Social software lets employees connect and share in new ways, and can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your organization. But social technologies like microblogging, social networking, automated activity feeds, social spreadsheets, wikis, etc. are new to most organizations, and most IT departments don’t have experience with how to successfully implement them.
Success with social software involves a lot more than simply finding the product that best fits your needs. It involves framing the problem appropriately in the first place, defining your business goals, and choosing a rollout methodology designed to meet those goals. It involves selling your CFO, changing behavior across your organization, and more.
This paper is designed to help you learn from the mistakes of others before you, so you can avoid the common pitfalls of social software, and get fast business value.
According to Gartner, 70% of social implementations fail because they lack a business purpose. When it comes to harnessing the power of social software, a focus on business value is required. This whitepaper defines a strategic framework for gaining business value from social software. It outlines six successful rollout strategies. Each of the six approaches delivers different business results, and has a different level of risk. And most importantly, each has different requirements to succeed. To be successful with social software, you need to choose the rollout strategy that is best for your organization, and understand its requirements for success.
6 Reasons Your Employees Will Love Collaborative LearningBlue Economy Agency
Our latest infographic is a testament of how collaborative learning can help to enhance employee engagement and spark innovation. So if you are looking to score big with your employees this Valentine’s Day you might want to learn how to share the love of collaborative learning!
Social technologies like microblogging and social networking are being used internally by companies to dramatically speed the flow of work. But you need large-scale adoption to get business results that make a difference. This paper provides a blueprint to drive the large-scale adoption of a social software solution, so you get results that are noticed.
Leveraging social technologies and particularly social workflow is a core part of how organizations today can manage the transition to a new way of working or usher in a more holistic cultural change.
Successfully implementing a collaboration platform is essential for realizing business value. The implementation should be split into two distinct phases: initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. IT managers are familiar with the former, but must also be actively involved in the latter to ensure the long-term success of the collaboration environment. This research will help you:
•Understand the common pitfalls that organizations encounter in implementing a collaboration solution.
•Develop an implementation strategy that addresses all steps in the initial platform deployment, as well as ongoing solution design.
•Create a collaboration business analyst role to bridge the gap between IT and the business, and create solutions that meet the needs of permanent and ad-hoc teams.
•Foster an environment that is conducive to end-user adoption of the collaboration platform.
Collaboration implementation misfires are costly and time-consuming. Adhering to best practices around both steps of the implementation will ensure that the full potential of the platform is realized.
According to Gartner, 70% of social implementations fail because they lack a business purpose. When it comes to harnessing the power of social software, a focus on business value is required. This whitepaper defines a strategic framework for gaining business value from social software. It outlines six successful rollout strategies. Each of the six approaches delivers different business results, and has a different level of risk. And most importantly, each has different requirements to succeed. To be successful with social software, you need to choose the rollout strategy that is best for your organization, and understand its requirements for success.
6 Reasons Your Employees Will Love Collaborative LearningBlue Economy Agency
Our latest infographic is a testament of how collaborative learning can help to enhance employee engagement and spark innovation. So if you are looking to score big with your employees this Valentine’s Day you might want to learn how to share the love of collaborative learning!
Social technologies like microblogging and social networking are being used internally by companies to dramatically speed the flow of work. But you need large-scale adoption to get business results that make a difference. This paper provides a blueprint to drive the large-scale adoption of a social software solution, so you get results that are noticed.
Leveraging social technologies and particularly social workflow is a core part of how organizations today can manage the transition to a new way of working or usher in a more holistic cultural change.
Successfully implementing a collaboration platform is essential for realizing business value. The implementation should be split into two distinct phases: initial platform deployment and ongoing solution design. IT managers are familiar with the former, but must also be actively involved in the latter to ensure the long-term success of the collaboration environment. This research will help you:
•Understand the common pitfalls that organizations encounter in implementing a collaboration solution.
•Develop an implementation strategy that addresses all steps in the initial platform deployment, as well as ongoing solution design.
•Create a collaboration business analyst role to bridge the gap between IT and the business, and create solutions that meet the needs of permanent and ad-hoc teams.
•Foster an environment that is conducive to end-user adoption of the collaboration platform.
Collaboration implementation misfires are costly and time-consuming. Adhering to best practices around both steps of the implementation will ensure that the full potential of the platform is realized.
