 |
Breaking
eBusiness and Search News |
|
 |
The Most Common Types of IT Resistance To Enterprise Collaboration and How to Deal With It
Based on a research report Chess Media Group released last year on the State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration, the most common types of IT resistance to collaboration are: it's not a priority, there are security issues or threats, no manpower, and no budget. Let's take a look at each one in more detail and explore how to deal with them when they come up.
The Risks of Not Investing in Collaboration
All good chess players understand the risks of the moves they make on the board and the consequences that can result. However, chess players also have plans in place for what to do if those risks are taken advantage of by their opponents. Here are some of the risks of not making the investment in collaboration (taken from “The Collaborative Organization“)
The Death of Human Decision Making
I’m not quite sure when this happened but at some point we began relying more on technology to make decisions for us and less on people. How many times have we been faced with a situation were a customer service representative tells us, “I’m sorry the system won’t let us do that.” Oftentimes there is a logical reason for why you need something done or changed and the system just doesn’t allow that to happen so you end up trying to find a workaround which ends up causing more problems in the end. Most of us experience this daily in one way or another; whether we are dealing with flight upgrades, purchasing a product at a store, or going to the gym. Technology ultimately drives virtually everything we do.
Can You Create a Collaborative Organization Without Technology?
Is it possible to change behaviors or to build a collaborative organization without technology? Think about that for a moment before you answer.
Insights from a Customer Care (SOCAP) and Knowledge Management (KMWorld) Conference
I spent this week traveling to San Diego where I spoke at the SOCAP conference and D.C where I spoke at KMWorld (the week before that I was at CMMA for media professionals in Florida). SOCAP is primarily focused on customer care, customer insight, and customer service professionals (including call centers) whereas KMWorld is primarily focused on knowledge managers and collaboration practitioners. I learned a few interesting things from the dozens of conversations I had at both of these events.
Collaboration Use Cases for Executives
A few days ago my friend Karthik (who works at Salesforce) called me up to get some ideas and advice on collaboration use cases for senior executives. In other words, why would any C-level leader see value in supporting and using a collaboration platform such as Chatter, Yammer, Jive, and the like? It’s an interesting and good question because executives in many organizations may support the tools and strategies but oftentimes don’t use the tools themselves. Here are some of the top collaboration use cases for executives that I discussed with Karthik.
Picking the Right Collaboration Vendor Can Help You Avoid Wasting Time and Money
There’s a bit of an unsettling trend that I’m starting to pick up on more frequently these days. That trend is some organizations are wanting to switch collaboration vendors. I typically get at least 1-2 emails or phone calls on this every week and they typically start with “we deployed vendor XYZ and they are just not right for us.” To which I immediately reply with “why did you deploy them? Let’s go over your use cases and feature requirements.” Then…silence.
IT as Change Agents NOT Roadblocks
There is a bit of a clash (as has usually been the case) between business managers and IT professionals, especially when it comes to implementing collaboration solutions within the enterprise.
What are the Technology Capabilities that Enable Collaboration?
Over the past few years collaborative platforms have evolved quite a bit. It’s important for us to consider what makes these collaborative tools what they are. In other words, “what are the capabilities that collaborative tools have now that we didn’t have years ago?” In 2006 Andrew McAfee developed an acronym, SLATES, to help explain what the key capabilities were of emergent collaboration solutions. Not long after than, Dion Hinchcliffe added to the acronym which then became FLATNESSES. I just wanted to review these here as a reference for anyone that is having these conversations at their workplace. Keep in mind that just a few years ago many of that collaboration platforms that companies use today didn’t exist. So the underlying technologies or capabilities that spell out FLATNESSES are:
A Guide to Enterprise Collaboration Costs
One of the common questions that business leaders want to know is what kind of an investment needs to be made in collaboration. In other words, what sort of a budget should they be planning for and where should this money be coming from? It seems that this topic isn't as widely addressed as it ought to be. I can't tell you what the costs are going to be because there are a lot variables that go into this and each company is going to have different needs. However, I can at least try to help further the discussion that your team should be having by taking a look at some of the items and variables that you should consider. It's easy to get carried away and right a massive article on this but I wanted to try to keep things as simple as possible.
