IBM Connections were designed with the world biggest companies in mind. On the other hand, this tool is very beneficial also for small&medium businesses. See why.
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Connections for SMB? Sure!
1. IBM Connections in Small or
Medium Enterprise? Sure!
Jan Valdman, DNS a.s.
Michal Holoubek, oXy Online, s.r.o.
2. (Motto)
2
„As a director, you suddenly miss the
straightforwardness of the old days when you were
one team, one family. At that moment, we realized
we were big enough to be ready for a company
social network.“
Zdenek MICHÁLEK
Director of Strategy and Development, CZC.cz
7. Different-sized Companies Require
Different Approach.
You don’t have to be a large company to
take advantage of social business, but…
… you will use the social business by any
other way
7
8. What’s the difference?
8
Few teams but one
large community
Everyone contributes to
company’s value
No enterprise-grade
applications
Simple processes
<100
Complex orgchart
Complex processes
Many specialized
applications
People do not know each
other
>1000
9. What’s the difference?
9
Fews teams but one
community
Everyone contributes to
company’s value
No enterprise-grade
applications
Simple proceses
<100
Complex orgchart
Complex processes
Many specialized
applications
People do not know each
other
>1000
Process
support
Communication
issues
10. Different-sized Companies Have
Different Needs
10
Size of organisation
Sizeofcommunity
Process Support
(Activities)
Sharing
(Files, Wikis)
Social network
(Profiles, Blogs)
13. The Greiner Model
How Companies Grow and Evolve
13
Activities
Sharing
Personal
networks
14. Social Axioms
14
It’s a human nature to communicate
Companies can ignore social business but their employees will
not
The only result you might achieve is that your employees will
discuss work-related issues over public social networks
„You can disagree, you can discuss it, but that‘s all
you can actually do about it.“
(Jara da Cimrman)
15. Example: Management Meetings
Open Issues.
Information,
documents, discussion.
Last meeting. Open
issues and tasks.
Meeting minutes.
Decisions and tasks
16. Example: Small Project Management
• Tool for planning and
realization of small projects
• One place for project
documentation and
communication
• Increase in efficiency of
project management
16
18. Example: Simple Test Management Tool
• Test planning and
management
• Reporting
• Easy, effective and
cheap tool for test
management.
18
19. Best Practices of Adoption Process
19
Top management
HR
Marketing
Trade
Technical support
Customer support
Business cases
Testing
Ad hoc working groups
Pilot (8 months)
Expansion (6 months)
Evolution
20. Best Practice: Tablets
• Top managers prefer a mobile client
rather than a web interface.
• Tablets – from an e-mail reader to an
inteface of corporate systems.
• Tablets simplify the adoption of IBM
Connections considerably
21
As you can see in this quote, at on point in time our company expanded to such an extent that it became vital to maintain the close interpersonal communication while the employees were scattered all over the country and their numbers were growing.
At this point we opted for a company social network as a basis for not only that form of communication but also the ground for further growth of the company.
So now let me take you through the process step by step.
Moving on, I am going to focus on the implementation of the company social network in CZC.cz and the adoption process.
1. It’s human nature to communicate.2. You can ignore social business as a trend but you will not get rid of it.3. The only result you might achieve is that your employees will discuss work-related issues over public social networks.
Restriction is not a solution because the most creative and active employees regulary use social networks.
Let me show you, how the „Meetings“ work in practice.
We start by creating a new meeting activity based on a meeting template. This template consist of 3 sections:
1. The first one is a list of tasks from the previous meeting.
2. The second section consists of open issues …
3. … and the last section consists of meeting minutes, decisions and tasks.
During preparation of a meeting, we update the status of tasks from the previous meeting, the participants create new items, and the other can discusse tham and propose solutions.
During the meeting, the open issues are dragged and dropped to the „meeting minutes“ section and decisions and tasks are added.
Quick, simple, effective.
Moving on from the pilot phase, the next step was the support of all other company processes in CZC.cz.
I am now going to present three examples of such applications.
The first one is the Small project management support.
As I implied, the goal was to create a tool for planning and realization of small projects as well as a place for all project documentation and communication.
Therefore the effectivity of project management would be increased.
As a result we eliminated the shared disks and decreased the number of project emails by 85%. The side effect of this application is the dramatic icnrease in re-using previous experience and documents.
Another example istaken from the Human Resources Department.
The main goal is to increase the efficiency of communication between the company and its employees, and at the same time to encourage feetback from the employees.
Business results are positive in our view. Emails directed „to everyone“ were completely eliminated.
Moreover, the feedback from CZc.cz´s employees is more effective.
The feedback function of the actual coffee corner was satisfyingly substituted by the virtual one.
Last, but not least, there is the example of test management process support.
The goal is to provide support for continuous planning, managing and reporting tests of the CZC.cz e-shop.
As a result, now CZC.cz has an easy effective and cheap tool for test management now.
At this point it´s time to summarise CZC.cz´s experience of this project and it´s results.
Social Business approach enables people within the company to stay in contact.
Adoption has to start from the top down – it doesn´t work the other way round
For small business communities, the simplest solutions are the best.
What is also essential is the role of the implementation partner. He helps with not only technological aspect of the project, but also with the methodology of social business. The implementation partner of CZC.cz was oXy Online.
Now it is time to outline general experience of the implementation and adoption process of social business in CZC.cz.
Now it is time for me to draw some conclusions.
CZC.cz is an excellent example of a medium sized company which implemented the social business approach successfully. This approach is generally applicable to not only small and medium-sized companies, but also to small teams or communities within the large companies.
Adoption doesn´t depend on the size of the company, instead, it depends on the size of the actual community. A small company can work with a very large community – like customer community, and vice versa, a big company can have small working teams or small community of experts.
CZC.cz is such an excellent example, because we have a large customer community, small employee community and middle-sized partner community.
Processes in small and medium sized companies (or communities) are rather simple, therefore the simple solutions are the best. Powerful and overly sophisticated applications and tools do more harm than good in such cases. For example, we don´t need a sophisticated CRM, whan an excel sheet can do the same job easily.
The organizational structure contains small number of levels in SMB. Therefore the adoption process must usually begin with the top management, as I said before.
The top-down approach is important in SMB.
A tablet is an effective and natural client for social business applications and can serve as a helpful tool for the adoption process.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.
Last but not least, there is the key role of implementation partner. The importance of this partner lies not only in technology but also in methodology. The CZC.cz implementation partner was oXy Online.