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11 Reasons Why Community Platforms Create Better Results
http://socialcomputingmagazine.com
11 Reasons Why Community Platforms Create Better Results
Back to the Article
by George Dearing
The release a few days ago of Telligent's newest product, Community Server Evolution, a platform aimed squarely at the intranet and Enterprise 2.0 markets, got me thinking about the business possibilities and opportunities they enable for those that use community platforms. While much of the discussion around community platforms focuses around technology, instead, let's talk about what community platforms can do for your business.
1. You can finally feel confident about starting an intranet initiative
It's different behind the firewall. In fact, most business people will tell you it's quite a challenge mimicking some of the things we take for granted on the consumer Web. Typically things like search, usability and basic collaboration are expected in anything that even smells of the consumer web. So why do we all give in when the experience shifts behind the firewall? We're making sure you don't have to give in. Once you've established how you intend to transform the way you collaborate, most community platforms will adapt with you.
2. The pulse of your organization becomes much more visible.
It may sound a bit cliche to talk about the pulse of a company, but with Enterprise 2.0 applications it's almost eerie the things you can extrapolate when you see a bird's eye view of an organization's activity. Within seconds I can see who's connected to who, how many discussions are taking place, or the statuses of my departmental colleagues. Once you start to see how connectedness drives conversation, you can glean intelligence from those interactions.
3. You'll accelerate the way you find resources and expertise.
Information is the lifeblood of today's organization. If you can't filter the flow and capitalize on the important bits and bytes, you're at a competitive disadvantage. With online communities, the gold nuggets of information come in the form of activity streams, rich user profiles, and answer-rich forums and message boards. It's not that you'll rid yourself of those hallway sprints to find Jenna in Marketing, it's more about being prepared to ask her the right question at the right time.
4. You'll have one-click access to fundamental Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, forums and groups.
I don't mean to harp so much on the technology here, but we've found that online communities are a great way to provide a hands-on rollout of social computing 101 exercises. In a short time, you'll be able to stitch together quick scenarios for various departments that paint the bigger picture of how all this stuff actually helps them do their job. I can tell you first hand that community usage will equate to all sorts of creative ways to share information, connect, and communicate. And isn't that what we're all striving for after you strip away all the Web 2.0 hyperbole?
5. You can easily incorporate your day-to-day activities and enhance your workflow -- instead of disrupting it.
This is a big one because we all know a big Achilles' heel of any software or services rollout is adoption. For us social media users, adoption comes day one. When you're provisioned as an employee, community integration with the intranet is a big part of that onramp. The fundamental things you can quickly accomplish -- building your profile, blogging, joining a group, etc -- all become a part of the way you work inside the firewall. You quickly find yourself easily cutting and pasting content and letting that content live where it needs to live. The world of file shares and dormant repositories of data become a thing of the past because valuable artifacts and discussions can be surfaced via tagging, voting and threaded discussions. And if you're a SharePoint user, you're sure to like the expanded capabilities related to blogging, wiki publishing and a cool email gateway that allows you to post and respond remotely to forums. How's that for flexible workflow?
6. You'll have the IT group on your side when you decide to champion an Enterprise 2.0 approach.
You know who you are. You're the tinkerer, the strategist, and the solo freedom fighter dead-set on making the mess inside the firewall a better place for knowledge workers everywhere. You'll have the confidence to strut into the IT group's weekly meeting and prove you won't be making their lives miserable. After your IT team sees the back-end and how easy online communities are to deploy, they might even bring the donuts to your weekly meeting.
7. You'll have the line of business execs in your corner when you pitch the CIO on enterprise and intranet 2.0.
Before you head to the CIO's office, you'll be armed with case studies from happy business people that loved the Evolution use cases you (IT) had them adopting in a matter of hours. It shouldn't be a surprise that you IT types like modern community platforms. They set out to make it as easy as possible to incorporate a lot of the tools and tasks you need to deliver services to the business. IT users love to have hooks into things like Active Directory, Exchange and the portal de jour, SharePoint.
