Axero Pulse » business collaboration

Social Software For Managing Customer Relationships

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:00:39 +0000

Keep Your Prospects Close & Your Customers Even Closer – The New Social Enterprise 2.0 Mantra

Customer relationship management is more traditionally synonymous with one-on-one communication with customers through various medium both online and offline. With the development of enterprise social networks and active business online communities, this is where a lot of the customer service is happening and also where customer relationships are strengthened and molded. This transparent interaction between customers and a business has picked up with more businesses using social enterprise software to build strong online communities and communication channels with their customers.

Don Hinchcliffe recently wrote in a post on the zdnet blogs on the topic of social CRMs:

For its part, Social CRM paints a vision of creating a deeper and more engaging community-based relationship with your customers, instead of the traditional approach of managing them, in a very Cluetrain Manifesto way. Part online community, part crowd sourcing, part customer service, Social CRM can create an emergent, collaborative online partnership with customers that can result in an array of improvements to business performance.

Online communities and enterprise social networks are virtual places where a business and its customer connect and engage in communication. The main difference as compared to traditional customer relationships is it’s more transparent and community driven as against the one on one communication. The dialog and interaction between customers is the driving force and they are the ones actively leading the process and that is something businesses need to understand in order to get it right. Used to the push sales tactics and driving customers actions by directing or managing communications is something companies need to be leave behind with social customer relationship management and they will have to learn to take a back seat and let the customers drive most of the activity.

Setting the basic guidelines and providing the platform is the first role of businesses and that can be done by starting online discussions, creating topics and being the catalyst in getting an active community going where the customers know they can freely interact with each other as well as the business. Once an active community is in place, gathering intelligence from the activity is equally important. This is where tools like “online polls” can come in handy while gathering more quantitative data. In a community however, though not quantitative, a lot of the intelligence is right there in the form of comments, posts, questions and other content posted on the platform. Questions on products directly to the business or even other customers could be an indication of interest in a product and building a solid process on gathering such intelligence and making it actionable information is something that needs to be worked on.

Whether it’s customer service, sales or marketing, each function can benefit tremendously from a well built online community and getting customers to participate more closely with the business. The software platforms are easily available and technically a social customer relationship management system can be put into place. The people and process is the bigger challenge and once you have that rolling, you’re on the way to building better, stronger relationships with your customers.

Social Collaboration Software For The Sales Force

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:00:26 +0000

The Social Business Collaboration Software Powered Sales Force

With the sales team being the front line in the quest for success for any organization, the need to strengthen their abilities as a team and equip them to function as efficiently as possible becomes paramount to their effectiveness. From businesses with smaller sales teams to ones with a sales force which can be hundreds and even thousands strong, there are a number of challenges which they can face which are unique to the sales organization. The ability to communicate easily and collaborate as a unit is perhaps one of the most common ones and while CRM software and blackberry’s are associated with making the lives of the sales team better, there is one other technology which is gaining ground very quickly…social networking software for collaboration.

Whether an in house sales force or a network of channel and partner sales representatives, the sales organization is often a widely spread very mobile organization scattered across locations or always on the move. Communication and content is a lifeline for the organization but the common complaint is a lack of a unified platform they can use to communicate on and work with each other. This often sees large numbers of sales representatives working as islands with no sharing of intelligence, best practices and a coordinated effort which could otherwise result in more efficient working and perhaps better revenues.

For the management, there are other challenges such as the need to send out individual communications with each sales rep with the alternative being to email or push out their communications and content across the entire sales force even though a lot of it may not be relevant to each one of them again creating an inefficient process. Training and development of new and existing sales reps is a constant concern with higher employee turnover rates than most other departments and the need to constantly update and enhance skills and information throughout the daily working process. So how is a social networking based business community platform going to address all this?

Building a collaboration network platform for the sales force is a great strategy. Sales teams at IBM, CISCO, T-Mobile and others have already experienced the results of leveraging collaborative social software in providing their sales teams with these platforms and here is just some of what has been observed by companies who have built such online networks for their sales organization:

Greater sharing of knowledge & best practices: – collaboration and social networking environments foster sharing of information and experiences which among sales organizations often translates to a widespread sharing of best practices. These best practices which are often posted by members of the sales team on the job come from practical experiences with customers and the practice of sharing this knowledge alone helps build a better sales organization.

