Perspectives & Strategy

About a year ago on this forum I asked “Is any Business Benefit Gained by Adopting Collaborative Technologies within the Workplace?” much has changed in the intervening time which has led me to go back and look at my earlier article and comment on the changing workplace. I stated:

“Research has shown that in most organisations it is a small number of people are responsible for a large amount of web usage. Adding [Social Media] applications into the mix does allow more opportunity for overburdening the corporate network. It is this more than anything that concerns the average corporation.“

also:

“The Internet is evolving [and] the corporation must understand the business benefit each of these technologies bring and decide whether access to them is appropriate within their organisation, department, or work-group. Any technology will only bring real benefit when it is intuitive, easy to use, and has a clearly stated value proposition.“

In the past 12 months social media drivers have become stronger for the corporation, yet I would have to say that according to my research corporate understanding has advanced very little. In another article “How to Leverage the Social Media Channel for Business Success” I discuss at some lengths the key components for successful deployment. Sadly too many so-called Social Media ‘gurus’ focus all of their efforts on the marketing and monetising the social media channel. I firmly believe that revenue opportunities do not come about simply because we leverage social media for advertising, they come about because we are involved with the media, because we interact with people there.

Social media provides another level of communication. To leverage the media correctly we are investing in relationships. In fact it can be argued that the media is primarily a collaboration tool:

“If we take one person we can look at their collaborative sphere (shown below) as starting with themselves, they can expand that by working with another person. It can be further build through teams, out through their department to the company as a whole. Each step of this process is bringing in additional expertise. Ultimately our individual spheres of influence touch customers and suppliers, they may also touch various third party partners like haulage companies.“

This process is about strengthening the relationships that we are involved in. Each of the elements of this value sphere bring in distinct expertise and specialities and each helps one individual complete their job. This process happens with or without social media. Social media is simply providing tools that can make this collaboration happen at the speed of the web. Here we are simply managing our relationships with smarter tools, where data is at the heart of the relationship. An ROI can be measured simply by looking at smarter communications alone.

Ultimately our individual spheres of influence touch customers and suppliers, they may also touch various third party partners like the haulage company with whom we are able to build a trusting relationship over time.

In this respect I am keeping an open eye for Google Wave when it comes along. This should be a further collaborative tool in our arsenal. Within 5 years email as we know will have changed forever if Wave is successful. As we develop P3 Social Media I certainly hope to be leveraging Wave as our mail server instead of Exchange.

A year ago I stated “It is argued that there is between a 2 and 6 fold productivity enhancement for any given large organization to adopt collaborative technologies. It can also be argued that early adoption will be progressive and lead to a corporation being at the forefront of an industry”. This is still true today, the Social Media market is still immature, but right now knowledge is building and perhaps productivity levels can be even higher when deployed correctly. Yet also recently I remember answering a question “Have we missed the Web 2.0 bandwagon?” Clearly this executive was concerned that having not been an early adopter they were now too late to take advantage of Social Media capabilities.

The concept of being “too late” is an interesting one, given credence by Bill Gates when he stated many years ago that a business must be on the web by 2000 in order to survive. Yet today many businesses are only on the web because of those words. I would say that it is not essential for every business to be on the web, let alone use social media. The auto-repair business at the end of my street probably derives little benefit from having a web-site, after all I cannot book my car in for a service through their site, let alone get a progress check as it goes through each stage. Any business can elect to get involved with a specific technology at any stage in its development. The decision relating to deployment should be backed up with an identifiable return on investment and a consideration of the process impact it brings with it.

One important policy decision that still has to be made is “What tools should we be using?” and “Who should use Social Media?“. These decisions are business decisions, not technological ones.

Related articles:

Web 2.0 and the Enterprise by Cisco
Tension in Collaboration by Bruce Lewin
Realizing Value from Social Networks: A Life Cycle Model by The Global Human Capital Journal
Feeling the Fear by Elizabeth Bennet
Don’t Set Aside the ROI in Building your Social Media Solution by Peter B. Giblett