Enterprise 2.0 thinking

February 20th, 2008 by mhjones

What is Enterprise 2.0? To paraphrase Harvard Business School’s Andrew McAfee at yesterday’s Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, it’s a term that describes the use of social software by companies. Think Web 2.0 for the suits.

(Cartoon source: Geek and Poke)

So that’s the definition, but what about real world applications? Forum host Ross Dawson assembled some interesting local case studies, and you can listen to their presentations and the Q&A session on The Scoop. (Btw, it’s the first time I’ve done a live recording of a panel using my Zoom H4. The feed out of the desk was a little hot for some of the speakers, but with a bit of digital spit and polish I’m largely satisfied with the result.)

There’s plenty of blog coverage out there from the event, including posts from Brad, Trevor, Mick (plus more from him at Phil Morle on Tangler), and of course Ross’ own reflections.

As for me, it’s been interesting to reflect on the expectations that we bring to this discussion. If you’re a digital marketer, you want to know how social media effectiveness can be measured in terms of ROI and sales leads. If you’re in business, there’s a sense that Enterprise 2.0 should add significant business value. Andrew McAfee’s assessment was that we expect any new collaboration tool to be at least 10x better than the incumbent technology - email.

Expressed in more simple terms, we’re impatient for success. Enterprise 2.0 is part of a broader, very significant shift in the way we communicate and collaborate. We’re still experimenting, and those on the bleeding edge like those in featured in my podcast are blazing the trail. It strikes me that to simply sit back and demand instant success does not reflect the spirit of what’s happening here. It’s the different between participation and consumption. Consumers say “gimme!”, while those in social software are prepared to take a risk and get their hands dirty.

We got a chance to flesh out some of these issues during roundtable sessions at the event. I attended one hosted by Capgemini’s CTO Peter Evans-Greenwood called “Effective implementation of Enterprise 2.0.” Here’s the notes I typed into my dopod 838:

Effective implementation of ent 2.0 - roundtable

How do you get the value? Is it getting beyond wiki implementation?

Will you spend $10k investment or lots on consultants. It can be a lot easier to create your own reports. Similar to idea of access to info very quickly.

Self provisioning is key.Deploying new app - the prob is how to collaborate.

Web 2.0 captures more than collaboration. Its about the connections btw apps. eg CRM and wiki - Salesforce.com API into wiki.

Effectiveness is found in what does the org actually do. All the info needs to be brought together. Eg govt case mgmt.

How bring the client into the decision making process?

Knowledge worker must be able to participate. Lets create a space for your loan (eg on a wiki). Deliver info over any channel you want.

Commodity needs to be the focus for non competitive knowledge tasks.

Implementation should begin where you competitve differentiation matters the most.

How do you recognise what people should contribute to ent 2.0? Culture shift in the organisation comes first, technology second.

IT assets are great but you don’t need to own them. No longer an assest focussed discussion.

Some peoples power base will erode due to this culture of openness.

You treat systems as services, not silos. Automation was a focus for a while and straight through processing. But this only automates the small percentage of cases that are not exceptions up to 60 percent.

Processes need to be codified.

More exceptions then the requirements were wrong? If you differentiate by exception then cater for that.

If you want people to use Ent 2.0 make it part of their job. One example from Capgemini was a sales leader who blogged and then that allowed people to find out and sign up for projects. There has to be something in it for people and the business. People are still looking for the quantifiable business application.It is a place for idea generation. So you can get known for your ideas. Bottom up knowledge generation.

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