See You in 2008 - The Enterprise in 2008

First of all I want to wish you all a Happy Holidays. I hope you are enjoying this time with family and friends, as well as, taking the time to relax and recharge the batteries. I know I will be. Since we've launched this blog, we've been covering so much across industries, vendors, and service providers it's tough to gauge what will come next in 2008. Much of what we've shared recently suggests a new wave in 2008, as organizations begin to fully invest not only financially, but in human capital, bringing new skills to the forefront to help maximize the use of such technology.

We're excited to continue to cover everything that will be happening in 2008, and we'll be sharing new plans and events in the new year. Stay tuned, and have a Happy and Safe New Year's, we'll see you back on the blog early next year!

Collaboration: The software is important, but not the most important part

So, we’ve seen the discussion of how important collaboration is when it comes to an enterprise fully adapting to 2.0 mode. So what is the most important part we are leaving out? I think we commonly overlook the people that allow the collaboration to happen. In James Robertson’s newest paper he highlights why the people are important.

First off, Robertson points out that a corporation should not give the tools to collaborate to everyone in the corporation. Why? This is because everyone will not understand how to use them. The tools should be given to those who already collaborate on a regular basis. These employees who do not will see the benefits of collaboration and slowly adapt the tools. Only once these individuals have learned to use these tools, their success will spread across the enterprise and the process and software will be more likely to be adapted throughout the corporation.

For collaboration tools to be used, the opportunity must present itself to the employees. Managers should be able to identify the need to collaborate and then give the opportunities to the employees. Collaboration can happen both in divisions and cross divisions. The collaboration must also fit in the right place in the company culture. After these two things are in place, then the collaboration software set up to provide the most benefit.

According to Robertson, the third step to full collaboration is social networking. Since the tools are in place with collaborating, the next step is allowing employees to network with each other. Robertson believes the most important part to this is allowing experts to be identified and that their contacts are highlighted within the social network.

IT Dept, Please Remove That Barrier!

The primary concern of the IT dept should be to aid employees in being more productive and also to help them do their jobs more efficiently, it shouldn’t be to create obstacles for them. IT managers are so concerned with safety that they restrict essential Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise such as RSS feeds and social networking, just to name a few. Oscar Berg shares his annoyance with the IT dept in his latest post. Oscar mentions a few things that provoke his “allergic reactions” to barriers in the enterprise. Here are some of the things:

• Not allowing employees to buy or download and install software on their computers
• Not allowing employees to set their own browser home page or not allowing multiple home pages in pages that support multiple tabs
• Not allowing browser plug-ins such as Flash
• Restricting access to information resources by default instead of only restricting access when it is really needed and having as default to let employees access information resources
• Not allowing instant messaging
• Not allowing external RSS feeds (simply because they are seen as something alien that the IT department cannot control)

These obstacles put on by the IT dept are crippling business strategy. After a long time of frustration, employees will start to seek ways to go around these restrictions, thus breaking some company rules. If IT pros want to avoid this conflict, then they must start to realize the value that Web 2.0 tools can bring to the enterprise.

Facebook moves one step closer

Yesterday, Facebook released its latest improvement, the ability to sort your friends into different categories. In its aspiration to become more usable by businesses, the new lists that you can sort friends in to can now be easily mass messaged, send invitations and a few other things.

ReadWrite Web analyzes the change in a recent post. They bring up the very important part of privacy yet again. Since Facebook was created for personal and private information, there may still be things on your page that you would prefer your coworkers and bosses didn’t know. I agree with ReadWrite Web that along with the groups, you should be able to tailor the information that each individual group is able to see. Maybe this will be Facebook’s next improvement. With each step the social networking site is taking, they are moving closer and closer into a world where people can network.

Quick Base’s New Software

We wrote a post earlier about how XM radio used Enterprise 2.0 to sync its many broadcasting locations so they could communicate more effectively. Bill Ives’ latest post he discusses more about the software that enabled XM to integrate Enterprise 2.0. Quick Base, that was responsible for that, has announced new software, Enterprise Edition. Their aim for releasing this software is:

“Striking a balance between the needs of both business users and senior management when utilizing online business applications.”

While, as with most Enterprise 2.0 software, IT staff may feel that they are loosing control of the IT functions. Quick Base has built in special tools to allow control of this product. It is a tool that is open ended, so it can be flexible for the needs of the company. It also allows IT to see all incoming and outgoing traffic, and who is accessing what data, no matter if they are in the enterprise or from the outside.

Features of this product are:
--Centralized policy administration screens
--LDAP integration
--IP address filtering
--Centralized user management

Bill Ives concludes his article with saying that it is the workers who will bring the concept of Enterprise 2.0 to the company, but it is the communication with the IT department that will allow full integration into the company.

Enterprise Ban on Social Networking: When Will it End?

