Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий

A quarterly journal

06 26 48
2011 The collaboration Enterprise success with The CIO’s role in social
Issue 3 paradox emerging social technology enterprise strategy

Transforming collaboration
with social tools

Tony O’Driscoll
Executive Director
Center for Technology,
Entertainment and Media
Fuqua School of Business
Duke University

Contents

Features
2011
Issue 3 The collaboration paradox
More social information helps
the workforce find what it’s
looking for.

06
Enterprise success with
emerging social technology
Innovators are learning to build graphs
to help users locate the information they
need—and each other.

26
The CIO’s role in social
enterprise strategy
Transforming collaboration demands
an evolutionary approach.

48

Interviews Departments

18 02
Building a new learning Acknowledgments
environment around
social tools 04
Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University Message from the editor
aligns social technology’s strengths
with the way people learn today.
66
Subtext
22
How online identity
and context become
productivity drivers
Sameer Patel of Sovos Group places
social technology in the context of
software that enterprises already use.

38
Adding social networking
to business workflow
Tim Young of Socialcast considers how
blending activity streams with existing
applications can open the door to
behavioral change inside enterprises.

42
Harnessing the power
of the graph
Keith Griffin of Cisco Systems describes
how emerging social and graph data
technology can remove barriers to
more effective collaboration.

60
Why collaboration hasn’t
changed much—yet
Sheldon Laube of PwC focuses on
the essentials that still need to emerge
to create real improvements in
enterprise collaboration.

Transforming collaboration with social tools 01

Acknowledgments

Advisory Center for Technology
Principal & Technology Leader & Innovation
Tom DeGarmo Managing Editor
Bo Parker
US Thought Leadership
Partner-in-Charge Editors
Tom Craren Vinod Baya
Alan Morrison
Strategic Marketing
Natalie Kontra Contributors
Jordana Marx Heather Ashton
Galen Gruman
David Kelly
Bud Mathaisel
Bill Roberts

Editorial Advisors
Larry Marion
Christine Wendin

Copy Editor
Lea Anne Bantsari

Transcriber
Dawn Regan

02 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3

US studio Industry perspectives Sheldon Laube
Art Director During the preparation of this Chief Innovation Officer
Lisa Marie Taylor publication, we benefited greatly PwC
from interviews and conversations
Designer with the following executives: Nina Llorens
Suzanne Lau Program Manager
Jans Aasman Strategic Programs and User
Illustrators President and CEO Experience Knowledge Management
James Millefolie Franz Competency Center
Tatiana Pechenik SAP
Sriram Chakravarthy
Online Director Jack Miller
Managing Director Online Marketing Product Strategy and Development Global Vice President
Jack Teuber TIBCO Collaboration and Cloud Analytics
SAP
Designer and Producer Ryan Damico
Scott Schmidt Co-founder and CEO Rick Napolitano
Crocodoc CIO
Reviewers ARINC
Steve Ardire Keith Griffin
Rich Beaumont Lead Architect Tony O’Driscoll
Mike Bergman Enterprise Collaboration Platform Executive Director
Basudeb Dash Cisco Systems Center for Technology,
Maxim Duprat Entertainment and Media
Carl Duyck Bill Guinn Fuqua School of Business
Rajiv Jain CTO Duke University
Jonathan Labovich Amdocs
Frank Munn Sameer Patel
Marie Wallace Natalie Hanson Partner
Christopher Wasden Senior Director Sovos Group Solutions
Strategic Programs and User
Special thanks Experience Consulting Holly Simmons
Steve Canny SAP Senior Director
Cisco Systems Marketing
Dick Hirsch SAP
Yasemin Krause Senior Consultant
Voce Communications Siemens IT Services and Solutions Tim Young
CEO and Founder
Ram Menon Bill Hopkins Socialcast
TIBCO Director of Operations
Egon Zehnder International
Craig Norvell and Steve Sears
Franz

Susan Scrupski
Social Business Council

David Brockington and Ju Wu
SAP

Carrie Young
Socialcast


Tackling the
challenge of
information
overload—with
social tools

Message from the editor But today, postal systems must deal
Carmel-by-the-Sea, near Monterey, with many billions of pieces of mail
California, is a quaint little place in a efficiently and effectively, intended
beautiful coastal setting. “A village in a for billions of potential destinations.
forest overlooking a white sand beach” Providing addresses in the quaint
is how the town describes itself in its Carmel style would introduce massive
general plan. One of Carmel’s quaint overhead. Each envelope would need to
features is that its houses don’t have be intensively scanned and interpreted,
numbers. As a result, the US Postal and the people sorting mail would
Service doesn’t deliver mail in Carmel need to have amazing memories for
house by house; instead, residents families and the buildings described
must go to the post office and pick it up in addresses. That is why much of the
themselves. Even express mail delivery world—where residential delivery of
services have had to adapt—they use mail to individual houses is possible—
the street name, the cross street name, uses logical addressing schemes of one
and the number of houses in from the form or another. And for the most part,
cross street to direct packages to the these schemes organize the process
Tom DeGarmo
right house. This is clearly a system that very effectively, making it possible for
Principal & Technology Leader doesn’t scale. letters to make their way across national
thomas.p.degarmo@us.pwc.com boundaries and continents.
Back when most people lived agrarian
lifestyles in small villages—and rarely Today’s electronic communications
left—mail was less essential. But don’t suffer from addressing ambiguity
general mobility and the movement of or overload. But they are increasingly
populations to cities created the need to becoming a problem, as e-mail, chat,
communicate with people you weren’t voice mail, texting, and, yes, tweets
likely to see very often. Before these and social network postings gobble up
migrations, Carmel’s lack of house more and more of our time. Between
numbers was fine. Addresses could Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
be loosey-goosey—simply giving the and unique e-mail and system IDs, the
family name or describing something electronic messages meant for us reliably
distinctive about the house where the
addressee lived would be sufficient.


