive] to implement.  Rather, they are a relatively lightweight overlay to the existing infrastructure"  -- is spot on.

Through their polling of global executives, McKinsey believes that though the spending on Web 2.0 tools for enterprise "is a relatively modest $1 billion," they predict that the level of investment, despite the current recession, should grow by more than 15% annually over the coming 5 years -- a certainly non-insignificant amount.

In this report, McKinsey identifies six key factors that they believe are critical to the success of efforts to implement Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise.  They are:

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top
2. The best uses come from users, but they require help to scale
3. What's in the work flow is what gets used. (They rightly say that "participatory technologies have the highest chance of success when incorporated into a user's daily workflow."  We at NewsGator have definitely seen this trend.)
4. Appeal to the participants' egos and needs, not just their wallets.  (A more effective approach, they say, actually "plays to the Web's ethos and the participants desire for recognition.")
5. The right solution comes from the right participants. 
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.  (Prudent managers, they say, should work with the entire complement of "legal, HR, and IT security functions to establish reasonable policies.")

McKinsey closes by saying that the "acceptance of Web 2.0 technologies in business is growing.  Encouraging participation calls for new approaches that break with the methods used to deploy IT in the past."  We here at NewsGator could not agree more!

You can view the full report here.

Deloitte Releases Optimistic Social Networks in Enterprise Report

Deloitte recently released their report, Social Networks in the Enterprise: Facebook for the Fortune 500, which predicts that "2009 is likely to be the breakout year for social networks in the enterprise."  They also predict that total spending on social networking solutions (both internal and external) for enterprise will likely approach half a billion dollars. 

Deloitte believes that social networks for the enterprise are "likely to be considered an inexpensive solution" despite "financially constrained IT spending" because of the current state of the economy.  They also predict that large IT companies will spend a significant amount of R&D dollars in 2009 on social networking applications that "focus exclusively on enterprise."  These solutions are attractive to such companies because of their "hierarchy-flattening, information-sharing, [and] team-building" effects.   

As the graphic at right shows, the Deloitte report explains the multi-faceted and far-reaching nature of Enterprise Social Networking (ESN), which can include such diverse solutions and applications as social discovery, social search, microblogging, cloud computing, Web 2.0 applications, wikis, mash-ups, online meetings, and syndicated feeds.

The bottom line, according to Deloitte's report, suggests a bright future for comprehensive Enterprise Social Networking solutions in 2009.  They believe that "social networks look to be a powerful tool and a way of tapping into the 'wisdom of crowds.'"  Though Deloitte cautions the need for IT departments to develop solutions that will allow these tools to enhance productivity, they see most ESN solutions as "inexpensive, easy to roll out and requir[ing] little employee training."  No doubt, then, despite (or even because of) the current economic difficulties, enterprise companies should see innovations like NewsGator's Social Sites (our social networking offering that focuses exclusively on the enterprise) as ever critical to their employees' productivity and the overall functioning of their companies.

Web 2.0 and Information/Knowledge Management – Webinar

We are hosting a webinar on February 19 at 2 PM ET featuring G. Oliver Young – a senior analyst with Forrester.  Oliver will discuss how Web 2.0 tools can be used to address Information and Knowledge Management challenges.  Please join us.  Registration details are available on our website.
 

NewsGator's Founder on Enterprise RSS

NewsGator's founder and CTO, Greg Reinacker, has published a very informative post on his personal weblog called "Enterprise RSS - the State of the Industry."  He wrote it in response to an ongoing debate online about the current health of Enterprise RSS.  He concludes that Enterprise RSS is, indeed, alive and well, though it's not always in "the obvious places."

Greg explains how, whether one realizes it or not, RSS is at the heart of Enterprise portal enhancement, alerts, competitive tracking, knowledge capture, social networking, and collaboration.  He suggests that for any of these specific problems, RSS forms the underlying plumbing to transfer content around the organization.

You can read the entire post on the state of Enterprise RSS here.

Reciprocity and Enterprise Social Computing

The concept of reciprocity was driven home to me last week when using TripAdvisor.  This is one of my favorite travel sites as it employs a large and active community of fellow travelers who write reviews and share information.    I use the site every time I travel to check out the real scoop on my intended destination and have been doing so for years.  I was finally inspired to “give back” and be a good Web 2.0 citizen by writing a review of the Park Central New York hotel in Manhattan.      This desire was purely intrinsic and I got to wondering what inspires reciprocity for enterprise social computing initiatives.