In this previous post we mentioned to think twice before deploying a social networking platform in your enterprise. The truth of the matter is that half of all businesses that use filters like Barracuda block sites like Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn. This latest article on ZdNet summarizes an organization’s main concerns in adopting a social networking strategy.

1. Potential damage from viruses or spyware
2. Drain on employee productivity
3. Bandwidth issues and potential liability exposure

Obviously there is some value to social networking sites, business professionals are already communicating with each other on LinkedIn, a business oriented social networking site. Employers should think of ways to include this form of communication into their business strategy, instead of putting a ban on it.

There is a challenge that exists in this day and age, organizations must find a way to boost employee productivity while fostering out any harmful intrusions. Over time, this dilemma will be solved. After all, organizations initially restricted all web access because employers thought that workers would spend all day shopping and surfing inappropriate sites. Businesses that deploy the best means of collaboration and communication will ultimately succeed in the end. In the future, I can not see any Fortune 500 company lasting without making an investment in a social networking platform.

Easy How-to For Your Corporate Wiki

As I continue to do research on Enterprise 2.0 and all the goodies that come with it, I just can’t seem to escape the praise for the book Wiki Patterns by Stewart Mader. Yesterday on the Social Media Today blog, Susan Scurpski posted about the perfect holiday present for your boss, coworker or even your mother-in-law. Surprise, surprise, it was the Wiki Patterns book. Here’s why: with this witty interpretation about Enterprise 2.0 this book can be useful to your enterprise. He also gives easy and straight foreword ways so everyone knows how to use wikis and blogs.

It focuses on the two basic things that enterprise uses today in their slow roll to join the evolution to Enterprise 2.0: blogs and wikis. Another highlight is the ease of collaboration software when it comes to editing documents around the office. Once people see that there no longer has to be fifteen different copies of the same document edited by fifteen different people, in addition to it being an easy process, the basics of Enterprise 2.0 will catch up at the office. So if you’re confused on what to get that one person who hasn’t quite caught on to the ease of Enterprise 2.0, this might be the perfect book

Enterprise 2.0: As said by one of the innovators

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about Google. Most of the time, it’s about Google. Now, we get to talk with Google. Erick Schmidt sat down with the New York Times and discussed the topic of how technology in the workplace is changing so fast and how companies are evolving to make it work for them. In this article, he discusses these five downfalls of having instant information:

1) No falsehood can last.
2) People expect an immediate answer.
3) You can measure everything.
4) Managers will need a new way to listen to the information and uncover the gems.
5) Managers have to obtain everyone else’s good information, and avoid sinking in the vast sea of words

This may be difficult now, but as the next generation moves up, they have always worked with technology. How will the help with the adaption of these tools?

Collaboration: Where Do We Go From Here?

Looking through these different sites I came across an interesting array of questions brought up by Michael Sampson regarding collaboration and where it is headed in 2008. We have come so far in terms of maximizing collaboration efforts, but here are some of the questions Michael poses:

• How do we reduce reliance on email within a team?
• How can end users be most effective with SharePoint for team collaboration?
• "Traditional" team collaboration tools vs. Enterprise 2.0 team collaboration tools: Do they lead to different behaviors and outcomes?
• Team collaboration via a wiki vs via a collection Word documents: Which is better?
• Should a firm continue with its incumbent collaboration environment or shift to a new one?
• How does a firm get the best return on investment when staying the course with its current collaboration environment?
• What does the IT department need to look like in 2008 to encourage rather than hinder team collaboration efforts?
  

What aspect of enterprise 2.0 applications worries your company in the new year? As for 2008, I will be looking forward to seeing improvements in Web 2.0 apps that can help businesses run more effectively. What will the new year hold in store for the enterprise?

Reactions on Enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee’s latest blog post is about his conclusions after spending a day talking with managers about how they feel about Enterprise 2.0. He came to two conclusions: People who are working with others are more open to the new E2.0 concept than those who work with the computers (like IT). They are also very fearful about what will happen if they allow an open community with the whole corporation, even with the external benefits it could possess.

He was surprised to find out that the executives were really excited to see what this could do for their company. HR executives surprised him the most. They were the most excited about these new social platforms. The IT managers were quick to focus on the security and the risks, and they believed it was not worth trying. As a whole, the managers all believed that the workers would use the new technology for the benefit of the enterprise. They were not really concerned over possible threats, because they saw the huge benefits that could evolve from a company with this kind of software on their side.

The negative part of the session was that he discovered that it would take a very long time to actually accept this software into the company. Companies just aren’t ready for the lateralization that comes with having a whole communication being able to communicate from top to bottom in one community. They are more fearful of this than allowing an open community with their customers that could allow better insight to the company and the value of customer feedback that could improve the way they run their company.

Is open communication in your company more worrisome tan the value you could gain with an open door community with your customers?