Rapid turnaround time in getting answers to questions:- companies have seen with the ability to simply log in to the network and post a question on the discussion boards or forums, sales reps and channel sales agents find it easy to ask questions on handling situations, on product updates and other topics. What’s more is with all the other members regularly on the network, questions get answered quickly creating a strong process for ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Better objection handling:- it’s been observed that when sales reps come across customer objections while selling and post them within their network, they are replied to with multiple suggestions for handling these objections from others on the community. With everyone collectively pitching in on how to manage these objections, the learning curve increases and everyone gains from better success rates.

Constant pull-based learning & development process:- With the constant discussion, conversation, posting of learning content, presentations, blog posts, videos, webinars and other useful content the network also acts as a platform for continuous learning. Since it’s not pushed on employees it’s not seen as something they are forced to learn and rather, they are encouraged to participate in posting, consuming, commenting on and sharing learning content by seeing others do the same.

Single platform for distribution of content: Rather than have to email each sales rep or go through the other extreme of email the entire sales force with content and material which may not be relevant or useful to all of them, the collaborative network provides a single platform to which content can be posted to. Sales reps can simply login and take what they need whether it’s a product guide, specs update sheet or marketing collateral. This makes it easier for management to distribute content and spares the sales reps from being bombarded with what they may not need.

Single platform for communication and planning:- Perhaps one of the biggest plus points for management is having a single platform they can use to communicate with the entire sales team no matter how far they are spread and where they are physically located. Whether it’s sending out important notices or planning campaigns which need groups of sales reps to participate and discuss, the network provides a platform to communicate, plan and execute on what may otherwise be a daunting task.

Visibility into operations and recognition of performers:- The collaboration network brings a greater level of transparency into the working of the sales organization as well as to information which would otherwise slipped under the radar. Management can spot performers, contributions to the sales organization and spread the word on achievements to recognize outstanding sales reps and also to motivate the sales community as a whole to push the envelope and do better.

In short, the social collaboration software platform can bring a new level of cohesiveness to the working of the sales force and a unified sales force is powerful one. Quicker spread of information, better ability to plan and interact with each other and better communication can be targeted with building a platform exclusively for sales employees and a lot of businesses can benefit from the results seen by those who have been front runners in this space. After all if the goal is to push revenues, what better way than to equip the sales organization with the technology they need to bring home the results?

Social Networking – The Near Future Of Business Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:23 +0000

Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises
what Social Networks are to Consumers

It’s always great to read a view point that’s so close to your own thoughts that you can’t say it better — and that’s exactly what happened when I read Padmasree Warrior’s post on the CISCO blog “5 Predictions For The Future Of Collaboration“. Her first prediction echoes what we’ve been seeing as more companies turn to social networking software to enable their internal and external collaboration requirements. The prediction is “Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises what Social Networks are to Consumers”

Padmasree says in the post:

“At Cisco, we believe that the rigidly structured silos that were traditionally put in place in most enterprises will give way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities of experts. Increasingly, companies will rely on Collaboration Networks that bring together “clusters of experts” to get critical projects completed. These groups will form dynamically to achieve a shared outcome. This self-organizing cycle repeats itself on an ongoing basis, as the need arises. It’s both efficient and effective, in part because experts are drawn to projects and are thus motivated — rather than being “assigned” in a top-down fashion.”

Social networking software architecture is ideal for creating a collaboration network platform for businesses. Every business has its own processes and its share of custom requirements from their software to blend in perfectly. Social networking software provides that flexible basic framework that allows for communication and interaction between people online. With its open nature, it acts as a set of tools for employees to leverage in their daily work — and provides the perfect platform to encourage participation and collaboration without having management impose a software on them (as the Padmasree blog post points out).

