A lot of people are dreaming about driving a Ferrari one day, unfortunately only a few are privileged. So what do you do if you are a car nut? You start with a Fiat Grande Punto, later on upgrade to an Alfa Romeo, when you get that promotion you go for a second hand Maserati and maybe one day you’ll have budget enough to buy that Ferrari.
I don’t know ANYBODY that takes the public transport for 25 years just to wait for the moment that he/she can buy that car. Why? Well you do need to go from point A to point B, so you just need something that does that job if your budget is bit limited. You settle for a solution that works NOW, something that does the job, gives you value for money and you settle with the fact that it is a little less glamorous than the Ferrari…
Over time, when you start to settle down and kids come there is a chance that you value other things in life, like a big house with a garden. The Ferrari is off the plan.
Sounds simple?
It sure does, so why don’t we take this very simple life approach and apply it to adopting Enterprise 2.0 systems in large global corporations then?
Awaiting the Walhalla
I’ve seen large global corporations not having a business collaboration platform because they have a hard time aligning all their business units who are each using their own tools. Or there are so many different views of what needs to happen that it takes ages to reach consensus. The larger the company, the more widespread and the more independent the different business units, the more likely this will happen.
What would you prefer?
- Not having a business collaboration platform at all for three years, with the risk that after three years you get something that only partially fits your needs, or
- having a business collaboration platform now, that has a high value add to your particular business unit, with the risk that in three years there will be 6 to 8 different platforms in your 100 000-people company?
Or let me rephrase it: do you want to drive a Fiat now, or don’t drive a car at all and wait several years for a Ferrari that might never come?
Gimme a Fiat please
“All good and well, but Lee, didn’t you say earlier that we should also focus on platform consolidation as a good manager?” – I hear you rightfully saying. Yes, my suggestion to go for the Fiat, does have the implication that over a couple of year’s time we might end up with several platforms. From a pure IT cost point of view a dreadful option because it will cost much more to keep eight different platforms up and running instead of one to rule them all.
But how much business value does it bring you? Or rather, how much do you lose each day by not having a proper collaboration, communication and knowledge platform? I’d say that in most cases the business benefit of having multiple platforms that work, outweighs the higher IT cost.
It’s only a problem if you let it be one
And there is even better news: multiple knowledge repositories/silos don’t necessarily need to be a problem. What do you think that Google is doing? They are indexing a gazillion knowledge repositories all over the web and trying to make sense out of it. In my previous post I’ve argued that we should start to rely on smarter software and better hardware, well here’s exactly why. With the proper software from vendors like System One, Inquira, Autonomy and some others, we can index those knowledge silos and take it to a whole new level.
These search++ (++ because it is SO much more than just search) solutions index everything and cross-link all the data in your organisation and do tons of voodoo things: entity recognition (it recognises dog, but also that Labrador is a dog), similar content (ideal for searching for instance similar contracts or project initiation documents), enriching content (mashing different internal and external data sources), translations, etc
So, shall we just give up?
Does that mean that we can happily give up the ideal world scenario? Not at all! Keep in mind that I urge you to strive for Walhalla, however in my posts I try to point you to some (temporary?) solutions that will help you bridge the time needed to reach Walhalla. Solutions that might sound inefficient or weird at first sight, but that will give you direct business value.
An approach you could take is to identify which ones of those 6 or 8 platforms are really successful, identify the usage patterns and user stories. Run some workshops and do some stakeholder interviews. Genuinely understand what our business users need and want. Then see if you can consolidate systems, move communities to other platforms, migrate data, etc.
Be careful with this: pick the right battles, on the right moment. It makes sense that if you have an extremely successful platform and community, that you don’t just migrate them away for the sake of migrating. Also, focus on good opportunities like when you need to upgrade to a newer version of the particular platform.
It’s a never-ending story
So when is your job finished? Most likely if you are working in a large knowledge-intensive organisation, I’d say: never. Nowadays, everything changes at such a rapid speed, that also the needs of the people in your organisation and the organisation itself changes at a rapid speed. The perfect solution you are adopting today might not fit your needs anymore in two years.
