Tags: social-in-business social-business technology social-technology tools

In this installment of the social in Business we address the Technology of Social in business. .

Rather than rattling off the current social tools market with my color commentary, I felt this topic is a good opportunity to talk about the “technology” of Social Technology. My main point is that there are many tools that fall into the social technology market category. The social capabilities that each tool supports are key to knowing which tools to deploy in the business. You've by now likely heard me preach about the perils of installing technology for technology’s sake (cue soapbox). If you’ve been following this series by now hopefully you have caught on that social in business is not a " build it an they will come" scenario; that it takes time, forethought and concentrated effort to make social solutions a success in the business environment.

Rather than rattling off the current social tools market with my color commentary, I felt this topic is a good opportunity to talk about the “technology” of Social Technology. My main point is that there are many tools that fall into the social technology market category. The social capabilities that each tool supports are key to knowing which tools to deploy in the business. You've by now likely heard me preach about the perils of installing technology for technology’s sake (cue soapbox). If you’ve been following this series by now hopefully you have caught on that social in business is not a " build it an they will come" scenario; that it takes time, forethought and concentrated effort to make social solutions a success in the business environment

• First came e-mail, which has dominated electronic communications since the early 1970’s and still (according to a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll) supports more than 85% of communications worldwide. E-mail continues to make our working lives better and miserable all that the same time.
• As productivity tools and networks improved collaborative tools began to make more sense for doing interactive processes with groups of people.
• Then, as networks expanded (corporate and Internet) and devices got "smarter" (e.g., mobile phones and laptops) we looked to better forms for real-time communication (e.g., chatting and conferencing) and collaboration. This movement helped to bring down organizational and operational barriers of time, device, and location.
• As the Internet grew and improved security emerged, the consumerization of electronic communications exploded. The opportunity to re-design the interfaces for electronic communications allowed us to add on more nuanced personalization and interaction with our information and colleagues.

Buying or building depends on existing tools (read licenses), the firm’s IT environment, the goals for social, risk and business tolerance. These choices can't be made in a vacuum. Sound social tool decisions can only be made by understanding how social technology is supporting the business: electronic communication with a personal touch.

So what does that mean for social in business? It means that choosing social tools depends heavily on the way the business communicates and how that communication supports the business’ needs. Savvy companies take time to understand their environment and business needs, to identify specific use cases and purposes for the social tools and then assemble the tools accordingly. In other words, knowing the value of communications tools on the business and which ones are most appropriate for the firm is paramount to a successful social tools strategy.

The social business tools market is growing rapidly and, typical of new markets, the market is dynamic and volatile. It’s a complex equation to decide which tools to deploy. The gnarly set of options today include:

• Cloud or in-house
• Hosted (dedicated or shared)
• Consumer (e.g., Facebook or Google+)
• Traditional productivity vendors e.g., IBM (Notes+Samtime+Connections) or Microsoft (soupped-up SharePoint)
• Cloud-based business solutions e.g. Yammer or Salesforce.com add-ons
• Social business solutions such as Jive or SocialText on/off premises

Buying or building depends on existing tools (read licenses), the firm’s IT environment, the goals for social, risk and business tolerance. These choices can't be made in a vacuum. Sound social tool decisions can only be made by understanding how social technology is supporting the business: electronic communication with a personal touch.

Our Social in Business Series

Part 1 - What we are talking about
Part 2 - Build it and they will come (?)
Part 3 - What are we doing here anyway?
Part 4 - Rubber meet Road

About Karen Hobert

Karen is an IT industry research analyst focused on communication, collaboration, content management and social software technologies. She offers over 23 years of hands-on and market expertise to enterprises planning, designing, and deploying shared information systems. You can see more of her thoughts at Karen Hobert's Connecting Dots blog.

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 08:02:53 AM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: strategy social business social software social in business

In this next installment of Social in Business we focus on Strategy.

Hopefully the thesis of this post shouldn’t knock your socks off; in a nutshell, businesses need a social software strategy in order for the social in business to be successful at the firm.

Want to reach the holy grail of an e-mail free working environment? In reality what you’ll likely find, especially if you do the strategy legwork, is that the goal is not getting rid of e-mail. Rather, the goal is to improve e-mail usage so that it is not a drag on productivity. And yes, social tools can help with that. That goal, however, will never be achieved unless the firm puts in place a strategy with plans and guidelines for effectively mitigating e-mail stresses through social tools.

