Axero Pulse » business collaboration

Enterprise Social Software Integration

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:00:49 +0000

Need Of The Hour – Enterprise Social Software Platform Integration For Seamless Business Collaboration

So you’ve joined into the social software bandwagon and the organization is finally tuned to using blogs, Wiki s, instant messaging and starting to grasp the benefits of each of these technologies and see how they can be used to better their work environment. A team logged in here updating their project Wiki to set the agenda for what’s to be done next and another department using a standalone chat client to discuss an event that coming up soon.

Someone from customer support is logged into a forums software answering questions customers posted the previous day while the PR manager is gathering a list of employee blog urls so they can be reviewed and notified in case something doesn’t quite gel with the companies PR strategy. A training group has just created an account on a social bookmarking site to consolidate articles that may be useful to train the sales staff and will pass on the account details to them when that’s done.

It’s clear from all the activity the business in this scenario has adapted to social software and can be dubbed “enterprise 2.0″ but what’s also evident is every activity is fragmented in some way and they are not using a single platform to bring everything together and that is slowly becoming the need of the hour for several businesses.

A ReadWriteWeb post published in June titled “Becoming An Open Enterprise: Five Lessons from Booz Allen Hamilton” discussed 5 lessons by Booz Allen Hamilton. The firms portal which was adopted by 40% of the 21,000 employees was awarded the Enterprise Innovation Award at the 2009 Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Among the five lessons that the article carried, the fourth one stated:

Create a One-stop Shop

Part of what stalled previous undertakings was that despite having good software like Confluence, their varied systems were segregated. Inadvertently constructing more silos out of multiple enterprise 2.0 platforms creates more problems than you ever had with just email and file sharing.

Now, you might depend on interoperability between your different software packages, but what really worked for Booz Allen was to create a true one-stop shop for information that included individual profiles, communities, forums, blogs, Wiki s, and social bookmarking.

The ultimate aim of implementing social software within the enterprise is to make communication and collaboration as efficient as possible. The use of multiple independent software platforms for each function in many ways adds to inefficiency instead of overcoming it. The issues that come up with multiple platforms are not easily noticeable. Not until you have used an integrated platform that is. It’s easy to ignore those inefficiencies within the processes and keep on going with them but the fact is, there are issues with the system. Issues like:

Multiple online locations to go to
More logins and passwords
Reduced security
No centralized administration
Scattered content
Problems with scalability

The best way of integrating all these systems as the Booz Allen Hamilton success story points out is relying on a one stop shop or single platform which can bring everything together, offers unified management and allows for greater interoperability. This single platform will provide a more comprehensive solution for employees and create an efficient collaborative work space. That should set the organization up for the true enterprise 2.0 experience!

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?

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.

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!

Social Software For Quicker Product Development

Tim Eisenhauer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:00:30 +0000

Building A More Inclusive Product Development Process With Social Software

While this may be easier to relate to for those who work in large enterprises, regardless of what size and level a business operates at, if you are a product company, product development is core to your being and the better you can make your product development process, the more success you’ll find around the corner. The challenge facing most product companies is how to step up the development cycle and get products to market quicker while being able to innovate and give customers exactly what they are looking for. It’s not that businesses are not listening to their customers while developing products, but often by the time they are ready and rolled out, customers are already looking for something better or competitors have swiped market share while the product was still in the works. What’s needed is:

A quicker product development cycle
Customers involvement and participation in the development process
A more inclusive process where more minds can contribute and collaborate without involving inefficiencies

The problem with the last requirement is that the more people you involve in the process, the more inefficiencies you’re likely to invite. Inefficiencies of time, place, and communication. At the same time, if you can’t include more customers within the process, you’re gambling on the fact that the opinion of a small focus group or fewer people will reflect the way all customers will react to your final product. This is where social software for business collaboration has been able to provide solutions for product companies. By implementing a social networking based collaboration platform, a business can have a base to build a more inclusive product development process that is scalable. Employees, partners, product experts, and selected customers can be granted access to an online social collaborative environment where they can freely interact, share ideas, and jointly work towards developing new products.