Knowledge management, collaboration and communication are not an end-goal. They are just supporting you in doing your business more efficient and effective. Your business changes over time, and so do your Enterprise 2.0 systems.
Need some help in a pragmatic approach in starting with business collaboration or Enterprise 2.0 solutions in your organisation? Drop me a mail at lee.provoost@headshift.com.
I really liked this blogpost.
In my view the main benefits from Enterprise 2.0 can be gained from the simplest tools l(ike Yammer). Low threshold tools utilizing the weak ties within the company. Tools that allow you to get answers from people you didn’t even know exist.
What is important is that the tools must lower the cost of the collaboration – not increase it through complexity.
Working for a large automotive OEM, BMW, for a couple of years I have come across video conferencing, Sametime, Netmeeting (all tools already embedded in the operating system). Mostly people never used them because meeting in person made it not necessary.
As we set up the plant in Leipzig (well 5-6 hours away from the other plants down in Bavaria) the use of virtual connection across plants and also within the new plant in Leipzig became valuable and time saving.
The following quote by JorgenDalen is quite right and I am totally with him,
“What is important is that the tools must lower the cost of the collaboration – not increase it through complexity.”
That is my mission to help companies across the globe to use new tools in order to lower the overall time and hazzle due to recent processes.
Best regards
Ralf
PS.: There is always an easier way – changing completely the organization is never an option for sustainable become better as a whole. Changing step by step from within and adapt to current system that is the way to be – you can start with a FIAT to move on to a Ferrari;-)
@Jorgen @Ralf I really like the statement “What is important is that the tools must lower the cost of the collaboration – not increase it through complexity.”
But we do need to see “the cost” in the bigger picture.
To make it more clear: when you use a cloud computing platform like Amazon, in several use cases the use of cloud computing is more expensive than hosting the servers yourself. However, the added business agility that hosting it in the cloud can offer, might outweigh the potential higher cost of the cloud.
So in the case of your statement, we shouldn’t solely focus on the pure cost of the collaboration process itself, but rather to the overall picture of how much value it brought it us.
Does that make sense?
@Lee Provoost , Thanks a lot for this blog post and if you ask me about my decision I will go with the fait and it might make me forget my Ferrari dream for one reason or the other.
enterprise 2.0 know is very potential solution that could compete with knowledge management platforms and this i how some academics from KM area of study started talking about KM 2.0 which is the use of web 2.0 to enhance KM practices within organisations.
In regards to what you have comment “we shouldn’t solely focus on the pure cost of the collaboration process itself, but rather to the overall picture of how much value it brought it us”, there is also a cost that we pay by not engaging in using web 2.0 in business as it is the trend and the future business opportunity. Most companies know they are thinking web 2.0 and foreshore there are some losers who do not participate.
A very interesting article, Lee. For transparency, OutStart offers an enterprise 2.0 (otherwise known as a social business software solution) so I may be biased but from the beginning, for enterprise 2.0 initiatives and many, many other areas analyst and consultants have been recommending the “get started, get value and learn approach” and then figure out the corporate standard later. Many high value solution areas got started this way. Companies had different vendors for sales force automation and help desk, they had different file systems and databases to name a few. Its the analysis paralysis that can cause the most harm. Getting started on specific initiatives, getting value, learning, and then moving forward is the right way. By the way, my college roommates first two rides were expensive sports cars — he totalled them both.
Jeff Whitney, Outstart, Inc.
blog.outstart.com
@jjeff great to see that your experience/insight is aligned with ours! it’s one of the things I’d sometimes like to yell out loudly “just let’s get started already!”
If organisations want to get ahead of the pack they need to really get to grips with E2.0 to help improve their operations today but also to start to equip them to embrace the New Virtual Enterprise which will adopt internal collaboration, supply chain collaboration and in due course Cyberspace business enabled by SN’s and Virtual Worlds. All these capabilities will be created as a result of adopting VE collaboration today. If we consider how Amazon, iPhone apps and others have left the competitors standing through the use of inter and intra collaboration approaches.