Three questions to ask when implementing an enterprise collaboration system:

What is the reason for it?

Who is responsible for making it successful?

How is it going to work?

There is a common belief among enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts (like myself) that an enterprise social media application will organically sprout collaboration in the work place. This belief is rooted in the fact that all of us are using social media sites in our private life - why can’t we do the same in our professional life? Of course we can. But then why do half of the enterprise 2.0 initiatives fail? Because in many cases management attention is concentrated on the technology rather than the organizational change.

My experience implementing several enterprise applications taught me that introducing any new technology requires paying attention to three questions: What is the reason for the change? Who is responsible for making it successful? And how is it going to work?

What is the reason for the change? For people to change behavior, we need to know why we should. How will new ways of doing things add value to our organization? We use Facebook because we like to share with friends and family, and we like to keep in touch. To use a similar tool in the workplace we need to have a compelling reason.

• How will it make us more competitive?
• How will it increase efficiency?
• How is it going to make my job easier?

Who is responsible for making the project successful? Everyone needs to get involved, from senior management to the customer support representative. Too many times these projects are being treated as an IT pet project. It’s the job of IT to make sure the technology works. But it’s not IT’s job to generate business value from the system. This is everyone’s job. The key is to get people involved and give them responsibilities. For example you might say to the project manager, “Our goal is to reduce the average timeline by 20%.  How do you think you can use the new system to achieve this goal? What needs to be improved/changed?”

How is it going to work? Planning is one of those things that’s easy to talk about, but very hard to do right. Let’s take Knowledge Management, for example. The ability to collect and disseminate knowledge has potential for high ROI, especially for companies where employee know-how is the source of competitive advantage.

But how do you build KM? That is the million dollar question. One important thing to remember is that knowledge management systems don’t grow organically, they need to be engineered. Think about Wikipedia -- when it started, it didn’t start from nothing. It had previous encyclopedias to use for example and structure. Those encyclopedias were engineered -- someone decided what entries to add, who will write them and how they will grow over time. Similarly, when designing a KM someone needs to be responsible to decide on subject lists, creating a manageable scope, deciding who will contribute their knowledge, and installing a peer review process to ensure quality. This process requires resources and commitment over time - excellent KMs are not built in a quarter and they don’t build themselves.

The same can be said for implementing an enterprise 2.0 system.

When implementing an enterprise 2.0 system, remember: make sure there is a good reason to do so, make sure key people in the organization are committed to its success, and carefully design and follow the implementation plan.

To what extent does using Enterprise 2.0 tools increase the competitive advantage?

I swear I am getting a gray hair every time I come across an organization that uses email to share knowledge and collaborate on documents.

In the year 2011 there are so many tools that facilitate creativity and enable people to work together. It really seems just a matter of time until the transition to Enterprise 2.0 will be here.  But, at the same time, many organizations out there are still living in the early 2000’s or even 1990's. The model of operation is shifting. The question is: to what extent does using Enterprise 2.0 tools increase the competitive advantage?

Comments are welcome.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bqif0

Collaboration framework

Check out this SlideShare Presentation by Prem Kumar Aparanji. On slide 6 Prem has a Collaboration Maturity Model. The model depicts the different levels of collaborations and with whom you need to collaborate.  For example, using the open source model to accomplish tasks with a broad community, or creating an innovative new product by working with customers & partners.

This model is useful when implementing an social enterprise application because it helps thinking through collaborate in a variety of situations.

Collaboration framework

View more presentations from Prem Kumar Aparanji.

What Could Be Google’s Next Collaboration Application?

Last week Google announced that they stopped developing Wave. Wave is a ground-breaking online collaboration tool that allows users to work together in real time. The underlying goal of Wave was to be “the next big thing” after email. The technology behind Wave is impressive and for sure will trickle down to other applications in Google’s portfolio. Much has been said about the different reasons it failed, and I don’t see much reason to repeat it. I would like to speak about one concept that Wave employed that hopefully will live on - the idea of putting everything in one place.

Wave gave the user a blank canvas with which to work. The canvas could be used to write text, share documents, upload images, manage tasks, create diagrams and even build a custom application to meet particular needs. Everything that was created/added was in one thread (Wave). Putting technology challenges aside, the idea is pretty neat, and it’s especially beneficial for collaboration. One of the reoccurring themes in my online collaboration experience is the ongoing need to manage the collaboration activities – keeping everyone updated, making sure files are versioned, and cleaning outdated information. This is because most affordable and popular collaboration means are a mash-up of different tools – chat, email, tasks, calendar and documents. The result is a collaboration environment that is separated into different silos. The need to bridge the silos is evident. Improving the intuitiveness and the transparency of collaboration tools will increase productivity. Tools that achieve these goals have the potential to become ubiquitous with collaboration.  

Facebook can be looked at as a good example for intuitiveness and transparency. A user can easily make status updates and view her friends’ updates in one intuitive and transparent interface. Imagine a business collaboration application that lets you, post messages, add comments, send email, manage tasks, share documents, schedule meetings and more in one centralized place. Wouldn’t be nice?

Google has everything in place to make such an application by marrying key features from Docs, Calendar, and Gmail into a social network-like interface (something similar to Google’s Buzz). Here is an example how it can work:

·          John: create a new thread “Acme Proposal” and invite Sahara and Mark to it.

·         John: uploads Acme original request, and share two other documents – standard contract and product presentation.

o   All files are stored by the application in the “Acme Proposal” folder that corresponds to the thread.

·         Sahara: review Acme request and modify the product presentation to match the request.

o   The application inserts a comment “presentation was updated by Sahara on…..” and link to the document version history.

·         Mark: review Sahara’s change and add comments on the presentation.

o   The application displays those comments on the thread.

·         Mark: schedule a meeting to discuss possible changes to the contract.

Using a social network interface as a collaboration platform for the Google Business Application can really make it the next big collaboration tool and a great comeback for the core idea behind Wave, and have the potential to become ubiquitous with online collaboration.