7 Adoption Strategies for Enterprise Collaborationtibbr
Enterprise social networks offer a litany of benefits ranging from better employee engagement to faster problem solving. But, getting the maximum ROI is dependent on one thing: successful employee adoption. How do you get more employees involved on the network? How do you get past initial networking barriers and convince them of its value?
Download 7 Adoption Strategies For Enterprise Collaboration and find out how to unlock productivity through social collaboration.
For more information, please visit http://www.tibbr.com/
The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-ServiceChristian Buckley
Within Office 365, we have multiple methods for social collaboration. Organizations around the world are struggling to understand which tool to use when -- but this is the wrong premise. In this session, we'll discuss the broader concept of 'conversation as a service' and how Microsoft Teams, Outlook Groups, Yammer, and SharePoint all fit together -- and show you how to get the most out of all of them.
What 2015 holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
Here is our annual guide to where we think will be this years Internal Communication trends. This years guide outlines 5 main areas that we think are going to be key in 2015, along with sub themes and a wealth of hints and tips. We hope it is of benefit, and brings you success with your 2015 internal communications!
Social tools are now being offered by a number of collaboration vendors. Many organizations are unsure of how to integrate social tools with existing team workflows. Managers must embrace, rather than hinder, integration of social collaboration tools. This storyboard, along with its accompanying tools, will help you:
* Understand social collaboration and how it builds team effectiveness.
* Develop a strategy for enabling social collaboration patterns with technology.
* Understand the major vendors and feature sets for social tools.
* Foster a culture that encourages the use of social collaboration tools.
Managers must recognize that social tools are powerful enablers of knowledge-sharing and productivity in the age of the team.
Enterprises always look for ways to help employees collaborate with each other more effectively that leads to faster and higher-quality work, which, in turn, drives increased productivity. Though most enterprises keep employee collaboration on top of their corporate agenda, they still lag behind to drive that force to its optimum level! Using traditional approaches for attaining high productivity and innovation among employees are no more beneficial and effective in fast-technology pace and people oriented work space environments.
How can enterprise social technologies help your company? What tools will enable you to connect employees to each other and to information to address key challenges?
What 2014 holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
This is the follow up to last years guide to Internal Communication trends. This years guide outlines 4 main areas that we think are going to be key in 2014, along with sub themes and a wealth of hints and tips. We hope it is of benefit, and brings you success with your 2014 internal communications!
What the Future Holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
Our annual guide identifies the key trends that are shaping the future of Internal Communications. This years guide focuses on:
1. Employee Feedback
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. Management
4. Internal comms strategy
5. The employee experience
6. Digital culture.
We are social creatures and we crave social interaction. This presentation from SPSNYC is about how we build social solutions to our business problems...today.
Elevating the Digital Employee ExperienceCognizant
To address the changing dynamic of a more digitally savvy workforce, HR organizations must tap into advanced analytics and harness 'as a service' delivery models to raise the bar on talent acquisition and development, as well as to inform new employee compensation and collaboration initiatives.
How IT can empower your organization to wlanMicrosoft
How can enterprise social technologies from Microsoft help your company stay connected and secure when employees are increasingly becoming more mobile and distributed? What tools will enable you to connect employees to each other and at the same time provide the right levels of IT management?
One of presentations given in "Where's the University?": building an institutional geolocation service: Janet McKnight and Sebastian Rahtz, Oxford University Computing Services- parallel session given at Institutional Web Management Workshop 2009, University of Essex, 28 - 30, July 2009
7 Adoption Strategies for Enterprise Collaborationtibbr
Enterprise social networks offer a litany of benefits ranging from better employee engagement to faster problem solving. But, getting the maximum ROI is dependent on one thing: successful employee adoption. How do you get more employees involved on the network? How do you get past initial networking barriers and convince them of its value?
Download 7 Adoption Strategies For Enterprise Collaboration and find out how to unlock productivity through social collaboration.
For more information, please visit http://www.tibbr.com/
The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-ServiceChristian Buckley
Within Office 365, we have multiple methods for social collaboration. Organizations around the world are struggling to understand which tool to use when -- but this is the wrong premise. In this session, we'll discuss the broader concept of 'conversation as a service' and how Microsoft Teams, Outlook Groups, Yammer, and SharePoint all fit together -- and show you how to get the most out of all of them.
What 2015 holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
Here is our annual guide to where we think will be this years Internal Communication trends. This years guide outlines 5 main areas that we think are going to be key in 2015, along with sub themes and a wealth of hints and tips. We hope it is of benefit, and brings you success with your 2015 internal communications!