Focusing on Metrics that Matter
Metrics aren't hard to come by, in fact it's just the opposite, anything can be a metric and that's a part of the problem. Organizations today are struggling with trying to understand what they should be measuring and looking at when it comes to enterprise collaboration. Should they be looking at how many employees are using tools or how many comments are being submitted? What about how many groups are created or how many ideas are submitted? Most vendors offer these types of metrics as a part of their reporting and there's nothing wrong with looking at these metrics if they are the ones you have identified as measures of success.
The 5 Must Avoid Enterprise Collaboration Mistakes
Today I had the privilege of presenting a webinar for PBworks on 5 must avoid collaboration mistakes that I see companies making quite frequently. If your organization is interested in enterprise collaboration then you may find this presentation valuable. The 5 risks that I discuss are:
What Would Happen if Your Organization Didn’t Invest in Collaboration?
I (and many others) have spent a great deal of time talking about why organizations should invest their resources in collaboration tools and strategies. But let's assume for a moment that you didn't. How long do you realistically see your organization going on without making this investment; 1 year, 2 years, 3 years? Do you really see your organization waiting this long?
The Business Value of Social CRM and Common Use Cases
Last month we announced that we teamed up with Avectra to release a series of whitepapers on the topic of Social CRM. We already released our first whitepaper which looked at the business value of Social CRM. Today we are releasing the second whitepaper in the series which looks at several common real world Social CRM problems that organizations are faced with and how they can be solved.
The Risks of Gamification for the Enterprise
This post was inspired by a discussion I had with Bert Sandie who is the Director of Technical Excellence at Electronic Arts.
The Cost of a Disengaged Employee
I've had a lot of interesting discussions lately around employee collaboration and one of the topics I've been having conversations around is employee engagement. Now before I go into more detail I want to stress that engagement in this case doesn't refer to activity on a platform such as submitting ideas, commenting, sharing status updates or anything else of that nature. That's typically something that some vendors in the industry like to focus on but in my opinion it's wrong. Activity is not the same thing as engagement. In this case engagement refers to employees being passionate about the work they do and the feeling of being connected to the company. So the question becomes, is engagement a fundable business case for employee collaboration? (even though the benefits of employee collaboration extend far beyond just engagement).
Emergent Collaboration Vendor Review: Telligent
This week I'm taking at look at Telligent which has been in business for around 8 years and is headquartered in Dallas Texas with offices in Seattle, Chicago, Paris, and Australia. Telligent has taken one round of funding thus far and has had profitable quarter. I spoke with Wendy Gibson the CMO and Rob Howard, the CTO and co-founder. Telligent describes themselves as "social community software for the enterprise."
Emergent Collaboration Vendor Review: SkyDox
This week I'm taking at look at SkyDox which was founded in 2009 and is currently headquartered in London with around 20 employees. The company has developed a cloud-enabled file-sharing and collaboration platform that allows companies to view, comment, search, store, deliver, manage and collaborate on over 200 types of files. Skydox has spent two years in product development with input from enterprise development customers in media, finance, creative, and professional services. The management team comes from a diverse background, holding senior level positions in enterprise software, high availability data center infrastructure, SaaS, and document comparison technology areas. I spoke with Ali Moinuddin the CMO and Dan Von Weihe the VP of product management.
Emergent Collaboration Vendor Review: HyperOffice
This week I'm taking at look at HyperOffice which has been in the business of cloud based business applications for the past seven years. HyperOffice is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland and currently has around 30 employees. It is privately funded and profitable. I spoke with the co-founder Farzin Arsanjani and Ross Savage (although I was never given his formal role or title).
Do Organizations Need a Chief Collaboration Officer?
More organizations are starting to deploy new collaborative tools and strategies as a core part of their business evolution to connect and engage employees. It's becoming increasingly difficult (especially at large companies) to oversee these initiatives as typically there isn't a role devoted to collaboration. Usually collaboration falls on the shoulders of employees with an existing full plate of things that need to get done (such as the CIO). So is it about time for organizations to create the role of the CCO (chief collaboration officer)?