arrive and use very little compute This issue of the Technology Forecast • Sameer Patel of Sovos Group
resources in the process. The problem examines social technologies as provides an overview of the four
is farther downstream. All of us are the solution to electronic main categories of enterprise social
spending more and more time filtering communications overload. software, the challenges enterprises
all of these communications, trying to face in incorporating this technology
separate the important messages from “The collaboration paradox” on page 06 into workflow, and the opportunity in
those that are simply distractions. considers how an additional layer of emerging technology.
information—generated with the help
The reality today is that we receive of social tools—can actually help reduce • Tim Young of Socialcast explains
far more invitations to interact in the information overload by providing what can happen to a workforce’s
electronic domain than we ever did in structure and context that connects management style when a
the world of physical mail. Most of us users and helps them navigate to the conversation stream gets blended with
already ignore many of them, leaving content they need. workflow from other applications.
unread—and even unseen—vast
numbers of electronic communications “Enterprise success with emerging • Keith Griffin of Cisco Systems
directed at us. But our approaches are social technology” on page 26 discusses how modifying data
inefficient and inaccurate—we often reviews the evolution of enterprise architecture can remove obstacles
miss important messages while deleting social technology, underscoring to effective collaboration.
low-value ones. We’re like the poor the importance of blending social
express mail delivery people trying to information with workflow from • Sheldon Laube of PwC places today’s
figure out which house a package should existing applications. social technology trends in the context
go to in Carmel. of a 30-year evolution of online
“The CIO’s role in social enterprise enterprise collaboration tools.
At first glance you might think that strategy” on page 48 identifies a middle
social networks just add to the problem. ground between allowing all use of Please visit pwc.com/techforecast to
Most companies today are adopting social networking and disallowing any, find these articles and other issues of
social networking internally without advocating an evolutionary approach the Technology Forecast online. If you
a good plan for taking advantage to balance the need to motivate staff would like to receive future issues of
of its latent potential. They aren’t with the business goals that must this quarterly publication as a PDF
understanding that each employee’s be achieved. attachment, you can sign up at
enterprise social network is the best pwc.com/techforecast/subscribe.
way to filter and manage electronic This issue also includes interviews As always, we welcome your feedback
communications, so that employees with five executives at companies and and your ideas for future research and
attend to them in their order of institutions that are fully engaged analysis topics to cover.
importance and potential value. In fact, in long-term efforts to improve
the social analytics available from the collaboration with the help of
leading enterprise social tools are the social tools:
first addition to the toolset for electronic
communications that can actually • Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University
reduce the overhead of dealing with discusses the role of social technology
enterprise communications. in Duke’s Cross Continent MBA
program, an innovative peer learning
But this latent potential emerges approach that relies heavily on
only if your staff engages fully, links multimedia for many-to-many
to other staff, and follows topics in information sharing.
ways that reflect the priorities of their
work plans—and if they comment and
interact in activity streams in ways
that mirror the focus of their work
challenges and opportunities. It’s a form
of organizational learning and cultural
change that has defeated some early
adopters of social technologies, often
because they were unaware of its
true potential.


The collaboration
paradox
More social information helps the workforce
find what it’s looking for.
By Alan Morrison and Bo Parker

For competitive advantage in its than a database, more structured than
mission to supply top executives to a huddle, and not as overwhelming as
multinational corporations, Egon e-mail. And something over which users
Zehnder International (EZI) relies would take ownership.
on its ability to share information
quickly across regions. Until recently, “I wanted to eliminate IT as the
information sharing at the executive middleman so the content would be the
search firm was supported primarily by responsibility of the user community,”
two formal processes: huddles, in which Hopkins says.
consultants and staff converse about
a candidate or search; and Orchestra, Hopkins decided to give business
a repository of data about candidates units a microblogging capability on
and searches. The two processes— the corporate intranet, which lets users
one unstructured and one highly “round out the conversations” they have.
structured—were augmented by It’s still early, but adoption has been
phone calls and e-mail. brisk, and microblogging has become
a small but integral new process.
These processes worked well until
the world got flatter and the business For years, the business and trade press
pace got faster. Orchestra and the have been abuzz about the external
huddles were still useful, but they were opportunities for social media and
no longer quite enough. And phone for companies to reach customers by
calls and e-mail—especially e-mail— using these tools. Much less has been
had become classic examples of the written about the internal use of social
collaboration paradox: they created networking—inside the enterprise.
so much information they actually The EZI example illustrates how it is
hindered the speedy exchanges possible to create real value through
needed to do business. collaboration using a social media tool
internally in a direct, low-overhead
Bill Hopkins, EZI’s director of way with content owned and defined
operations, discerned a gap between by the users.
the two main processes that needed to
be filled with something less structured


Figure 1: The scope of our research
Our primary focus is on internal communications.

Social
enterprise

Customers Business
and world partners

This issue of the Technology Forecast The many-to-many
“I wanted to eliminate explores how social technologies communications paradigm
can improve collaboration within On one level, enterprise collaboration
IT as the middleman so the enterprise, especially in day-to- technology hasn’t changed much.
the content would be day operations. (See Figure 1 for an E-mail, groupware, and document
illustration of the scope of our research sharing have been around for more than
the responsibility of within the context of the broader land- two decades. Typically, they started in
the user community.” scape.) One important factor, as this first universities or research labs, and then
—Bill Hopkins of Egon article describes, is the need to focus migrated to business use. For example,
on business unit goals and to use social after universities demonstrated the
Zehnder International analytics, including interest graphs, to utility of e-mail and a standard emerged
overcome information overload. for e-mail over the Internet, the power
of e-mail became obvious. In the early
The second article, “Enterprise success 1990s, businesses began to use it
with emerging social technology,” on in earnest.1
page 26 examines enterprise-class
social applications, social analytics,
and how functions that are more 1 The history of the Eudora e-mail client, developed at the
University of Illinois in the 1980s, provides an example of
deeply embedded in the IT stack this evolution. See “Historical Backgrounder” at http://
provide new value. The third article, www.eudora.com/presskit/backgrounder.html#name,
accessed May 1, 2011.
“The CIO’s role in social enterprise
strategy,” on page 48 examines an
evolutionary approach CIOs can
take with these emerging social
networking platforms.