Social tools are now being offered by a number of collaboration vendors. Many organizations are unsure of how to integrate social tools with existing team workflows. Managers must embrace, rather than hinder, integration of social collaboration tools. This storyboard, along with its accompanying tools, will help you:
* Understand social collaboration and how it builds team effectiveness.
* Develop a strategy for enabling social collaboration patterns with technology.
* Understand the major vendors and feature sets for social tools.
* Foster a culture that encourages the use of social collaboration tools.
Managers must recognize that social tools are powerful enablers of knowledge-sharing and productivity in the age of the team.
Enterprises always look for ways to help employees collaborate with each other more effectively that leads to faster and higher-quality work, which, in turn, drives increased productivity. Though most enterprises keep employee collaboration on top of their corporate agenda, they still lag behind to drive that force to its optimum level! Using traditional approaches for attaining high productivity and innovation among employees are no more beneficial and effective in fast-technology pace and people oriented work space environments.
How can enterprise social technologies help your company? What tools will enable you to connect employees to each other and to information to address key challenges?
What 2014 holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
This is the follow up to last years guide to Internal Communication trends. This years guide outlines 4 main areas that we think are going to be key in 2014, along with sub themes and a wealth of hints and tips. We hope it is of benefit, and brings you success with your 2014 internal communications!
What the Future Holds for Internal CommunicationsTrefor Smith
Our annual guide identifies the key trends that are shaping the future of Internal Communications. This years guide focuses on:
1. Employee Feedback
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. Management
4. Internal comms strategy
5. The employee experience
6. Digital culture.
We are social creatures and we crave social interaction. This presentation from SPSNYC is about how we build social solutions to our business problems...today.
Elevating the Digital Employee ExperienceCognizant
To address the changing dynamic of a more digitally savvy workforce, HR organizations must tap into advanced analytics and harness 'as a service' delivery models to raise the bar on talent acquisition and development, as well as to inform new employee compensation and collaboration initiatives.
How IT can empower your organization to wlanMicrosoft
How can enterprise social technologies from Microsoft help your company stay connected and secure when employees are increasingly becoming more mobile and distributed? What tools will enable you to connect employees to each other and at the same time provide the right levels of IT management?
One of presentations given in "Where's the University?": building an institutional geolocation service: Janet McKnight and Sebastian Rahtz, Oxford University Computing Services- parallel session given at Institutional Web Management Workshop 2009, University of Essex, 28 - 30, July 2009
Slides for talk on "I've got this idea for an app" given by Christopher Eddie in a workshop session at UKOLN's IWMW 2012 event held in the University of Edinburgh on 18-20 June 2012.
Please visit our online professional network and join our community of Automotive Social Media Marketing professionals at http://www.ADPsocialMarketing.com
Learn more about Automotive Digital Marketing at the most popular professional network for car dealers and interactive marketers working in the auto industry at http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/
As social media programs grow, the need for a social media management system becomes evident for many companies. This paper dives into how to get buy-in for an investment in social marketing software, common challenges that can be overcome with an SMMS platform, and how to create a unique checklist of feature requirements based on your brand's social media goals.
Communication is omnipresent in every business. While a lot is said and done about Communication Skills improvement, the area of improving Communication Process or the Communication Systems within an organization remains vastly ignored. There are sustainable benefits that can be achieved by improving the business communication system. Some organizations have already realized impressive benefits such as 100%+ improvement in operational efficiency and 50%+ improvement in sales. We cover the latest happenings, how a company can achieve these benefits and the common mistakes that need to be avoided.
Leveraging social media across the organizationHermes F
In today’s socially driven digital landscape, the enterprise must adapt to leverage the social capitol and knowledge of its employees. Change is not instant and companies will need to deploy various solutions to meet its employees’ businesses needs. The true power of social media lies within unifying the various communication platforms to create and grow their knowledge base.
Leveraging
Social Media in the Workplace - Are We Nearly There?Infor HCM
Since Facebook was invented a decade ago, it has attracted a billion users worldwide. Twitter now reports 200 million users who send 400 million tweets every day. Compounded by record IPO valuations well into the billions, there is little doubt that the social media way of life is here to stay.
