AIIM Western Canada - Social Web and the Enterprise

Just finished my talk. Good feedback from the group. Thanks.

Social Networking and the Enterprise - Visual

A DRAFT of my AIIM conference slides:
The caveat is that this will all change by the time I talk. There is no audio context, so you'll have to use your imagination.

AIIM Conference_Draft

View more presentations from John Hutchings.

With the exception of slide 5 (from my own imagination), much of this thinking has been mashed together from the likes of Dave Armano, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Berman and others. They're all smarter than me, so credit where credit is due.

Social Networking and the Enterprise - Part 4 : How?

In a recent Forrester article and blog post, Jeremiah Owyang talks about the 5 ways companies are participating in Social Web. Although he's mostly speaking to the inside-out communication aspect of this phenomenon, the model is still applicable.

1. No clue: It's a complete free for all, it puts the organization at tremendous risk of Intellectual Property leakage and regulatory non-compliance, often without the firm knowing until it's too late.

2. The Corporate Representative: This is analogous to the 'tower' model where a silo of representatives, often senior leadership, are responsible for all Social corporate communications. This is safe, but doesn't truly embrace true sharing or collaboration. The analogy here is the 'Message from the President' newsletter.

3. Common Employees Blessed for Social: This model lets a few more trained people within the organization behind the velvet rope to act as Social Media ambassadors. This, and 4 below, follow the 'hub and spoke' model. The challenge here is that you're creating two classes of workers and it is still more of a push model rather than true collaboration and sharing.

4. Everyone is Encouraged: Again the 'hub and spoke' model, with a cross-disciplinary team in the middle acting as a conduit between various business stakeholders. From a brand communication perspective: "This is ultimately going to be the future, but having a free for all isn't an excuse for having a strategy, guidelines and resources to support the brand and employees". For a regulated entity, it may take a long time to get this far, both externally and internally.

5. Shut it down: The pendulum swung to the other extreme of the free for all, this is analogous to organizations that block Internet access to Webmail and other 'non' work sites. This happens more often you might think, particularly in regulated verticals like Finance and big Pharma. (I once built a clinical trial portal for a large pharmaceutical manufacturer. It failed because the clinicians using the site couldn't use it to 'talk' with each other. Legal, Medical and Regulatory got a hold of it and were so concerned about Adverse Event reporting they shut down all community elements, including hard coding email addresses so they weren't clickable!). This doesn't work because employees will use their mobile devices or just surf from home.

So, which one makes the most sense? It depends. Maybe a checklist:

1. Involve your Regulatory, Legal and Privacy people early.
2. Do a POST analysis on your organization or team. It will vary from Marketing to Operations to Sales, so it's important to do more granular analysis.
3. Don't forget about your company's Intranet and email client. Your organization's Intranet can (and should) be the primary information sharing and collaboration space if it's easy to use and addresses the needs of workers.
4. Get Identity Management working - fast. My experience with regulated entities is that some employees have access to things that others don't. This is typically managed by multiple passwords or the user having to 'ask for permission' (via telephone or email) to gain access. With single sign-in and Role Based Access Control Lists, access to information is based on your role within the organisation. This leads to a better end user experience and improved information control. This can then be extended to the personalization and customization of the Intranet and in-house Social Networking applications.
5. Start small and practical. A blog or wiki? For one department? Yammer.com for your sales department? Perhaps start a 'Social Media Sandbox' with a pilot group or team?

I'm certain there are others. Any thoughts from the 'community' would be most welcome.

Social Networking and the Enterprise - Part 3 : If your organization should do it?

So, we've looked at definitions and have now answered the question about why Social Networking is important, both from an external marketing perspective and as an internal information sharing and collaboration tool.

Next is whether an organization should entertain it in the first place. In his 2007 bestseller Groundswell, Josh Berman proposes 'a systematic approach to social (media) strategy'. It's called the POST Method. It breaks down like this:


People: Assess your customers' Social activities. As mentioned earlier this has to do with your organization's demographics and culture. A company full of Gen Y workers is, in general, more likely to adopt than one full of Boomers.

Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish as an organization. Better collaboration? Better information capture and sharing? Also decide on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before you start. This drives the technology choice.

Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers (in this case internal) will change. This is critical, particularly in a regulated environment. You have to plan for what could go wrong and mitigate it with safeguards.

Technology: Decide which Social applications to use. A common axiom here is 'don't let the technology tail wag the dog'. A good example is MOSS. It used to ship free with Windows. So, guess what? The IT guys played around with it, and to quote Greg: "spun it up and called it an ECM strategy". I recently completed an Enterprise Content Management engagement for a large Oil & Gas company. They literally had hundreds of SharePoint sites running. And the majority of business users had no idea where to look for information...

Let's look at a simple example. Where I work:

P: Mostly Gen Y with some Gen X. Open, collaborative culture. Everyone is on FaceBook, most are on Twitter. The leadership and senior client service and strategy folks can all Tweet on the company's behalf.

O: One objective was to improve internal communication in a secure environment. Another was to have a information repository that is editable and accessible to all - it was about knowledge capture, management and transfer.

S: The strategy was to get individual workers to keep their conversations internal and work-oriented and to have a one-stop shop for all information.

T: We implemented Pandion as our in-house IM application and it is heavily trafficked. Our internal wiki is in huge demand, particularly among our development team who use it as a code-base repository.

How do we know they are working? We measure.

This isn't rocket science, but it is a simple and elegant way to determine how Social Media fits into an organization's marketing mix as well as it's internal communication and collaboration strategy. After determining the 'if' it's now time to explore how we are going to go about it.

Social Networking and the Enterprise - Part 2 : Why should we bother?