If the rapid adoption of general social networking sites is any indication of things to come, collaboration networks will go the same direction as a natural extension of this framework for business needs. Just as social networking platforms like Facebook are now the broader structure within which other activities using software such as games, auctions, e-commerce, content sharing and more happen, we are likely to see applications such as CRM, document management, spreadsheets, customer service modules, and more all within the confines of a collaboration network login.

We already have customers building on a social networking platform and customizing it for their employees and departments by adding components such as stock tickers, sales performance dashboards, and RSS news feeds to equip them with more than the basic collaboration functionality. Given that platforms such as Communifire are geared towards customization and enhancing features, is it too hard to imagine that in the near future, a sales person in an enterprise organization logs into his/her internal collaboration network and has access to the company CRM data?

What is certain, is that we are still at the early phases of social software for the business — and the future is bound to see this technology find its way to the core of businesses computing. It’s already happening.

Using Social Networking To Build A Truly Collaborative Business Environment

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:40 +0000

Creating A Participative Business Decision Making Culture Within Your Collaboration Network

Creating a working environment which is truly collaborative and includes every employees contribution is a challenge many businesses have been striving to achieve. In this quest, social networking and collaboration software platforms have been one of the most effective solutions in enabling this. We’ve talked about how it brings about transparency in daily working, encourages participation and allows people to contribute to the business without the common boundaries like titles and positions which are often issues preventing this kind of a culture. We’ve talked about how internal collaboration platforms can help improve communication and make project management more efficient but there is one small feature which as small and often insignificant as it may seem has the power to use a platform like this to make everyone’s opinions count and create a working culture where each decision counts.

Polls within an internal employee social networking environment can be used to create organization wide surveys and gather opinions on just about any decision needed to be made. It can be a poll to gauge how employees will react to a new HR policy change, a poll to get everyone’s opinion on the new paint scheme for the office, a poll to understand what has been the most effective selling strategy or absolutely anything else. One normally tends to avoid getting too many people involved in the decision making process not because they don’t want to know others view but because it’s too impractical and inefficient. Meetings, phone calls or emails with groups of people can be time consuming and it’s just easier to exclude them and make decisions unilaterally. However, that isn’t always the best way to do things and ideally basing these decisions on multiple views is better. Within a collaborative platform since everyone is already in one place metaphorically speaking, it’s easier to put ideas to vote and consider everyone’s views before making decisions.

This kind of an environment which is now completely possible to create is not just about having a democratic business process. It fosters a participative culture where each employee knows their contribution is valued and considered in the working of the business. It reduces barriers between departments, positions and levels and induces the feeling that everyone is important to the business and decisions are made with them contributing in some way if it finally goes in another direction. In the long run, this can create a good working atmosphere reduce problems of attrition. All things being equal, everyone would prefer working in an environment where they can play an important role and their contribution counts for something.

Polls may not always be used to their full potential. When they are, they could change the way you work.

ROI on Social Business Collaboration

Tim Eisenhauer — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:00:30 +0000

Need A Good Case For Business Collaboration Software Platforms? – Try 900 Percent ROI

There are businesses still mulling whether to use social networking software and build a better business collaboration platform for their employees and often they find themselves taking a back seat till they have a solid case why they should go ahead with this. CISCO it seems has come out with a good reason to build a case for better collaboration through great software. A recent article by Oliver Marks titled Cisco Releasing Sophisticated Collaboration Framework to Accelerate Your Business Value reveals how the company used collaboration best practices to better their business growth and productivity while achieving a 900% ROI.

The article on the soon to be released report states :

“The Report, ‘Creating a Collaborative Enterprise: a Guide to Accelerating Business Value with a Collaboration Framework’, shows how their best practices saved them US$691 million and increased productivity 4.9 percent in fiscal year 2008 against technology investments costing US$81 million.”

Now of course, this was for CISCO and we are talking about the savings and productivity increase across a team of 80,000 employees but that doesn’t mean smaller businesses have nothing to gain from this. In fact it’s a lot easier to implement collaboration best practices and create a better collaboration software platform within a smaller business with far less people which can be scaled as a business grows.