Case study
Microblogging in a new paradigm
The example of Egon Zehnder As a starting point, Hopkins chose
International (EZI) illustrates social technology from Socialtext,
fundamental aspects of the successful which includes a microblog application.
adoption of social technologies Launched about two years ago, the
internally in the enterprise. With 64 strategy was to give the business units
offices in 40 countries, EZI is one of a place for short postings that would
a few executive search firms that has round out the huddle discussions and
a truly global presence. The warm augment the structured information
relationship that a consultant has with in Orchestra. The adaptive, many-to-
an executive in one place can be crucial many user environment of Socialtext
to addressing the needs of another gave business units—encouraged by
consultant’s client in another place. Hopkins—the opportunity to “own” the
The best matches on a global scale are technology in a way they hadn’t before
exactly what the company trades on. and make it more relevant.

But EZI was stuck in an old When well designed and implemented
communications paradigm that so that it delivers relevance and
most enterprises will recognize. An promotes use, enterprise social
existing portal on the corporate intranet networking can be engaging, and the
had outlived its usefulness. Given technology allows users to adapt it to
the demands on staff from phone various needs. Hopkins made Symphony
calls, e-mail, and searches, the static a self-sustaining content system by
portal had become a place for aging complementing the existing candidate-
information that fewer and fewer search processes. All EZI users—
people had time to visit. The portal was consultants, researchers, and other
neglected and increasingly irrelevant. staff—could use the same tool together.

“It was highly IT intensive, and the The early results are encouraging.
content was obsolete,” says Bill One of the first benefits to users is an
Hopkins, EZI’s director of operations. improved ability to locate expertise.
“People avoided it in droves.” “Say I’m working on a search for the
shipbuilding industry in Southeast Asia
The old portal was not going to fill where a key skill is the ability to procure
the gap Hopkins saw between the materials,” Hopkins says. “The question
unstructured huddles and the highly is, does anyone have experience, not
structured Orchestra, a combined necessarily in shipbuilding, but in
project accounting and customer materials procurement?” Microblog
relationship management (CRM) posts on Symphony can help identify a
system. His vision was to create an consultant who knows executives
interactive replacement for the portal, with that experience in that region.
to be called Symphony. Hopkins knew
the keys to success were to encourage Hopkins acknowledges that Symphony
participation by the business units is the beginning of a lengthy path to
and instill a sense of ownership. improve EZI’s collaboration capabilities.
“I think I saw this quotation somewhere:
‘If only we knew what we know.’”


Figure 2: One-to-many vs. many-to-many communications
E-mail, document sharing, and portals are examples of a one-to-many or “broadcast” communications paradigm, depicted on
the left. Social technologies, by contrast, use a many-to-many paradigm, as depicted on the right.

Comment

Comment
Idea Comments

Idea
Comment

Comment

One-to-many Many-to-many
• Content is isolated • Content is persistent
• Limited to people who received the message • Available from anywhere, to everyone, at any time
• Disappears over time • Groups are created organically by following
• E-mail groups must be constantly managed

Social technologies, which introduced The many-to-many paradigm has clearly
a many-to-many communications evolved. Blogs, microblogs, wikis,
paradigm, have also been around and the like appeared, and now suites
in some form for decades. Figure 2 combine these tools. As the article,
contrasts one-to-many with many- “Enterprise success with emerging social
to-many communications. The latter technology,” on page 26 describes,
paradigm started with online bulletin enterprise tools are available that move
boards such as the Whole Earth beyond secured versions of Facebook,
’Lectronic Link (WELL), a dial-up Twitter, or other social applications that
bulletin board that Stewart Brand, have not been optimized for business.
creator of the Whole Earth Catalog,
established in 1985. Mitch Kapor, the In spite of today’s capabilities, most
founder of Lotus Development, which enterprises still are not posting much
funded and then bought the Notes many-to-many information internally.
collaboration environment, was an Instead, they send lots of e-mail,
early WELL user.2 creating blizzards of low-relevance
information through indiscriminant
Many-to-many information sharing distribution lists, and often failing to
leverages inexpensive communications. reach those who might have the best
As the cost of posting messages to any answer to a question. Social technology,
number of people and making the plus analytics, can change that scenario
messages persistent approached zero per by helping companies find the sweet
message, the advantages of the media spot between too much and not enough.
became clear. Billions of people now Figure 3 illustrates how consumer
have the ability to post and have their social media trends have influenced
messages read anywhere at any time enterprise collaboration.
after the posting.

2 See Steve Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of New Media: An
Essential Reference to Communication and Technology,
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications), 172ff, and “The
History of Notes and Domino,” IBM developerWorks,
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/
ls-NDHistory/, accessed May 1, 2011.


Figure 3: Social media’s influence on enterprise collaboration
Many-to-many social technology used by consumers influences how enterprise collaboration occurs, but the impact
is not as direct as some might expect.

Telephone E-mail/chat Document sharing Groupware Social technology

Historically, many tools have been used both outside and inside the enterprise. Social media, however, undergoes dramatic transformation
when used for inside-enterprise collaboration. The activity stream is where the similarity ends. The means of adoption are different and must
be aligned with business goals.

Outside Inside the enterprise

Inside an enterprise, the ability to filter Another big issue with the many-to-
the internal information and extract many platforms, whether they’re team
what’s essential is more significant than collaboration tools such as Notes or
ever. If you’re an EZI consultant, the newer social software suites, is that they
right posting from another consultant function separately from the rest of the
you don’t know might mean the IT fabric. (See Figure 3.)
difference between no fee and a
substantial commission. Enterprises that diagnose what’s
wrong with internal collaboration
Collaboration tools have matured, but and prescribe a many-to-many cure
the main question continues to be, as are trying to weave social networking
PwC Chief Innovation Officer Sheldon into the IT fabric in a complementary
Laube puts it: “How do you make teams way. They are also working on the
more effective through the use of organizational aspects of creating
technology?” Implied in that question is incentives, reengineering processes, and
another question: how do you expand using analytics to make the information
the reach of the teams? flows relevant to specific groups and
individuals. This approach promises two
Laube sees this as the perennial issue, advantages: (1) a single place to work,
one that predates the web. Laube, who and (2) a means of creating context, a
evaluated Lotus Notes in the mid-1980s significant component of knowledge
and bought the first 10,000 seat licenses sharing that’s historically been lacking.
that Notes issued when he was CIO at
Price Waterhouse, says, “That’s why
Notes was brought in, and that’s what
Tim Berners-Lee [inventor of the World
Wide Web] had in mind. The web was a
collaboration environment. The world
of collaboration was set back by a mere
15 or 20 years because the web turned
into a one-way publishing environment,
instead of a collaboration medium.”