By strategy I mean a well-considered plan for selecting, deploying, managing, and educating users on the technology that will support social working activities. Social software options (e.g., vendors, tools, cloud, on-premise) options can become overwhelming very quickly. A good strategy considers the different options, how the business works, and then gauges success through identifiable metrics and milestones. It also means doing a fair amount of homework on the technology state, corporate governance, internal communications, cost factors, and operational requirements for deploying different options. Assessing this information and building a strategy that addresses these factors of the business not only aids in making decisions but also helps to identify viable solutions and (hopefully) documents the rationale for those decisions.

Why is this necessary? Because, like anything else in business, times and technology change. If the firm knows why it chose something in the first place, and documented what was successful and what failed, it will be a lot easier to modify and keep up with new trends as they come along. For example, knowing why the firm chose an on-premise solution over cloud-based solution is valuable information, especially if the reasons, cost, and rationale for that choice are documented and the plan is clearly defined on paper. It becomes much easier to recalibrate choices or make changes should a compelling reason for one choice become obsolete. Going back to the example, subsequent network upgrades might cloud-based solutions easier to support and more cost effective, hence the firm can quickly revisit the old rationale and decide if it applies any longer.

Strategies also help to communicate to the business and executives the nature of social software and that it takes time for success. Documenting the plan for development, deployment, and success metrics for social in business helps non-technical colleagues understand the cultural and working shifts that come with social software. It becomes much easier for the business to support new technology efforts if they know what to expect and when.

We all know that a good strategy and plan makes life easier with fewer gotchas when it comes to deployment. It can be hard to reign in enthusiasm for something new that will solve the “big” issues, but it’s worth the effort to take the time for strategy. No matter what the strategy is, the firm is better off with one. Even if the strategy is to let things grow organically and ad hoc, at least the consideration of the risks have been addressed, communicated and documented. What’s not to like about that?

Our Social in Business Series

Part 1 - What we are talking about
Part 2 - Build it and they will come (?)
Part 3 - What are we doing here anyway?

About Karen Hobert

Karen is an IT industry research analyst focused on communication, collaboration, content management and social software technologies. She offers over 23 years of hands-on and market expertise to enterprises planning, designing, and deploying shared information systems. You can see more of her thoughts at Karen Hobert's Connecting Dots blog.

Posted by Karen Hobert At 10:36:54 AM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: social business social software enterprise

This is the third post in the Top Dog/Elguji Social in Business blog series. The first post was entitled "Social in Business: What we are talking about" and the second was entitled "Social in Business: Build it and they will come (?)".

Today we focus on Objectives.

So if you’ve followed my blog (or other similar minded bloggers) you’ve likely come across one of my occasional rants about the pitfalls of buying technology for technology’s sake. This is sort of one of those posts in this installment of “Social in Business”, Objective.

It’s hard to pick a technology, even an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink type of technology as social software, if you don’t know what you need it for. Actually one of the drawbacks of technologies that offer many options, such as social software, is that it is the potential answer to many issues. Vendor’s sales and marketing like the Swiss Army Knife utility of social software because they can answer “yes” to many customer needs but it makes things that much harder to for the customer to figure out if it really needs the product or not. More specifically, with so many options it can be very hard to identify which parts of the product offer the most value to customer’s business.

Who knew the toothpick on the Swiss Army knife would end up being so handy? Taking the Swiss Army knife analogy a bit further, today there are many versions of the renowned knife on the market that customer’s really need to know what they want to carry around in their pockets and what is likely to be most useful; corkscrew or none? For me a corkscrew-less version would be virtually useless. And what about the semi-retired boy scout who might benefit more with a Leatherman. It’s all a matter of knowing which features will serve the greatest purpose for the unique needs of the customer. Regardless of which model the customer chooses, they will likely use some tools in the kit more than others depending on their needs.

The same applies when choosing social software for enterprises. Much depends on the firm’s needs and how it operates. In other words, if a firm has a strong hierarchy with lots of structure and formalized ways of completing work its social software needs are likely to be different from a de-centralized, cross-organizational firm that functions in more organic ways. Both are viable organizations but they have very different objectives and expectations for the social software technologies that they employ.

