With the high levels of innovation and complexity in banking products, our client wanted to ensure that people involved in the negotiation and implementation of associated transactions could stay abreast of change and be better connected with relevant expertise and information. In that context, we have been working in a consultancy capacity with members of pilot groups from distinct operational areas and communities, to identify key processes/business needs to be supported by well-positioned social tools.
Connecting people with information and expertise
The project stemmed from the client's initiative to explore improvements to existing work process, and opportunities for better networking and collaboration. The perception was that practices were constrained by existing systems, which did not adequately connect people, information and expertise. Many of their issues stemmed from the (over) use of shared drives, spreadsheets and emails.
Pilot groups with distinct yet representative needs were selected for the project, to enable us to examine the depth and breadth of possibilities for improvement in people's ability to find, share, and use information and expertise.
Our work with those groups fell into two broad areas:
1. Information-related operations
2. Social networking
In the first area we focused on designing a social tools platform to improve the findability, retrievability and processes for updating documentation, linking contextual information to underlying information, and promoting knowledge capture and sharing.
In the second area we investigated how that same platform could facilitate increased communication, networking and collaboration between globally dispersed group members in relation to 'event' organisation activities, with a view to the future extension of the platform to regional groups and their networking activities.
Solving the problems
Common themes echoed throughout our pilot group workshops included:
Our user-centric analysis enabled us to prepare use cases which would enable us to address those issues through the integration of social tools with work processes and existing technology investments. That approach ensured that we did not squeeze users into pre-existing software models and workflows.
Implementing social tools that fit the use cases
Our recommended solution combined, amongst other things, a wiki, shared blogs, book-marking, tagging and personalised pages. Rather than developing multiple distinct sets of requirements, our investigation identified commonalities to be implemented across the current (and potentially future) pilot groups, together with individual sets of requirements that characterise the interaction within each of the pilot groups.
The wiki's high level of configurability allowed us to design with the users global and page templates, which highlight key pieces of information and create sign-posts to the underlying documentation, as well as allow users to comment on different content areas within the pages.
A key issue we have been helping the pilot groups overcome is the traditional problem associated with hierarchical file and folder structures - namely that documents can reside in only one place and therefore one category. However, in many instances the same document may relate to different jurisdictions, products, or clients. Consequently, we have devised a customised 'tagging' interface to enable users to place and view documents in relation to a number of different categories.
Blogs also form an important part of the solution to the email problem. Using the group blog to share ideas and opinions about issues, then linking those discussions to relevant documents attachments in the wiki, will provide users with a stream of information to update yesterday's agreement with today's intelligence.
Adopting popular aspects from social networking sites
Based on the feedback from pilot group members, we have adopted popular aspects of public social networking sites that suit the corporate culture and the more specific needs of the groups. More particularly, this involved personalising the interaction by showing who's online, letting people write in each other's blogs, sharing upcoming event information and news about conferences and networking functions.
As a result, the client now has clearly defined requirements tailored to user needs and work processes for the development and roll-out of a social software platform.
Connecting people with information and expertise
The project stemmed from the client's initiative to explore improvements to existing work process, and opportunities for better networking and collaboration. The perception was that practices were constrained by existing systems, which did not adequately connect people, information and expertise. Many of their issues stemmed from the (over) use of shared drives, spreadsheets and emails.
Pilot groups with distinct yet representative needs were selected for the project, to enable us to examine the depth and breadth of possibilities for improvement in people's ability to find, share, and use information and expertise.
Our work with those groups fell into two broad areas:
1. Information-related operations
2. Social networking
In the first area we focused on designing a social tools platform to improve the findability, retrievability and processes for updating documentation, linking contextual information to underlying information, and promoting knowledge capture and sharing.
In the second area we investigated how that same platform could facilitate increased communication, networking and collaboration between globally dispersed group members in relation to 'event' organisation activities, with a view to the future extension of the platform to regional groups and their networking activities.
Solving the problems
Common themes echoed throughout our pilot group workshops included:
- The lack of genuinely flexible technology to allow people to collate ideas, discussions, communications, opinions, and other information regarding underlying documentation or group activities
- The ability for the above to be easily accessed, updated, searched and personalised.
Our user-centric analysis enabled us to prepare use cases which would enable us to address those issues through the integration of social tools with work processes and existing technology investments. That approach ensured that we did not squeeze users into pre-existing software models and workflows.
Implementing social tools that fit the use cases
Our recommended solution combined, amongst other things, a wiki, shared blogs, book-marking, tagging and personalised pages. Rather than developing multiple distinct sets of requirements, our investigation identified commonalities to be implemented across the current (and potentially future) pilot groups, together with individual sets of requirements that characterise the interaction within each of the pilot groups.
The wiki's high level of configurability allowed us to design with the users global and page templates, which highlight key pieces of information and create sign-posts to the underlying documentation, as well as allow users to comment on different content areas within the pages.
A key issue we have been helping the pilot groups overcome is the traditional problem associated with hierarchical file and folder structures - namely that documents can reside in only one place and therefore one category. However, in many instances the same document may relate to different jurisdictions, products, or clients. Consequently, we have devised a customised 'tagging' interface to enable users to place and view documents in relation to a number of different categories.
Blogs also form an important part of the solution to the email problem. Using the group blog to share ideas and opinions about issues, then linking those discussions to relevant documents attachments in the wiki, will provide users with a stream of information to update yesterday's agreement with today's intelligence.
Adopting popular aspects from social networking sites
Based on the feedback from pilot group members, we have adopted popular aspects of public social networking sites that suit the corporate culture and the more specific needs of the groups. More particularly, this involved personalising the interaction by showing who's online, letting people write in each other's blogs, sharing upcoming event information and news about conferences and networking functions.
As a result, the client now has clearly defined requirements tailored to user needs and work processes for the development and roll-out of a social software platform.