Figure 4: The social graph’s impact How context creation with the The interest graph is a superset of the
interest graph can help overcome social graph, a people map. The interest
information overload graph includes people, things, and their
Divergent phase What’s new about enterprise linkages, and it helps users navigate the
collaboration is the capability to create information thicket.
and share more context. This starts
with the many-to-many paradigm that Since the 1980s, enterprises have
tools such as Facebook and Twitter endured unprecedented information
have popularized, but it doesn’t end overload. This was the first phase of
there. Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos social technology—the divergent phase,
Group, a social technology consulting in which people learned to expose
firm, describes the shortfalls of earlier information in willy-nilly fashion in
Social
approaches that did not include silos. Within the silo, there was a
information
appears, this capability: limited amount of context; between
but it’s silos, there was even less; and then
siloed “The fundamental problem with those the silos proliferated.
old collaborative systems was that they
were devoid of context. You would Enterprises have recently entered the
Convergent phase see stuff thrown at you and it was not convergent phase and are learning
really tied into your daily flow of work. to purpose the social information by
You were expected to go into these design. Vendors enable the embedding
knowledge bases that are separate from of social technology in systems as well as
where you might live,” Patel says. the localization of the information. The
potential for relevance increases, but the
? “You might be a call center rep who is information is still not as relevant and
living in a call center application, or accessible as it could be.
you might be someone in the finance
Information
department living in ERP [enterprise Within a couple of years, PwC expects
is more resource planning] financials. These the navigational phase to begin in
accessible, are very disconnected worlds, and earnest. (See Figure 4.) Relationships
but difficult the process apps focused on taking between people, and between business
to search
you through your processes. The issues and people, will become more
knowledge management was just explicit in the form of self-managed
Navigational phase sitting in a vacuum.” interest graphs. The interest graph
will become the means for finding
Context creates relevance. And what’s relevant. It’s important to
after decades of data proliferation, remember that the addition of the social
relevance is finally a hot topic, even information layer and the ability to
on the consumer side. In March 2011, structure that information along with
TechCrunch proclaimed “The Age of other information in graph form are
Relevance,” noting that several of the what provide the additional context.
newest social media platforms focus With this additional context, companies
Information on creating an “interest graph,” a map can confront and reduce information
in graph form
for navigating to subjects and people of overload. Business success in using the
becomes
integrated and interest. The author, Mahendra Pasule, interest graph will depend on how well it
navigable asserts that “Social media may lose is understood and built for the purpose.
its obsession with follower numbers
and traffic, evolving to context-driven
reputation systems and algorithms.”3
Vendors of enterprise-class systems are
engaged in similar efforts.

3 Mahendra Pasule, “The Age of Relevance,” TechCrunch,
March 3, 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/the-
age-of-relevance/, accessed May 2, 2011.


The 160 students enrolled in the Duke University
Cross Continent MBA program come from more
than 25 countries and have at least three years of
work experience. The experience lends itself to a
peer learning environment that socially networked
multimedia facilitates.


Figure 5: Sense making vs. exception handling and predictable execution
Collaboration tools that benefit from social technology dwell more at the sense-making and exception-handling end of
the continuum, where processes are more ad hoc, and have fewer repeatable components. Adding social technology into the
same workflow window with predictable execution tools (such as ERP) allows users to do ad hoc work with less disruption.

Hig
h

Need for collaboration and
Medium value from social technology

Low

Sense making

Predictable execution
Exception handling

Using the interest graph for “The majority of these students do not
shared sense making have an intrinsic motivation to move
The Cross Continent MBA program on and earn Ph.D. degrees in any of the
at Duke University, in which business disciplines, but rather to make
Tony O’Driscoll teaches, is a prime a difference in the global work context,”
example of the way that many-to- O’Driscoll says. “The key to tapping
many communications can be used into their motivation is to discuss the
in education and business. The 160 societal, political, and economic issues
students enrolled in his 16-month that they will encounter in the region.”
program have at least three years of
work experience. The program is an Getting students to share their own
innovative spin on distance learning. experiences is a major objective of
It begins in person as the students and the program. “It’s really important to
faculty gather for 10 days in a city such tap into that well of experience from
as New Delhi, and it continues online people who have lived and worked all
after that. over the world. We want to leverage the
experiential wisdom of the group so
Once they arrive, O’Driscoll engages the they can become leaders of consequence
students with a blitz of media collection, by really understanding how history
sharing, and critiquing. He kicks off the and culture influence how institutions
peer learning program on a rich-media work and how markets function in each
blog to trigger commentary and engage region,” O’Driscoll says.
the students in peer dialogue before they
meet in class.


The program integrates a number of Taking advantage of new tools
social networking platforms that allow at enterprise scale
many-to-many multimedia sharing— In recent years, a few enterprises have
for the collaboration and peer learning. targeted information overload by
O’Driscoll insists that every deliverable changing the communications paradigm
gets posted and that students review entirely. Their methods are comparable
each other’s work. “Anybody who writes to what O’Driscoll does in his program.
anything, whether individual or team, To accomplish this paradigm change at
is now exposed in the commons. And an enterprise scale, these enterprises
everybody is required to review three have adapted both the tools and
deliverables other than their own and their organizations.
rank them,” he says. (See the interview
with O’Driscoll on page 18.) Cisco Systems uses its own system
internally. Since the software was
O’Driscoll describes this process as installed, it has become an alternative
shared sense making, and he contrasts it to e-mail. Lead architect Keith Griffin
with e-mail. When he was a researcher points out that users can tune and
at IBM 15 years ago, he was involved in reconfigure the way information is
a project to reinvent e-mail. “E-mail was displayed via the system’s interface,
killing the humans, and it was killing so only the sources need appear. “We
the networks. E-mail was killing the don’t, by default, connect everybody to
humans, reducing them to information everybody. They discover each other in
workers playing Whac-A-Mole with the organization,” Griffin says. “I have “We don’t, by default,
digital data. Workers are just essentially my blog aggregator, where the blogs I’ve connect everybody
prolonging the inevitable by drinking chosen appear. Then I have my watch
more coffee and whacking more e-mail list.” Participants can add each other to
to everybody. They
moles. We’re going to lose that battle.” conversations, and after that point, they discover each other
end up in the watch list, too. (See the in the organization.”
O’Driscoll’s other insight is that interview with Griffin on page 42.)
organizing and responding to e-mail —Keith Griffin of Cisco
messages doesn’t equal accomplishment. Griffin says the “follow” model allows
In contrast, shared sense making is an a flexible asymmetry that’s suitable
accomplishment in and of itself, one for corporate hierarchy. “If any given
that does not demand that you respond employee in an organization sends a
to every message. For each assignment, contact request to the CEO, the CEO
students are required to critique the is not going to answer everybody. The
work of three other students. That’s follow model is more appropriate in
it. The program is not about digesting that case. Everybody is interested
large amounts of material. Instead, in what the CEO has to say and will
the goal is to instill the “capability for follow that person, but the CEO does
discernment” in students. Discernment not necessarily need to connect in that
plays a large role in enterprises, where contact type of mode. It’s important
sense making is on the more ad hoc that we get the underlying data model
side of business process—a side that right, so that we can look at those
could use substantial improvement. different relationships.”
Figure 5 considers sense making within
the context of other parts of typical
enterprise workflow.