Where are Collaboration Budgets Being Allocated?
When it comes to deploying a collaboration solution for the enterprise there are a lot of things to consider especially when it comes to budgets. Towards the end of the 2009 I wrote an article called, "Companies Interested in Enterprise 2.0 Need to Take Strategy Seriously," which looked at data collected from a 2009 report on collaboration. What I found particularly shocking was the small budget allocation that strategy was receiving. Towards the end of 2011 Chess conducted another survey on the "State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration" and one of the topics we looked at was budget allocation.
Connectivity Does Not Mean Availability
Not too long ago your workday started when you arrived at work and ended when you left work. Then, overtime, as new forms of communication were introduced and implemented in the workplace work started to play a more central role in our lives. Work was no longer about when you got to work and left work it became about when you could be reached. Now thanks to the web, email, phone, and other technologies we can be reached anywhere at anytime, but this is a double-edged-sword.
Emergent Collaboration Vendor Review: Qontext
On Friday's I'll be reviewing a vendor in the emergent collaboration space and will provide an overview on that vendor which includes aspects from leadership and vision to technology and market focus. If you are vendor that would like to participate, please contact me (email is in the sidebar as is the twitter link). The goal of these posts is not to bash or praise vendors but to simply offer an objective view on what various vendors offer so that YOU can decide if they are a good fit for your business. Every post will cover the same elements for different vendors. If you have ideas or recommendations for other items to be covered in these posts then please let me know and I will consider them.
Customer and Employee Collaboration Solve Different Problems
Recently I had a conversation with the CEO of a company (anonymous since I discuss that I will be blogging this) that provides customer community solutions (so clearly he is already biased). This person is a friend so we usually get in little debates about things pertaining to customer and employee collaboration. For some reason the conversations usually turn to, "why do organizations need employee collaboration platforms?" Why can't they just stick with email, intranets, and phone systems? The conversations sometimes also steers down, "the best way to inspire and engage your employees is to show them how you delight your customers." Basically what this CEO likes to argue (I'm sure he does this just to irk me!) is that customer communities can change companies and provide for far more inspiring and engaging fodder for employees, aka customer engagement and communities are more valuable than employee engagement and communities.
The ROI of Enterprise 2.0 and the Value of Intangible Assets
I want to dispel a myth that I keep hearing and that myth is about the ROI of emergent collaboration technologies. We keep hearing about the challenges with measuring and showing ROI and how that is a sticking point for executives and decision makers at companies. The problem with this is that there will never be an ROI from an emergent collaboration technology precisely because technology is just that…technology. We are talking about tools that enable us to collaborate and do "things." The ROI or the value comes from the activity and from the actual collaboration, not from the technologies themselves.
Social Media Marketing isn't Customer Collaboration
Telling your customers you want to engage and collaborate with them and then marketing to them are two very different things. The concept of wanting to collaborate with customers sounds great and at first everyone nods their heads and says, "yes we want to do that." But when it comes time to actually doing it (collaborating) we oftentimes revert back to the idea of using social media to market or send out messages to our networks, not quite the same thing as collaborating with them. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with just using social media for marketing, but in my opinion it can be used for greater and deeper impacting business purposes.
Do You Need A Business Problem Before Using Social Media?
I had an interesting dinner meeting with a prospect today about how they might use social media. They are a b2b subscription based publication and they were wondering if they should be in the space. I thought about it for a minute and resisted the temptation to just say "yes." Because after all just "being" somewhere and having a few accounts online doesn't really mean much. One of the folks at dinner asked me a simple and point blank question which I'm sure many people would have said yes to. He asked me, "should we have a facebook page or a twitter account?"
Do You Need a Business Case for Social Media?
I had an interesting dinner meeting with a prospect today about how they might use social media. They are a b2b subscription based publication and they were wondering if they should be in the space. I thought about it for a minute and resisted the temptation to just say "yes." Because after all just "being" somewhere and having a few accounts online doesn't really mean much. One of the folks at dinner asked me a simple and point blank question which I'm sure many people would have said yes to. He asked me, "should we have a facebook page or a twitter account?"