8. You'll reduce your email.
It's interesting how our company nicely stigmatizes email. Fact is, with Enterprise 2.0 applications you quickly learn when email is inappropriate or just doesn't cut it. There's really no reason to email someone when you can post a message to a Group or Forum, see a colleague's status, or skim a blog or wiki post. If anything, Evolution will open your eyes to all the options you have to communicate and collaborate.
9. You'll reduce your meetings.
No really. On numerous occasions I've circumvented the dreaded "I could've avoided this meeting" syndrome. With Web-based collaboration tools, there's plenty of ways to become a real self-service employee and find the information you need. That means having actionable content that's timely, accurate and even archived for future reference. We like to describe this as surfacing your valuable corporate intelligence and activity. For example, if you're trying to schedule a meeting with Mike in Product Engineering and notice his user profile status says "finishing up client specifications doc", you might want to avoid sending that Outlook meeting request. If you had an RSS subscription to Mike's blog, you would have had that insight.
10 . You'll have some innovation on display as you try and recruit all those Gen Y Workers.
Across the board you'll hear companies, especially large ones, stress the importance of recruitment and retention of younger workers. How can you expect to lure the youthful digital natives if you can't build the right village around them? Evolution provides a helluva start to the blueprint.
11. And finally, you can actually be a part of the conversation instead of just watching it on the sidelines.
Have a gripe about something that doesn't work? No problem, you have all sorts of ways to submit feedback. You can find an appropriate group, participate in a specific forum, or create a blog post that's highly visible across the community software landscape. Flexibility and understanding the way people interact and engage in digital environments underscores much of the vision those of us have in Enterprise 2.0 tools and community platforms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Bio:
George Dearing is Corporate Evangelist for Telligent, who spends most of his time helping customers use social software and services to grow their business.
George has written about technology, social computing and Enterprise 2.0 for InformationWeek, Social Media Today, Content Management Connection and The FastForward Blog. He is also anchor publisher of The Enterprise Content Management Network.
George's microblogging coordinates are below:
Twitter | http://twitter.com/georgedearing
Tumblr | http://www.dearingsdashboard.com
Jaiku | http://georgedearing.jaiku.com
Posterous | http://georgedearing.posterous.com
11 Reasons Why Community Platforms Create Better Results
Back to the Article
by George Dearing
The release a few days ago of Telligent's newest product, Community Server Evolution, a platform aimed squarely at the intranet and Enterprise 2.0 markets, got me thinking about the business possibilities and opportunities they enable for those that use community platforms. While much of the discussion around community platforms focuses around technology, instead, let's talk about what community platforms can do for your business.
1. You can finally feel confident about starting an intranet initiative
It's different behind the firewall. In fact, most business people will tell you it's quite a challenge mimicking some of the things we take for granted on the consumer Web. Typically things like search, usability and basic collaboration are expected in anything that even smells of the consumer web. So why do we all give in when the experience shifts behind the firewall? We're making sure you don't have to give in. Once you've established how you intend to transform the way you collaborate, most community platforms will adapt with you.
2. The pulse of your organization becomes much more visible.
It may sound a bit cliche to talk about the pulse of a company, but with Enterprise 2.0 applications it's almost eerie the things you can extrapolate when you see a bird's eye view of an organization's activity. Within seconds I can see who's connected to who, how many discussions are taking place, or the statuses of my departmental colleagues. Once you start to see how connectedness drives conversation, you can glean intelligence from those interactions.
3. You'll accelerate the way you find resources and expertise.
Information is the lifeblood of today's organization. If you can't filter the flow and capitalize on the important bits and bytes, you're at a competitive disadvantage. With online communities, the gold nuggets of information come in the form of activity streams, rich user profiles, and answer-rich forums and message boards. It's not that you'll rid yourself of those hallway sprints to find Jenna in Marketing, it's more about being prepared to ask her the right question at the right time.
4. You'll have one-click access to fundamental Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, forums and groups.
I don't mean to harp so much on the technology here, but we've found that online communities are a great way to provide a hands-on rollout of social computing 101 exercises. In a short time, you'll be able to stitch together quick scenarios for various departments that paint the bigger picture of how all this stuff actually helps them do their job. I can tell you first hand that community usage will equate to all sorts of creative ways to share information, connect, and communicate. And isn't that what we're all striving for after you strip away all the Web 2.0 hyperbole?