Another interesting point the article makes is the three important components that have to be considered while developing a collaboration framework for the business as one of these or some of these are often ignored:

Essentially, Cisco recommends organizations must carefully cultivate the three components of collaboration: people, processes and technology (something my colleagues and I have also been evangelizing for the last year).

Cisco’s collaboration framework prescribes three phases of collaboration: first investigative work, then performance process tuning and finally a transformation phase.

No matter how good the collaboration technology platform is, unless the processes are aligned with the people and the technology, the results won’t be optimum. Once the processes have been identified and people are comfortable with the technology, things fall into place. It has been known for a while that social networks and online business collaboration platforms have been great tools for communicating better, having discussions, organizing events and projects but things often come down to the question of ROI. “What are the tangible returns financially of implementing this?” I think that’s what will be answered with facts and statistics in this upcoming report and provide answers to those still waiting for the answers. For now, with a company that could implement a framework with 80,000 employees and display the kind of productivity and savings figures CISCO has, I am convinced not many businesses should have doubts and stay left behind.

Microsoft Office Social Software And Collaboration

Tim Eisenhauer — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:40:28 +0000

Microsoft 2010 For Business Gears Towards Better Collaboration - Is Your Social Software Up To The Challenges?

Microsoft-driven businesses (that includes a lot of businesses the world over) have probably been keeping a tab on the news bits that keep being released around the Microsoft Office 2010 developments. The talk around Microsoft’s vision for Office 2010 started much earlier and Share Point indicated they would focus on enhancing collaboration. Recent news confirms that’s exactly the direction they have gone with the soon to be released version of perhaps the most widely used office suite in the world. The company has looked to improve collaboration and productivity in its latest version, which not surprisingly, will also be more web based than its predecessors.

An article published in PC World online recently stated:

“Microsoft is also counting on a more Web-based manifestation of Office to keep from looking like a corporate dinosaur next to fast and loose Web apps from Google and Zoho, as well as to protect itself from the shift from PCs to more portable devices including smart phones and netbooks.”

According to the article, users can also expect to see better unified communication and ability for multiple users to edit documents real-time when online and have remote access to all office documents. It’s evident that office suites are evolving to move towards a web-based collaborative working environment and with Microsoft moving this direction, this will impact the way hundreds of thousands of businesses work everywhere.

Software used by businesses has for a long time been influenced by the direction Microsoft goes… and developers have always had to consider how their software would work alongside the Microsoft software suites so that businesses don’t run into any compatibility issues or find that they can’t integrate their software with the version of Office that’s being used within their business. When it comes to social software, that still applies — or it is definitely a consideration. If a business is relying on a social software platform for most of its communication and collaboration, the flow of documents within these portals is also important. While previously a business’s online collaboration platform (intranet or website portal) was not always used with its offline office suite like Microsoft Office, with this new development towards web based office suites, the chances are they will have to work together.

To be able to seamlessly use web based office suite applications and manage documents across a social network on the business website or intranet there needs to be some room for customization and integration in the software platform being used. For example the architecture of Communifire which is built on the latest ASP.NET 3.5 platform with AJAX and related web 2.0 technologies allows for greater customization. This leaves a business with the ability to integrate newer components and web applications that the business may need in the future. This can however be an issue, especially in social software and community platforms that are built by weaving several free software components to create a wider platform. In such cases, integrating with other critical software that the business is using can be cumbersome even if it is at all possible.

As more business applications move towards the web based collaborative productivity centric way, the need to integrate a business’s various web based software platforms is only going to grow stronger. After all, if all the components are going to help unify the work environment and make things more efficient, they will have to work together themselves.

Business Collaboration Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:49:41 +0000

Is Social Business Collaboration Software The New Groupware 2.0?

Groupware technology has been around for a long time now. Almost every business organization has been using some form of groupware or another to create a collaborative work environment independent from geography and location of employees. The Usabilityfirst.com website defines groupware technology as follows:

“Groupware is technology designed to facilitate the work of groups. This technology may be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate. While traditional technologies like the telephone qualify as groupware, the term is ordinarily used to refer to a specific class of technologies relying on modern computer networks, such as email, newsgroups, videophones, or chat.”