A successful collaboration strategy includes technology, process alignment, and the user experiences. However, organizations tend to focus the most on technology, and the least on people -- when the opposite should be true. As this presentation explains, culture is the key to any successful collaboration strategy.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
http://www.infoxtechnologies.com/technologies.html
Moving Beyond the Knowledge Base to the Social Knowledge ExchangeBlue Economy Agency
In today’s world, effective knowledge sharing within an organization helps to attract talent, to build revenue and to inspire innovation, all of which lead to competitive advantage. Historically, the dissemination of information has happened through a system of content platforms and static document sharing, often via email. Those old paradigms no longer apply in the real-time socially connected world of today. Leveraging social platforms to tap the collective mindshare of the organization is not only important, it's mission critical for success.
These slides from our recent webinar with ClimateWorks and Forrester Research demonstrate how innovation is pushing the boundaries of knowledge management and moving us into the era of the Social Knowledge Exchange.
Kate Leggett, Forrester’s leading expert analyst on knowledge management will lead the conversation and provide industry trends and insights on the future of the Social Knowledge Exchange. We'll also hear from Sarah Nichols, Director of Knowledge Management for ClimateWorks, a foundation dedicated to supporting public policies that prevent dangerous climate change, and learn how ClimateWorks uses its social intranet to:
Create a central services portal that connects its global network of non-profits
Connect systems of record to systems of engagement
Develop innovative UX search and content discovery mechanisms
Apply best practices to increase intranet adoption and usage.
Social networking has been part of the recruiting landscape for some time, but as prospective hires become employees, companies are using social tools to streamline work processes associated with onboarding new hires.
Companies are finding that by leveraging social technologies they can create communities for new employees that provide opportunities for learning, mentorship and peer identification quickly reducing training time and strengthening company culture at the same time.
During this session you’ll hear how companies are delivering gold-medal onboarding by:
Pre-distributing benefits and learning materials
Facilitating employee introductions and collaboration prior to new hire orientation
Pinpointing mentors and birds of a feather
Using 360º performance reviews and transparency of actions to provide true measure of employee success.
Social Transformation: Accelerating Industry at the Pace of SocialBlue Economy Agency
The integration of the enterprise is upon us. Social technologies have brought upon us a new era of distributed knowledge with people at their center.
While social software has been growing in use among knowledge workers, it is rarely cited as a benefit to traditional industry. Yet, using today's modern E2.0 technologies - we are witnessing a technological renaissance that promises to bring new life to many embattled industry sectors.
Social Transformation: Accelerating Industry at the Pace of SocialBlue Economy Agency
The integration of the enterprise is upon us. Social technologies have brought upon us a new era of distributed knowledge with people at their center.
While social software has been growing in use among knowledge workers, it is rarely cited as a benefit to traditional industry. Yet, using today's modern E2.0 technologies - we are witnessing a technological renaissance that promises to bring new life to many embattled industry sectors.
The Motley Fool is a company that is firmly committed to putting its people at the center. And when its internal "culture" committee decided an update to its social intranet was in order, everyone rallied behind the effort and brought Jingle to life. Since then Jingle has become a vibrant community where coworkers get a chance to connect and collaborate.
American Hospital Association Social Intranet & Collaboration PlatformBlue Economy Agency
Jack MacKay, the VP and CIO of the American Hospital Association, shared best practices on enterprise social networking, providing an overview of the AHA's social intranet built on Socialtext.
New York Event: Drive superior business performance with social softwareBlue Economy Agency
Anand Padmanabhan, the CIO of NYU Stern, shares how social software has transformed the way faculty, students and staff communicate and collaborate at the business school.
This presentation highlights two of the most important aspects of social software: 1) focusing on the people that create and share the content, 2) using new features to enhance existing business processes. Two customer case studies (GT Nexus and Hayes Knight) are presented to provide examples.
With release 4.6 Socialtext delivers several features that help make your intranet more social. It's now easy to share videos and slides via Signals or wiki pages, embed OpenSocial widgets on pages, and chat with colleagues using instant messaging.
Learn about the benefits of having a Social Intranet from Socialtext, Forrester Research and the American Hospital Association.