The self-organizing graphs generated What this example implies is a way
by employees enable navigation to to take processes apart, add a more
a relevant interest. Because of the ad hoc piece of the flow to them, and
interconnected interest graph enabled put them back together—not unlike
by the system’s data architecture, search business process reengineering. But it’s a
retrieves “a three-dimensional view of different part of the work process that’s
people, communities, and information,” being addressed. Dick Hirsch, senior
“What’s intriguing about Griffin says. consultant for Siemens IT Services and
Solutions, puts it this way: “What’s
these tools is that you Other tools like SAP’s StreamWork intriguing about these tools is that you
can have a touch point also enable the interest graph. They can have a touch point to an existing
connect to the Lightweight Directory process where people can work in an
to an existing process Access Protocol (LDAP), which serves unstructured manner using Web 2.0
where people can work as the kernel of a user’s online identity tools to achieve the goal in a certain
in an unstructured and moves out from there. “LDAP task. Then they can return to the
becomes your system of record from the process and keep moving on.”
manner using Web 2.0 standpoint of who you are,” says Holly
tools to achieve the goal Simmons, senior director of marketing From the experiences of Cisco and
for StreamWork. “StreamWork is the SAP in using their own tools, two
in a certain task. Then front end for the back-end collaboration reengineering elements seem crucial:
they can return to the we already do.” (1) the data architecture that gives
process and keep structure to the interest graph, and (2)
From the user’s perspective, once the ability to add a more unstructured
moving on.” that social graph is connected and the flow to an existing work process.
functionality is accessible to those who Without both, companies won’t be
—Dick Hirsch of Siemens IT need it, ad hoc collaboration directly able to alleviate information overload.
Services and Solutions in StreamWork becomes possible. It’s a
new capability, even to those inside SAP. Seize the actual potential and
ignore the fluff
“Before, I would have built a Enterprises are in dire need of help with
presentation slide deck with the information overload, but soon they’ll
team through e-mail. We would have be able to use the collaboration paradox
searched for version control and who to their advantage. With the enterprise-
had the latest comments and did we class social tools that are becoming
incorporate everybody’s comments. available, organizations can start to
There probably would have been at least eliminate the bad communications
100 e-mails, plus 15 different versions of habits they’ve developed with e-mail,
the deck,” says Jack Miller, global vice document-centric websites, a broadcast-
president for collaboration and cloud only information model, and siloed
analytics at SAP. “This time we built that application stacks. In their place,
entire presentation inside the tool, so enterprises will be able to start building
everybody’s comments are captured in a social information layer, and in the
one place—the latest version. We were process they can surface identities and
able to build this entire CEO-level deck relationships that can bind corporate
without going through e-mail.” information together. Given the right
architecture and the use of identities
and relationships, the workforce will
be able to navigate to more relevance.


Some vendors are leading by example. Today, the most powerful capabilities
Cisco has moved beyond e-mail to a new are localized. Duke University’s Cross
communications paradigm, a renewed Continent MBA program has a lot
data infrastructure, and a work style of inherent flexibility as a relatively
with less overload. With StreamWork, small and autonomous effort. In time,
SAP is adding a sense-making compo- enterprises will get better at extracting
nent to its workflow, one that’s blended value from social technology at scale,
with the applications. and the security model will evolve so
the extended enterprise—partners
Internally, both vendors are moving included—will benefit. The first step
beyond what most enterprises have done. will be to take the component parts—
Enterprises need to follow their lead by a different communications paradigm,
tapping into the real power of these tools, a new way to blend IT resources, and
rather than adding yet another channel an evolved data architecture—and
to a collaboration environment that’s work at a small scale to discover how
already overly complicated. They need to they function best given specific
understand the vision first, and then do enterprise challenges.
the hard work.

Early adopters of best-of-breed
systems also provide an example
to follow. By using Socialtext, EZI
complemented processes that already
worked. Socialcast, another vendor,
has manufacturing clients that make
the activity stream part of their
workflow by sharing the designs they
are working on. PwC, with initiatives Enterprises are in dire need
such as iPlace, creates highly focused of help with information
internal interactive environments. The
relevance, incentives, and the process overload, but soon they’ll be
for participation are built into each able to use the collaboration
online initiative.
paradox to their advantage.


PwC: Are you teaching currently?

Building a new TO: Yes. I’m teaching in the Cross
Continent MBA program, which is one of
the places we’re using social technology.

learning environment It’s a 16-month MBA program where
we travel en masse to six different areas

around social tools
of the world and spend 10 days on the
ground embedding ourselves in the
region. Afterward we try to make sense
of what just happened, before we do
Tony O’Driscoll aligns social technology’s it again in another area. It’s an intense
strengths with the way people learn today. kind of immersion and reflection, where
our students are embedded in the region
Interview conducted by Alan Morrison, Bo Parker, and Bud Mathaisel first, and then through distance-based
introspection they try and make sense of
the experience they just went through.