A Global View of the Social Customer
We talk a lot about the social customer, but rarely do we look at their behaviors within the global landscape. What's important to note about the below data is that it is based on regions, not countries. When devising a social media strategic plan, it's important to understand the social customer at the country level because their behaviors change quite dramatically.
Questions to Ask When Developing a Social CRM Strategy
Social CRM means different things to different people. If you ask three people to explain social CRM chances are that you'll get four different responses. The thing to remember is that all of this "social" stuff is about solving customer facing problems that address people's change in behavior, expectations, technological fluency, and communication methods. These problems are solved with strategies that include BOTH new technologies (such as Facebook, Jive, Lithium, Twitter) AND older technologies (such as CRM systems).
The Dangers of Doing What Works
Why is it that in the enterprise 2.0 and social CRM (and probably many other) spaces that we always try to offer a prescription to organizations problems based on what other organizations have done? We always hear about blanket statements such as, "there has to be a center of excellence to manage these efforts," "the customer relationship can't just be owned by sales," "you have to be social internal first and than external, "insert blanket statement here." Why?
What Makes Sense For One Company May Not Work For Yours
Why is it that in the enterprise 2.0 and social CRM (and probably many other) spaces that we always try to offer a prescription to organizations problems based on what other organizations have done? We always hear about blanket statements such as, "there has to be a center of excellence to manage these efforts," "the customer relationship can't just be owned by sales," "you have to be social internal first and than external, "insert blanket statement here." Why?
Implementing Enterprise 2.0 for the Federal Government: More Obstacles
This is part four in a multi-part series on how the federal government is implementing Enterprise 2.0. This was done through extensive interviews with Booz Allen Hamilton who has led many of the efforts for various Government agencies. The full series on Enterprise 2.0 for the Federal Government (which includes additional information and specific examples) can be downloaded(registration required) for free. I recommend that you start with the first post: Implementing Enterprise 2.0 for the Federal Government Part One: Business Drivers, the second post: Implementing Enterprise 2.0 for the Federal Government Part Two: Who Drives the Tools?, and the third post: Implementing Enterprise 2.0 for the Federal Government Part Three: Obstacles.
Measurement and Metrics or People and Relationships?
I was on a panel discussion at the Sales 2.0 conference last week and one of the questions the moderator asked was around dashboards, in other words, if you could create your metrics and dashboards for social engagement; what would you track and why? It's really tough to answer this type of a question because on one hand every organization is going to care about different things and on the other hand a part of me wanted to say, "who cares?"
Does Figuring Out The ROI Always Make Sense?
When I go into meetings there's one question I love to ask when it comes down to social customer initiatives. I get the key stakeholders seated at a table together and ask, "If I told you that you would never know about making any direct revenue from your customers through social channels, would you still invest the time and money to do it?"
How Communities Work In Social Business
When you talk about social business you can't help but bring up the C-word. We all know what I'm talking about right? Yes, communities! Now, when most people or organizations think of communities they actually think of customer communities, however there is more than one type of community that organizations need to think about.
Evaluating Risks For Supply Chain Initiatives
I just finished reading "The New Supply Chain Agenda," by Reuben E. Slone, J. Paul Dittmann, and John T. Mentzer which is a great book for anyone interested in supply chain management. One of the chapters in the book talked about evaluating risks for supply chain initiatives and I thought the model they used makes perfect sense for the social business space. It's not overly complicated and if enterprise organizations can use this framework for multi-million dollar supply chain initiatives then it should work just fine for organizations getting involved in social business. I'm going to modify it in the near future but here is the basic framework.
Is The Supply Chain Missing Collaboration?
My previous (and first) post on social supply chain management was surprisingly popular so I thought I'd continue with that topic and talk about something that I learned (and am continuing to learn) thanks to Trevor Miles. Again, keep in mind I'm no supply chain expert like Trevor but we're both very interested in how social media impacts and can be integrated into supply chain activities. The image below was created by AT Kearney.
What Can Social Innovations Bring To Supply Chain Management?