When you think of traditional groupware software like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, you think of a suite of email management, chat, address book, messaging, document transfer, and so on. However, the features and tools used in collaborative efforts online have evolved into what we now commonly known as social networking and social media software. Blogs, instant messaging, micro-blogging, wikis, online events, groups, forums, and video sharing are more along the lines of what we associate with online collaboration and interaction in our every day communication with others on the web. So where does traditional groupware technology stand in today’s context where social networking software platforms for businesses are picking up momentum?

Well, some features of traditional groupware will continue to be used, such as email and perhaps chat/instant messaging, but the use of social media platforms integrated in business websites for internal collaboration is rapidly taking over with many large corporations switching over to social business collaboration platforms. More interesting than the adoption of this technology by larger organizations, is that social business collaboration software platforms like our own Communifire are just as accessible to the smaller and mid-sized businesses and cost is no longer a barrier. The geographical boundaries of businesses are being broken down quickly and the concept of “physically being present” at a workplace is blurring just as fast. For this reason, the need for groupware or business collaboration platforms is greater than before.

With the evolution of how we choose to collaborate online outside the workplace, groupware and collaboration platforms need to evolve and incorporate those features. The very nature of business collaboration has already changed, whether we like it or not. Now the only question is, when are businesses going to integrate this into their websites?

Is social business collaboration the new groupware 2.0?

ROI on Social Business Collaboration

Business Collaboration Application Platforms

Tim Eisenhauer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:43:29 +0000

There’s More To Social Media And Business Collaboration Than You Might First Think

Larger enterprise businesses need to communicate regularly with several different stakeholders…from channel sales partners, shareholders, field sales teams, IT, and more. Social networking software turned into a business communication and collaboration platform can be a single channel to communicate and reach out to all these different groups consistently and effectively.

There is more to the social business collaboration software platform movement that is currently taking large enterprises by storm. It’s not surprising that companies like Starbucks and others are laying so much emphasis on being able to leverage the social media boom on their own websites and enable collaboration at the level they have managed to. In previous conversations on our AxeroPulse blog we have agreed on the following:

Social software platforms on business websites are great way to engage customers online
They are great tools to communicate and get feedback from customers
They provide a platform for those who love your business and products to promote them online
Social networking software platforms are useful as a collaboration and communication tool internally for a business

But there is more…

A business is made up of people, and people are not restricted to just employees on the inside and customers on the outside. There can be other stakeholders involved in your business, such as investors, stock holders, channel sales partners, distributors, suppliers and more. Now, think of the collaboration efforts and the amount of communication that is involved on a daily basis with each of these stakeholders … We need to reach out to our shareholders with an explanation of why the stock prices were effected to give them back their confidence … We need to inform our distributors about the new sales incentive plan … We need to reach out to our suppliers and get the word out on the new component that we will need in a few months … We need feedback from our customers on what they think of the latest product changes and upgrades. The sheer amount of communication and co-ordination required within your business calls for a technology platform that can enable everyone to get together and interact with the least fuss. This is where the social media based business collaboration platform comes in.

Imagine a business website with the key elements of a social networking platform, where all the different stakeholders in that business can sign up, create a profile, and get together. Groups can be created for each type of stakeholder — so the investors, distributors, suppliers, sales teams, or offshore teams can each be grouped together to make communication to or within these groups a piece of cake. Wikis, groups, message boards, blogs, and poll widgets are all powerful in providing a structured platform for all these different people together and forming an efficient way to do business collaboratively.

Now that is true collaboration!

Collaborative Enterprise Blogging Lessons

Tim Eisenhauer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:34:37 +0000

Enterprise Blogging & Social Media Lessons From The Big Guys

Social media marketing is not just a buzz word anymore. Businesses are taking it very seriously and despite the drop in budgets and spending on several other forms of advertising, reports show that the social media spend is still on a rise. The food giant General Mills employed the social media power of 900 bloggers about a month ago to promote their range of products. 80% of the bloggers comprised of moms and housewives, which also the largest demographic of the company’s customers, and there is probably no person more credible to blog about a Betty Crocker double layer choco chunk cake than a mom. But just how did they pull off a collaborative blogging effort of this size? By building MyBlogSpark which was based on a strong social media software platform.