More than 25 countries are represented
in the 160 students enrolled in the
Tony O’Driscoll program. They bring with them that
Tony O’Driscoll is executive director, international experience as well as at
Center for Technology, Entertainment and least three years of business experience.
Media, Fuqua School of Business at Duke
University. His business background includes
PwC: How do you use social
previous leadership positions in the strategy
technology in that program?
and change consulting practice at IBM
Global Services and at Nortel Networks. TO: We use a peer learning approach
that relies on socially enabled
His most recent book, Learning in 3D: technologies. For example, after we
Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise arrive in a place, I send the students
Learning and Collaboration, which he on what I call a Culture Dash. Each
co-authored with Karl M. Kapp, was
team has a video camera, and they
published in 2010.
are given that afternoon to go around
to predefined landmarks that have
historical significance. They interview
people about the societal, political, and
economic transitions in those places.


Minimizing e-mail
The number of e-mails Tony O’Driscoll
did not reply to because he’s started to
7,000
give up on the medium.

They take that four hours of video and I decided to do away with all that, Whac-A-Mole with digital data. Workers
jointly edit it down to a five-minute and instead I use the technological are just essentially prolonging the
movie. The final product gets posted, affordance called a blog. The students inevitable by drinking more coffee and
and the teams review each others’ read the blog beforehand. whacking more e-mail moles.
videos. This way, we try to extract
the experiential wisdom of all these You need to motivate students up front. We’re going to lose that battle. No doubt
people and share it with others, so I use public domain sources such as about it. If you look at how information
they too can be leaders. We encourage YouTube, Big Think, TED, or FORA.tv, is expanding and proliferating, and
the students to tune in quicker, to and I find material to seed serious you put that into your inbox, you can
understand whatever city they go into conversation about the issues that the see that’s not going to work. To deal
by really understanding the culture, and world faces today. I post a link to two with the volume, you organize all your
to see how institutions work there and and a half minutes of Fadi Ghandour e-mails into folders. Moving bits around
how markets function there. [CEO of Aramex] talking about the Arab on a screen this way might help you feel
Spring, for example, and that prompts better, but I don’t know how much that
The future of learning is shifting from a whole bunch of questions. As the blog sort of activity contributes to anything.
pouring knowledge into individuals’ administrator, I can track activity and
heads to enabling them to tune their monitor the comments. And I do a lot I’m both frustrated and proud of the
networks to solve unanticipated of polling. I can see who is having what fact that last year there were 7,000
problems as they confront them. My kinds of conversations, know where e-mails that I just did not respond
job is to get the network of students to people are getting stuck or not, and to. I have literally started to give it
use social tools to tap into each others’ get ideas for class discussions. up as a medium. Everything outlives
experiences around the key objectives. its usefulness. Even back when we
That’s what the younger generation is So when I go into class on Monday introduced Sametime, there was a 20
doing; they are tuning their network morning in India or wherever we are, to 25 percent drop in e-mail. Instead,
to the problem at hand. The classroom I’m not going in cold. With the social people were using Sametime to ask each
paradigm is increasingly being pushed platform and presence and identity other, “When can you meet?” You could
into a corner, and the place where baked in, I can track all of the activity, I respond with, “I can meet at this time.”
learning has to happen is increasingly know what’s going on, and I am clearly That was it.
emerging at the moment of need in the much better prepared to add value to
workflow context of an increasingly their learning experience. PwC: How are different people
complex and uncertain business world. responding to the same set
PwC: What lessons can enterprises of tools? The students in the
PwC: So you don’t rely much on take from this sort of example? Cross Continent program may
traditional classroom methods? TO: They can introduce alternatives have totally different frames
TO: Around the edges I do, but not at that are better suited to specific tasks in of reference.
the core. I decided to get rid of the pre- a very similar way. When I was an IBM TO: I haven’t seen any variability in
reads, the “box of doom” as the researcher at Lotus 15 years ago, we different regions in terms of their
students called it, that we sent the did this big project called reinventing interest in using the tools. There’s an
students two weeks before they had to e-mail. E-mail was killing the humans, overriding motivation, one that says that
show up. That translates into hundreds and it was killing the networks. It I have made a decision to do this and I’m
and hundreds of pages of dead trees. was killing the humans, reducing really excited to connect with people.
them to information workers playing


Benefits of social technology 40
Tony O’Driscoll no longer has to

700
parse through 40 channels of TV
or push through 700 e-mails.

I take advantage of the fact that the PwC: In the broad generic world Most important is the activity-based
students are enthusiastic and they of Facebook and Twitter, there computing paradigm that allows an
haven’t become jaded yet. I wouldn’t seems to be two kinds of people. artifact within the ecosystem to be its
suggest trying to change your Some people adapt very quickly own beacon. In this case, the project
technology platform to be socially based to broadcasting their thoughts, plan is the artifact—it’s broadcasting
toward the back end of somebody’s ideas, and feelings. Others sign up an activity stream to me. It tells me
MBA degree, because they are focused but rarely post, if ever. Do you run something just happened to it, such as
on getting their degree and getting the across that with your students? when someone I know touches it. From
hell out. But you can take this unbridled What’s your strategy? that stream, I can pretty much figure
enthusiasm and bring it into a social TO: I have a contribution grade that out where and when I might want to
context that establishes the norm for amounts to 10 percent of the total grade. pay attention.
how things are going to work. Essentially, the grade is designed to
encourage them to contribute. Learning That broadcasting increases the
Where it gets interesting is that and adaptation are two sides of the same efficiency with which you manage your
everybody submits their deliverable coin. The minute you stop learning, you attention, but it doesn’t account for the
to the commons and everybody else stop adapting; when you stop adapting, fact that the inputs to those attention
can see it. That’s different, because you die. management systems are moving at
in the traditional world, everybody jerk speed and our ability to process is
submits the work they’re assigned to That’s one of the really interesting things not. So it’s buying us some time, but it’s
the professor, and the professor makes about human beings—if I ask you right insufficient to address the larger issue.
a value judgment as to its utility and now to stop learning, you can’t. You
correctness. The students submit the are a sense-making machine. That’s PwC: So are we just exchanging
work in a very secure environment, why we are here and dinosaurs aren’t. one nonscalable environment
and they can choose to share it or not And we have the capacity to adapt for another?
share it. faster than before. The clock speed of TO: It’s a digital divide of a different
technology is jerk speed, and it’s jerking kind. Our ability to process information
In this new context, by comparison, humanity around because it’s working is constant, but the amount of
anybody who writes anything, whether at a different clock speed from what we information that requires processing
it’s an individual or a team, is now are used to. Our clock speed is relatively is increasing exponentially. Collective
exposed in the commons. Everybody is constant over time. sense making is one way to bridge this
required to review three deliverables divide. By tapping into social networks
other than their own and rank and What social technologies do is change and using more precise information
review them. That’s a little foreign, the paradigm for attention management. parsing methods, we can certainly be
and there’s a fair amount of pushback In the old paradigm, I would parse more effective than we have in the past.
on that. People say, “What do you through the 40 channels of TV or try to
mean, other people can see my stuff?” push through 700 e-mails a day. Now I
And I say, “Well, that’s how peer can crowdsource attention by essentially
learning works.” having human beings I trust and value
give some seal of approval to some piece
of content that I think I might want to
engage in.


