The Rise of the Networked Enterprise

 Posted by at 11:13 am  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 012011
 

Whilst organisations continue to  invest in the internal adoption of social technologies, it is becoming clear that, so far, only a few have worked out how to make the most of these new opportunities. McKinsey’s latest survey into the use of web 2.0 tools within organisations has identified the emergence of this new class of company – ‘The Networked Enterprise’.

Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed by McKinsey are now using social technologies to some degree, benefiting from quicker access to knowledge and internal experts, greater communication and operational efficiencies, increased employee satisfaction and greater levels of speed to market and subsequent success for product/service innovations.

However, as with any new technology, the rate of adoption and the ability to generate significant improvements varies enormously. McKinsey’s report identifies four major types of organisation -

Developing -The vast majority (79%) of organisations are still learning how best to deploy the new technologies. They are realising only modest improvements in business performance and have yet to develop significant usage or integrate tools into daily work flows, as a result they see little change in levels of communication, collaboration or information sharing.

Internally Networked Organisations – Some organisations (13%) focus primarily on using social tools within their company, resulting in higher levels of employee participation and greater integration into work-flows. The major benefits come from significantly more flexible internal processes; information shared more easily and less hierarchically, greater collaboration across silos and a more project-based approach to tasks.

Externally Networked Organisations - These companies (5%) achieve substantial benefits from using web 2.0 tools to connect with customers and business partners. They see benefits in marketing effectiveness and revenues but much less improvement in operational efficiencies and internal sharing and collaboration.

Fully Networked Enterprises – These are the elite organisations (just 3%) that are successfully integrating web 2.0 technologies throughout their operations; connecting the internal efforts of their employees and extending the company’s reach out to customers, partners and suppliers. As a result these organisations are seeing both sales growth through increased market share and higher margins through increased operational efficiency.

The benefits of the fully networked approach not only deliver competitive advantages now but provide the means for businesses to extend that advantage; lessons learned in one market, region or function can be quickly shared and adopted throughout the organisation, leading to faster innovation, greater organisational effectiveness and better products/services.

Key Steps to Becoming Fully Networked

The creation of effective networks, both internal and external, is quickly becoming an organisational necessity. If they aren’t already, senior managers everywhere need to be thinking about how they can enable their business…

  • Integrate the use of Web 2.0 into employees’ day-to-day work activities
  • Drive up levels of adoption and usage
  • Break down barriers to organisational change
  • Apply Web 2.0 technologies to interactions with customers, business partners and employees.

The ‘Networked Enterprises’ already have an advantage, the challenge for everyone else is to join them quickly or risk being left further behind.

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3 Common Mistakes In Running An Online Community – A Reminder!

 Posted by at 4:45 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , ,
Feb 142011
 

Even now, there are plenty of examples of online communities that are failing to establish themselves and deliver the expected results. It is worth remembering therefore, that more often than not these failures can be traced to one or more of these common mistakes.

What should be clear, is that any new project needs a substantial commitment in both time and resources, and an understanding of the way communities develop, in order to avoid these mistakes.

1. If you build it, they will come.

Probably the most common  community fallacy. Too many organisations believe that simply rolling out a given technology (blogs, forums, wikis, etc.) will be enough to attract and engage users, who can the be left to develop a vibrant community. This can be attributed to the shiny attraction of “social software”, companies jumping at an application or platform rather than looking to provide value for their audiences.

2. Once it’s launched, we’re done.

Many communities launch successfully, only to fade out and disappear. This is often due to a failure in the planning stage to identify and secure ownership of the community and to have a strategy that lasts past “launch.”

3. Bigger is better.

It is often assumed that the overall size of a community is indicative of its success. However, a community’s value to its members  is more about the quality and relevance of engagement and content rather than numbers. This can be challenging for most community managers and businesses to understand, and is often contrary to what they’ve usually been told.

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Better Communications Can Help Conquer The ‘Unexpected’

 Posted by at 5:48 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Jan 182011
 

It’s usually the ‘unexpected’ that creates the biggest difficulties for most organisations. Whilst traditional hierarchies and structures often make it difficult to respond quickly, now, social technologies and more open, networked, cultures are enabling organisations to develop timely and effective solutions when things don’t quite go as expected.

The Center for the Edge, part of Deloitte LLP, highlighted the impact ‘exceptions’ have on the day-to-day work of many organisations. Once something falls outside of the established business process, a huge amount of time and effort is wasted following rigid reporting lines, limiting both the speed at which issues can be addressed and the pool of expertise that can be called on to help provide an answer.

More often than not, the answer to the problem already exists within the organisation, or its extended network. The key to a more effective response system could therefore come from the wider adoption of some of the ‘social business’ tools that enable greater networking and collaboration. Mico-blogging feeds or Q+A forums can be used to ask questions of and get answers from the whole organisation within minutes, whilst detailed personal profiles can enable users to search for and connect with the exact people and specific skills they need to create and deliver the most effective response.

As with any new organisational initiatives, it’s not just about the technology. Alongside the tools it’s important to develop an appropriately open and  supportive culture – one in which members are encouraged to acknowledge and share problems early rather than as a last resort, where there is a willingness to accept input and help and a widespread understanding of the value of supporting others rather than keeping your head down and worrying just about your own job.

The technology already exists, the real challenge is in changing the mentality. But a few quick wins and positive feedback from those whose ‘exceptions’ are addressed and it won’t be long before more organisations are looking at ways to connect their members more effectively.