To see a recording of this presentation please visit http://www.socialtext.com/products/webinar_socialintranet.php
Instead of adding social features to each business critical application one by one, a social layer enables applications to openly broadcast their events to an integrated activity stream where people across the entire company can benefit from the information.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor Turskyi
5 Biggest Blunders With Enterprise Social Software
1. The 5 Biggest Blunders with
Enterprise Social Software
And How to Avoid Them
2. Contents
The challenge of social software success ............................ 2
#1: Fail to define your goals and rollout strategy ...................................................2
#2: Confuse document management with collaboration........................................2
#3: Ignore practices already in use in your organization .......................................3
#4: Fail to put your people in control......................................................................4
#5: Fail to recognize the system requirements critical to success.........................4
Conclusion ............................................................................ 5
About Socialtext.................................................................... 5
More information & resources .............................................. 5
Socialtext Page 1 www.socialtext.com
3. The challenge of social software success
Business social software allows co-workers to connect and share in ways that can dramatically
improve organizational effectiveness. But social software solutions incorporate Web 2.0
technologies that are new inside the walls of most organizations – technologies such as
microblogging, social networking, automated activity feeds, wikis, blogs, social spreadsheets and
more. As such, it can be hard to know how to implement social software in a way that ensures the
dramatic results you are seeking.
This paper is designed to help you focus on the areas most critical to success with social
software, and to avoid the five biggest and most common blunders others have made when
implementing social software for their organizations.
#1: Fail to define your goals and rollout strategy
According to Gartner, 70% of social software projects fail because they lack a business purpose.
To achieve business results with social software, you need to clearly define your goals, and then
follow a rollout approach designed to achieve those goals.
As more and more businesses have deployed social software, a clear pattern has emerged of the
rollout methodologies that lead to highest success. All successful rollouts start by gaining results
in a specified area before expanding the solution into other areas. The best place to focus your
initial implementation depends on the business problems you are trying to solve, and your
organization’s tolerance for risk. There are six distinct places to start. For example, one starting
place is to focus on solving one or more business problems within a given department, another is
to focus on improving communications across the organization.
Each of the six approaches delivers different business results, and has a different level of risk.
And most importantly, each has different requirements to succeed. To be successful with social
software, you need to choose the rollout methodology that is best for your organization, and
understand its requirements for success.
Our companion paper, “Six Ways to Get Business Value from Social Software,” outlines these
rollout methodologies and the risks, requirements and rewards of each. Use this companion
paper to reduce risk and achieve the fastest success with social software.
#2: Confuse document management with collaboration
A common blunder when considering social software is to miss the most fundamental opportunity
it presents: to help your people work together more effectively across the broad set of functions
that make up their day. The key to achieving this is to break down the barriers to sharing that
exist today, and work openly and transparently.
A document can be the best delivery paradigm for certain information types and purposes, such
as packaging a visually appealing data sheet that you intend for sales reps to use as a leave-
behind in prospect meetings. The very piece of information you are reading here is packaged as
a document so it can be delivered from multiple places, to unknown recipients, as a printable
package.
Socialtext Page 2 www.socialtext.com
4. However, the sharing and synchronization enabled by social software and the process control
created by document management are two very different things. Specific features are important
to managing documents, features such as document check-in and check-out, the ability to define
approval workflows, and a library for storing and finding these documents. A formal process flow
can be defined for managing each document or document type, and the set of people involved in
managing each document can be defined.
In contrast, the bulk of knowledge worker interactions are made up of informal processes that
cannot be predetermined. Improving these interactions involves enabling the process rather than
controlling the process. Knowledge worker processes are severely hampered by captive
information in files (e.g. documents), on different physical storage sites (individuals’ hard drives,
individuals’ e-mail inboxes, shared folders). A document is a very poor delivery paradigm for
sharing information for the purpose of staying in sync and getting work done.
Social software is designed for the type of sharing that makes up the bulk of knowledge worker
interactions, such as:
• Keeping teammates informed of progress, setbacks, and changes
• Asking questions when you don’t know who might have answers
• Disseminating information that people may need to find later
• Opening a topic that will spur a dialog with multiple people
• Sharing information that could increase corporate intelligence, such as competitive insight
or product feedback
• Sharing information that may later change
Instead of a static document paradigm, social software provides dynamic information streams. It
does the work of informing others via automated activity streams, group communication channels,
and subscribed notification mechanisms. It does an excellent job of keeping teams synchronized.
Social software allows people to work openly and transparently and to stay much better informed,
across the broad set of interactions that make up their day, while at the same time eliminating
communication overhead.
#3: Ignore practices already in use in your organization
Knowledge workers are measured by the results they deliver. They have a large degree of latitude
in how to approach each new challenge and task. It is, in fact, this latitude that defines a
knowledge worker who must figure out how to apply their specialized knowledge to deliver results
to the organization. As such, your knowledge workers are very creative and inventive in how they
accomplish results.