Before we talk about anything "social" as it pertains to the supply chain, let's start off with just the plain ‘ol supply chain. There are a few definitions of "supply chain" but I like the one put forth in the book "The New Supply Chain Agenda" by Rueben E. Slone, J. Paul Dittmann, and John T. Mentzer which is:
Creating More Efficient Communication Within Your Organization
For those of you not familiar with Chatter, it's a relatively new product that Salesforce (CRM vendor) released and it's basically designed to allow for more efficient communication within your organization. It's a bit like Facebook but for the enterprise.
Breaking Down Social Customer Engagement
The Chess and Metz team have put together a visual to help organizations understand what we believe to be the four scenarios of social customer engagement.
Social Customer Relationship Management
I thought it would be very interesting to look at how other people in the world are talking about, describing, and visualizing Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM). I found some pretty interesting images out there and compiled some of them below. I also included an image from Chess Media Group. It's interesting to see the various differences between how people talk about visualize the same topic but; some are simple yet others are more technical and complex. Notice for example how Lithium and Oracle look at social CRM (both vendors). If you have an image that you created or came across that you feel helps explain Social CRM, send it on over!
Understanding CRM From A Social Standpoint
If you put a consultant, an analyst, a vendor, and an end user client together in the same room and ask them to explain or discuss social CRM or social business (or pretty much anything else), you will get very different answers and explanations. Nothing is ever one-sided so why bother trying to look at things from one perspective?
Broadening Your Reach To Internal And External Platforms
There's been some interesting blog fodder as of late around whether or not the terms Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business are more applicable in describing this shift towards emergent collaborative tools being used within the enterprise.
Moving Beyond Simple Internal Or External Business Platforms
There's been some interesting blog fodder as of late around whether or not the terms Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business are more applicable in describing this shift towards emergent collaborative tools being used within the enterprise.
When Should A CIO Care About Social Media?
A few folks have asked me to post my CMSWire articles here, while I can't re-post them in their entirety, what I can do is provide snippets and then point you to where you can read the rest of them, does that work?
Using Facebook As Your CRM Platform
Ok, so it's not exactly a fully fledged CRM system (yet) but when you compare the information you have on a client or lead in Salesforce with the information that Facebook has on the same person the difference and quality of information is mind-boggling. Not only that but Facebook permeates across the online world like an out of control growing snowball.
Building Clearly Defined Customer Benefits Of Social Computing
In my presentations I oftentimes reference a quote from Gartner which says the following: "By 2010 more than half of companies that have established an online community will fail to manage it as an agent of change, ultimately eroding customer value."
Could Listening Tools And CRM Become Merged System?
Call me crazy (as many of you have), but I don't see the separation of "listening tools" and "CRM systems" lasting too much longer. We have actually seen a few acquisitions over the past few months such as Jive acquiring Filtrbox, Lithium acquiring Scout Labs, Meltwater acquiring Buzzgain, Attensity acquiring Biz 360, and several others. We haven't really seen CRM companies acquire listening tools (have we?).
Taking The Best Approach To Customer Engagement
I've been reading Dan Pink's book, "Drive," and while I'm only 50 or so pages in, I can say that so far it's a pretty interesting read. One particular area of the book mentions the difference between algorithmic vs heuristic ways of getting things done.
A Shared Understanding And Collaborative Business Evolution
Over the past few months (and perhaps more so over the past few weeks) I've noticed a growing tension between the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the social media folks. In some instances this has led to direct name calling in public mediums - which is rather unfortunate.
How Social CRM Seeks to Solve Existing Business Challenges
There's been a lot of talk about what SCRM is (social customer relationship management) and how it should be defined. There has also been a lot of conversation around Social CRM from a technology standpoint in terms of vendor offerings.
Better Experience Through Excellent Service
A key tenant in Social CRM has always been around providing users with a better experience. In addition to delivering a great product one of the best ways to provide a better experience is through excellent service (yes there are other things).
Would You Spend More For Excellent Service?
A key tenant in Social CRM has always been around providing users with a better experience. In addition to delivering a great product one of the best ways to provide a better experience is through excellent service (yes there are other things).