PwC: To get to that point will Enterprise behavior is different. You
require more than just moving can’t take the same social technologies
Twitter or Facebook inside and plop them into a profit-making
the enterprise. context and expect that people will
TO: It will. We have seen very immediately engage. The question
productive activity on Twitter or is, once the underlying motivation
Facebook, but the incentives are shifts from purpose to profit, will the
different. People raised money to motivation to engage persist?
send to Haiti, or to help with the
tsunami in Japan, or the oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico. We saw all of
these spontaneous aggregations of
cognitive ability being put toward a
common humanitarian purpose.
“Where it gets interesting is
that everybody submits their
The motive in this kind of social
context is altruism. It’s to help others.
deliverable to the commons
By contrast, the motive in a business and everybody else can see it.
context is all about profit. That’s different, because in the
traditional world, everybody
submits the work they’re
assigned to the professor, and
the professor makes a value
judgment as to its utility
and correctness.”


PwC: What are the more recent

How online identity challenges companies have been
facing on the collaboration front?
SP: The fundamental problem with

and context become those old collaborative systems was that
they were devoid of context. You would
see stuff thrown at you and it was not

productivity drivers really tied into your daily flow of work.
You were expected to go into these
knowledge bases that are separate from
Sameer Patel of Sovos Group places social where you might live.
technology in the context of software that
You might be a call center rep who is
enterprises already use. living in a call center application, or
you might be someone in the finance
Interview conducted by Alan Morrison and Bo Parker
department living in ERP [enterprise
resource planning] financials. These
are very disconnected worlds, and
the process apps focused on taking
Sameer Patel you through your processes. The
Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos Group, knowledge management was just
has consulted on enterprise collaboration sitting in a vacuum waiting for you
strategy and technology planning for to associate context.
more than 13 years, starting at USWeb
(marchFIRST).
The true value of enterprise social
computing will come from bringing
data, content, and people together
in the context of business activities.
Context is not just a general-purpose
content management effort or a
knowledge management effort. Online
collaboration needs to be embedded in
the flow of work to get you to the end
goal more effectively, as opposed to yet
another place for workers to remember
to go to.


PwC: What’s your take on the PwC: That being the landscape, At best, one or two of the standalone
current generation of tools and is there an inherent advantage platforms will continue to remain alone.
how they’re moving toward in any one of the camps over The enterprise software vendors will
that goal? the others? offer a social information layer as part
SP: You’ve got four camps, really. In SP: I work for a consulting firm and of their content management stack.
the first camp, you have the general- so do you guys, so I’m going to say, “It Oracle has an entire content business;
purpose tools that typically come from depends.” There are tradeoffs. If you so do SAP and IBM. These tools will
the startup community—that have come from the process side (as a product become part of one stack (either from
garnered inspiration from consumer company, for example), you have a focus one vendor or via tight partnerships)
social tools, but are fitted for the that will always force you to be very that will give you content management,
enterprise context. In the second camp, disciplined about having context built document management, knowledge
you have the HR vendors that have been in to how fluid collaboration and people management, and social connectivity.
selling learning and performance connectivity can fill gaps in a traditional
management, as well as the whole HR workflow-laden design. PwC: What about inhibitors?
suite. Their message is that because SP: One issue the media doesn’t talk
effective use of social technology is A professional services company, a very much about is the participation problem
ultimately about people and the people-centered business, tends to go with some of these tools. Companies
workforce, they’re the ones best with the central suites, whether they go through the hype phase and the
positioned to push this to you. buy IBM Connections or Jive. It’s not excitement of buying Facebook-like tools
about sitting in ERP screens all day long; for the enterprise, and then they don’t
The third camp is ERP vendors that these companies don’t have the same know what to share. People slow down
help organizations complete a critical sort of workflow that a typical product their usage, and then they stop posting
process in context—the SAPs and company has. Less structured knowledge their status updates because they’re not
Oracles that build process-oriented is the asset. So there’s a big focus on seeing the value of it. This is one of the
systems. Salesforce.com, obviously, is using collaboration suites to reuse problems when participatory intent
one of these. Even though the company knowledge and improve project margins. is not clear to the user and when the
doesn’t have the entire ERP suite, it has social platform is largely decoupled
Force.com—you can get every single The HR system marketing folks may from contextual work.
conceivable ERP component from make it sound like the HR management
Force.com. IBM and TIBCO with tibbr system is neatly tied to the social
can ultimately go in this camp, too. technology. It’s just not there yet, but I
suspect they’ll get there in the next 6 to
Then the last camp is the unified 10 months. Chief HR officers will say
communications companies. Cisco, that the stream needs to be embedded
for example, bought WebEx; has into the HR management system,
figured out video, face-to-face, because ultimately they’re the ones who
online conferencing, and Voice over manage all the performance reviews,
IP; and is now broadening the solution allocate resources, and manage talent
to include text-based engagement and learning. And there’s certainly merit
and collaboration. to that.

That’s essentially the lay of the land
starting out.


The information sharing problem
End users aren’t necessarily
50
interested in information sharing;
they are interested in making 50
customer calls a day.