Companies that have built their product development platforms on social software have seen significant improvements in their process and ability to get products to market sooner — giving a significant edge over their competitors. Here are just some of the advantages that companies have observed since they’ve adopted social software environments for their product development efforts:

They have seen that, when placed within a company, the social architecture (that many people are now familiar with from social networking sites like Facebook , Orkut, LinkedIn, and others.) has encouraged greater interaction and activity, creating a conducive environment for collaboration. Also, the adoption of the platform was easier — and employees, project teams, and customers found they could interact freely.
The platform is completely suitable for freely interacting with others, sharing ideas, opinions, collecting data and feedback, have open discussions, and have a very transparent working system that high level management management and just about anyone with access to the system can simply observe by just logging in and checking on current activity.
Customers and project teams located in all places around the world can log into the same system and participate regardless of where they are. This means they don’t have to disturb their schedules and travel and also means they can have customers from the US, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, and any other country included in the product development process and get as wide a participative group as they need.
There is a record of all previous interactions and conversations between each member within the platform — this becomes a great resource for the company well after the interactions have taken place. The system becomes a permanent resource for anyone within the process who needs access to that information.
It fosters a truly open communication culture for open collaboration — the product development process need not be restricted to a fixed number customers and select project teams, but others within the business can simply pitch in suggestions or share their ideas if they can contribute something useful towards the development process.
It’s highly scalable and very inclusive allowing wider collaboration and more sharing of ideas without being inefficient.

While each business will need to build on a social networking platform and customize the environment to work cohesively with their specific product development strategies and processes, the advantages of having a powerful collaboration platform to drive better products out more efficiently are clear. With the ability to include customers within the deepest levels of the product development cycle and still speed up their development cycles, we are bound to see businesses truly working with their customers.

Business Collaboration And Social Software Platforms

Tim Eisenhauer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:43:08 +0000

Social Networking Business Portals Are Just As Much About Consolidation As They Are About Collaboration

While business websites and portals created using social networking software platforms are known to have the “community” and “collaboration” as key objectives, there is one other “C” which is just as important and objective to keep in mind. “Consolidation“. Consolidation of people like customers, prospective customers, and employees towards a single online location rather than have them scattered across different websites. Then you have consolidation of communication channels which again is usually done through several websites and applications. Lastly, consolidation of content which is just as good a reason to consider social networking-like business portals.

The amount of content that we absorb, go through and refer to online is immense as compared what it was even three to four years ago. The social media and social networking revolution has fueled this increase in content by making it easier for users to publish their own content, communicate online, create discussions, develop learning material, and search through previous communications and so on. In a single working day, the need to access content online could drive you through several websites and applications. From having a conversation on Skype with a colleague, logging into your business email account to check mail, then moving over to LinkedIn to check for messages and new group discussions, to posting project updates on an online project management software before checking your favorite blogs for new posts. From there you could login to PollDaddy.com to set up a poll which would help you get some research stats for a an online meeting with your customers on WebEx but you also need to check your local company intranet to confirm if there is any update on the team meeting which may end up clashing with the customer meeting. It’s too much content spread across too many places! INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

Sure you have RSS readers and single sign on tools, but there is only so much they can do. There are just too many different websites to login to and keep a tab on in our every day working lives. All these websites enable better communication, provide good content or improve collaboration — but the fact that they are at different locations online brings about some level of inefficiency with it. It’s tedious. When a business uses a social networking or social business collaboration software platform to build a more unified portal it can help do away with some of these inefficiencies. Perhaps it’s not possible to avoid visiting multiple sites to get different things done. A business portal that combines forums, wikis, groups, blogs, instant messaging, polls, membership, and single sign on to “bring them under one roof” helps to consolidate the people we need to interact with, the communication channels we need, as well as the content we need to access during the working day — and that can make life easier. Believe me, it does.