We've already established relevant definitions and put together a visual fabric about how Enterprise 2.0, ECM, Enterprise Social Software and Social Web stitch together.

Although the point of this exercise is to determine how regulated entities should incorporate Social Networking strategy, we should first establish the 'why' and 'if'.

So, why is it important to consider Social Networking as part of an organization's information sharing and collaboration strategy? Let's look at some top-level drivers:

1. Technology Populism: This really puts pressure on organizations to act and to give their knowledge workers the tools they require to share and collaborate. Although somewhat dependent on the demographics - and by extension the culture - of the organization, people are increasingly finding or using their own solutions. If your organization doesn't have an in-house IM application, guess what? They’re going to use their own MSN. No online collaboration spaces? Maybe your employees will start using a solution like Google Docs or TeamViewer.

2. Enterprise Software meets UEX and Social Networking: Many Content Management Systems (Red Dot, MOSS, etc.) are now shipping with built-in Social Networking apps - better integration and Usability make these a reasonable option with easier adoption

3. Cloud Computing and the virtual desktop: Innovations in cloud computing are making the virtual desktop the norm thus reducing the cost of connecting workers and thereby increasing the potential reach of corporate social networks.

It’s not all sunshine, however. A recently released survey by eMarketer reveals that 45% of Social Media Marketers think that Social Media is not effective at improving internal communications.

Taken from a Forrester paper “Facebook for the Enterprise”: Catchy Phrase or a Strategy for Collaboration”, there are other considerations as well.

1. “Notifications” and “tweets’ assume more connectivity is better. I don’t regularly use our internal IM application and I have trouble keeping up with Twitter.

2. Interruptions sap information work productivity. Research suggests that it takes workers 25 minutes to return to what they were working on.

3. Professional capital needs identity, reputation and objectivity. Translated: I can pretend to be anyone on Facebook or Twitter (although this is changing with vanity URLs), but within an organization, identities need to be verifiable. This is where Identity Management and Role Based Access Control Lists becomes critical.

There are also legal and Intellectual Property issues to consider. Even with safeguards in place, employees will find ways to let knowledge walk out the door. And, the ill-timed release of sensitive information can land companies in trouble with regulators.

So, there are things to consider on both the positive and negative side of the equation. With the ‘Why’ out of the way, it’s time to move onto the ‘if’. Before we even consider how an organization, particularly a regulated one, should implement a Social Networking strategy, we need to ask if they should even bother. That’s next in Part 3.

Social Networking and the Enterprise - Part 1: Definitions and Mapping

Strap in, this is going too be long and come in four parts.

Earlier, I mentioned that I'm scheduled to speak at the AIIM Western Canada conference.

My topic is, Social Web: Cutting through the clutter. How to use Social Networks and other tools to enable appropriate information sharing and collaboration within your organization.

So, I've got a little leeway, but was also struggling on how to approach it. I spent some time doing research and have come up with an outline for the talk.

1. Definitions: First, it was important for me to understand what all these terms mean.

Enterprise 2.0: According to AIIM, this can be defined as a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities WITHIN the extended enterprise. In other words, Web 2.0 for the enterprise.

Enterprise Content Management: ECM can be referred to as the strategies, methods, and technologies (tools) used to Capture, Manage, Store, Preserve and Deliver content and documents related to organization processes - they permit the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever it may exist. (emphasis is mine).

For the majority of users within the enterpise, it's the Manage component (which can be further broken down into DM, Collaboration, WCM, RM and Workflow) that they spend the most time with, so emphasis should be placed here.

Enterprise Social Software: A subset of E2.0, it comprises social software utilized in a business context. Applications such as internal blogs, wikis, feeds and internal social bookmarking - all often bolted onto an existing Intranet - live in this space.

Finally, you've got good old-fashioned Social Web (including Social Networking and User-Generated Content - Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, personal blogs, Youtube, Flickr, etc.).

So, the business question is how all of these fit together for enterprise context, particularly for heavily regulated verticals such as Oil & Gas, Big Pharma and Government.

2. Mind Map: A visual representation of the space.

To begin to answer how these fit together, I came up with the visual above. The X - axis represents the number of users - few vs. many. The Y - axis talks about the amount of control an organization can exert over information - the higher and to the up and right you go, the more difficult it is to 'control the collaboration'. As a reaction, some organizations just shut everything down. I'll get to this when we talk about Jeremiah Owyang's thoughts on "How to Organize Your Company For Social Computing".

What's also interesting is how a company's Intranet and email applications fit into the mix. Email is often overlooked as a 'social network' but that's exactly what it is and it's still the most popular platform.

With these definitions and framework in place, I'll next examine the emerging trends and key business drivers behind enterprise Social Network adoption (or lack thereof). Then, I'll look at a model that helps to determine in which direction an organization should move. Finally, I'll take a stab at some key conclusions and direction.

UPDATE: I asked my friend and colleague Greg Clark from C3 Associates, who is an ECM and E2.0 ninja, to vet this model for me. I got a passing grade, but he raised an interesting and valid point. To quote:

"One thing that jumped out at me is your comment about the importance/focus of the “Manage” portion of ECM. To me this is where a lot of implementations fall down; infrastructure geeks in black Nine Inch Nails t-shirts sitting in windowless server rooms spin up an ECM app and call it a strategy. Don’t need to tell you this is bad. The “Deliver” portion is where things get interesting from an E2.0 perspective. Marrying up these two (with a side benefit of some subversive records management to handle the end of the information lifecycle) is where it’s at."

So, I forgot the 'Deliver' aspect which is used to present information from the 'Manage', 'Store', and 'Preserve' components.

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The 'Why, If, and, How questions are next.