Covering All Aspects Of Enterprise CRM
We've talked about a lot of topics around the Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 space and I think it's about time we get a bit deeper into both of these areas and explore how they fit together. I get a bit frustrated when I hear people talking about SCRM and E2.0 from the same high level point of view all the time (I'm also guilty of this). So, what I want to do moving forward is really push the envelope. I'm not saying I'm going to be right or wrong but I am hoping that what I write and talk about will make you think differently about both E2.0 and SCRM. Let's take a look at some of the important and interesting things we've covered so far and then build some sort of a future roadmap for what we should cover in the future.
Have Social Media And CRM Evolved?
I just arrived at the CRM Evolution conference and last night I attended a pre-show meetup where I had a great conversation with Brian Vellmure. Among one of the interesting things we talked about is how he and I (and others) got involved with Social CRM.
Technology Adoption and Encouraging Use
This is part four in a multi-part series on how Intuit is implementing Enterprise 2.0 within their organization. Part one covered the business drivers of Enterprise 2.0, part two looked at some of the change management issues of Enterprise 2.0, part three explored cultural and organization shifts, and today we're going to take a look at technology adoption within Intuit and how they were able to encourage use of E2.0 platforms and tools.
How To Identify A Social CRM Initiative
Hello ladies! (this is only funny if you have seen the Oldspice commercials, otherwise this is a bit awkward for all of us...) Over the past few weeks you may have seen that the Oldspice man has been responding to comments on youtube, facebook, and twitter by creating individual personalized messages for people essentially creating a type of collaborative relationship between the brand and the customer, but is the Oldspice campaign a social media campaign or a social CRM campaign?
Better Understanding The Business Effects Of Social Media Strategies
I've been giving this some thought lately as over at Chess Media Group (CMG) we are gearing up for our new website launch which also means finalizing our list of our core service offerings. There are a lot of "social" words people have been using lately such as social media, social business, enterprise 2.0, and social crm (and perhaps you can think of others).
Developing Strategies Around The Social Customer
You might have heard that Social CRM is all around developing strategies around the "social customer". But, what exactly is a social customer and what do brands need to know about interacting with her? Chess Media Group has released a whitepaper with Attensity 360 (which is free) introducing the social customer and the document provides a lot of valuable information and insight on who exactly the social customer is and why it's important to understand her.
How To Adapt To The Social Customer
In the last post we looked at what the difference between CRM and SCRM is (with visuals). Today I want to talk about how CRM is actually evolving to SCRM. There have been several images and diagrams which have attempted to depict the shift or evolution from CRM to Social CRM.
How To Manage Your Social CRM Process
In the past week or so we covered a few interesting topics with easy to understand visuals (we hope). We looked at the difference between CRM and Social CRM (for those that are new here CRM = customer relationship management) and also explored the evolution of CRM to Social CRM. Today I want to talk about a process that Chess Media Group and Mitch Lieberman developed aptly called ARM or; the Action, Reaction, Management, Process. As quoted in the Guide to Understanding Social CRM:
Developing Strategies Around Social Customer Relations
You might have heard that Social CRM is all around developing strategies around the "social customer". But, what exactly is a social customer and what do brands need to know about interacting with her?
How Vendors And Strategists Differ In The Social CRM Space
After spending a lot of time speaking and interacting with vendors and strategists in the Social CRM space it became very clear to me that vendors and strategists (or consultants or analysts or whatever else you want to call them) are on a very different page when it comes to understanding and explaining what Social CRM is and/or does. I think what we are seeing now (also in the E2.0 space) is a space which is being "pulled" by vendors so to speak. I realize it's not this cut and dry and that not all vendors fall into the "vendor" mindset and that not all strategists fall into the "strategist" mindset. Having said that let's a take a look at where the disconnect might be between vendors and strategists.
|
|
|
 eBUSINESS
RESOURCES |
|
|
 |
|
| About
WebProNews |
WebProNews is the number
one source for eBusiness News. Over 5 million eBusiness professionals read
WebProNews and other iEntry business and tech publications.
WebProNews provides real-time coverage of internet
business.
Free Email Newsletters:
|
|
|
|