Before picking a specific social software technology, and more specifically a vendor, enterprises should look at the objectives for the technology. If it turns out that there are many objectives, pick the objectives that will provide the most value to the firm. Make these the leading objectives for the technology to solve and focus on how to achieve them. Some may be solved without any technology or simply by improving on existing technologies. But the key idea is that the firm must know what it needs to work on before picking a tool or technology.

Identifying the leading objectives for social software in the enterprise and how to meet them cannot be done in an IT vacuum and must include input from the business and operational sides of the firm. This will ensure greater success and adoption when the business is part of creating the solution. It is vital for enterprises to understand the working culture, needs, and goals for the social technologies they want to deploy prior to choosing which one to buy. Otherwise they might just end up with a giant, expensive brick in their pockets.

About Karen Hobert

Karen is an IT industry research analyst focused on communication, collaboration, content management and social software technologies. She offers over 23 years of hands-on and market expertise to enterprises planning, designing, and deploying shared information systems. You can see more of her thoughts at Karen Hobert's Connecting Dots blog.

Posted by Karen Hobert At 06:49:21 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: social business people social software

This is the second post in the Top Dog/Elguji Social in Business blog series. The first post was entitled "Social in Business: What we are talking about". Today we focus on people.

Social - tending or form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others.1

By its very nature, the term social implies people. I particularly like this definition of “social” since it is open-ended enough to us to consider “others” as either people or information. After all, in the world of “social software” what we're really discussing here are technologies that foster relationships between people and other people, people and information, and information with other information. Bottom line is that social in business aims to tap into people and the human factors of how work gets accomplished. This is tricky stuff. There are so many subjective factors that a one-size-fits-all approach to social software in the enterprise is virtually impossible. What we can do is look at best practices and figure out if they support the specific business or process we seek to improve and then apply what makes best sense to succeed.

As noted in our first post, enterprises are moving beyond the "it's just a fad" opinion of social software to cautious optimism and beginning to formulate just what social software would look like at their firm and how it can improve business. The fact that social software in each business can mean different things is probably a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it's great to have many options but on the other hand it means more complexity in figuring out which options to implement first or which things will support the firms needs the best.

Understanding which options to pick means having a good idea on how people at the firm work and what tools will help them do their jobs most effectively. Today that's a moving target. With mobile, consumer tools (e.g., Facebook, Google Plus), globalization, telecommuting, and the changing workforces, not only are the lines blurred between work and personal business but also navigating the matrix of different working styles is becoming more difficult to quantify and address. For example, the fact that I’m siting in a café in downtown LA right now while writing this does not mean I am any more or less effective than if I were sitting at a desk in an office building. In other words firms need to address all of these “human” factors to keep up and make a productive working environment.

Since people are vital to social in business we are seeing HR, Operations, and departments other than IT initiating social in business. This makes a lot of sense, considering that we are talking about working with and impacting the culture of the organization and how it works. It also makes sense that parts of the organization dedicated to its culture and operations are very interested in what happens with social technology. IT has the power to make the enterprise more effective but IT has never been accused of being a social mover or shaker. Rightfully so, IT really should not be in the business of changing corporate working culture; it should be in the business of making sure that people work effectively and securely through the proper use and implementation of tools. IT’s role is to help the human factors side of the business succeed at social in business. This can only be accomplished through planning, implementing, and cooperating with the people parts of the business.

Social software in business isn’t just a matter of “build it and they will come.” Rather, social in business requires first, an understanding of how people work together with others (people and information) to conduct business. Only then can IT implement and create an ecosystem that will support the social business needs most effectively.

1. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social

About Karen Hobert

Karen is an IT industry research analyst focused on communication, collaboration, content management and social software technologies. She offers over 23 years of hands-on and market expertise to enterprises planning, designing, and deploying shared information systems. You can see more of her thoughts at Karen Hobert's Connecting Dots blog.

Posted by Karen Hobert At 04:41:04 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: ideajam news evaluation




We are happy to announce that IdeaJam V1.9.1 is now available for download. Elguji customers with active maintenance and support agreements can download this version at http://elguji.com/download. The release notes for IdeaJam V1.9.1 are also available.