Social networking for business portals are just as much about consolidating everything into a single location as it is about collaboration and communication.

Business Collaboration On The Linkedin Platform

Tim Eisenhauer — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:56:30 +0000

Mimicking Real World Business Collaboration Needs – Linkedin Launches Subgroups

LinkedIn groups have been among the most active online business groups and collaboration platforms with over 30,000 groups created over time. Clearly one of the best features the social networking for business professionals offers, the LinkedIn groups have been a popular place for millions of business professionals to come together, discuss, collaborate and share providing a great resource to its members. It looks like the groups may just get better.

LinkedIn announced the introduction of subgroups which can be created under the thousands of main groups created. This was a response to a popular suggestion from its users who have been suggesting the introduction of subgroups for some time but what is interesting is the real world comparison of this feature. In an email which went out to the members, LinkedIn says:

“We’re happy to announce that later this week we are launching a long-requested feature for group managers: the ability to create subgroups. Subgroups are like a break- out session at a conference. They enable you to create more focused areas than in the main group.”

Also, by creating and inviting members into subgroups, you can now send additional weekly Announcement emails to focused audiences.

It’s good to see some more aspects of real world business collaboration situations being applied to the improvement of digital business collaboration platforms like the online groups. The ability to address a smaller section of an overall group like in the conference situation is something that does happen in many situations and being able to do the same online would perhaps bring online groups a step closer to how people would interact offline. On the flip side, I wonder if this will fragment larger groups and perhaps isolate some of its members as more activity happens within subgroups. We will just have to wait and see how things pan out over time.

For now it’s a welcome change and perhaps the forerunner to other social networking for business software platforms that will also keep a close eye on it and decide to implement this feature into upcoming versions. Anything in the direction of improving software to encourage more collaboration is a step in the right direction.

Social Business Collaboration Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:51:19 +0000

Business Collaboration & Idea Sharing — The Social Networking Way

There are some businesses that do it well and some that just don’t seem to be cut out for it. We are talking about business collaboration — collective development and fostering a business environment that encourages idea sharing. Some companies have this built into their process and daily functioning so well, they are great examples of how a business can grow by putting their minds together and working as a unit. There have been many great ideas put into practice to encourage this kind of an environment. There are brainstorming sessions, rooms dedicated to thinking and ideas, team building sessions and workshops, events and social gatherings, and other carefully thought out programs that instill the habit of collaborating and working as a team to innovate and move ahead.

Then, there is the social networking platform — which is one of the most natural tools to foster a collaborative environment.

For example — if a business decides to do a team building workshop, or maybe a meeting to brainstorm ideas on what they can do to improve the next version of their product, they will need to organize an event and then persuade employees to attend through an email, phone call, fax, etc. However, if the company had an online collaboration / social networking platform and started a discussion topic around the subject, employees would more likely pitch their ideas and participate. To most of us ‘Internet- capable’ people, it comes quite naturally to participate in online discussions, share or post interesting photos or video, or collaborate with others online. Recently, someone posted a business question on popular business networking site LinkedIn asking others’ advice on that topic and whether they had any experience that could help. Instantly, there were replies, experiences, advice, and ideas on how she could move ahead with her dilemma — from not just one person, but from several others who could help her. I’m sure that this saved her a lot of time and money — simply because she had a platform to collaborate with others and leverage the community’s expertise.

However, in order to achieve that level of communication, businesses first have to provide the social networking platform to their employees. You can build a social networking platform into your own business website and make it the core platform for everyone involved to get together online. Once the platform is provided, people will get involved with blogging, discussing problems or topics, collaborating on projects, sharing ideas through blogs and forums, collecting consensus through polls and using all the other features available to them. When people collaborate online, things often translate into offline actions automatically. Having the technology infrastructure internally to build a social network within the business encourages everyone to participate in the business actively, and promotes the work environment as well as a constant learning environment that so many businesses are still seeking. The right technology platform is one great step ahead towards getting there so go ahead and encourage business collaboration the social way.