If you have not yet deployed a social software solution, it is likely your knowledge workers are
experimenting with solutions on their own. They have experience using tools available on the
public web, and they have experienced the benefits of those tools. As they contrast these tools to
the ones they use inside the organization, they often conclude there is a gap that needs to be
filled. Free microblogging tools, for example, are being adopted by workgroups who have realized
that many of their communications needs are not served by today’s in-house communication tools
such as e-mail and instant messaging.
You want the tools being adopted within your organization to adhere to corporate security and IT
policies. For example, do you have the authority to remove a user, say a user who leaves your
company? Do you own the data your employees are creating? Where is that data stored and what
are the security implications? A growing number of IT departments have discovered that the
Socialtext Page 3 www.socialtext.com
5. microblogging tool their employees are using has already created a security problem for the
organization, a problem that needs to be addressed before it grows.
An immediate task while creating your social software strategy is to inventory the tools already in
use and discover the unmet needs in your organization. This exercise will not only give you insight
into those needs, but will also identify social software champions that can help your rollout, and will
help you determine the first business problems to tackle with social software.
#4: Fail to put your people in control
As mentioned, knowledge workers are accountable for what they produce and are used to having
a high degree of freedom over how they produce it. For social software to be successful, the user
must have a high degree of control. When a few people come together to tackle a challenge, for
example, they should be able to instantly create a gathering place for their new group that gives
them the social tools the group needs to stay posted on progress and accomplish their goals.
Unlike today where people have to involve IT just to change an e-mail distribution list, to be
successful, social software needs to let your people readily serve their own needs. For example:
• The deployment team you assemble for a new customer should be able to create a home
page for their team complete with a membership list, a microblogging channel, and a
shared workspace.
• A user should be able to easily set up a workspace and invite others as they choose.
• Your people should be able to subscribe to activity streams, channels and alerts as they
see fit to do their jobs, easily and on the fly, without asking anyone for help.
• A person should be able to set up his or her own personal home page with the
information they need to produce business results. They must be able to adjust their
choices and settings on the fly, as part of the process of learning how to use the solution
to best fit their needs.
People need to change their subscriptions, notifications, personal home page, group
memberships and the like as needs change, projects come and go, and new information sources
become available.
If the social software doesn’t allow people to make these changes, as and when they wish, on the
fly, it will severely hamper the pace of collaboration and will not gain the level of adoption needed
for success.
#5: Fail to recognize the system requirements critical to success
A set of specific system capabilities is also critical for success with social software. For example,
the system you choose should contain certain capabilities in order for you to create a sharing
culture in your organization. It should be specifically designed for high adoption, with the set of
features and capabilities that come together to make a product highly adoptable. It should also
have low total cost of ownership.
To learn the key system requirements for social software success, read our companion paper,
“Five Key Requirements for Enterprise Social Software.”
Socialtext Page 4 www.socialtext.com
6. Conclusion
By learning from the mistakes of others, you can avoid the common pitfalls of social software and
instead realize the tremendous benefits it can bring. The right social software solution, deployed
with the right rollout plan, can improve organizational effectiveness in ways never before
achievable.
About Socialtext
Free the flow of work
With Socialtext, people stay synchronized and work together much more easily using the best of
social software in one integrated solution. The Socialtext platform incorporates secure
microblogging, social spreadsheets, live personal profiles, activity feeds and more. It creates a
surge in group cohesiveness and allows a company and its people to mobilize in unison and be
more agile and effective.
Socialtext provides hosted and appliance-based solutions to more than 6,500 large and mid-
market businesses world-wide, including Egon Zehnder, Epitaph Records, Mayo Clinic, McGraw-
Hill, OSIsoft, Symantec and The Washington Post.
More information & resources
Sign up for a free trial of the full Socialtext platform:
http://www.socialtext.com/products/freetrial.php
Whitepaper: Five Key Requirements for Enterprise Social Software
http://www.socialtext.com/products/wp_keyrequirements.php
Whitepaper: Six Ways to Get Business Value from Social Software
http://www.socialtext.com/products/wp_businessvalue.php
More social software whitepapers, videos, and other resources:
http://www.socialtext.com/products/resources.php
WP-Biggest Blunders with Social Software-V4
Socialtext Page 5 www.socialtext.com