We also have evaluation versions of IdeaJam V1.9.1 also available. Interested? Drop me an email or feel free to fill out this short form.

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 03:16:36 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: social business strategy collective intelligence interest cultivation expertise location relationship leverage

For the last 6 months I’ve been having regular discussions with Bruce Elgort on the subject of Social Software in business. Bruce is in the business of helping companies collect and build ideas. The firm he co-founded, Elguji, is, as the web site masthead says, “Helping Companies Innovate” by offering tools (such as its best-selling IdeaJam) that facilitate collaboration to effectively bring new ideas to market. Together we’ve been looking at the ins-an-outs of deploying social media in a business environment and the earmarks of success. Long story short, we decided to put some of our thoughts down in prose and broadcast it to our readers in a series of blog posts on Social in Business.

Just to be clear, you may have read my recent posts about IBM’s Social Business Gambit and my thoughts about IBM’s new social approach to the collaboration and communications market. These posts are not about that, instead, they are focused on approaches and strategies that businesses can develop as they explore social media in the business environment.

Social in Business Today

Enterprise IT is beginning to move into a formulation phase in the evolution of social tools in business. Recent presentations by research analysts (e.g., Gartner, Forester) and vendors (e.g., IBM) are moving from the question of “What is Social?” to the discussion of “Strategies for Social.” This new conversation indicates that customers are looking beyond the fad and considering how social within the organization might impact them.

The perspective is also shifting from external to internal social. If we were to poll most executives on what social is we'd likely get more of an external facing response, such as “brand building” or “customer interfacing”. But as Gartner points out in a recent webinar, “Taking a Strategic Approach Social Media”, there are at least 6 opportunities for what Gartner calls Mass Collaboration by using social inside the business. That list includes:

• Collective intelligence
• Expertise location
• Interest cultivation
• Relationship leverage
• Flash coordination
• Emergent structures

Gartner also notes that oftentimes when a firm engages in social initiatives, the projects typically take advantage of more than one of these opportunities. Rightfully so, once tools are in place for doing one thing they invariably support other activities. The trick is to identify the most valuable opportunities for the firm and foster their success.

The Mission: Build a Strategy

Agility and versatility in IT environment is the new mission of the IT Operations Manager who is becoming more a solutions architect than an implementer. IBM’s last three annual CIO studies note that along with cost savings innovation is a priority for most organizations. So cost saving and innovation are not mutually exclusive. CIOs see IT delivery as having it all. As Bruce asked me how does the director of it operations do it? How do they keep up?

Overall managers, business and IT, need to consider all the options for social in the business and design a strategy to be successful within the parameters of their business. A strategy will help the organization to understand what needs to be done, how to choose the technologies it will deploy, and guide decision-making. In agile companies strategies are organic and evolve informing modifications while the firm’s needs change. Strategies also serve as an anchor for making sound decisions. If certain assumptions and rational were used to make one decision they can likely be used or modified for future decisions.

More to Come…

We’ll be posting more of these types of topics in the upcoming weeks. We hope these blogs will get you thinking more about the things that we are concerned about. We think the tactical and strategic market knowledge of Elguji and Top Dog is a great combination to help you to kick-start your social in business strategies.

About Karen Hobert

Karen is an IT industry research analyst focused on communication, collaboration, content management and social software technologies. She offers over 23 years of hands-on and market expertise to enterprises planning, designing, and deploying shared information systems. You can see more of her thoughts at Karen Hobert's Connecting Dots blog.

Posted by Karen Hobert At 01:14:16 PM Location Los Angeles, CA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: case study ideajam




Today we posted a case study about Winn-Dixie Stores which used Elguji's cloud based IdeaJam services. Elguji Partner Simplified-Technology-Solutions worked with Elguji and Winn-Dixie to make their jam a success.

Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., a regional grocery chain of nearly 500 stores based in the Southeast United States and headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., rolled out a new strategic frame work called the WINN-ing Way in mid-2011. Through this the company introduced a new company vision and new set of values and promises to key stakeholders. Communication to and feedback from the chain’s 46,000 team members, most in stores scattered across five states, was critical to the campaign’s success.

