Jivespace: Message List - Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:01:13 GMT

Joe,

I have only read this far into the thread, but Support Central sounds pretty interesting.

Have they made it available outside of GE?

=Mike

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:37:05 GMT

One thing that I found to be a real problem is helping people 'get it' in a business context. Being able to mock up sites in a business context really helped. Specifically I knocked up some blogs using (heavilly themed) Wordpress and this not only helped with the immediate problem but also because I made sure it was globally accessible people would forward links to the sites to others that were interested in Web 2.0. Nothing works as well as something one can sink ones teeth into as it were I've found.

Sure Wordpress isn't Clearspace but there is room for both as one is great for a more traditional looking news with feedback style and the other is a community facilitator and one naturally leads to the other as ones organisation gains experience with social software. Facilities such as being able to reply to email and have it appear in a post (like I'm doing here, hope it works fine ) help with introduction and intial proof of concepts.

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

matt.crowl@gmail.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:25:33 GMT

I'm building my business case right now and this thread has helped immensely. Keep it coming!

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:09:57 GMT

Very late to the game on this but put my thoughts up yesterday - http://jonmell.co.uk/social-software-roi/

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:41:31 GMT

Thanks Iain,

Great perspective - and yes Chuck's blog is a rich resource for sure. I'm also working on key messages the leadership must make to employees to help drive the transformation. This direct sanction from the top is key to successful deployment, because employees need to hear that it's supported and that they as the primary users are integral to the success.

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:33:59 GMT

Very good point.

Having just gone through an exercise working out the value of Social Software to company phrasing the benefits in terms of what can it do for YOU has been beneficial in working out what they can be.

For example

What is the benefit to you in helping build your professional network?
What is the benefit to you in finding out what others are doing and not reinventing the wheel.
What is the benefit to you of being able to have things you're working on easy to find and share?
What is the benefit to you of being able to easily work with colleagues in other business units, partners and customer focus groups?
What is the benefit to you in being able to easy get you message to people you want to hear and have them engage with you in conversation?

and so on and this starts to translate into such benefits to an organisation as

What is the value of a fully connected workforce?
What is the value of breaking out of collaborating in silos (departments) and being able to innovate (cross department/business units)?
What is the value of your customers telling you what they want from you?

and finally

What are you loosing when your competitors are adopting this technology and culture?

BTW I can't recommend Chuck Hollis's blog 'A Journey in Social Media' highly enough, pure gold!

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:49:40 GMT

niallcook wrote:

My advice: don't bother trying.

For social software to work, you need to deliver value to the individual before you try and deliver value to the organization. So build an employee case instead. Start by explaining the value that will be delivered to the employee, to other employees as a result of each additional persons' participation, and then - and only then - the resulting benefits to the business as a whole.

Although your headline sounds shocking, I think this advice is still building the business case for E2.0 Niall, just with different emphasis.

BTW I believe you are onto something. We are at the fringe of discovering this with our pilot. Like the grains of sand metaphor previously mentioned, one of the grains is adoption. Well adoption is nothing more than the user having a compelling reason to use something. If they don't get an answer to "what's in it for me?" - it's harder to connect a body of users into something called an Enterprise.

If we think through the premise, then almost nothing about adoption comes from force or pushing. Even "explaining the value that will be delivered" is not nearly as strong as the employee experiencing value for themselves and then telling their story through usage.

When I say we are on the fringe of discovery, we are also in the middle of the experiment (pilot). While some early curiousity seekers have tried it, many more are sidelined. Why? From my own experience with ramping up to learning the functionality, and listening to non-users, it's still about comfort levels. This is transactional software. It enables interaction, not merely static reading. That shift alone is at the heart of adoption.

In other Enterprise transactional software, such as Human Resources performance management, or benefits apps, the reasons for using it are fairly straight forward. Entering and tracking goals and objectives, or tracking and managing benefits, compensation and personal info. But even these, offer little in the form of creativity and certainly not innovation.

I'm starting to think we underestimated how to make the case for what this will do for the individual. What are the incentives to voluntarily becoming a self-directed learner? How well can we answer the smaller questions of how do I get things done and why do I want to participate?

The How questions may be solved using scenario-based learning modules. Each one explaining the specific steps for:

I want to ask or answer a question
I want to start a discussion based on an idea
I want to create a document with others adding their knowledge
I want to safely interact with leadership without retribution and hierarchal fear of skip levels
I want to join a work group for solving problems
I want to get credit for participation as part of my managing by objectives individual performance

The Why questions are really best answered from leadership and company philosophy. Naratives should outline how:

We are on a quest to transform our company and become more innovative
We need each employee to contribute
We don't need controlling, non-sharing or insecure employees (nobody does)
We need curiousity, openness to ideas, continuous learning, collaboration and connectedness
We need quality participation on a daily basis because our competition is on full throttle

So maybe it's a combination of these two approaches in tandem that creates the E2.0 business case. Unlike the traditional formula business case of planning the solution, maybe this becomes more about continuous planning, learning and evolving from the individual outward.

Finally, having done a bit more digging around this site, I discovered this document, which is one of the most comprehensive and easy to read white papers on Community and Collaboration. A must read that fills in many of the things I was just scratching the surface with above.

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:19:17 GMT

I've now seen GE's stuff, and I'm even more impressed. It isn't pretty or perfect, but the linkage to BPM is even smarter than I thought. They let communities build/modify work processes. One thing I've learned is that if you throw BPM (formerly workflow) in to user environments, it is rarely adopted. They do their jobs just fine, thank you very much, and all this "efficiency" you're promising is just a way for you to cut jobs. BPM may be the world's most sabotaged software "deployment" when it comes from top down.

GE is laser-focused on making it easier for groups of people to do their jobs. No if's and's or but's about it - that's their mission. Support Central doesn't deploy workflow/BPM it facilitates communities coming together and building and executing their workflow - fascinating! Definitely something worth understanding more.

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

robert.noland@sematech.org — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:27:43 GMT

In an earlier post Joe Schueller referenced Chuck Hollis' blog about GE: http://chucksblog.typepad.com/a_journey_in_social_media/2008/07/a-humbling-expe.html

Joe made the point: "They also had done a nice job of putting a somewhat formalized workflow layer over an essentially social environment."

In Joe's 7/15 post he said "The other thing you seemed to indicate is the strong linkage to BPM."

Joe's parting comment: "I see 3 big things in all of this, people, process and content." resonates with me. It would be nice to see a roadmap to integrate Clearspace with a best of breed BPM system. That would be a powerful combination.

Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:02:37 GMT

I like the business process reengineering approach. I'm evangelizing a cross-organizational approach in government and private sector agencies (http://www.ddmcd.com/program.html) that justifies collaboration based on a reduction in time (by making it easier for people in diffrent organizations to communicate directly) and an improvement in the innovation process (by involving more people in accessing needed expertise). It's slow going. The approach requires being able to collaborate across organizations that are not all centrally controlled and that have a variety of boundaries to collaborating in place (e.g., formal procurement processes). I would hope that an enterprise 2.0 approach to collaboration that does not face so many organizational issues would have a more direct justification potential. (Perhaps an approach on corporate R&D such as suggested by Mike Crocker would be appropriate.)

Dennis McDonald

Alexandria, Virginia