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Internal Communications’ Developments for 2011

 Posted by at 5:42 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Jan 062011
 

The way people communicate within organisations continues to change.  The role of Internal Communications is becoming less about broadcasting the company message and more about encouraging those conversations and collaborations that will most effectively deliver the business’ goals.

The Intranet Design Annual 2011 from the Nielsen Norman Group offers some interesting insights into the way organisations are expanding, changing and re-imagining their internal communications activities, delivering greater value, to more of their members, more regularly. Having seen many of these developments first hand in our client discussions, we’ve picked out a few of the trends we expect to see more of in 2011.

More Companies Can Now Have Better Intranets

More and more companies are now able to develop high quality intranets. This is partly due to the wider recognition of the value of investing in intranets and partly due to the availability of better tools for building intranets. The easier it is to make the implementation work, the more resources that are left for design and usability. This is especially important in smaller organizations, which found it costly and time consuming to make things work with clunkier technology.

However, quality intranets remain a long-term commitment. Many organisations supplement their intranet teams with outside resources — such as design firms and consultants — for their redesign projects, only to cut back resources after launch. Long-term usability requires ongoing commitment, both for continuous design improvement, and for things such as search quality initiatives, consistency and style guide enforcement, and training new users and content contributors.

Mobile Intranets

Mobile access to intranet sites continues to grow in importance. Significantly  those sites with fewer features have much better usability than full-featured websites; focus on specific features that are important to employees on the go instead of trying to squeeze the entire intranet onto a tiny screen.

One major difference between mobile intranets and mobile websites is that an intranet team can optimize for the relatively small set of company-issued mobile devices.

Managing Knowledge

As well as providing searchable access to the organisation’s knowledge archive, many intranets are now actively encouraging members to share their expertise more widely and are using social media tools to provide the means for users to identify and connect with people, knowledge and resources across the organisation.

  • Knowledge sharing. Providing searchable archives for case studies, reports, creative samples, and other existing information can help people with similar problems avoid having to start building their solutions from scratch. Sometimes, knowledge sharing can be as simple as a Q&A tool to connect employees with questions to colleagues with answers.
  • Innovation management. Managing and encouraging innovation by offering users tools for taking ideas and improvements from conception to completion.
  • Comments. The simplest way to inspire user-contributed intranet content is to let employees comment on existing information, ranging from news stories to knowledge bank resources.  Systems that force people to create content from scratch every time inhibit user participation, commenting features reduce the fear of the blank screen.
  • Ratings. Giving a grade requires even less work than writing a comment, and thus rating systems can further broaden user participation. Sites that use ratings can list top-rated resources first in menus or give them added weight in search listings.
  • Participation rewards. User participation increases when contributors are visibly rewarded, such as by adding points or badges to their profiles. Because there’s real business value to features like knowledge sharing and innovation management within an enterprise, some intranets went beyond the symbolic value of visible recognition and offered real prizes to employees who gathered sufficient participation points.

Continued Trends

These are fairly established practices that are likely to be implemented more and more widely in the coming months-

  • A wide spectrum of technology solutions: there’s no single way to build a great intranet.
  • Structures based on organisational tasks and activities rather than legacy silos.
  • News as a main homepage feature, but with increasing emphasis on the usefulness of news stories.
  • Better employee profile pages. In addition to offering information beyond plain contact listings, profiles are coupled with a more structured way of finding employees with specific expertise.
  • Blogs by both executives and regular employees.
  • Emphasis on search and on initiatives to improve search quality (which continues to suffer on many intranets).
  • The use of pre-designed page layouts and a CMS to establish and maintain content consistency.
  • Training for site managers and people in charge of individual areas, in recognition of that fact that user experiences derive from people and not just technology.
  • Increased use of video on intranets, including features that let employees create and share video content.
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Getting, and Keeping, Your Readers’ Attention

 Posted by at 10:57 am  Social Media  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 112010
 

‘Showing summaries of many articles is more likely to draw in users than providing full articles, which can quickly exhaust reader interest.’

Useful and thought provoking insights from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, on how to layout your homepage to get your messages across most effectively. Including some great research into how pages are read.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/blog-front-pages.html

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A Special Report on Social Networking

 Posted by at 11:55 am  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Feb 262010
 

There are currently two very different views on social media, especially concerning its value to business.

Some will tell you that it’s just too big to ignore, the whole world is using it and it’s not going away; if you’re not at least considering making it work for you then you’re already way behind.

Others say it’s just the latest over-hyped big thing, a distraction for the workforce and, as nobody can make a convincing case for the ROI, a potential black hole for investment.

The truth lies somewhere in-between. The new technologies do offer enormous potential benefits for business but only the best have worked out how to realise them. Whilst some companies have struggled however, there are plenty of developers, consultants and evangelists out there to help them make sense of it all. The applications and their uses are improving all the time and the variety and choice is growing too; all of which suggests a prosperous on-going future for these new mediums.

Whatever the long term prospects, it’s clear that businesses today can’t afford to just ignore social media. Even if the decision is ‘not for us’ they must at least consider the potential impacts, positive and negative, on both their external and internal communications and relationships. And, as with anything as fast moving as new technologies, they need to keep revisiting their analysis.

One indicator of the growing importance to business of social media is the fact that The Economist recently produced a special report ‘A world of connections’. It’s well worth a look, especially the article on the challenges, issues and benefits facing those trying to the deploy the new technologies within their businesses.

The Economist argues, and we agree

‘…social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size…this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.’

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