Winn-Dixie partnered with Elguji Software to establish an online forum to allow team members across the company to come together in a LIVE online discussion to exchange ideas and give feedback on the WINN-ing Way.

...

Team member response was very positive. “IdeaJam is one the BEST things I have ever taken part of in my 25 year career with Winn-Dixie!” one Team Member commented. “I am very excited about Winn-Dixie’s future, and proud to be part of it and am ‘In it to Winn It!’ THANK YOU!”

...

Winn-Dixie’s leadership has already implemented several of the ideas received and many of the others have been turned into active projects and initiatives.

Read the Winn-Dixie IdeaJam Case Study >

Posted by Gayle Elgort At 11:52:18 AM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: awards ideajam ibm ics




At the annual IBM Lotusphere event held last week in Orlando, Florida, Elguji's IdeaJam idea management software was recognized as a Finalist in the "Innovation in Social Business Application Development Utilizing the Social Business Framework" during the Opening General Session. This award recognizes ISV's who:

Provide the best solution for an exceptional Web or "Work Social" experience utilizing IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) products, and/or the IBM Web Experience software solutions including the application development tools. The offering must leverage new technology innovations such as the Social Business Toolkit, or XPages Extension Library, Web Experience Factory builders, and Mobile Controls. Submissions for this award should be solutions that leverage these new technologies to address a specific business need by:

• Enabling interactions with customers or employees through online social networks (on-premise, cloud, or public social network sites)
• Enhancing situational awareness through analysis of social data, or
• Supporting contextual collaboration by integrating social capabilities into existing or new business applications leveraging OpenSocial gadgets and creating an embedded experience

IdeaJam has also earned Elguji many other IBM/Lotus awards since it's launch in 2008:

• 2009 Lotus CTO Innovation Award
• 2009 Lotus Breakout Technology Award
• Lotusphere 2009 Best of Product Showcase Finalist Award
• 2009 IBM Beacon Award Innovative Collaboration Solution with Lotus Software Award
• Finalist 2010 IBM Beacon Award Innovative Collaboration Solution with Lotus Software
• Finalist 2010 Best TOTAL Lotus Collaboration Solution Award
• Finalist 2010 Best End-User Solution Award

Congratulations to the Trilog Group for winning the award and to SCSK Corpoation for also being named a Finalist.

Posted by Gayle Elgort At 06:04:40 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: case study gsx elguji ideajam




IBM recently published a customer case study about GSX's use of Elguji's IdeaJam. Antoine Leboyer, CEO, GSX said “We never set a goal to be ‘social.’ We just focused on what was key to ensuring our success, which I believed was improved collaboration with customers.”

Here's what's in the case study:

The need:

GSX, which provides monitoring and management solutions for collaboration platforms, is in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Like most companies, core internal players had always provided the vision for GSX’s new product development. Given competitive pressures and customer needs, however, GSX sought a way to more rapidly and effectively iterate products based on customer input.

The solution

GSX turned to a platform called IdeaJam, which was developed by Elugi using IBM Lotus® Domino® software. The platform provided an easy way for GSX to open up an ongoing dialogue with key customers about new product features and capabilities that are needed to address key business challenges. IdeaJam also integrates with IBM Connections software, so users can create custom portal pages, share profile information and more.

The benefits:

• Enabled GSX to more rapidly develop new products and services that customers need, helping drive growth and profitability
• Started dialogues between GSX and customers, as well as among GSX customers about common challenges, helping increase customer satisfaction
• Resulted in a better ongoing alignment of product features and capabilities with customer needs, helping improve competitive advantage

Download the GSX IdeaJam case study and other IdeaJam case studies.

Posted by Gayle Elgort At 03:50:23 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tags: ideajam iqjam trial evaluation


Just a quick blog entry to let you know that we do offer 14 day trials of IdeaJam and IQJam. Every single feature is available for you to use. You can customize the way it looks, use it in Spanish, French, German or any other languages we offer, you can use the API, and much more. The only thing you don't get with the trial is access to the underlying database design.

And if you decide to purchase either product you won't lose any of your test data. You simply get a new license key and access to the unlocked database template.

Interested? Drop me an email or feel free to fill out this short form.

Posted by Gayle Elgort At 06:22:16 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (1)