An AdWeek press release by Brian Morrissey stated:

“MyBlogSpark has recruited more than 900 bloggers — over 80 percent are moms — to register to be eligible for everything from sampling campaigns to product coupons to news of a new ad campaign. General Mills plans to use the network to promote its wide portfolio of products in the food and beverage, beauty, home, electronics, health and automotive categories.”

General Mills can be confident the program will fill blogs with positive reviews. One of the requirements for participation reads:

“If you feel you cannot write a positive post regarding the product or service, please contact the MyBlogSpark team before posting any content.”

Collaborative blogging is an extremely powerful source of word-of- mouth marketing. Whether it’s paid or for some incentive, as in the General Mills case or it’s done by a community that is simply passionate about a business or its products, it’s still perceived as a more credible source of information than PR and press articles. Your customers and online community are your best PR agents, provided that you give them a good collaborative platform to talk about your products and services. There is no better PR agent for a small software company than a small group of software experts who use their products. There is no better agent for a small online musical instruments business than a group of musicians. There is no one better to market a local SCUBA dive shop than a group of divers who have been there.

Even the small independent music store can mobilize the community to blog collectively and help promote its business online. It may not be 900 bloggers and moms but even 10-20 music enthusiasts working together to blog and promote the business can create a lot of word of mouth marketing and go a long way. Social software platforms like Communifire, which offer not just the software but the option to fully own the source code too, allow a virtually unlimited level of customization and can easily be used to build something along the lines of MyBlogSpark or make a perfect base for the collaborative social media and blogging campaign. There is a lot you can learn from the big guys — but you don’t have to be one to build a strong community to represent your business. Use community power!

The Licensing Cost Reduction Angle Of Social Software Communities For Business

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:04:31 +0000

The Impact Of Social Software & Online Communities On Enterprises Suffering From Inflated Software Licensing Costs

There are several financial arguments for taking a social networking platform for business and investing in building an internal collaboration platform or internal community for an enterprise or business. There is reduction in travel expenses, creating a better communication platform which can reduce phone expenses, allow for flexibility of employee and partner location, reducing workspace costs and more. To really be able to justify investing in an internal social software platform to the financial heads of a business there needs to be a strong case but with clear cost benefits, it comes across as a sensible move. Let’s take a closer look into just one cost that several enterprise businesses spend a small fortune on “software licensing costs”.

In a typical enterprise business environment, you’ll find different kinds of stakeholders –including different types of employees, partners and so on. They may each have very different computing requirements: some quite basic and some may need more extensive software capabilities. Yet, most businesses issue similar hardware and provide standard installations of software across the board.

Now, an employee in sales may need the latest version of Microsoft Office and SharePoint to create and upload sales presentations and share documents, but someone in another function may not. The practice or need to install a fresh license of collaboration and communication software like SharePoint, Lotus Notes and other groupware for every new employee or stakeholder that’s now part of the wider organizational network can be expensive.

Just imagine in a larger organization how much that could add up in license fees each year? To think some of the employees may need an additional user license just so that they can use the internal messaging, instant messaging, or group notification function within the organization, is it really a justified cost?

This is where social networking and business collaboration software can play a crucial role in reducing unwarranted licensing costs. By migrating a lot of the common everyday internal collaboration and communication functions to an internal social software platform and making that the core internal interaction platform for the business the dependency on more expensive licensed copies of other software can be drastically reduced. Once that dependency on that software is gone, it will end up being used only where it is really required and doesn’t have to be used across the board just because that’s the standard internal platform the company works on. Most businesses have been stuck in this trap of having to invest a considerable licensing fee every time they add on a user or need to scale perhaps for a lack of a better solution. Now that there is good solution that is cost effective, scalable, and makes good financial sense, should we still be paying those inflated licensing costs each year?