5. You can easily incorporate your day-to-day activities and enhance your workflow -- instead of disrupting it.
This is a big one because we all know a big Achilles' heel of any software or services rollout is adoption. For us social media users, adoption comes day one. When you're provisioned as an employee, community integration with the intranet is a big part of that onramp. The fundamental things you can quickly accomplish -- building your profile, blogging, joining a group, etc -- all become a part of the way you work inside the firewall. You quickly find yourself easily cutting and pasting content and letting that content live where it needs to live. The world of file shares and dormant repositories of data become a thing of the past because valuable artifacts and discussions can be surfaced via tagging, voting and threaded discussions. And if you're a SharePoint user, you're sure to like the expanded capabilities related to blogging, wiki publishing and a cool email gateway that allows you to post and respond remotely to forums. How's that for flexible workflow?
6. You'll have the IT group on your side when you decide to champion an Enterprise 2.0 approach.
You know who you are. You're the tinkerer, the strategist, and the solo freedom fighter dead-set on making the mess inside the firewall a better place for knowledge workers everywhere. You'll have the confidence to strut into the IT group's weekly meeting and prove you won't be making their lives miserable. After your IT team sees the back-end and how easy online communities are to deploy, they might even bring the donuts to your weekly meeting.
7. You'll have the line of business execs in your corner when you pitch the CIO on enterprise and intranet 2.0.
Before you head to the CIO's office, you'll be armed with case studies from happy business people that loved the Evolution use cases you (IT) had them adopting in a matter of hours. It shouldn't be a surprise that you IT types like modern community platforms. They set out to make it as easy as possible to incorporate a lot of the tools and tasks you need to deliver services to the business. IT users love to have hooks into things like Active Directory, Exchange and the portal de jour, SharePoint.
8. You'll reduce your email.
It's interesting how our company nicely stigmatizes email. Fact is, with Enterprise 2.0 applications you quickly learn when email is inappropriate or just doesn't cut it. There's really no reason to email someone when you can post a message to a Group or Forum, see a colleague's status, or skim a blog or wiki post. If anything, Evolution will open your eyes to all the options you have to communicate and collaborate.
9. You'll reduce your meetings.
No really. On numerous occasions I've circumvented the dreaded "I could've avoided this meeting" syndrome. With Web-based collaboration tools, there's plenty of ways to become a real self-service employee and find the information you need. That means having actionable content that's timely, accurate and even archived for future reference. We like to describe this as surfacing your valuable corporate intelligence and activity. For example, if you're trying to schedule a meeting with Mike in Product Engineering and notice his user profile status says "finishing up client specifications doc", you might want to avoid sending that Outlook meeting request. If you had an RSS subscription to Mike's blog, you would have had that insight.
10 . You'll have some innovation on display as you try and recruit all those Gen Y Workers.
Across the board you'll hear companies, especially large ones, stress the importance of recruitment and retention of younger workers. How can you expect to lure the youthful digital natives if you can't build the right village around them? Evolution provides a helluva start to the blueprint.
11. And finally, you can actually be a part of the conversation instead of just watching it on the sidelines.
Have a gripe about something that doesn't work? No problem, you have all sorts of ways to submit feedback. You can find an appropriate group, participate in a specific forum, or create a blog post that's highly visible across the community software landscape. Flexibility and understanding the way people interact and engage in digital environments underscores much of the vision those of us have in Enterprise 2.0 tools and community platforms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Bio:
George Dearing is Corporate Evangelist for Telligent, who spends most of his time helping customers use social software and services to grow their business.
George has written about technology, social computing and Enterprise 2.0 for InformationWeek, Social Media Today, Content Management Connection and The FastForward Blog. He is also anchor publisher of The Enterprise Content Management Network.
George's microblogging coordinates are below:
Twitter | http://twitter.com/georgedearing
Tumblr | http://www.dearingsdashboard.com
Jaiku | http://georgedearing.jaiku.com
Posterous | http://georgedearing.posterous.com
venerdì 17 ottobre 2008
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