Certainly, that same spirit of giving back can and does exist in the workplace.    This spirit may be inspired by the culture and it is this type of cultural influence that will greatly enhance opportunities for successful adoption and greater business value.   But, what about more extrinsic factors?    Rewards?  Recognition?  Compensation?  They all matter and it is the wise organization that addresses these issues head-on when deploying social computing technologies within the enterprise.      Of course, to enact any such program, metrics will be requested and perhaps even required.  This is a far from trivial task.  Andrew McAfee has written an excellent post proposing a model for Enterprise 2.0 Ratings, but there are many more qualitative criteria that could apply and should be used.   Some examples might include:

•       Decreased time to get an answer to a question

•       Number of new connections made amongst people who haven't worked together in the past

•       Decrease in email volume specifically related to collaboration or content sharing

•       Increase in expertise or knowledge discovery - "Are you more knowledgeable in subject matter X as a result of using social computing?"

•       Increase in end user "satisfaction" - are end users seeing real value and how do they define that value?

Without reciprocity, enterprise social computing efforts can become dominated by a handful of more vocal and active participants which misses the point.   It is the nature of emergent knowledge that is the key to realizing the profound benefits offered by blogs, wikis, communities, tagging and bookmarking. 

Social Computing Best Practices - A Spirit of Receptivity

A key factor when rolling out social computing features in your enterprise is a willingness to be “open”.     An intrinsic value of social collaboration is the collective knowledge and information gained explicitly and implicitly from your user community.  While this sounds great and you may believe it will happen naturally, don’t be surprised if you find that some members of your community are resistant and uncomfortable with this concept.   Knowledge Management 1.0 focused largely on hierarchy and control.  Old habits will be hard to break, but you will be pleased with the end result.

So, what do we mean specifically?  As an experiment, implement a group or community that is 100% un-moderated and see what happens.  You will probably wish to start with lower risk subject matter, but don’t err on the side of choosing a topic that is without value or would be considered “fluff”.  Let your users have full control to tag, create discussions, and share news and information.    You will learn a lot about the solution you have implemented as well as user behavior.    And, you will better understand what, if any, controls improve the process.  A healthy example may be the use of tag auto-completion or normalization.     A less desirable example could be discussion moderation as this is much more likely to squelch participation due to the delay in real time interaction. 

Facebook for the Enterprise – Part 1

Although Facebook began as a social networking site for college students – a site where they could upload pictures of their friends and write on one another's wall – it has quickly evolved into a wildly popular social network for high school students, professionals and everyone in between, with a valuation in the billions. As its popularity has skyrocketed, users have come to realize that Facebook has several very attractive collaboration and networking attributes including:

• Rich user profiles

• Easy discovery of friends to build a social graph

• Easy creation and joining of groups

• Easy content generation

• Intuitive display of updates based on social graph

Today, many businesses are seeing employees apply these social elements of Facebook to their jobs, forming Facebook groups around work projects and job interests. Looking to take advantage of this high-level collaboration and the power of the social graph, companies are now bringing Facebook-like features behind the firewall.

Over the next few weeks, we'll discuss the ways in which a Facebook-type network for the enterprise benefits both businesses and workers, and what the important distinctions are between Facebook and a social network built specifically for the enterprise, such as NewsGator's Social Sites (to get a brief summary of the latest release, here’s a brief Computerworld article that gives a good introduction). We'll cover the various aspects of social networks including the profile page, the home page, groups, news feeds, privacy features and sharing, and how these elements can support effective business communication and increased productivity.

The Facebook profile page contains information about a user that can be viewed by their friends and people in their network. Facebook users can customize their profile pages to include photos, favorite movies and books, interesting articles or videos from across the Web, and career and education history. The Facebook profile page also includes a mini-feed that shows recent activity and links to a user’s friends and groups.

Similarly, NewsGator Social Sites’ profile page contains information about a user that people in their company can tap into in order to get a sense of who they are and with whom and what they're working on.  

 

The Social Sites profile page includes a person’s photo, interests, work and education history, work communities, favorite subscriptions, and clipped articles.  The profile page also shows the user’s most recent activity within the company’s intranet/portal (i.e. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007).  And notably, although the page is customizable, much of the content is automatically generated through a user's daily authoring, tagging and reading, so he or she doesn't have to update information constantly. When users are given easy access to information about what someone in a certain role is reading, what they're interested in and what they've done most recently on SharePoint, further connections and collaborative relationships happen effortlessly.

One of our clients, CME Federal Credit Union, provides banking services to 26,000 members from multiple branches located throughout Ohio. With a highly distributed workforce, it was often difficult for CME’s branch personnel to find and connect with other employees. CME implemented Social Sites profile pages to facilitate collaboration and make it easier for branch employees to find subject matter experts.  This enterprise application of social networks, combined with other social computing features, enabled CME to improve productivity and realize a time savings of 30 minutes per day per employee.

The bottom line is that social networks in the enterprise enable people to find one another through shared connections and interests that they otherwise wouldn't know they had in common. And when minds come together to tackle a common problem, the business benefit is great indeed.