The participation issue is a symptom of The third problem is from a marketing PwC: These are systemic
a deep problem with a lack of business standpoint. Often, vendors will sell inefficiencies of some sort?
alignment and participation incentives. stuff to an IT director or a CIO, and they SP: Yes. We’ve been living in this myth
These issues should be addressed present general-purpose benefits that that stuff that happens at companies is
before the software is rolled out. A lot make a lot of sense to a forward-thinking very repeatable. We put all these CRM
of enterprises wait until the switch has IT executive. After the purchase, those [customer relationship management],
been flipped to then figure out how they same marketing materials from the ERP, and MRP [materials requirements
will get people to use it. They’ve really vendor are used as selling materials to planning] systems in place thinking that
not done the proper planning or gotten the end user. When end users look at they’re repeatable processes and we can
the right groups to understand how some of these nebulous outcomes, such get repeatable value out of the systems.
it facilitates the core process they’re as “Share more; it’s better,” they say, The truth is that every single process
responsible for. “All this information sharing doesn’t in the enterprise is not as repeatable
matter to me; my target is to do 50 as we would like it to be. People have
People are not measured on which customer calls in the day and go home.” questions along the way.
tool they use; they’re measured on Those outcomes need to be translated
getting their work done. You have to into why it makes sense for them, so ERP systems have boiled down every
have that alignment, which is one of the there’s a lot of that confusion. single business application to a submit
biggest issues. People will hide behind and a cancel button, when really what
culture and other challenges such as the The fourth problem, and this is probably users want is a giant discuss button
Millennial argument, which has some one of the biggest, is I’ve never met a sometimes. Users don’t know the right
truth to it but not nearly as much as they CEO or another CxO who is going to say, answer sometimes, they need to get
say. The problem is that the “What’s in it “We don’t want to innovate and we don’t help, and they need to find the right
for me?” factor has not been identified want to share knowledge.” The problem people to help them. That need is more
for these users. is that they’ll often tell someone in their acute in some processes than others, for
executive team, “OK, we’re going to do example, in areas of the company where
Another big issue is just good old politics this. Who’s going to take ownership of there are inefficiencies, where products
101. A lot of the activity and effort that’s this thing?” Everyone’s going to look haven’t gotten out the door, or where the
been evident so far has been emergent. around, nod their heads, and say, “This quality is lower.
For example, pockets of the company is a fabulous idea, Bob. Why don’t you
will go off and get their own accounts, take it?” Until it’s clear that social and
and usage will start to gain some collaborative approaches and tools can
steam in engineering or in a product At the CEO level, of course they want address big problems and can have
development group. Even if this thing more innovation and sharing, but every operating and financial benefit, it will
starts to show promise, executives often person sitting in that room is in charge be challenging to make them C-suite
will not get behind something that they of quota, pushing product out the door, imperatives.
can’t take full credit for. So, if they can’t growing a geographic footprint, and
say that they invented it and they’re the the like. That’s where broad, nebulous
ones who brought it to the company, goals such as improve innovation and
then they don’t get all the points for it. sharing start to get difficult to execute.
This goes back to articulating the value
of social and collaborative approaches
and technology in the context of
known performance headaches and
opportunities that executives face today.


“I’ve never met a CxO who is going to say, ‘We
don’t want to innovate and we don’t want to
share knowledge.’ The problem is that they’ll
often tell someone in their executive team,
‘OK, we’re going to do this. Who’s going to
take ownership of this thing?’ Everyone’s
going to look around, nod their heads, and
say, ‘This is a fabulous idea, Bob. Why don’t
you take it?’ ”

PwC: Speaking of finding people Social software can essentially help
who can help, that issue seems companies meet their performance
tied to a lack of online individual objectives in much more efficient
identities in a company. If ways by facilitating connection and
the identities of each individual discussion. Once that becomes obvious,
in the workforce were visible, it will be surprising how many people
how would that help?’ are willing to engage.
SP: This battle will ultimately be won
on identity management. Beyond
usability as a differentiator, many
elements in the enterprise social
software suite are becoming
commodities. The magic will happen
when we tie in implicit and explicit
profile data elements of our individual
public and historical profiles with our
enterprise social profiles and, of course,
HR. That’s when your colleagues and
others get a true sense of who you are,
what you think you’re good at, and,
just as important, what the community
thinks you’re good at.


Enterprise success
with emerging social
technology
Innovators are learning to build graphs
to help users locate the information they
need—and each other.
By David Kelly, Heather Ashton, and Alan Morrison

Mention social technology or social generation, brand identity, customer
networking, and most people think service, or marketing purposes. The
of consumer-driven applications such possibilities for internal applications
as Twitter or Facebook. But some of social technology are much broader,
organizations realize that Facebook, but they are less obvious, slower
Twitter, and their secured equivalents to emerge, and have significant
inside the enterprise are just a catalyst architectural and organizational
for deeper changes that must be made implications that many businesses
to collaboration tools and methods. may not have sufficiently explored.

Improving how work gets done is a New generations of social
bigger challenge than adding a social technologies—when coupled with
networking activity stream to the IT clear vision, good planning, and
mix. Some aspects of that challenge effective execution—have the potential
are technological, as this article to change the way business is done. If
describes. Others, as the article, “The they aren’t already, IT departments will
collaboration paradox,” on page 06 soon face the challenge of determining
explains, involve a change in strategy or the best approach to incorporating
are mostly organizational in nature. Still social technology into the way their
others, as the article, “The CIO’s role in enterprises do business.
social enterprise strategy,” on page 48
considers, require IT leadership that In conversations with some of the
must be evolutionary in approach. most fully engaged adopters of social
technology, CIOs, and social technology
Over the next decade, businesses that leaders, PwC sees a change occurring
seek competitive advantage from more in the enterprise social technology
effective online collaboration will need landscape and the opportunity for
to acquire a keen awareness of what organizations to take advantage of it.
these changes involve and how they’re Enterprise social technology has moved
materializing. Most businesses already from a divergent phase into a more
use some type of externally facing convergent phase.
social technologies, typically for lead


Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий

Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (19)

Destaque

Destaque (20)

Semelhante a Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий

Semelhante a Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий (20)

Mais de Ingria. Technopark St. Petersburg

Mais de Ingria. Technopark St. Petersburg (20)

Último

Último (20)

Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий