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![Figure 3: Social media’s influence on enterprise collaboration
Many-to-many social technology used by consumers influences how enterprise collaboration occurs, but the impact
is not as direct as some might expect.
Telephone E-mail/chat Document sharing Groupware Social technology
Historically, many tools have been used both outside and inside the enterprise. Social media, however, undergoes dramatic transformation
when used for inside-enterprise collaboration. The activity stream is where the similarity ends. The means of adoption are different and must
be aligned with business goals.
Outside Inside the enterprise
Inside an enterprise, the ability to filter Another big issue with the many-to-
the internal information and extract many platforms, whether they’re team
what’s essential is more significant than collaboration tools such as Notes or
ever. If you’re an EZI consultant, the newer social software suites, is that they
right posting from another consultant function separately from the rest of the
you don’t know might mean the IT fabric. (See Figure 3.)
difference between no fee and a
substantial commission. Enterprises that diagnose what’s
wrong with internal collaboration
Collaboration tools have matured, but and prescribe a many-to-many cure
the main question continues to be, as are trying to weave social networking
PwC Chief Innovation Officer Sheldon into the IT fabric in a complementary
Laube puts it: “How do you make teams way. They are also working on the
more effective through the use of organizational aspects of creating
technology?” Implied in that question is incentives, reengineering processes, and
another question: how do you expand using analytics to make the information
the reach of the teams? flows relevant to specific groups and
individuals. This approach promises two
Laube sees this as the perennial issue, advantages: (1) a single place to work,
one that predates the web. Laube, who and (2) a means of creating context, a
evaluated Lotus Notes in the mid-1980s significant component of knowledge
and bought the first 10,000 seat licenses sharing that’s historically been lacking.
that Notes issued when he was CIO at
Price Waterhouse, says, “That’s why
Notes was brought in, and that’s what
Tim Berners-Lee [inventor of the World
Wide Web] had in mind. The web was a
collaboration environment. The world
of collaboration was set back by a mere
15 or 20 years because the web turned
into a one-way publishing environment,
instead of a collaboration medium.”
Transforming collaboration with social tools 11](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-13-320.jpg)
![Figure 4: The social graph’s impact How context creation with the The interest graph is a superset of the
interest graph can help overcome social graph, a people map. The interest
information overload graph includes people, things, and their
Divergent phase What’s new about enterprise linkages, and it helps users navigate the
collaboration is the capability to create information thicket.
and share more context. This starts
with the many-to-many paradigm that Since the 1980s, enterprises have
tools such as Facebook and Twitter endured unprecedented information
have popularized, but it doesn’t end overload. This was the first phase of
there. Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos social technology—the divergent phase,
Group, a social technology consulting in which people learned to expose
firm, describes the shortfalls of earlier information in willy-nilly fashion in
Social
approaches that did not include silos. Within the silo, there was a
information
appears, this capability: limited amount of context; between
but it’s silos, there was even less; and then
siloed “The fundamental problem with those the silos proliferated.
old collaborative systems was that they
were devoid of context. You would Enterprises have recently entered the
Convergent phase see stuff thrown at you and it was not convergent phase and are learning
really tied into your daily flow of work. to purpose the social information by
You were expected to go into these design. Vendors enable the embedding
knowledge bases that are separate from of social technology in systems as well as
where you might live,” Patel says. the localization of the information. The
potential for relevance increases, but the
? “You might be a call center rep who is information is still not as relevant and
living in a call center application, or accessible as it could be.
you might be someone in the finance
Information
department living in ERP [enterprise Within a couple of years, PwC expects
is more resource planning] financials. These the navigational phase to begin in
accessible, are very disconnected worlds, and earnest. (See Figure 4.) Relationships
but difficult the process apps focused on taking between people, and between business
to search
you through your processes. The issues and people, will become more
knowledge management was just explicit in the form of self-managed
Navigational phase sitting in a vacuum.” interest graphs. The interest graph
will become the means for finding
Context creates relevance. And what’s relevant. It’s important to
after decades of data proliferation, remember that the addition of the social
relevance is finally a hot topic, even information layer and the ability to
on the consumer side. In March 2011, structure that information along with
TechCrunch proclaimed “The Age of other information in graph form are
Relevance,” noting that several of the what provide the additional context.
newest social media platforms focus With this additional context, companies
Information on creating an “interest graph,” a map can confront and reduce information
in graph form
for navigating to subjects and people of overload. Business success in using the
becomes
integrated and interest. The author, Mahendra Pasule, interest graph will depend on how well it
navigable asserts that “Social media may lose is understood and built for the purpose.
its obsession with follower numbers
and traffic, evolving to context-driven
reputation systems and algorithms.”3
Vendors of enterprise-class systems are
engaged in similar efforts.
3 Mahendra Pasule, “The Age of Relevance,” TechCrunch,
March 3, 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/the-
age-of-relevance/, accessed May 2, 2011.
12 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-14-320.jpg)
![Minimizing e-mail
The number of e-mails Tony O’Driscoll
did not reply to because he’s started to
7,000
give up on the medium.
They take that four hours of video and I decided to do away with all that, Whac-A-Mole with digital data. Workers
jointly edit it down to a five-minute and instead I use the technological are just essentially prolonging the
movie. The final product gets posted, affordance called a blog. The students inevitable by drinking more coffee and
and the teams review each others’ read the blog beforehand. whacking more e-mail moles.
videos. This way, we try to extract
the experiential wisdom of all these You need to motivate students up front. We’re going to lose that battle. No doubt
people and share it with others, so I use public domain sources such as about it. If you look at how information
they too can be leaders. We encourage YouTube, Big Think, TED, or FORA.tv, is expanding and proliferating, and
the students to tune in quicker, to and I find material to seed serious you put that into your inbox, you can
understand whatever city they go into conversation about the issues that the see that’s not going to work. To deal
by really understanding the culture, and world faces today. I post a link to two with the volume, you organize all your
to see how institutions work there and and a half minutes of Fadi Ghandour e-mails into folders. Moving bits around
how markets function there. [CEO of Aramex] talking about the Arab on a screen this way might help you feel
Spring, for example, and that prompts better, but I don’t know how much that
The future of learning is shifting from a whole bunch of questions. As the blog sort of activity contributes to anything.
pouring knowledge into individuals’ administrator, I can track activity and
heads to enabling them to tune their monitor the comments. And I do a lot I’m both frustrated and proud of the
networks to solve unanticipated of polling. I can see who is having what fact that last year there were 7,000
problems as they confront them. My kinds of conversations, know where e-mails that I just did not respond
job is to get the network of students to people are getting stuck or not, and to. I have literally started to give it
use social tools to tap into each others’ get ideas for class discussions. up as a medium. Everything outlives
experiences around the key objectives. its usefulness. Even back when we
That’s what the younger generation is So when I go into class on Monday introduced Sametime, there was a 20
doing; they are tuning their network morning in India or wherever we are, to 25 percent drop in e-mail. Instead,
to the problem at hand. The classroom I’m not going in cold. With the social people were using Sametime to ask each
paradigm is increasingly being pushed platform and presence and identity other, “When can you meet?” You could
into a corner, and the place where baked in, I can track all of the activity, I respond with, “I can meet at this time.”
learning has to happen is increasingly know what’s going on, and I am clearly That was it.
emerging at the moment of need in the much better prepared to add value to
workflow context of an increasingly their learning experience. PwC: How are different people
complex and uncertain business world. responding to the same set
PwC: What lessons can enterprises of tools? The students in the
PwC: So you don’t rely much on take from this sort of example? Cross Continent program may
traditional classroom methods? TO: They can introduce alternatives have totally different frames
TO: Around the edges I do, but not at that are better suited to specific tasks in of reference.
the core. I decided to get rid of the pre- a very similar way. When I was an IBM TO: I haven’t seen any variability in
reads, the “box of doom” as the researcher at Lotus 15 years ago, we different regions in terms of their
students called it, that we sent the did this big project called reinventing interest in using the tools. There’s an
students two weeks before they had to e-mail. E-mail was killing the humans, overriding motivation, one that says that
show up. That translates into hundreds and it was killing the networks. It I have made a decision to do this and I’m
and hundreds of pages of dead trees. was killing the humans, reducing really excited to connect with people.
them to information workers playing
Transforming collaboration with social tools 19](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-21-320.jpg)
![PwC: What are the more recent
How online identity challenges companies have been
facing on the collaboration front?
SP: The fundamental problem with
and context become those old collaborative systems was that
they were devoid of context. You would
see stuff thrown at you and it was not
productivity drivers really tied into your daily flow of work.
You were expected to go into these
knowledge bases that are separate from
Sameer Patel of Sovos Group places social where you might live.
technology in the context of software that
You might be a call center rep who is
enterprises already use. living in a call center application, or
you might be someone in the finance
Interview conducted by Alan Morrison and Bo Parker
department living in ERP [enterprise
resource planning] financials. These
are very disconnected worlds, and
the process apps focused on taking
Sameer Patel you through your processes. The
Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos Group, knowledge management was just
has consulted on enterprise collaboration sitting in a vacuum waiting for you
strategy and technology planning for to associate context.
more than 13 years, starting at USWeb
(marchFIRST).
The true value of enterprise social
computing will come from bringing
data, content, and people together
in the context of business activities.
Context is not just a general-purpose
content management effort or a
knowledge management effort. Online
collaboration needs to be embedded in
the flow of work to get you to the end
goal more effectively, as opposed to yet
another place for workers to remember
to go to.
22 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-24-320.jpg)
![The information sharing problem
End users aren’t necessarily
50
interested in information sharing;
they are interested in making 50
customer calls a day.
The participation issue is a symptom of The third problem is from a marketing PwC: These are systemic
a deep problem with a lack of business standpoint. Often, vendors will sell inefficiencies of some sort?
alignment and participation incentives. stuff to an IT director or a CIO, and they SP: Yes. We’ve been living in this myth
These issues should be addressed present general-purpose benefits that that stuff that happens at companies is
before the software is rolled out. A lot make a lot of sense to a forward-thinking very repeatable. We put all these CRM
of enterprises wait until the switch has IT executive. After the purchase, those [customer relationship management],
been flipped to then figure out how they same marketing materials from the ERP, and MRP [materials requirements
will get people to use it. They’ve really vendor are used as selling materials to planning] systems in place thinking that
not done the proper planning or gotten the end user. When end users look at they’re repeatable processes and we can
the right groups to understand how some of these nebulous outcomes, such get repeatable value out of the systems.
it facilitates the core process they’re as “Share more; it’s better,” they say, The truth is that every single process
responsible for. “All this information sharing doesn’t in the enterprise is not as repeatable
matter to me; my target is to do 50 as we would like it to be. People have
People are not measured on which customer calls in the day and go home.” questions along the way.
tool they use; they’re measured on Those outcomes need to be translated
getting their work done. You have to into why it makes sense for them, so ERP systems have boiled down every
have that alignment, which is one of the there’s a lot of that confusion. single business application to a submit
biggest issues. People will hide behind and a cancel button, when really what
culture and other challenges such as the The fourth problem, and this is probably users want is a giant discuss button
Millennial argument, which has some one of the biggest, is I’ve never met a sometimes. Users don’t know the right
truth to it but not nearly as much as they CEO or another CxO who is going to say, answer sometimes, they need to get
say. The problem is that the “What’s in it “We don’t want to innovate and we don’t help, and they need to find the right
for me?” factor has not been identified want to share knowledge.” The problem people to help them. That need is more
for these users. is that they’ll often tell someone in their acute in some processes than others, for
executive team, “OK, we’re going to do example, in areas of the company where
Another big issue is just good old politics this. Who’s going to take ownership of there are inefficiencies, where products
101. A lot of the activity and effort that’s this thing?” Everyone’s going to look haven’t gotten out the door, or where the
been evident so far has been emergent. around, nod their heads, and say, “This quality is lower.
For example, pockets of the company is a fabulous idea, Bob. Why don’t you
will go off and get their own accounts, take it?” Until it’s clear that social and
and usage will start to gain some collaborative approaches and tools can
steam in engineering or in a product At the CEO level, of course they want address big problems and can have
development group. Even if this thing more innovation and sharing, but every operating and financial benefit, it will
starts to show promise, executives often person sitting in that room is in charge be challenging to make them C-suite
will not get behind something that they of quota, pushing product out the door, imperatives.
can’t take full credit for. So, if they can’t growing a geographic footprint, and
say that they invented it and they’re the the like. That’s where broad, nebulous
ones who brought it to the company, goals such as improve innovation and
then they don’t get all the points for it. sharing start to get difficult to execute.
This goes back to articulating the value
of social and collaborative approaches
and technology in the context of
known performance headaches and
opportunities that executives face today.
24 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-26-320.jpg)
![Success in the early stages of While early social technologies provided
One approach is to bring social technology adoption inside organizations with a way to do light
the enterprise has been due to a collaboration and acted as a substitute
the social functionality combination of human interest and for e-mail, the tools were simply a first
to users in their IT support. Without management step, an experimental phase. They
support for adoption, incentives for use, primarily served to surface a new social
familiar application and metrics for measurement, many information layer and trigger thinking
environments. standalone social technologies don’t about (1) how to use that layer, and
get used. Unlike Facebook, relationship (2) how collaboration could be
building inside the enterprise via social different if social technology were
tools may not provide enough incentive thoughtfully applied.
to encourage continued usage after the
initial interest. Integrated social technology:
Generation two
The standalone nature of many of the In recent years, a second generation
first-generation tools posed a challenge has evolved that seeks to broaden
to businesses. Natalie Hanson, senior the functionality and reach of first-
director of strategic programs and user generation solutions. A real push was
experience consulting at SAP, which on to integrate social technologies more
has used Jive and also uses its own broadly with existing business processes,
StreamWork, notes one obstacle her applications, and data, and to encourage
group faces in educating workers about greater adoption by more business users.
social tools. “The challenge for us is “What history tells us and why many of
to make sure the people come to us to those [early social] initiatives failed is
understand the value propositions of that they all tried to create a new kind
those different [social] platforms and of siloed area,” Young says. And the last
that they choose one that meets their thing the enterprise needs is more siloed
needs,” she says. information that is difficult to access
and share.
30 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-32-320.jpg)
![Many vendors of the standalone tools The technologies are starting to address As Young explains, “Instead of having
announced integrations in an attempt some of the complaints about early this one big stream that you must feed
to move away from the silo effect. versions of social technology— off of all the time and contribute to,
For example, besides its integration complaints regarding security and we decided to take those streams and
of the Crocodoc HTML5 document curation. Among the features that make them context specific in these
viewer, Yammer began adding plug- PwC gathered (through interviews other applications—embed them in
ins for enterprise applications such as and research) to be most important your ERP [enterprise resource
Microsoft Outlook to encourage the use for the enterprise are the following: planning], in your CRM [customer
of social networking in all aspects of relationship management], in your
business. Jive, Socialcast, and Yammer • Integration with business- project system, in your SharePoint.
announced integration with SharePoint critical applications That way, a tool like Socialcast can
and other Microsoft products. The • Curation and content organization address that 75 percent of users who
major enterprise software vendors • IT management functionality to don’t want to learn a new tool. The
began to develop sets of social support governance and compliance social functionality they need is now
functions that took advantage • Social analysis within their workflow.”
of their existing suites.
The current social technology solutions An alternative approach reverses
on the market provide varying degrees that strategy by creating social hubs.
Figure 3: SAP StreamWork of support for these requirements. These solutions pull activity and event
workflow integration
information from enterprise applications
Team members can pull data and Integrating social functionality into (such as ERP or CRM) into the social
information from existing workflows everyday work technology platform to create a central
and back-end systems into SAP Adoption is a major challenge to the hub for collaborative, task-based, and
StreamWork for discussion and introduction of any technology. Given social activities. An example is Jive’s
decision making. that social and collaborative tools are Engage platform, which can bring
intended to support the day-to-day activities from legacy applications into
activities of enterprise workers, the its environment so that users can “live”
tools need to be usable in ways that there rather than moving back and
cause minimal disruption to the forth between applications.
existing environment. The vendors of
social technology solutions are taking Another example of this approach is
two different approaches to integrate SAP StreamWork, which can pull data
the functionality into the enterprise and information from multiple back-
work stream. end systems into a social environment.
(See Figure 3.) Consider a situation
One approach is to bring the social in which a company needs to make a
functionality to users in their familiar supplier decision. Using a technology
application environments. Users can such as StreamWork, the company can
build conversations around “objects” of combine social tools with application
interest from existing applications, such
as an image of a prototype, to support
project collaboration.
Transforming collaboration with social tools 31](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-33-320.jpg)
![How social graphs relate to Hopkins explains how social graphs help interested in this particular thing right
interest graphs at EZI: “It’s hard for us to know who may now, that are on the system right now,’
A subset of the interest graph, a know somebody in a firm that may be and you’ve got this flow, this stream of
social graph is a mapping of people unrelated to a given search but might people responding.” Plugging into such
(employees, partners, customers, be a broker to provide introductions a stream would mean a paradigm shift
and so forth) and how they are related. for us as well. So what we’re looking in the way workers accomplish their
Figure 5 illustrates an example. for in these social graphs are ways that business tasks today.
we can uncover relationships that may
If the social graph is made part of the be beyond our borders but might help Dynamic search and triple store
larger interest graph, the information us break into a market or a particular support the social graph
about how people are interconnected segment of a company that we hadn’t PwC expects that search will be a
can benefit the information about done before in any one office of significant tool for fully leveraging all
places and things, too. the firm.” of the social objects in the enterprise.
Search based on the identification of
When working to make this visibility Vendors are starting to move in this the semantically defined relationships
possible inside the enterprise and direction, with early attempts to that the social graph provides will
expanding its definition to include combine technologies from other allow more relevant information
knowledge and expertise, the social enterprise areas with social technology retrieval and contribute to a higher
graph becomes an invaluable resource. to support a dynamic social graph. level of enterprise efficiency.
Doing so requires several dimensional
graphs that can overlay the vast network According to Keith Griffin, lead In this scheme, social identities become
of social “objects” in the enterprise, from architect in Cisco Systems’ enterprise another means of obtaining context,
user profiles to all the content generated collaboration platform business unit, and context is the coin of the realm in
through social tools. The knowledge or these tools focus on connecting workers providing relevance, whether through
interest graph would provide a relational with the information they need to search or other kinds of navigation.
view of all the content that exists inside do the best job, based on context: Cisco couples search with social
the organization and would provide “It would be nice if there were an technology. According to Griffin,
context to help aid retrieval, which is instantaneous community, not that you “The goal is to use a search engine
a core value proposition and reason to chose, but that the context said, ‘These and couple that with some of the
invest in social technologies. are the people who are particularly capabilities involved, like the [social]
graph and the semantic processing.”
Figure 5: The social graph as a machine sees it
Any enterprise data in graph form, whether it relates to people, places, or things,
can be interconnected in this way.
Jane is a customer of Mary
wor
ks o
n
is a friend of
is a friend of
is
a Project of
lives in
lives in
fri d
en X en
d fri
of a
is
lives in San
Sally knows Bob Jose
36 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-38-320.jpg)
![By talking with middle managers and Then there’s the shared learning that When you look back at the history of KM
doing some analysis, we found that goes on. When we talk to executives [knowledge management], you see that
social technology is changing the about advancing their organization many of those initiatives failed because
role of middle management. Middle from a human capital standpoint, they all tried to create a new kind of
management is going from a command shared learning is incredibly important, siloed area. Employees would say, “If I
and control structure to much more like especially as they’re trying to move have an issue in my CRM [customer
a coach or a mentor. Because more and faster, be more competitive, and do more relationship management] or in my
more information is transparent, they’re with less. It’s not necessarily destroying ERP [enterprise resource planning],
really helping employees understand e-mail or trying to get rid of e-mail—it I now have to switch context. I must
how executive management’s goals is taking over a part of the attention that go to this other external collaboration
are attached to the specific items that we were giving tools such as e-mail. system and try to reframe the context of
individual contributors are working on, the problem, the comment, whatever I
and they’re interpreting the meaning of PwC: How do users generally take want to share, and then follow up in that
that and why it’s important. to Socialcast initially? system only to come back to my primary
TY: About 20 to 25 percent of users system and actually complete whatever
You can see these cultural shifts and are early adopters. They tend to be action I needed to do.]
how the shifts change roles. It is people who are very active online both
making middle managers much more contributing content and connecting We looked at this problem in depth last
critical to the success of organizations with friends, family, and colleagues year, and I think it’s indicative in one of
because they are micro-CEOs of their through networking sites. There’s really the products we launched in 2010 called
own domain. When you look at large no modification you would need to Socialcast Reach. Instead of having this
companies that have hundreds of global make; they just love this new capability. one big stream that you must feed off
offices, it’s really important that they And then as you go from that 25 percent of all the time and contribute to, we
have passionate people. to the remaining 75 percent of the decided to take those streams and make
organization, you start to see an them context specific in these other
PwC: What benefits are the interesting phenomenon. applications—embed conversations in
executives seeing? your ERP, in your CRM, in your project
TY: From an executive level, I think Their lack of usage or their nonsupport system, in your SharePoint. That way,
many companies don’t understand of the tool falls into a few different we can address the 75 percent of users
what is going on all the way down to categories. Some of the biggest ones are, who don’t want to learn a new tool. The
the individual contributor level, and it’s “I don’t want to learn a new tool,” and social functionality they need is now
because there just haven’t been tools “I don’t want to learn a new way of within their workflow.
that allow them to do that, especially working.” Another one is, “It’s not
qualitative tools. You can do surveys embedded in any of my workflows;
and polls, but you don’t get the ability it’s this new thing.”
for consistent real-time feedback from
everyone in the organization—and
that feedback is necessary to harness
the collective human capital of
the organization.
Transforming collaboration with social tools 39](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-41-320.jpg)
![Now, when that user goes into that ERP PwC: It sounds like two things—
“What we’ve strived to application and pulls up that account one is that there’s essentially
screen, the activity screen for that a communication channel,
do inside organizations specific account is right there within and the other is what those
is allow people to that app. They never have to go communicating are doing. So I’m
connect over the outside to another application. They assuming you can see where a
can see who has worked on it, relevant person is currently in their work,
business objects that conversation on it, who the expert is, what they’ve actually done, what
they deal with every and they can ask a question—all within other people have done. Is that
the application.When they come back to correct?
day, whether that be that account in that account screen, all TY: In general it’s correct. We’ve created
a customer, a work that information is there. what we would call social objects out of
these business processes and workflows.
order, a palette, a PwC: What gave you the idea to A social object is something that two
product, or a document make streams context specific? or more people connect over in the
that they’re working TY: The consumer analog would consumer world; it’s like a photo on
be Facebook Connect. For a long Flickr or Facebook. You post it, I see it,
on. That’s really the time, Facebook had this one portal like it, you comment on it. Even just
difference.” destination very akin to the suite looking at it, I’m connecting with you
approach that Enterprise 2.0 through this object.
companies have brought out.
What we’ve strived to do inside
What Facebook figured out, very organizations is allow people to connect
intelligently, is that your social over the business objects that they
experience online doesn’t just begin and deal with every day, whether that be
end with Facebook.com; it really goes a customer, a work order, a palette, a
everywhere—on CNN, on the blogs you product, or a document that they’re
read, everywhere. Adding Facebook working on. That’s really the difference.
Connect allows you to take your social
graph with you in all those other places Let’s say you’re part of the workforce at
online. We provide basically the same a book publisher, and you’re entering
thing. Socialcast Reach allows you to an ISBN [International Standard Book
take that social graph—all the people Number] in your inventory system. You
you work with—with you in all your actually pull up the whole record of
other apps. information on that book title and get
all that social information right there in
that system. So you see all the people
who have worked on it, whether it is the
40 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-42-320.jpg)
![How do users take to tools like Socialcast? 20to
About 20 to 25 percent love the new capability. 25%
The remaining 75 to 80 percent won’t see the value unless it’s
25to
incorporated into their workflow.
75%
editor, the guy who ordered the paper, as you are now rewarded for taking that PwC: What’s the goal here?
everybody. You also get to see all the information that you have and using it TY: Obviously, one goal is that
conversation that’s happening. So we’re within the company to add value to the information flows extremely freely
merging that business object and that company, by sharing it appropriately. among people. But then there’s the
conversation, where in the past it’s been specific business goal. With most any
separated; it’s either been done in e-mail In many cases, you’ll have known activity stream, you may get a lot of
or IM [instant messaging], and it’s very experts inside the company. But we interesting conversations, but you won’t
hard to pull all of that together. have found that knowing where that get repeatable value. People converse,
ultimate expertise lies often is not but then what? What is the business goal
PwC: Does making both identity helpful for an individual trying to get of this? Organizations might say they’re
and conversation more visible lead a question answered. It’s not helpful not getting any repeatable value, so how
to more accurate and complete because typically the person who has do they really know what it’s doing? It’s
expertise location? the most expertise is not necessarily the same thing—you put workers in a
TY: Yes. It all goes back to identity and in a position or has the time to answer factory and what are they going to do?
what the employee is trying to do. It questions. So we can guide users to
is one thing to locate a subject matter other people who might have less In the end analysis, the functions must
expert, and many systems have been domain expertise, yet they are the support processes and mission that
able to do that, but the real value of most willing and able to actually result in repeated value. That’s the
expertise locations is getting feedback help and get questions answered. challenge and that’s what Socialcast is
and getting a question answered or working on. We’re pushing the evolution
getting some insight on a subject. You really just need your question of the tools and helping our customers,
In that sense, the subject matter answered quickly, and in many cases you so they don’t get stuck with four walls
expert and the person who is seeking don’t need to talk to the leading subject and a bunch of talented people and
information must interact. matter expert in your company to get the nothing for them to focus on.
correct answer. We look at people who
Both are trying to gain something from not just have the most information or PwC: How does the recent
that exchange. In many of the previous share the most information, but people acquisition by VMware change
systems, the subject matter experts store who actually answer other people’s your vision for Socialcast?
their information and build silos around questions in that domain. Then we can TY: Joining with VMware provides us
themselves for reasons like job security point people who ask questions to with the opportunity to expand our
because there’s really not any value those individuals. vision and advance as a core technology.
in that exchange. So I give you that
information, but what do I receive PwC: So you can actually see the
as the subject matter expert? behavior to do this, and that
changes the reward dynamic.
By making that information expertise TY: Yes. Exposing the behavior changes
exchange more transparent and open, a lot of things. We’ve seen CEOs go in,
the companies—over time—see their view a question-and-answer exchange,
subject matter experts move from and they’ll like it or they’ll leave a
domain experts to mentors because comment. That action completely begins
that exchange is now out in the open. to change the mind-set of individuals.
You’re not rewarded necessarily for The SMEs’ willingness to share increases
being a subject matter expert as much over time with more activity.
Transforming collaboration with social tools 41](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-43-320.jpg)
![PwC: What’s the role of triple store PwC: If social tools are going to PwC: How does the graph
technology in systems like this? be successful, useful, and not just model affect enterprise search?
KG: Everything that’s going on must add to the workload but actually Relational databases, by
be RDF-ized and put into the system so subtract from the workload, you contrast with graph data,
that you build a graph. [In RDF-ization, need passive and active expansion are about individual records
or conversion to Resource Description and trimming processes. How and summarizing a bunch of
Framework form, data is transformed do you use the social platform to records, not navigating through
into subject-verb-object triples for more enhance the processes around the a data space.
scalable linking at the data element workflow? KG: We call the concept that you’re
level with the help of domain and KG: One of the reasons for choosing describing relational navigation. If I
element relationship descriptions— a Web 2.0 and widgetized type of search for the term “Semantic Web,”
richer metadata, in other words. See deployment is the concept of contextual a system with relational navigation
the article, “Making Semantic Web awareness. The application should be will give me that three-dimensional
connections,” on page 20 of Technology aware of what I’m doing now. view of people, communities, and
Forecast, Spring 2009, for more information, so there’s the people,
information.] One of the things that’s come out of there’s the communities associated
Semantic Web in the last few years is with it, and there’s the information
PwC: Data in graph form should Linked Data. Linked Data is really an in the center. You can bring the social
help with relevance, shouldn’t it? excellent way to provide a foundation aspect to the search as well as the
When something new happens to make contextual awareness feasible. unified communications.
in the world, you want to be able Building a system from the ground up
to navigate to it very quickly. allows technology choices. You aren’t The difference the additional social
The system should alert you to tied to, let’s say, a relational model. You graph information brings is that the
new relevant developments as don’t need to create a graph using tables activities users are mentioning in
knowledge evolves. How in a traditional database. It actually is a the stream are now the activities of
do you treat social and graph. That makes a big difference. That the community. It’s not just random
knowledge graphs? Are gives you the flexibility to do the kinds activities and people who happen to be
they treated separately? of things you’re suggesting. associated with the community. These
KG: No. They’re combined. We are people working on this topic right
haven’t created features in this area, From a user experience perspective, now. It’s an active and current thing.
but the design of this graph is broader you can take a conservative approach.
than a social graph. In our original You can avoid getting into advanced PwC: How does the social
design philosophy around people, visualizations and delving into graph lend itself to
communities, and information, both contextual awareness. The first step is applications development?
information and people have some to offer an Enterprise 2.0 platform. Once KG: You can connect to your LDAP
knowledge. Communities are where you you bring value and get people on that [Lightweight Directory Access Protocol]
may contain some of that knowledge type of platform, then you can introduce directory and get started, or treat these
in a persistent way. Our graph is not these more intelligent features and start systems as platforms on which you can
inherently social. It’s just an arbitrary making life easier. build. Every single early customer that
scope that we placed on it initially. we’ve had has done work on a social-
enabled business process or tool for
the platform.
Transforming collaboration with social tools 45](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-47-320.jpg)
![The industry can offer open interfaces In Andrew McAfee’s book on Enterprise We’ve seen some of the leading research
through developer networks. With these 2.0 [McAfee is a Harvard Business groups in the world look at platforms
interfaces, a university such as Duke School professor and the author of like this, where they might be doing joint
can create certain kinds of libraries to Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative research projects. Maybe a major UK
describe a classroom, a study group, a Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest university has some funding and is going
teaching assistant, or a professor. [See Challenges], he talks about the fact to bring in a major US university for six
the interview with Tony O’Driscoll of that in the social network, your direct months. They want that temporal view,
Duke University on page 18 for more friends are at one degree of separation. so they have access to this community
information.] It’s a business process If all you do is spend time making the for six months.
that is social, but it’s built around the relationships you already have stronger
business process. and ignoring the ones you don’t yet have Maybe they want to bring in a
that potentially have more information university from China or from
I’d make a distinction between what and more use for you, what you’re doing somewhere else and set up a longer-
an API [application programming has limited value. term federation between both systems
interface] such as OpenSocial can do, where they maintain their independent
and what you can do by querying the But if you can see activities at more than systems but they share information.
graph directly with SPARQL [SPARQL one degree of separation, a friend of a I think there’s going to be a lot of
Protocol and RDF Query Language, part friend or a friend of a friend of a friend, opportunity for standardization. You
of the W3C Semantic Web stack; see the then you can create very interesting can federate at a protocol level. Some
article, “Spinning a data web,” on applications. You want to create those platforms can federate very well with
page 06 of Technology Forecast, Spring applications, but you also want to open things like SIP [Session Initiation
2009, for more detail on SPARQL]. The the API so that people who want to do Protocol] and XMPP [Extensible
system we use internally supports both this in their own setting in their own Messaging and Presence Protocol],
methods. An API is constrained by what environment can do that as well. but there’s social federation, too.
it’s able to do. With the OpenSocial API,
you can make only the calls that the PwC: You could have two PwC: What have your customers
API allows you to, but it is designed for organizations but because they been interested in doing with this
systems that have the concept of social. define policies different ways sort of platform?
So if I wanted to find out how many or they’re using the thing in a KG: It’s not all to do with social software
of my friends of friends have posted different way, they can’t actually directly. For example, if somebody
content on a particular subject, I could combine communities across wants to change how their intranet
do that with OpenSocial. enterprise boundaries, which is works, they look at it from a completely
what you really probably want to different perspective. That’s one of the
do in some cases. things Cisco itself did. Our intranet of
KG: That policy control is critical, and applications grew over 10 years and
it’s one of the reasons that the focus is often not with a lot of structure. So
so much on federated social software Cisco changed the user experience.
among different groups.
46 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-48-320.jpg)
![Indexing the interest graph
2
SIREn, Sindice’s search engine, can index
2 billion triples in 1 day on 2 machines, 4 to
4 to 6 times faster than conventional
database indexing methods. 6
PwC: In a sense, it’s a redo of the the directory. It’s getting whatever is on These are just technology examples.
home page. the web right now, and it can assemble It’s not that these things don’t exist.
KG: Yes, but now it’s widgetized. And pages on the fly from individual data It’s just that you need to map what’s
this is where governance comes in once elements because of the power of the available and what’s capable, and also
again. We have our internal browser- RDF or Linked Data graph. That kind consider what the user is capable of
based home page, but then we do all of dynamic publishing capability is at dealing with. I’d look at something like
of our work in other applications. a much more granular level than RSS Sindice, and I would say that it’s fine. I
They’re displayed close to each other, feeds. So if Stefan Decker published could probably navigate my way through
but the two don’t even talk to each something at a conference last week, it, but I shouldn’t need to navigate my
other. For example, we front-ended our it should be in that mashup now. way through it. It should happen
engineering document control system very naturally.
with a gadget-type definition as a unit Sindice is crawling, and it’s RDF-izing.
of work or a unit. It’s creating triples from every site it can So we continue to do our user
get its hands on, and it’s pulling that in. experience studies and research to
PwC: So if you happened to be an It’s a demonstration of the plumbing- find the most optimal way to do this.
HR employee you’d have a different level semantic interworkings that are
view, one that’s tied to the HR emerging on the web. Of course, this has
system instead of engineering. some obvious enterprise implications.
KG: Exactly. This is a major step to Just think about the ability to pull in
move from the Flash intranet to the individual data elements from LinkedIn
Web 2.0 enterprise. profiles (or any external source) and
combine them with your company’s
PwC: One last question: What’s own internal profile information and
emerging in this space that also the social information or stream
hasn’t really been harnessed activity, all of which is referenced via the
commercially yet? corporate directory. Once you’ve set up
KG: Have you seen Sindice [http:// the linkages and domain descriptions,
sindice.com/]? It’s a Semantic Web the profiles can be automatically
index developed at DERI [Digital updated, and the system can infer new
Enterprise Research Institute]. It ’s linkages, too. You’re actually using more
coupled with the Sig.ma presentation information—the richer metadata—to
tool [http://sig.ma/], which builds a link data silos together.
social information mashup live from
the web. For example, if you search
on Stefan Decker [DERI’s director], it
should pull in his picture from LinkedIn.
It’s not like a directory where you’re
going to get whatever is published in
Transforming collaboration with social tools 47](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-49-320.jpg)
![PwC: How do people collaborate
Why collaboration better and more effectively,
especially as teams get larger and
more distributed? People on one
hasn’t changed team often need help from another
team in a different place, in a
different unit. Maybe these teams
much—yet don’t even know each other.
SL: That’s the problem of collaboration.
The general problem case is that we’ve
Sheldon Laube focuses on the essentials that made no fundamental progress over the
still need to emerge to create real improvements past 30 years in using tools that help
that group of people do their jobs better,
in enterprise collaboration. other than e-mail.
Interview conducted by Alan Morrison, Bo Parker, and Bud Mathaisel
PwC: How does social networking
help solve that problem?
SL: The jump to solving that problem
through things like Facebook and
Sheldon Laube Twitter just is not obvious to me. Get rid
By the time this issue of the Technology of the words “social network.” Forget
Forecast is published, Sheldon Laube that for a second, because when you
will have retired from PwC, where he most say it to anyone else who is not in our
recently was chief innovation officer. His conversation, they think Twitter
career has included stints in C-suite
and Facebook.
positions at CenterBeam, USWeb, and
Novell. Between 1985 and 1995, he was
CIO at Price Waterhouse (PW) and was That’s why companies get confused.
behind the firm’s decision to license the first The question is, how do you make
10,000 copies of Lotus Notes ever sold to teams more effective through the
an enterprise. After his return in 2003 to use of technology?
what had become PwC, as chief innovation
officer he led the US firm’s iPlace web-
PwC: That’s why Notes was
based idea-sharing initiative.1
brought in back in 1990 or so.
1 See “PwC iPlace—Six Factors Behind Our Success” at SL: That’s why Notes was brought in,
the PwC Innovation Blog (http://pwcinnovate.wordpress.
and that’s what [web pioneer] Tim
com/2010/07/23/pwc-iplace-six-factors-to-our-success/)
for more information on iPlace. Berners-Lee had in mind. The web was
initially a collaboration environment.
The world of collaboration was set
back by a mere 15 or 20 years because
the web turned into a one-way
publishing environment, instead
of a collaboration medium.
60 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-62-320.jpg)
![Milestones 1990
1990s: Bulletin boards and Notes databases 2000
2000s: Web for publishing, not collaboration
2010s: Dynamic communities 2010
Back then, there was a domain: PwC: The WELL [Whole Earth cards in, and each card could support
computer-supported collaborative work. ’Lectronic Link] had been around. eight modems and whatever it was.
There were conferences. But soon, all SL: The WELL had been around, and There was a pretty clear limit, and of
of the money got sucked into a one-to- there had been these places you could course the notion of security and access
many publication model. go—such as CompuServe and some never existed.
others like that—and the notion was
So what’s happened is that because of always exactly the same. It was, “I would Ray Ozzie’s vision [Ozzie led the
social media, with people interacting on like to be able to share something that development of Notes, and then Groove,
a more peer-to-peer level, people have others could easily see.” Those notions which was acquired by Microsoft. He
started asking about web collaboration were all one to many, or many to many. was one of Microsoft’s CTOs and then its
once again. chief software architect until the end of
Things like the WELL facilitated 2010.] was always about collaboration.
PwC: Every time you try and get discussions. You’d read through the It was never about e-mail. The point
off of e-mail, you find yourself posts and maybe somebody had an was, how do you allow people to self-
inexorably held back. answer to your question, much like assemble into working groups?
SL: There have been some attempts. threaded discussions now. That hasn’t
Google Wave was a good example, and changed dramatically. PwC: Notes was the
now there are new ones. What’s being do-it-yourself WELL?
attempted are dynamic communities The thing was, I couldn’t set up my own SL: Yes, but Ozzie’s vision was bigger
that are sensitive to your temporal work. discussions very easily. In other words, than the WELL because it was aimed
In other words, the community would if I just walked into work and said that I at companies. Back in 1990, everybody
change as you move from task to task. wanted to set up a bulletin board system was starting to understand the power
to discuss the latest tax news, that was of a database, dBASE. That was one of
When I’m doing my timesheet there’d be not a lightweight operation. From a the top popular products. That’s what
one community, and when I’m working technology point of view, you’d get a people did with computers. But dBASE
on a project, there’d be another. PC and put in a card that had multiple was a one-user database.
connections to modems so people would
PwC: In 1990, what was the dial in. You had to be pretty savvy just to By comparison, Notes was this magical
aspiration and how was that run one of those. thing that allowed you to do everything
aspiration informed by the you could do in dBASE, and with no
experience with Notes? And from an enterprise point of view, effort it became a completely distributed
SL: In 1990, remember, most companies it wasn’t scalable. The biggest bulletin database that everyone could see and
did not have e-mail. You dialed up and board systems you could buy maxed out you could simultaneously update it. It
logged onto a bulletin board system. at 64 simultaneous users because the was an amazing vision for 1990.
CompuServe started coming out, but PC had only eight slots—you put these
there were bulletin board systems and
AOL had just been started.
Transforming collaboration with social tools 61](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-63-320.jpg)
![200,000
Notes use at PwC
Number of Notes databases at
Price Waterhouse in the early 1990s
Number in 2006 before the purge
900,000
When I first talked about Notes to to throw together a database and with PwC: By 2000, what were the
people here in the firm, I would stand the press of a button, anybody on any collaboration aspirations?
in my office in New York [at Price desktop had access to it, without any SL: In 2000, the web itself—even
Waterhouse]. As people would walk IT involvement. though it was one to many—faced
down the hall to the chairman’s office to the same set of issues. There were an
pay homage to the chairman—I was on It also had enterprise-level security, unlimited number of websites with
the same floor just by random chance— encryption, and scalability—all of that many individuals—lots of one to
I’d grab them and say, “Come and take was in 1990, in the first version of Notes. many—but when you get a lot of
a look at this.” And I’d show them Notes ones, that’s still a big number.
on my desk because it was the only Sure enough, it went wild, and with
copy running. nobody doing anything, other than us In the age of the web, these issues
getting it out there, we went from no became even more acute to everyone
After five minutes people said, “You databases to about 200,000. At the else in the world, because 900,000
know, we could share information like great purge of five years ago, there were websites ain’t nothing. I remember when
this.” I could put in a question and the something like 900,000 Notes databases. there were still 300, when you could go
community could come together and to wherever the directory was, and each
answer questions. Tax people would look The knowledge management people week you’d see more added, right?
at it, and intuitively they understood this said, “Oh, this is out of control, it’s
notion: There is some community that is wrong.” It was all about informal But the web really put this problem in
thinking about the stuff we’re thinking knowledge. They said, “How do you relief because you can think of each
about. How can we tap into each other know what’s right and who is saying website as a database, as a wiki, or
and share knowledge or collaborate? what to whom?” A lot of it was out of whatever, just conceptually. It faces
date, except for the fact that there the same set of issues. How do you
Our philosophy in the early days of Notes were people using it in valuable find the right ones? The problem isn’t
was anybody could create a database. ways—otherwise it wouldn’t exist. any different.
This was a lightweight operation and
it was so simple. The original Notes You get to 900,000 databases—and
was like dBASE, just a form, and you those are all mini collaborations—that
basically lay it out and you say, this is a was the aspiration and it worked. What
field, and it’s either a number or it’s a happened, and it happens over and
character, or it’s a rich text field. So it over again, is the IT people said, “We’ve
was very easy for anyone in the firm who got to get it controlled, and then you
had an idea like this. It was very easy need to add all of these enterprise
application features.”
62 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2011n3techforecasttransformingtools-120307040559-phpapp02/85/slide-64-320.jpg)
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Бизнес-потенциал социальных технологий
The document is a quarterly journal discussing the role of social technology in enterprise collaboration and how it addresses issues like information overload. It features insights on transforming collaboration strategies through social tools, highlighting case studies and expert opinions from various contributors. Central themes include the evolution of social technologies and their potential for enhancing communication and productivity within organizations.
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- 1. A quarterly journal 06 26 48 2011 The collaboration Enterprise success with The CIO’s role in social Issue 3 paradox emerging social technology enterprise strategy Transforming collaboration with social tools Tony O’Driscoll Executive Director Center for Technology, Entertainment and Media Fuqua School of Business Duke University
- 2. Contents Features 2011 Issue 3 The collaboration paradox More social information helps the workforce find what it’s looking for. 06 Enterprise success with emerging social technology Innovators are learning to build graphs to help users locate the information they need—and each other. 26 The CIO’s role in social enterprise strategy Transforming collaboration demands an evolutionary approach. 48
- 3. Interviews Departments 18 02 Building a new learning Acknowledgments environment around social tools 04 Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University Message from the editor aligns social technology’s strengths with the way people learn today. 66 Subtext 22 How online identity and context become productivity drivers Sameer Patel of Sovos Group places social technology in the context of software that enterprises already use. 38 Adding social networking to business workflow Tim Young of Socialcast considers how blending activity streams with existing applications can open the door to behavioral change inside enterprises. 42 Harnessing the power of the graph Keith Griffin of Cisco Systems describes how emerging social and graph data technology can remove barriers to more effective collaboration. 60 Why collaboration hasn’t changed much—yet Sheldon Laube of PwC focuses on the essentials that still need to emerge to create real improvements in enterprise collaboration. Transforming collaboration with social tools 01
- 4. Acknowledgments Advisory Center for Technology Principal & Technology Leader & Innovation Tom DeGarmo Managing Editor Bo Parker US Thought Leadership Partner-in-Charge Editors Tom Craren Vinod Baya Alan Morrison Strategic Marketing Natalie Kontra Contributors Jordana Marx Heather Ashton Galen Gruman David Kelly Bud Mathaisel Bill Roberts Editorial Advisors Larry Marion Christine Wendin Copy Editor Lea Anne Bantsari Transcriber Dawn Regan 02 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 5. US studio Industry perspectives Sheldon Laube Art Director During the preparation of this Chief Innovation Officer Lisa Marie Taylor publication, we benefited greatly PwC from interviews and conversations Designer with the following executives: Nina Llorens Suzanne Lau Program Manager Jans Aasman Strategic Programs and User Illustrators President and CEO Experience Knowledge Management James Millefolie Franz Competency Center Tatiana Pechenik SAP Sriram Chakravarthy Online Director Jack Miller Managing Director Online Marketing Product Strategy and Development Global Vice President Jack Teuber TIBCO Collaboration and Cloud Analytics SAP Designer and Producer Ryan Damico Scott Schmidt Co-founder and CEO Rick Napolitano Crocodoc CIO Reviewers ARINC Steve Ardire Keith Griffin Rich Beaumont Lead Architect Tony O’Driscoll Mike Bergman Enterprise Collaboration Platform Executive Director Basudeb Dash Cisco Systems Center for Technology, Maxim Duprat Entertainment and Media Carl Duyck Bill Guinn Fuqua School of Business Rajiv Jain CTO Duke University Jonathan Labovich Amdocs Frank Munn Sameer Patel Marie Wallace Natalie Hanson Partner Christopher Wasden Senior Director Sovos Group Solutions Strategic Programs and User Special thanks Experience Consulting Holly Simmons Steve Canny SAP Senior Director Cisco Systems Marketing Dick Hirsch SAP Yasemin Krause Senior Consultant Voce Communications Siemens IT Services and Solutions Tim Young CEO and Founder Ram Menon Bill Hopkins Socialcast TIBCO Director of Operations Egon Zehnder International Craig Norvell and Steve Sears Franz Susan Scrupski Social Business Council David Brockington and Ju Wu SAP Carrie Young Socialcast Transforming collaboration with social tools 03
- 6. Tackling the challenge of information overload—with social tools Message from the editor But today, postal systems must deal Carmel-by-the-Sea, near Monterey, with many billions of pieces of mail California, is a quaint little place in a efficiently and effectively, intended beautiful coastal setting. “A village in a for billions of potential destinations. forest overlooking a white sand beach” Providing addresses in the quaint is how the town describes itself in its Carmel style would introduce massive general plan. One of Carmel’s quaint overhead. Each envelope would need to features is that its houses don’t have be intensively scanned and interpreted, numbers. As a result, the US Postal and the people sorting mail would Service doesn’t deliver mail in Carmel need to have amazing memories for house by house; instead, residents families and the buildings described must go to the post office and pick it up in addresses. That is why much of the themselves. Even express mail delivery world—where residential delivery of services have had to adapt—they use mail to individual houses is possible— the street name, the cross street name, uses logical addressing schemes of one and the number of houses in from the form or another. And for the most part, cross street to direct packages to the these schemes organize the process Tom DeGarmo right house. This is clearly a system that very effectively, making it possible for Principal & Technology Leader doesn’t scale. letters to make their way across national thomas.p.degarmo@us.pwc.com boundaries and continents. Back when most people lived agrarian lifestyles in small villages—and rarely Today’s electronic communications left—mail was less essential. But don’t suffer from addressing ambiguity general mobility and the movement of or overload. But they are increasingly populations to cities created the need to becoming a problem, as e-mail, chat, communicate with people you weren’t voice mail, texting, and, yes, tweets likely to see very often. Before these and social network postings gobble up migrations, Carmel’s lack of house more and more of our time. Between numbers was fine. Addresses could Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) be loosey-goosey—simply giving the and unique e-mail and system IDs, the family name or describing something electronic messages meant for us reliably distinctive about the house where the addressee lived would be sufficient. 04 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 7. arrive and usevery little compute This issue of the Technology Forecast • Sameer Patel of Sovos Group resources in the process. The problem examines social technologies as provides an overview of the four is farther downstream. All of us are the solution to electronic main categories of enterprise social spending more and more time filtering communications overload. software, the challenges enterprises all of these communications, trying to face in incorporating this technology separate the important messages from “The collaboration paradox” on page 06 into workflow, and the opportunity in those that are simply distractions. considers how an additional layer of emerging technology. information—generated with the help The reality today is that we receive of social tools—can actually help reduce • Tim Young of Socialcast explains far more invitations to interact in the information overload by providing what can happen to a workforce’s electronic domain than we ever did in structure and context that connects management style when a the world of physical mail. Most of us users and helps them navigate to the conversation stream gets blended with already ignore many of them, leaving content they need. workflow from other applications. unread—and even unseen—vast numbers of electronic communications “Enterprise success with emerging • Keith Griffin of Cisco Systems directed at us. But our approaches are social technology” on page 26 discusses how modifying data inefficient and inaccurate—we often reviews the evolution of enterprise architecture can remove obstacles miss important messages while deleting social technology, underscoring to effective collaboration. low-value ones. We’re like the poor the importance of blending social express mail delivery people trying to information with workflow from • Sheldon Laube of PwC places today’s figure out which house a package should existing applications. social technology trends in the context go to in Carmel. of a 30-year evolution of online “The CIO’s role in social enterprise enterprise collaboration tools. At first glance you might think that strategy” on page 48 identifies a middle social networks just add to the problem. ground between allowing all use of Please visit pwc.com/techforecast to Most companies today are adopting social networking and disallowing any, find these articles and other issues of social networking internally without advocating an evolutionary approach the Technology Forecast online. If you a good plan for taking advantage to balance the need to motivate staff would like to receive future issues of of its latent potential. They aren’t with the business goals that must this quarterly publication as a PDF understanding that each employee’s be achieved. attachment, you can sign up at enterprise social network is the best pwc.com/techforecast/subscribe. way to filter and manage electronic This issue also includes interviews As always, we welcome your feedback communications, so that employees with five executives at companies and and your ideas for future research and attend to them in their order of institutions that are fully engaged analysis topics to cover. importance and potential value. In fact, in long-term efforts to improve the social analytics available from the collaboration with the help of leading enterprise social tools are the social tools: first addition to the toolset for electronic communications that can actually • Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University reduce the overhead of dealing with discusses the role of social technology enterprise communications. in Duke’s Cross Continent MBA program, an innovative peer learning But this latent potential emerges approach that relies heavily on only if your staff engages fully, links multimedia for many-to-many to other staff, and follows topics in information sharing. ways that reflect the priorities of their work plans—and if they comment and interact in activity streams in ways that mirror the focus of their work challenges and opportunities. It’s a form of organizational learning and cultural change that has defeated some early adopters of social technologies, often because they were unaware of its true potential. Transforming collaboration with social tools 05
- 8. 06 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 9. The collaboration paradox More socialinformation helps the workforce find what it’s looking for. By Alan Morrison and Bo Parker For competitive advantage in its than a database, more structured than mission to supply top executives to a huddle, and not as overwhelming as multinational corporations, Egon e-mail. And something over which users Zehnder International (EZI) relies would take ownership. on its ability to share information quickly across regions. Until recently, “I wanted to eliminate IT as the information sharing at the executive middleman so the content would be the search firm was supported primarily by responsibility of the user community,” two formal processes: huddles, in which Hopkins says. consultants and staff converse about a candidate or search; and Orchestra, Hopkins decided to give business a repository of data about candidates units a microblogging capability on and searches. The two processes— the corporate intranet, which lets users one unstructured and one highly “round out the conversations” they have. structured—were augmented by It’s still early, but adoption has been phone calls and e-mail. brisk, and microblogging has become a small but integral new process. These processes worked well until the world got flatter and the business For years, the business and trade press pace got faster. Orchestra and the have been abuzz about the external huddles were still useful, but they were opportunities for social media and no longer quite enough. And phone for companies to reach customers by calls and e-mail—especially e-mail— using these tools. Much less has been had become classic examples of the written about the internal use of social collaboration paradox: they created networking—inside the enterprise. so much information they actually The EZI example illustrates how it is hindered the speedy exchanges possible to create real value through needed to do business. collaboration using a social media tool internally in a direct, low-overhead Bill Hopkins, EZI’s director of way with content owned and defined operations, discerned a gap between by the users. the two main processes that needed to be filled with something less structured Transforming collaboration with social tools 07
- 10. Figure 1: Thescope of our research Our primary focus is on internal communications. Social enterprise Customers Business and world partners This issue of the Technology Forecast The many-to-many “I wanted to eliminate explores how social technologies communications paradigm can improve collaboration within On one level, enterprise collaboration IT as the middleman so the enterprise, especially in day-to- technology hasn’t changed much. the content would be day operations. (See Figure 1 for an E-mail, groupware, and document illustration of the scope of our research sharing have been around for more than the responsibility of within the context of the broader land- two decades. Typically, they started in the user community.” scape.) One important factor, as this first universities or research labs, and then —Bill Hopkins of Egon article describes, is the need to focus migrated to business use. For example, on business unit goals and to use social after universities demonstrated the Zehnder International analytics, including interest graphs, to utility of e-mail and a standard emerged overcome information overload. for e-mail over the Internet, the power of e-mail became obvious. In the early The second article, “Enterprise success 1990s, businesses began to use it with emerging social technology,” on in earnest.1 page 26 examines enterprise-class social applications, social analytics, and how functions that are more 1 The history of the Eudora e-mail client, developed at the University of Illinois in the 1980s, provides an example of deeply embedded in the IT stack this evolution. See “Historical Backgrounder” at http:// provide new value. The third article, www.eudora.com/presskit/backgrounder.html#name, accessed May 1, 2011. “The CIO’s role in social enterprise strategy,” on page 48 examines an evolutionary approach CIOs can take with these emerging social networking platforms. 08 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 11. Case study Microblogging in a new paradigm The example of Egon Zehnder As a starting point, Hopkins chose International (EZI) illustrates social technology from Socialtext, fundamental aspects of the successful which includes a microblog application. adoption of social technologies Launched about two years ago, the internally in the enterprise. With 64 strategy was to give the business units offices in 40 countries, EZI is one of a place for short postings that would a few executive search firms that has round out the huddle discussions and a truly global presence. The warm augment the structured information relationship that a consultant has with in Orchestra. The adaptive, many-to- an executive in one place can be crucial many user environment of Socialtext to addressing the needs of another gave business units—encouraged by consultant’s client in another place. Hopkins—the opportunity to “own” the The best matches on a global scale are technology in a way they hadn’t before exactly what the company trades on. and make it more relevant. But EZI was stuck in an old When well designed and implemented communications paradigm that so that it delivers relevance and most enterprises will recognize. An promotes use, enterprise social existing portal on the corporate intranet networking can be engaging, and the had outlived its usefulness. Given technology allows users to adapt it to the demands on staff from phone various needs. Hopkins made Symphony calls, e-mail, and searches, the static a self-sustaining content system by portal had become a place for aging complementing the existing candidate- information that fewer and fewer search processes. All EZI users— people had time to visit. The portal was consultants, researchers, and other neglected and increasingly irrelevant. staff—could use the same tool together. “It was highly IT intensive, and the The early results are encouraging. content was obsolete,” says Bill One of the first benefits to users is an Hopkins, EZI’s director of operations. improved ability to locate expertise. “People avoided it in droves.” “Say I’m working on a search for the shipbuilding industry in Southeast Asia The old portal was not going to fill where a key skill is the ability to procure the gap Hopkins saw between the materials,” Hopkins says. “The question unstructured huddles and the highly is, does anyone have experience, not structured Orchestra, a combined necessarily in shipbuilding, but in project accounting and customer materials procurement?” Microblog relationship management (CRM) posts on Symphony can help identify a system. His vision was to create an consultant who knows executives interactive replacement for the portal, with that experience in that region. to be called Symphony. Hopkins knew the keys to success were to encourage Hopkins acknowledges that Symphony participation by the business units is the beginning of a lengthy path to and instill a sense of ownership. improve EZI’s collaboration capabilities. “I think I saw this quotation somewhere: ‘If only we knew what we know.’” Transforming collaboration with social tools 09
- 12. Figure 2: One-to-manyvs. many-to-many communications E-mail, document sharing, and portals are examples of a one-to-many or “broadcast” communications paradigm, depicted on the left. Social technologies, by contrast, use a many-to-many paradigm, as depicted on the right. Comment Comment Idea Comments Idea Comment Comment One-to-many Many-to-many • Content is isolated • Content is persistent • Limited to people who received the message • Available from anywhere, to everyone, at any time • Disappears over time • Groups are created organically by following • E-mail groups must be constantly managed Social technologies, which introduced The many-to-many paradigm has clearly a many-to-many communications evolved. Blogs, microblogs, wikis, paradigm, have also been around and the like appeared, and now suites in some form for decades. Figure 2 combine these tools. As the article, contrasts one-to-many with many- “Enterprise success with emerging social to-many communications. The latter technology,” on page 26 describes, paradigm started with online bulletin enterprise tools are available that move boards such as the Whole Earth beyond secured versions of Facebook, ’Lectronic Link (WELL), a dial-up Twitter, or other social applications that bulletin board that Stewart Brand, have not been optimized for business. creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, established in 1985. Mitch Kapor, the In spite of today’s capabilities, most founder of Lotus Development, which enterprises still are not posting much funded and then bought the Notes many-to-many information internally. collaboration environment, was an Instead, they send lots of e-mail, early WELL user.2 creating blizzards of low-relevance information through indiscriminant Many-to-many information sharing distribution lists, and often failing to leverages inexpensive communications. reach those who might have the best As the cost of posting messages to any answer to a question. Social technology, number of people and making the plus analytics, can change that scenario messages persistent approached zero per by helping companies find the sweet message, the advantages of the media spot between too much and not enough. became clear. Billions of people now Figure 3 illustrates how consumer have the ability to post and have their social media trends have influenced messages read anywhere at any time enterprise collaboration. after the posting. 2 See Steve Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of New Media: An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications), 172ff, and “The History of Notes and Domino,” IBM developerWorks, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ ls-NDHistory/, accessed May 1, 2011. 10 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 13. Figure 3: Socialmedia’s influence on enterprise collaboration Many-to-many social technology used by consumers influences how enterprise collaboration occurs, but the impact is not as direct as some might expect. Telephone E-mail/chat Document sharing Groupware Social technology Historically, many tools have been used both outside and inside the enterprise. Social media, however, undergoes dramatic transformation when used for inside-enterprise collaboration. The activity stream is where the similarity ends. The means of adoption are different and must be aligned with business goals. Outside Inside the enterprise Inside an enterprise, the ability to filter Another big issue with the many-to- the internal information and extract many platforms, whether they’re team what’s essential is more significant than collaboration tools such as Notes or ever. If you’re an EZI consultant, the newer social software suites, is that they right posting from another consultant function separately from the rest of the you don’t know might mean the IT fabric. (See Figure 3.) difference between no fee and a substantial commission. Enterprises that diagnose what’s wrong with internal collaboration Collaboration tools have matured, but and prescribe a many-to-many cure the main question continues to be, as are trying to weave social networking PwC Chief Innovation Officer Sheldon into the IT fabric in a complementary Laube puts it: “How do you make teams way. They are also working on the more effective through the use of organizational aspects of creating technology?” Implied in that question is incentives, reengineering processes, and another question: how do you expand using analytics to make the information the reach of the teams? flows relevant to specific groups and individuals. This approach promises two Laube sees this as the perennial issue, advantages: (1) a single place to work, one that predates the web. Laube, who and (2) a means of creating context, a evaluated Lotus Notes in the mid-1980s significant component of knowledge and bought the first 10,000 seat licenses sharing that’s historically been lacking. that Notes issued when he was CIO at Price Waterhouse, says, “That’s why Notes was brought in, and that’s what Tim Berners-Lee [inventor of the World Wide Web] had in mind. The web was a collaboration environment. The world of collaboration was set back by a mere 15 or 20 years because the web turned into a one-way publishing environment, instead of a collaboration medium.” Transforming collaboration with social tools 11
- 14. Figure 4: Thesocial graph’s impact How context creation with the The interest graph is a superset of the interest graph can help overcome social graph, a people map. The interest information overload graph includes people, things, and their Divergent phase What’s new about enterprise linkages, and it helps users navigate the collaboration is the capability to create information thicket. and share more context. This starts with the many-to-many paradigm that Since the 1980s, enterprises have tools such as Facebook and Twitter endured unprecedented information have popularized, but it doesn’t end overload. This was the first phase of there. Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos social technology—the divergent phase, Group, a social technology consulting in which people learned to expose firm, describes the shortfalls of earlier information in willy-nilly fashion in Social approaches that did not include silos. Within the silo, there was a information appears, this capability: limited amount of context; between but it’s silos, there was even less; and then siloed “The fundamental problem with those the silos proliferated. old collaborative systems was that they were devoid of context. You would Enterprises have recently entered the Convergent phase see stuff thrown at you and it was not convergent phase and are learning really tied into your daily flow of work. to purpose the social information by You were expected to go into these design. Vendors enable the embedding knowledge bases that are separate from of social technology in systems as well as where you might live,” Patel says. the localization of the information. The potential for relevance increases, but the ? “You might be a call center rep who is information is still not as relevant and living in a call center application, or accessible as it could be. you might be someone in the finance Information department living in ERP [enterprise Within a couple of years, PwC expects is more resource planning] financials. These the navigational phase to begin in accessible, are very disconnected worlds, and earnest. (See Figure 4.) Relationships but difficult the process apps focused on taking between people, and between business to search you through your processes. The issues and people, will become more knowledge management was just explicit in the form of self-managed Navigational phase sitting in a vacuum.” interest graphs. The interest graph will become the means for finding Context creates relevance. And what’s relevant. It’s important to after decades of data proliferation, remember that the addition of the social relevance is finally a hot topic, even information layer and the ability to on the consumer side. In March 2011, structure that information along with TechCrunch proclaimed “The Age of other information in graph form are Relevance,” noting that several of the what provide the additional context. newest social media platforms focus With this additional context, companies Information on creating an “interest graph,” a map can confront and reduce information in graph form for navigating to subjects and people of overload. Business success in using the becomes integrated and interest. The author, Mahendra Pasule, interest graph will depend on how well it navigable asserts that “Social media may lose is understood and built for the purpose. its obsession with follower numbers and traffic, evolving to context-driven reputation systems and algorithms.”3 Vendors of enterprise-class systems are engaged in similar efforts. 3 Mahendra Pasule, “The Age of Relevance,” TechCrunch, March 3, 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/the- age-of-relevance/, accessed May 2, 2011. 12 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 15. The 160 studentsenrolled in the Duke University Cross Continent MBA program come from more than 25 countries and have at least three years of work experience. The experience lends itself to a peer learning environment that socially networked multimedia facilitates. Transforming collaboration with social tools 13
- 16. Figure 5: Sensemaking vs. exception handling and predictable execution Collaboration tools that benefit from social technology dwell more at the sense-making and exception-handling end of the continuum, where processes are more ad hoc, and have fewer repeatable components. Adding social technology into the same workflow window with predictable execution tools (such as ERP) allows users to do ad hoc work with less disruption. Hig h Need for collaboration and Medium value from social technology Low Sense making Predictable execution Exception handling Using the interest graph for “The majority of these students do not shared sense making have an intrinsic motivation to move The Cross Continent MBA program on and earn Ph.D. degrees in any of the at Duke University, in which business disciplines, but rather to make Tony O’Driscoll teaches, is a prime a difference in the global work context,” example of the way that many-to- O’Driscoll says. “The key to tapping many communications can be used into their motivation is to discuss the in education and business. The 160 societal, political, and economic issues students enrolled in his 16-month that they will encounter in the region.” program have at least three years of work experience. The program is an Getting students to share their own innovative spin on distance learning. experiences is a major objective of It begins in person as the students and the program. “It’s really important to faculty gather for 10 days in a city such tap into that well of experience from as New Delhi, and it continues online people who have lived and worked all after that. over the world. We want to leverage the experiential wisdom of the group so Once they arrive, O’Driscoll engages the they can become leaders of consequence students with a blitz of media collection, by really understanding how history sharing, and critiquing. He kicks off the and culture influence how institutions peer learning program on a rich-media work and how markets function in each blog to trigger commentary and engage region,” O’Driscoll says. the students in peer dialogue before they meet in class. 14 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 17. The program integratesa number of Taking advantage of new tools social networking platforms that allow at enterprise scale many-to-many multimedia sharing— In recent years, a few enterprises have for the collaboration and peer learning. targeted information overload by O’Driscoll insists that every deliverable changing the communications paradigm gets posted and that students review entirely. Their methods are comparable each other’s work. “Anybody who writes to what O’Driscoll does in his program. anything, whether individual or team, To accomplish this paradigm change at is now exposed in the commons. And an enterprise scale, these enterprises everybody is required to review three have adapted both the tools and deliverables other than their own and their organizations. rank them,” he says. (See the interview with O’Driscoll on page 18.) Cisco Systems uses its own system internally. Since the software was O’Driscoll describes this process as installed, it has become an alternative shared sense making, and he contrasts it to e-mail. Lead architect Keith Griffin with e-mail. When he was a researcher points out that users can tune and at IBM 15 years ago, he was involved in reconfigure the way information is a project to reinvent e-mail. “E-mail was displayed via the system’s interface, killing the humans, and it was killing so only the sources need appear. “We the networks. E-mail was killing the don’t, by default, connect everybody to humans, reducing them to information everybody. They discover each other in workers playing Whac-A-Mole with the organization,” Griffin says. “I have “We don’t, by default, digital data. Workers are just essentially my blog aggregator, where the blogs I’ve connect everybody prolonging the inevitable by drinking chosen appear. Then I have my watch more coffee and whacking more e-mail list.” Participants can add each other to to everybody. They moles. We’re going to lose that battle.” conversations, and after that point, they discover each other end up in the watch list, too. (See the in the organization.” O’Driscoll’s other insight is that interview with Griffin on page 42.) organizing and responding to e-mail —Keith Griffin of Cisco messages doesn’t equal accomplishment. Griffin says the “follow” model allows In contrast, shared sense making is an a flexible asymmetry that’s suitable accomplishment in and of itself, one for corporate hierarchy. “If any given that does not demand that you respond employee in an organization sends a to every message. For each assignment, contact request to the CEO, the CEO students are required to critique the is not going to answer everybody. The work of three other students. That’s follow model is more appropriate in it. The program is not about digesting that case. Everybody is interested large amounts of material. Instead, in what the CEO has to say and will the goal is to instill the “capability for follow that person, but the CEO does discernment” in students. Discernment not necessarily need to connect in that plays a large role in enterprises, where contact type of mode. It’s important sense making is on the more ad hoc that we get the underlying data model side of business process—a side that right, so that we can look at those could use substantial improvement. different relationships.” Figure 5 considers sense making within the context of other parts of typical enterprise workflow. Transforming collaboration with social tools 15
- 18. The self-organizing graphsgenerated What this example implies is a way by employees enable navigation to to take processes apart, add a more a relevant interest. Because of the ad hoc piece of the flow to them, and interconnected interest graph enabled put them back together—not unlike by the system’s data architecture, search business process reengineering. But it’s a retrieves “a three-dimensional view of different part of the work process that’s people, communities, and information,” being addressed. Dick Hirsch, senior “What’s intriguing about Griffin says. consultant for Siemens IT Services and Solutions, puts it this way: “What’s these tools is that you Other tools like SAP’s StreamWork intriguing about these tools is that you can have a touch point also enable the interest graph. They can have a touch point to an existing connect to the Lightweight Directory process where people can work in an to an existing process Access Protocol (LDAP), which serves unstructured manner using Web 2.0 where people can work as the kernel of a user’s online identity tools to achieve the goal in a certain in an unstructured and moves out from there. “LDAP task. Then they can return to the becomes your system of record from the process and keep moving on.” manner using Web 2.0 standpoint of who you are,” says Holly tools to achieve the goal Simmons, senior director of marketing From the experiences of Cisco and for StreamWork. “StreamWork is the SAP in using their own tools, two in a certain task. Then front end for the back-end collaboration reengineering elements seem crucial: they can return to the we already do.” (1) the data architecture that gives process and keep structure to the interest graph, and (2) From the user’s perspective, once the ability to add a more unstructured moving on.” that social graph is connected and the flow to an existing work process. functionality is accessible to those who Without both, companies won’t be —Dick Hirsch of Siemens IT need it, ad hoc collaboration directly able to alleviate information overload. Services and Solutions in StreamWork becomes possible. It’s a new capability, even to those inside SAP. Seize the actual potential and ignore the fluff “Before, I would have built a Enterprises are in dire need of help with presentation slide deck with the information overload, but soon they’ll team through e-mail. We would have be able to use the collaboration paradox searched for version control and who to their advantage. With the enterprise- had the latest comments and did we class social tools that are becoming incorporate everybody’s comments. available, organizations can start to There probably would have been at least eliminate the bad communications 100 e-mails, plus 15 different versions of habits they’ve developed with e-mail, the deck,” says Jack Miller, global vice document-centric websites, a broadcast- president for collaboration and cloud only information model, and siloed analytics at SAP. “This time we built that application stacks. In their place, entire presentation inside the tool, so enterprises will be able to start building everybody’s comments are captured in a social information layer, and in the one place—the latest version. We were process they can surface identities and able to build this entire CEO-level deck relationships that can bind corporate without going through e-mail.” information together. Given the right architecture and the use of identities and relationships, the workforce will be able to navigate to more relevance. 16 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 19. Some vendors areleading by example. Today, the most powerful capabilities Cisco has moved beyond e-mail to a new are localized. Duke University’s Cross communications paradigm, a renewed Continent MBA program has a lot data infrastructure, and a work style of inherent flexibility as a relatively with less overload. With StreamWork, small and autonomous effort. In time, SAP is adding a sense-making compo- enterprises will get better at extracting nent to its workflow, one that’s blended value from social technology at scale, with the applications. and the security model will evolve so the extended enterprise—partners Internally, both vendors are moving included—will benefit. The first step beyond what most enterprises have done. will be to take the component parts— Enterprises need to follow their lead by a different communications paradigm, tapping into the real power of these tools, a new way to blend IT resources, and rather than adding yet another channel an evolved data architecture—and to a collaboration environment that’s work at a small scale to discover how already overly complicated. They need to they function best given specific understand the vision first, and then do enterprise challenges. the hard work. Early adopters of best-of-breed systems also provide an example to follow. By using Socialtext, EZI complemented processes that already worked. Socialcast, another vendor, has manufacturing clients that make the activity stream part of their workflow by sharing the designs they are working on. PwC, with initiatives Enterprises are in dire need such as iPlace, creates highly focused of help with information internal interactive environments. The relevance, incentives, and the process overload, but soon they’ll be for participation are built into each able to use the collaboration online initiative. paradox to their advantage. Transforming collaboration with social tools 17
- 20. PwC: Are youteaching currently? Building a new TO: Yes. I’m teaching in the Cross Continent MBA program, which is one of the places we’re using social technology. learning environment It’s a 16-month MBA program where we travel en masse to six different areas around social tools of the world and spend 10 days on the ground embedding ourselves in the region. Afterward we try to make sense of what just happened, before we do Tony O’Driscoll aligns social technology’s it again in another area. It’s an intense strengths with the way people learn today. kind of immersion and reflection, where our students are embedded in the region Interview conducted by Alan Morrison, Bo Parker, and Bud Mathaisel first, and then through distance-based introspection they try and make sense of the experience they just went through. More than 25 countries are represented in the 160 students enrolled in the Tony O’Driscoll program. They bring with them that Tony O’Driscoll is executive director, international experience as well as at Center for Technology, Entertainment and least three years of business experience. Media, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. His business background includes PwC: How do you use social previous leadership positions in the strategy technology in that program? and change consulting practice at IBM Global Services and at Nortel Networks. TO: We use a peer learning approach that relies on socially enabled His most recent book, Learning in 3D: technologies. For example, after we Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise arrive in a place, I send the students Learning and Collaboration, which he on what I call a Culture Dash. Each co-authored with Karl M. Kapp, was team has a video camera, and they published in 2010. are given that afternoon to go around to predefined landmarks that have historical significance. They interview people about the societal, political, and economic transitions in those places. 18 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 21. Minimizing e-mail The number of e-mails Tony O’Driscoll did not reply to because he’s started to 7,000 give up on the medium. They take that four hours of video and I decided to do away with all that, Whac-A-Mole with digital data. Workers jointly edit it down to a five-minute and instead I use the technological are just essentially prolonging the movie. The final product gets posted, affordance called a blog. The students inevitable by drinking more coffee and and the teams review each others’ read the blog beforehand. whacking more e-mail moles. videos. This way, we try to extract the experiential wisdom of all these You need to motivate students up front. We’re going to lose that battle. No doubt people and share it with others, so I use public domain sources such as about it. If you look at how information they too can be leaders. We encourage YouTube, Big Think, TED, or FORA.tv, is expanding and proliferating, and the students to tune in quicker, to and I find material to seed serious you put that into your inbox, you can understand whatever city they go into conversation about the issues that the see that’s not going to work. To deal by really understanding the culture, and world faces today. I post a link to two with the volume, you organize all your to see how institutions work there and and a half minutes of Fadi Ghandour e-mails into folders. Moving bits around how markets function there. [CEO of Aramex] talking about the Arab on a screen this way might help you feel Spring, for example, and that prompts better, but I don’t know how much that The future of learning is shifting from a whole bunch of questions. As the blog sort of activity contributes to anything. pouring knowledge into individuals’ administrator, I can track activity and heads to enabling them to tune their monitor the comments. And I do a lot I’m both frustrated and proud of the networks to solve unanticipated of polling. I can see who is having what fact that last year there were 7,000 problems as they confront them. My kinds of conversations, know where e-mails that I just did not respond job is to get the network of students to people are getting stuck or not, and to. I have literally started to give it use social tools to tap into each others’ get ideas for class discussions. up as a medium. Everything outlives experiences around the key objectives. its usefulness. Even back when we That’s what the younger generation is So when I go into class on Monday introduced Sametime, there was a 20 doing; they are tuning their network morning in India or wherever we are, to 25 percent drop in e-mail. Instead, to the problem at hand. The classroom I’m not going in cold. With the social people were using Sametime to ask each paradigm is increasingly being pushed platform and presence and identity other, “When can you meet?” You could into a corner, and the place where baked in, I can track all of the activity, I respond with, “I can meet at this time.” learning has to happen is increasingly know what’s going on, and I am clearly That was it. emerging at the moment of need in the much better prepared to add value to workflow context of an increasingly their learning experience. PwC: How are different people complex and uncertain business world. responding to the same set PwC: What lessons can enterprises of tools? The students in the PwC: So you don’t rely much on take from this sort of example? Cross Continent program may traditional classroom methods? TO: They can introduce alternatives have totally different frames TO: Around the edges I do, but not at that are better suited to specific tasks in of reference. the core. I decided to get rid of the pre- a very similar way. When I was an IBM TO: I haven’t seen any variability in reads, the “box of doom” as the researcher at Lotus 15 years ago, we different regions in terms of their students called it, that we sent the did this big project called reinventing interest in using the tools. There’s an students two weeks before they had to e-mail. E-mail was killing the humans, overriding motivation, one that says that show up. That translates into hundreds and it was killing the networks. It I have made a decision to do this and I’m and hundreds of pages of dead trees. was killing the humans, reducing really excited to connect with people. them to information workers playing Transforming collaboration with social tools 19
- 22. Benefits of socialtechnology 40 Tony O’Driscoll no longer has to 700 parse through 40 channels of TV or push through 700 e-mails. I take advantage of the fact that the PwC: In the broad generic world Most important is the activity-based students are enthusiastic and they of Facebook and Twitter, there computing paradigm that allows an haven’t become jaded yet. I wouldn’t seems to be two kinds of people. artifact within the ecosystem to be its suggest trying to change your Some people adapt very quickly own beacon. In this case, the project technology platform to be socially based to broadcasting their thoughts, plan is the artifact—it’s broadcasting toward the back end of somebody’s ideas, and feelings. Others sign up an activity stream to me. It tells me MBA degree, because they are focused but rarely post, if ever. Do you run something just happened to it, such as on getting their degree and getting the across that with your students? when someone I know touches it. From hell out. But you can take this unbridled What’s your strategy? that stream, I can pretty much figure enthusiasm and bring it into a social TO: I have a contribution grade that out where and when I might want to context that establishes the norm for amounts to 10 percent of the total grade. pay attention. how things are going to work. Essentially, the grade is designed to encourage them to contribute. Learning That broadcasting increases the Where it gets interesting is that and adaptation are two sides of the same efficiency with which you manage your everybody submits their deliverable coin. The minute you stop learning, you attention, but it doesn’t account for the to the commons and everybody else stop adapting; when you stop adapting, fact that the inputs to those attention can see it. That’s different, because you die. management systems are moving at in the traditional world, everybody jerk speed and our ability to process is submits the work they’re assigned to That’s one of the really interesting things not. So it’s buying us some time, but it’s the professor, and the professor makes about human beings—if I ask you right insufficient to address the larger issue. a value judgment as to its utility and now to stop learning, you can’t. You correctness. The students submit the are a sense-making machine. That’s PwC: So are we just exchanging work in a very secure environment, why we are here and dinosaurs aren’t. one nonscalable environment and they can choose to share it or not And we have the capacity to adapt for another? share it. faster than before. The clock speed of TO: It’s a digital divide of a different technology is jerk speed, and it’s jerking kind. Our ability to process information In this new context, by comparison, humanity around because it’s working is constant, but the amount of anybody who writes anything, whether at a different clock speed from what we information that requires processing it’s an individual or a team, is now are used to. Our clock speed is relatively is increasing exponentially. Collective exposed in the commons. Everybody is constant over time. sense making is one way to bridge this required to review three deliverables divide. By tapping into social networks other than their own and rank and What social technologies do is change and using more precise information review them. That’s a little foreign, the paradigm for attention management. parsing methods, we can certainly be and there’s a fair amount of pushback In the old paradigm, I would parse more effective than we have in the past. on that. People say, “What do you through the 40 channels of TV or try to mean, other people can see my stuff?” push through 700 e-mails a day. Now I And I say, “Well, that’s how peer can crowdsource attention by essentially learning works.” having human beings I trust and value give some seal of approval to some piece of content that I think I might want to engage in. 20 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 23. PwC: To getto that point will Enterprise behavior is different. You require more than just moving can’t take the same social technologies Twitter or Facebook inside and plop them into a profit-making the enterprise. context and expect that people will TO: It will. We have seen very immediately engage. The question productive activity on Twitter or is, once the underlying motivation Facebook, but the incentives are shifts from purpose to profit, will the different. People raised money to motivation to engage persist? send to Haiti, or to help with the tsunami in Japan, or the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We saw all of these spontaneous aggregations of cognitive ability being put toward a common humanitarian purpose. “Where it gets interesting is that everybody submits their The motive in this kind of social context is altruism. It’s to help others. deliverable to the commons By contrast, the motive in a business and everybody else can see it. context is all about profit. That’s different, because in the traditional world, everybody submits the work they’re assigned to the professor, and the professor makes a value judgment as to its utility and correctness.” Transforming collaboration with social tools 21
- 24. PwC: What arethe more recent How online identity challenges companies have been facing on the collaboration front? SP: The fundamental problem with and context become those old collaborative systems was that they were devoid of context. You would see stuff thrown at you and it was not productivity drivers really tied into your daily flow of work. You were expected to go into these knowledge bases that are separate from Sameer Patel of Sovos Group places social where you might live. technology in the context of software that You might be a call center rep who is enterprises already use. living in a call center application, or you might be someone in the finance Interview conducted by Alan Morrison and Bo Parker department living in ERP [enterprise resource planning] financials. These are very disconnected worlds, and the process apps focused on taking Sameer Patel you through your processes. The Sameer Patel, a partner at Sovos Group, knowledge management was just has consulted on enterprise collaboration sitting in a vacuum waiting for you strategy and technology planning for to associate context. more than 13 years, starting at USWeb (marchFIRST). The true value of enterprise social computing will come from bringing data, content, and people together in the context of business activities. Context is not just a general-purpose content management effort or a knowledge management effort. Online collaboration needs to be embedded in the flow of work to get you to the end goal more effectively, as opposed to yet another place for workers to remember to go to. 22 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 25. PwC: What’s yourtake on the PwC: That being the landscape, At best, one or two of the standalone current generation of tools and is there an inherent advantage platforms will continue to remain alone. how they’re moving toward in any one of the camps over The enterprise software vendors will that goal? the others? offer a social information layer as part SP: You’ve got four camps, really. In SP: I work for a consulting firm and of their content management stack. the first camp, you have the general- so do you guys, so I’m going to say, “It Oracle has an entire content business; purpose tools that typically come from depends.” There are tradeoffs. If you so do SAP and IBM. These tools will the startup community—that have come from the process side (as a product become part of one stack (either from garnered inspiration from consumer company, for example), you have a focus one vendor or via tight partnerships) social tools, but are fitted for the that will always force you to be very that will give you content management, enterprise context. In the second camp, disciplined about having context built document management, knowledge you have the HR vendors that have been in to how fluid collaboration and people management, and social connectivity. selling learning and performance connectivity can fill gaps in a traditional management, as well as the whole HR workflow-laden design. PwC: What about inhibitors? suite. Their message is that because SP: One issue the media doesn’t talk effective use of social technology is A professional services company, a very much about is the participation problem ultimately about people and the people-centered business, tends to go with some of these tools. Companies workforce, they’re the ones best with the central suites, whether they go through the hype phase and the positioned to push this to you. buy IBM Connections or Jive. It’s not excitement of buying Facebook-like tools about sitting in ERP screens all day long; for the enterprise, and then they don’t The third camp is ERP vendors that these companies don’t have the same know what to share. People slow down help organizations complete a critical sort of workflow that a typical product their usage, and then they stop posting process in context—the SAPs and company has. Less structured knowledge their status updates because they’re not Oracles that build process-oriented is the asset. So there’s a big focus on seeing the value of it. This is one of the systems. Salesforce.com, obviously, is using collaboration suites to reuse problems when participatory intent one of these. Even though the company knowledge and improve project margins. is not clear to the user and when the doesn’t have the entire ERP suite, it has social platform is largely decoupled Force.com—you can get every single The HR system marketing folks may from contextual work. conceivable ERP component from make it sound like the HR management Force.com. IBM and TIBCO with tibbr system is neatly tied to the social can ultimately go in this camp, too. technology. It’s just not there yet, but I suspect they’ll get there in the next 6 to Then the last camp is the unified 10 months. Chief HR officers will say communications companies. Cisco, that the stream needs to be embedded for example, bought WebEx; has into the HR management system, figured out video, face-to-face, because ultimately they’re the ones who online conferencing, and Voice over manage all the performance reviews, IP; and is now broadening the solution allocate resources, and manage talent to include text-based engagement and learning. And there’s certainly merit and collaboration. to that. That’s essentially the lay of the land starting out. Transforming collaboration with social tools 23
- 26. The information sharingproblem End users aren’t necessarily 50 interested in information sharing; they are interested in making 50 customer calls a day. The participation issue is a symptom of The third problem is from a marketing PwC: These are systemic a deep problem with a lack of business standpoint. Often, vendors will sell inefficiencies of some sort? alignment and participation incentives. stuff to an IT director or a CIO, and they SP: Yes. We’ve been living in this myth These issues should be addressed present general-purpose benefits that that stuff that happens at companies is before the software is rolled out. A lot make a lot of sense to a forward-thinking very repeatable. We put all these CRM of enterprises wait until the switch has IT executive. After the purchase, those [customer relationship management], been flipped to then figure out how they same marketing materials from the ERP, and MRP [materials requirements will get people to use it. They’ve really vendor are used as selling materials to planning] systems in place thinking that not done the proper planning or gotten the end user. When end users look at they’re repeatable processes and we can the right groups to understand how some of these nebulous outcomes, such get repeatable value out of the systems. it facilitates the core process they’re as “Share more; it’s better,” they say, The truth is that every single process responsible for. “All this information sharing doesn’t in the enterprise is not as repeatable matter to me; my target is to do 50 as we would like it to be. People have People are not measured on which customer calls in the day and go home.” questions along the way. tool they use; they’re measured on Those outcomes need to be translated getting their work done. You have to into why it makes sense for them, so ERP systems have boiled down every have that alignment, which is one of the there’s a lot of that confusion. single business application to a submit biggest issues. People will hide behind and a cancel button, when really what culture and other challenges such as the The fourth problem, and this is probably users want is a giant discuss button Millennial argument, which has some one of the biggest, is I’ve never met a sometimes. Users don’t know the right truth to it but not nearly as much as they CEO or another CxO who is going to say, answer sometimes, they need to get say. The problem is that the “What’s in it “We don’t want to innovate and we don’t help, and they need to find the right for me?” factor has not been identified want to share knowledge.” The problem people to help them. That need is more for these users. is that they’ll often tell someone in their acute in some processes than others, for executive team, “OK, we’re going to do example, in areas of the company where Another big issue is just good old politics this. Who’s going to take ownership of there are inefficiencies, where products 101. A lot of the activity and effort that’s this thing?” Everyone’s going to look haven’t gotten out the door, or where the been evident so far has been emergent. around, nod their heads, and say, “This quality is lower. For example, pockets of the company is a fabulous idea, Bob. Why don’t you will go off and get their own accounts, take it?” Until it’s clear that social and and usage will start to gain some collaborative approaches and tools can steam in engineering or in a product At the CEO level, of course they want address big problems and can have development group. Even if this thing more innovation and sharing, but every operating and financial benefit, it will starts to show promise, executives often person sitting in that room is in charge be challenging to make them C-suite will not get behind something that they of quota, pushing product out the door, imperatives. can’t take full credit for. So, if they can’t growing a geographic footprint, and say that they invented it and they’re the the like. That’s where broad, nebulous ones who brought it to the company, goals such as improve innovation and then they don’t get all the points for it. sharing start to get difficult to execute. This goes back to articulating the value of social and collaborative approaches and technology in the context of known performance headaches and opportunities that executives face today. 24 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 27. “I’ve never meta CxO who is going to say, ‘We don’t want to innovate and we don’t want to share knowledge.’ The problem is that they’ll often tell someone in their executive team, ‘OK, we’re going to do this. Who’s going to take ownership of this thing?’ Everyone’s going to look around, nod their heads, and say, ‘This is a fabulous idea, Bob. Why don’t you take it?’ ” PwC: Speaking of finding people Social software can essentially help who can help, that issue seems companies meet their performance tied to a lack of online individual objectives in much more efficient identities in a company. If ways by facilitating connection and the identities of each individual discussion. Once that becomes obvious, in the workforce were visible, it will be surprising how many people how would that help?’ are willing to engage. SP: This battle will ultimately be won on identity management. Beyond usability as a differentiator, many elements in the enterprise social software suite are becoming commodities. The magic will happen when we tie in implicit and explicit profile data elements of our individual public and historical profiles with our enterprise social profiles and, of course, HR. That’s when your colleagues and others get a true sense of who you are, what you think you’re good at, and, just as important, what the community thinks you’re good at. Transforming collaboration with social tools 25
- 28. 26 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 29. Enterprise success with emergingsocial technology Innovators are learning to build graphs to help users locate the information they need—and each other. By David Kelly, Heather Ashton, and Alan Morrison Mention social technology or social generation, brand identity, customer networking, and most people think service, or marketing purposes. The of consumer-driven applications such possibilities for internal applications as Twitter or Facebook. But some of social technology are much broader, organizations realize that Facebook, but they are less obvious, slower Twitter, and their secured equivalents to emerge, and have significant inside the enterprise are just a catalyst architectural and organizational for deeper changes that must be made implications that many businesses to collaboration tools and methods. may not have sufficiently explored. Improving how work gets done is a New generations of social bigger challenge than adding a social technologies—when coupled with networking activity stream to the IT clear vision, good planning, and mix. Some aspects of that challenge effective execution—have the potential are technological, as this article to change the way business is done. If describes. Others, as the article, “The they aren’t already, IT departments will collaboration paradox,” on page 06 soon face the challenge of determining explains, involve a change in strategy or the best approach to incorporating are mostly organizational in nature. Still social technology into the way their others, as the article, “The CIO’s role in enterprises do business. social enterprise strategy,” on page 48 considers, require IT leadership that In conversations with some of the must be evolutionary in approach. most fully engaged adopters of social technology, CIOs, and social technology Over the next decade, businesses that leaders, PwC sees a change occurring seek competitive advantage from more in the enterprise social technology effective online collaboration will need landscape and the opportunity for to acquire a keen awareness of what organizations to take advantage of it. these changes involve and how they’re Enterprise social technology has moved materializing. Most businesses already from a divergent phase into a more use some type of externally facing convergent phase. social technologies, typically for lead Transforming collaboration with social tools 27
- 30. Figure 1: Theevolution of enterprise social technology Ease of use is of course one key criterion for companies considering social technologies, but equally important is how well the information these tools generate allows the social graph to become visible and interconnected in graph form with other enterprise information. The result should be better information filtering and less workflow disruption. Cisco Quad, SAP StreamWork, followed by others TIBCO tibbr, followed by others + filtering Socialcast Reach, Example vendors followed by others + alerts Jive, Yammer, many others + objects Social information: people sharing things Generation 1 2 3 3+ Focus Application layer Application layer + Messaging layer + Data layer Usage Many-to-many Workflow objects Alerts in individual Semantically filtered social networking embedded in stream activity streams communication and collaboration Role Exposing social Creating instantaneous Embedding social Organizing and information communities information in workflow prioritizing work life Understanding this evolution and where sophisticated social graphing that the advantage lies will be crucial to adds to the infrastructure-oriented mapping a strategy to improve online architecture that allows organizations collaboration. This article describes to embed the tools in existing how social technology has evolved application suites. and evaluates how it will impact the enterprise in the next five years. From an IT standpoint, the first This article is not intended to be a generation served a single purpose: comprehensive vendor review; rather, make more social information visible this article assesses how the technology and available to share online, period. itself has evolved, and it uses examples The newly visible social information from several vendors. helped users connect and made them aware of each other’s skills and Standalone social solutions: interests in a way they hadn’t been. Generation one Those who used first-generation tools Enterprise social technologies have were able to find people they weren’t evolved through two generations, and previously aware of in other parts of a third one is now emerging. (See the organization and learn what they Figure 1.) The first generation (late were doing. 1990s to early 2000s) primarily comprised standalone solutions that Jive Software is a prime example. Its had narrowly focused functionality. The enterprise collaboration tools included second generation (mid-2000s to 2010) threaded discussion forums and instant comprised broader tools that included messaging beginning in the early 2000s. some better integration, curation, By February 2007, Jive had introduced and analysis capabilities. Emerging a first-generation many-to-many social enterprise social technology is now in software suite. Jive continues to evolve, a third generation (beginning 2011), introducing an OpenSocial-compliant which will evolve to provide much richer app store in July 2011.1 semantic understanding of data—more 1 See Dion Hinchcliffe, “Jive seeks to up IT’s game with social apps,” ZDNet Enterprise Web 2.0 blog post, August 3, 2011, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/ jive-seeks-to-up-its-game-with-social-apps/1611, accessed August 11, 2011. 28 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 31. Figure 2: SocialcastReach workflow integration Reach allows integration with existing enterprise applications. After Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media “Transparency” resulted from the online coined the term “Web 2.0” in 2003 activity and visible social identity and Andrew McAfee followed generated by these tools, according with “Enterprise 2.0” in 2006, the to Tim Young, CEO of Socialcast. “As vendor landscape gained shape and we continue to move forward in this momentum. Many enterprise social knowledge economy, companies view software platforms appeared in the human capital as the most challenging mid-2000s, including a large number but the most important resource they of single-function web applications have,” Young says. “So they’re looking that have evolved quite a bit since. at new ways in which they can leverage Enterprise wikis Confluence from and grow that asset, and one of them is Atlassian and Socialtext Open from to begin to bring transparency of what Socialtext appeared in 2005 and 2006, they’re doing across the organization.” respectively. Wikis provided workers the ability to take intellectual property Transparency, however, came with trapped in a presentation slide deck a price. First-generation tools were or a spreadsheet and stored on shared separate from the main workflow drives or in an e-mail inbox and link it and not designed to be woven into to a central repository for collaboration the existing IT fabric. As a result, they purposes, similar to what Microsoft created yet another place users had SharePoint did, but with more focus on to go online. the activity stream and online identity. Microblogs are expanding to include this capability as well. Yammer, a microblog with a Twitter-like capability, debuted in September 2008. Transforming collaboration with social tools 29
- 32. Success in theearly stages of While early social technologies provided One approach is to bring social technology adoption inside organizations with a way to do light the enterprise has been due to a collaboration and acted as a substitute the social functionality combination of human interest and for e-mail, the tools were simply a first to users in their IT support. Without management step, an experimental phase. They support for adoption, incentives for use, primarily served to surface a new social familiar application and metrics for measurement, many information layer and trigger thinking environments. standalone social technologies don’t about (1) how to use that layer, and get used. Unlike Facebook, relationship (2) how collaboration could be building inside the enterprise via social different if social technology were tools may not provide enough incentive thoughtfully applied. to encourage continued usage after the initial interest. Integrated social technology: Generation two The standalone nature of many of the In recent years, a second generation first-generation tools posed a challenge has evolved that seeks to broaden to businesses. Natalie Hanson, senior the functionality and reach of first- director of strategic programs and user generation solutions. A real push was experience consulting at SAP, which on to integrate social technologies more has used Jive and also uses its own broadly with existing business processes, StreamWork, notes one obstacle her applications, and data, and to encourage group faces in educating workers about greater adoption by more business users. social tools. “The challenge for us is “What history tells us and why many of to make sure the people come to us to those [early social] initiatives failed is understand the value propositions of that they all tried to create a new kind those different [social] platforms and of siloed area,” Young says. And the last that they choose one that meets their thing the enterprise needs is more siloed needs,” she says. information that is difficult to access and share. 30 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 33. Many vendors ofthe standalone tools The technologies are starting to address As Young explains, “Instead of having announced integrations in an attempt some of the complaints about early this one big stream that you must feed to move away from the silo effect. versions of social technology— off of all the time and contribute to, For example, besides its integration complaints regarding security and we decided to take those streams and of the Crocodoc HTML5 document curation. Among the features that make them context specific in these viewer, Yammer began adding plug- PwC gathered (through interviews other applications—embed them in ins for enterprise applications such as and research) to be most important your ERP [enterprise resource Microsoft Outlook to encourage the use for the enterprise are the following: planning], in your CRM [customer of social networking in all aspects of relationship management], in your business. Jive, Socialcast, and Yammer • Integration with business- project system, in your SharePoint. announced integration with SharePoint critical applications That way, a tool like Socialcast can and other Microsoft products. The • Curation and content organization address that 75 percent of users who major enterprise software vendors • IT management functionality to don’t want to learn a new tool. The began to develop sets of social support governance and compliance social functionality they need is now functions that took advantage • Social analysis within their workflow.” of their existing suites. The current social technology solutions An alternative approach reverses on the market provide varying degrees that strategy by creating social hubs. Figure 3: SAP StreamWork of support for these requirements. These solutions pull activity and event workflow integration information from enterprise applications Team members can pull data and Integrating social functionality into (such as ERP or CRM) into the social information from existing workflows everyday work technology platform to create a central and back-end systems into SAP Adoption is a major challenge to the hub for collaborative, task-based, and StreamWork for discussion and introduction of any technology. Given social activities. An example is Jive’s decision making. that social and collaborative tools are Engage platform, which can bring intended to support the day-to-day activities from legacy applications into activities of enterprise workers, the its environment so that users can “live” tools need to be usable in ways that there rather than moving back and cause minimal disruption to the forth between applications. existing environment. The vendors of social technology solutions are taking Another example of this approach is two different approaches to integrate SAP StreamWork, which can pull data the functionality into the enterprise and information from multiple back- work stream. end systems into a social environment. (See Figure 3.) Consider a situation One approach is to bring the social in which a company needs to make a functionality to users in their familiar supplier decision. Using a technology application environments. Users can such as StreamWork, the company can build conversations around “objects” of combine social tools with application interest from existing applications, such as an image of a prototype, to support project collaboration. Transforming collaboration with social tools 31
- 34. data to moreefficiently move a process Bill Hopkins, director of operations along. Project members can create for Egon Zehnder International (EZI), an activity stream that pulls relevant wanted to remove IT from content information about the potential management and curation. (See the suppliers from the legacy system, adds article, “The collaboration paradox,” business intelligence, and connects on page 06.) He knew he needed a with other people in the company who tool that would be well received by have information about or experience the users. “If we didn’t give them a with the suppliers. The results are a hook that would generate immediate more efficient decision process and a interest for them, we would not see the more informed decision about the best adoption that we wanted,” Hopkins supplier for the project. says. He chose Socialtext intranet as part of an enterprise-wide toolset to Integration isn’t the only interesting support curation. “Now, the consultants aspect of second-generation social microblog, and that becomes an aspect technologies. There’s also been a push of that kind of conversation. It more to increase content management and effectively spreads the knowledge and curation capabilities. keeps it in a place where people can look at it as opposed to just in Managing the new enterprise somebody’s head.” One of the biggest social content One of the biggest challenges of social One of the big challenges that social challenges of social technology is how to manage or curate technology still must solve is the idea technology is how to the volume and variety of artifacts that of filtering. For example, how does workers create using social tools. Both IT an organization use social technology manage or curate the managers and enterprise users struggle tools to find the expertise within the volume and variety with how to establish and manage company? Tools such as microblogs of artifacts that repositories of digital artifacts and and wikis help identify subject matter content in a way that enables effective experts or workers who may have workers create search, filtering, and future reference. pertinent information to a particular using social tools. decision. But determining what is Many enterprises have designed relevant is still user driven. Although intranets and portals to access back-end the environment can create automatic information and data. However, portals data collections, the human touch is have fallen short of providing all the needed to provide some of the necessary tools necessary for effective curation, context. Table 1 summarizes the current especially for new social assets. Now, state of available enterprise social social technology solutions such as technology platforms. This list Oracle WebCenter and Socialtext are underscores the fact that most platforms extending previous portal approaches offer only limited filtering capabilities. and providing the access and curation necessary for information in today’s The future states of social social enterprise. Generating, technology: Generation three organizing, and finding the right data In the future, the most successful tools and connections easily and quickly will anticipate their roles as the means is a key requirement for enterprise to access and reach the people and social technologies, one that second- resources needed to get work done. generation tools provide today. When deployed correctly, rich user profiles tied to multifaceted content and active communities can create the collaborative environments to support distributed teams. The key will be finding ways to encourage participation by the entire workforce. 32 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 35. Figure 4: Anactivity and watch list Some tools include both an activity stream and a watch list. The watch list consists of work in progress and suggestions from listed users about items to look at. Future social technology will need to a web of interconnections. These Extremely large graphs of billions or include several important features. interconnections allow users to even trillions of triples can be built. If One of them is enhanced integration navigate from one part of the graph they’re structured well, the relationships capabilities to support connections and to another. Equally important, they among people, places, and things will be interactions between individuals and allow machines to automate some evident and navigable. communities, between individuals and sense making to help users find information assets, and to facilitate information and/or people they’re This database structure moves beyond enterprise activities in all of their seeking. Sense making typically traditional relational data stores by possible combinations. happens during the more ad hoc supporting the retrieval of the triples. parts of a business process. The triple store makes possible the Technology such as TIBCO’s tibbr is mining of all of this rich, complex moving in this direction, providing the Another key to this kind of navigation data created in enterprise social ability to follow events as well as people. is the triple store, which is essentially a environments. Events triggered by business processes database of graphs. At a basic can surface inside tibbr for action, level, each triple is itself a a Better data integration makes better supporting user productivity. simple graph, as depicted in mining possible, which leads to greater this illustration consisting visibility and better filtering of the As Dick Hirsch, senior consultant for of two nodes (a subject and activity stream and the alerts. Siemens IT Services and Solutions, an object) and a stated relationship (See Figure 4.) explains, “It’s the ubiquitous nature between them (the verb), like “Jane of the activity stream in a variety of is 45” or “Bob knows Mary.” Triples applications that increases its value.” consist of subjects, objects, and verbs. Finding ways to make that technology Both subjects and objects are nodes. ubiquitous and effectively managing it Verbs, the stated relationships between is the key. subjects and objects, link the nodes together in Tinker Toy fashion. The The rise of the enterprise interest graph result of many triples linked together Enhanced integration capabilities is a scalable, navigable graph. will support what could be the most significant feature of future social technology—the interest graph. At a high level, an interest graph is Transforming collaboration with social tools 33
- 36. Table 1: Enterprisesocial networking vendors reviewed June 2011 Subject Application- Semantic following/ relevant User- Associated content Process People filtering/ activity accessible application Widgetized Advanced integration/ flow Real-time Vendor and product following privacy streams repository ecosystems display analytics search relevance collaboration Cisco Systems CU, OS, LT Quad IBM IBM, MS, Connections SAP, OS Jive Software MS, OS Engage Microsoft MS, OS SharePoint Workspace Moxie Spaces Novell Vibe Oracle WebCenter salesforce.com FC Salesforce Chatter SAP SAP, OS StreamWork Socialcast MS, OS, Socialcast IBM, FC Socialtext Socialtext TIBCO OS tibbr Yammer NS, MS Yammer Column definitions: Widgetized display: A user-configurable display that consists of installable, People following: Subscribing to a person’s activity stream. Those familiar with movable, and removable elements, each of which can operate alone or Twitter or Facebook understand that when you follow or “friend” someone, you’re independently of the others. signing up to see what they post, or, in other words, what’s in their activity stream. The “follow” model is similar in the enterprise tools listed in this table. Advanced analytics: The ability to go beyond basic user statistics. Nearly all enterprise-class products in the same category as IBM Connections offer user Subject following: Subscribing to activity on a subject. Tools such as tibbr allow statistics, so this feature category identifies the ability to more easily mine users to follow subject categories as well as people. Quora is an example of a the information generated. Ideally, more of that information is accessible to consumer tool that enables subject following with the help of subject tags and users directly. taxonomies. A more explicit and useful interest graph is emerging with the help of tools based on a triple store or comparable technology. Semantic content integration/search: Information stored using a semantically enhanced data model such as RDF. With the use of such Application-relevant activity streams: The ability to embed activity streams in a model, the explicit node-relationship-node form of each triple—metadata existing applications, which is a feature that tools such as Socialcast Reach and of content that’s now lightly and scalably structured—makes the whole more SAP StreamWork offer. (See pages 31 and 40.) integrable with any other triplified information. The result is a higher degree of accessibility to content and searchability of that content. Additionally, the User-accessible repository: Making documents shared via the stream integration of the social information in graph form allows navigability from accessible in repository form. node to node, from users to the content or data they touch. Associated application ecosystems: Enterprise application families managed Process flow relevance: Tools such as SAP StreamWork make it possible to either by a vendor or an open-source community. Some products will lend augment or cobble together a process or workflow with the help of the themselves to better integration with one application source than another. For social tool itself. example, IBM Connections presumably integrates better with IBM applications, and Salesforce Chatter is designed to use applications from Force.com. Real-time collaboration: Updates that are relatively instantaneous. A tool such as Novell Vibe, for example, allows one user to see another typing in real time, and that capability could lead to simultaneous editing. Sources: Vendor sites and input, 2011 34 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 37. Heritage Strengths Vendor and product Announced in November 2009; launched in July 2010 Triple-store data architecture with refined filtering and search; Cisco Systems unified messaging enabled; integrated content search Quad Introduced in 2007 as a “business-grade social computing” platform Filtering and recommendations capabilities; unified IBM messaging and support for four mobile OSes Connections Launched “Social Business Software application suite version 3.0” in Popular suite with customer focus; single view or Jive Software March 2009; now called Engage; previous versions marketed as Clearspace; “bridging” of customer, employee, and partner spaces Engage Jive Forums go back to 2001 Launched in May 2010; reflects the heritage of team collaboration tool Groove Significant integration with Windows, Office, and Microsoft (acquired in 2005) SharePoint, a widely used repository SharePoint Workspace Launched Employee Spaces (intranet) and Customer Spaces (extranet) in Based on IDEO’s worker-centric Tube concept; includes Moxie September 2010 as company was renamed (previously nGenera) intranets and extranets Spaces Launched in April 2011; previous betas launched in August and Real-time, character-by-character co-authoring Novell November 2010 Vibe Launched WebCenter Suite 11g in July 2009 WebCenter Spaces accessible from Oracle applications; Oracle process-centric collaboration WebCenter Launched in April 2010 Potential for blending with many different Force.com salesforce.com applications Salesforce Chatter Launched in March 2010 Open APIs lend themselves to integration with SAP, SAP third-party, and OpenSocial applications StreamWork Launched in 2005; designed with verticals such as manufacturing in mind Socialcast Reach can embed conversations into a Socialcast range of different applications Socialcast Launched Workspace 1.0 wiki, blog, and chat platform in October 2003 Customizable social intranet approach Socialtext Socialtext Launched in January 2011 Device, application, and system agnostic; supports TIBCO bidirectional application feeds; subject, application, or tibbr social following; filtering and recommendations Launched in September 2008 Large user base known for ease of use; seamless Yammer Crocodoc HTML5 document viewer; NetSuite integration Yammer Application ecosystem abbreviations: CU = Cisco unified communications MS = Microsoft IBM = IBM applications NS = NetSuite OS = open source or any open application FC = Force.com SAP = SAP For any of the products on this list, paid subscribers can usually expect the following: Tagging and/or social bookmarking Administration and policy management Technical support and maintenance Content management Basic social network views Enterprise-level security Basic usage statistics Individual group and user following Basic activity stream with microblog, blog, and/or wiki interface Direct or limited distribution per message Basic reward and annotation system, including Like and Comment buttons User profiles with LDAP integration and follower counts Transforming collaboration with social tools 35
- 38. How social graphsrelate to Hopkins explains how social graphs help interested in this particular thing right interest graphs at EZI: “It’s hard for us to know who may now, that are on the system right now,’ A subset of the interest graph, a know somebody in a firm that may be and you’ve got this flow, this stream of social graph is a mapping of people unrelated to a given search but might people responding.” Plugging into such (employees, partners, customers, be a broker to provide introductions a stream would mean a paradigm shift and so forth) and how they are related. for us as well. So what we’re looking in the way workers accomplish their Figure 5 illustrates an example. for in these social graphs are ways that business tasks today. we can uncover relationships that may If the social graph is made part of the be beyond our borders but might help Dynamic search and triple store larger interest graph, the information us break into a market or a particular support the social graph about how people are interconnected segment of a company that we hadn’t PwC expects that search will be a can benefit the information about done before in any one office of significant tool for fully leveraging all places and things, too. the firm.” of the social objects in the enterprise. Search based on the identification of When working to make this visibility Vendors are starting to move in this the semantically defined relationships possible inside the enterprise and direction, with early attempts to that the social graph provides will expanding its definition to include combine technologies from other allow more relevant information knowledge and expertise, the social enterprise areas with social technology retrieval and contribute to a higher graph becomes an invaluable resource. to support a dynamic social graph. level of enterprise efficiency. Doing so requires several dimensional graphs that can overlay the vast network According to Keith Griffin, lead In this scheme, social identities become of social “objects” in the enterprise, from architect in Cisco Systems’ enterprise another means of obtaining context, user profiles to all the content generated collaboration platform business unit, and context is the coin of the realm in through social tools. The knowledge or these tools focus on connecting workers providing relevance, whether through interest graph would provide a relational with the information they need to search or other kinds of navigation. view of all the content that exists inside do the best job, based on context: Cisco couples search with social the organization and would provide “It would be nice if there were an technology. According to Griffin, context to help aid retrieval, which is instantaneous community, not that you “The goal is to use a search engine a core value proposition and reason to chose, but that the context said, ‘These and couple that with some of the invest in social technologies. are the people who are particularly capabilities involved, like the [social] graph and the semantic processing.” Figure 5: The social graph as a machine sees it Any enterprise data in graph form, whether it relates to people, places, or things, can be interconnected in this way. Jane is a customer of Mary wor ks o n is a friend of is a friend of is a Project of lives in lives in fri d en X en d fri of a is lives in San Sally knows Bob Jose 36 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 39. At present, searchnotoriously under- session. But the instructors realized this performs inside the enterprise compared approach was not effective because with search engines such as Google. students responded to the massive Google doesn’t just report where search amounts of reading materials with terms occur but ranks them according different levels of understanding to how other websites reference them— and preparedness. in effect, social technology and context applied to search. To do this, Google With the help of the social technology, “What we’re looking for takes advantage of large-scale link O’Driscoll has created a virtual ranking data that just aren’t available community for viewing short videos in these social graphs at the same scale inside the enterprise. that cover salient topics and building a are ways that we can Using some of the emerging social discussion around them before the next technologies, such as the social graph on-site learning. “I can track activity and uncover relationships and context-based interaction, inside monitor the comments. And I do a lot that may be beyond our the enterprise will enable search to of polling. I can see who is having what borders but might help become a much more effective tool kinds of conversations, know where for supporting the new socially people are getting stuck or not, and us break into a market charged workforce. get ideas for class discussions. When I or a particular segment go into the class on Monday morning, Duke University’s Fuqua School of I’m not going in cold,” O’Driscoll says. of a company that we Business uses social tools to support The learning starts at a new point on hadn’t before.” its Cross Continent MBA program, the continuum than it would have in a 16-month program that involves the traditional model. —Bill Hopkins of Egon intensive 10-day travel visits to various Zehnder International countries. It is a peer-learning-oriented Conclusion program that relies on technology to The rise and advance of enterprise support accidental learning. (See the social technologies has the potential article, “The collaboration paradox,” to dramatically alter the business on page 06.) information landscape and the organization’s ability to more Tony O’Driscoll teaches in the program. effectively leverage corporate data “I think the future of learning is really and information, but this achievement changing,” he says. (For more about will require a moderate investment in O’Driscoll and his role, see the interview social technology tools and changes in on page 18.) “The model is shifting from corporate practices and processes. pouring knowledge into individuals’ heads, so that they can achieve Third-generation social technologies everything themselves, to tuning their will provide organizations with a new networks to the problem at hand.” This approach to disseminating, identifying, notion of “tuning a network” makes use using, and sharing information, but of the social graph and emerging social they also come with the need for technologies in the enterprise. traditional enterprise responsibilities, such as management, security, and The program reflects this learning shift. compliance considerations. O’Driscoll is using social technology to create a collective mind from all the students. Previously, the program would provide all pre-reading course material to students two weeks before the next Transforming collaboration with social tools 37
- 40. PwC: How didSocialcast Adding social get started? TY: Socialcast is a company I founded a few years ago in Irvine, California. networking to In the spring of 2009 we moved it to San Francisco, and as of May 31, 2011, business workflow we were acquired by VMware. I grew up in Southern California watching my family build a fairly Tim Young of Socialcast considers how blending significant manufacturing business, and activity streams with existing applications can open I was really intrigued with the concept of merging social software with data in the door to behavioral change inside enterprises. a manufacturing context. Specifically, how do we make information flow Interview conducted by Alan Morrison and Galen Gruman more efficiently between shifts of manufacturing workers, between supervisors, between plant managers and executives? I wanted to help Tim Young enterprises understand their informal Tim Young is CEO of Socialcast, an organization, rather than just their enterprise social networking company formal org chart. he founded in 2005. VMware acquired Socialcast in May 2011. PwC: And so providing employees with the means to create and manage their own visible online identity is a part of that concept? TY: Yes. These tools create an identity that’s not just built on employees’ yearly performance reviews or a subjective opinion of their manager, but on the merits of their work. This is very, very powerful. When people not only share what they’re working on, but make that visible throughout the company, that’s what we mean by online identity. When you analyze that new information layer, it’s allowing not only HR departments but also executives to find the people in the organization who are extremely passionate and making big contributions. All that collective knowledge becomes available directly rather than through the org chart. 38 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 41. By talking withmiddle managers and Then there’s the shared learning that When you look back at the history of KM doing some analysis, we found that goes on. When we talk to executives [knowledge management], you see that social technology is changing the about advancing their organization many of those initiatives failed because role of middle management. Middle from a human capital standpoint, they all tried to create a new kind of management is going from a command shared learning is incredibly important, siloed area. Employees would say, “If I and control structure to much more like especially as they’re trying to move have an issue in my CRM [customer a coach or a mentor. Because more and faster, be more competitive, and do more relationship management] or in my more information is transparent, they’re with less. It’s not necessarily destroying ERP [enterprise resource planning], really helping employees understand e-mail or trying to get rid of e-mail—it I now have to switch context. I must how executive management’s goals is taking over a part of the attention that go to this other external collaboration are attached to the specific items that we were giving tools such as e-mail. system and try to reframe the context of individual contributors are working on, the problem, the comment, whatever I and they’re interpreting the meaning of PwC: How do users generally take want to share, and then follow up in that that and why it’s important. to Socialcast initially? system only to come back to my primary TY: About 20 to 25 percent of users system and actually complete whatever You can see these cultural shifts and are early adopters. They tend to be action I needed to do.] how the shifts change roles. It is people who are very active online both making middle managers much more contributing content and connecting We looked at this problem in depth last critical to the success of organizations with friends, family, and colleagues year, and I think it’s indicative in one of because they are micro-CEOs of their through networking sites. There’s really the products we launched in 2010 called own domain. When you look at large no modification you would need to Socialcast Reach. Instead of having this companies that have hundreds of global make; they just love this new capability. one big stream that you must feed off offices, it’s really important that they And then as you go from that 25 percent of all the time and contribute to, we have passionate people. to the remaining 75 percent of the decided to take those streams and make organization, you start to see an them context specific in these other PwC: What benefits are the interesting phenomenon. applications—embed conversations in executives seeing? your ERP, in your CRM, in your project TY: From an executive level, I think Their lack of usage or their nonsupport system, in your SharePoint. That way, many companies don’t understand of the tool falls into a few different we can address the 75 percent of users what is going on all the way down to categories. Some of the biggest ones are, who don’t want to learn a new tool. The the individual contributor level, and it’s “I don’t want to learn a new tool,” and social functionality they need is now because there just haven’t been tools “I don’t want to learn a new way of within their workflow. that allow them to do that, especially working.” Another one is, “It’s not qualitative tools. You can do surveys embedded in any of my workflows; and polls, but you don’t get the ability it’s this new thing.” for consistent real-time feedback from everyone in the organization—and that feedback is necessary to harness the collective human capital of the organization. Transforming collaboration with social tools 39
- 42. Now, when thatuser goes into that ERP PwC: It sounds like two things— “What we’ve strived to application and pulls up that account one is that there’s essentially screen, the activity screen for that a communication channel, do inside organizations specific account is right there within and the other is what those is allow people to that app. They never have to go communicating are doing. So I’m connect over the outside to another application. They assuming you can see where a can see who has worked on it, relevant person is currently in their work, business objects that conversation on it, who the expert is, what they’ve actually done, what they deal with every and they can ask a question—all within other people have done. Is that the application.When they come back to correct? day, whether that be that account in that account screen, all TY: In general it’s correct. We’ve created a customer, a work that information is there. what we would call social objects out of these business processes and workflows. order, a palette, a PwC: What gave you the idea to A social object is something that two product, or a document make streams context specific? or more people connect over in the that they’re working TY: The consumer analog would consumer world; it’s like a photo on be Facebook Connect. For a long Flickr or Facebook. You post it, I see it, on. That’s really the time, Facebook had this one portal like it, you comment on it. Even just difference.” destination very akin to the suite looking at it, I’m connecting with you approach that Enterprise 2.0 through this object. companies have brought out. What we’ve strived to do inside What Facebook figured out, very organizations is allow people to connect intelligently, is that your social over the business objects that they experience online doesn’t just begin and deal with every day, whether that be end with Facebook.com; it really goes a customer, a work order, a palette, a everywhere—on CNN, on the blogs you product, or a document that they’re read, everywhere. Adding Facebook working on. That’s really the difference. Connect allows you to take your social graph with you in all those other places Let’s say you’re part of the workforce at online. We provide basically the same a book publisher, and you’re entering thing. Socialcast Reach allows you to an ISBN [International Standard Book take that social graph—all the people Number] in your inventory system. You you work with—with you in all your actually pull up the whole record of other apps. information on that book title and get all that social information right there in that system. So you see all the people who have worked on it, whether it is the 40 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 43. How do userstake to tools like Socialcast? 20to About 20 to 25 percent love the new capability. 25% The remaining 75 to 80 percent won’t see the value unless it’s 25to incorporated into their workflow. 75% editor, the guy who ordered the paper, as you are now rewarded for taking that PwC: What’s the goal here? everybody. You also get to see all the information that you have and using it TY: Obviously, one goal is that conversation that’s happening. So we’re within the company to add value to the information flows extremely freely merging that business object and that company, by sharing it appropriately. among people. But then there’s the conversation, where in the past it’s been specific business goal. With most any separated; it’s either been done in e-mail In many cases, you’ll have known activity stream, you may get a lot of or IM [instant messaging], and it’s very experts inside the company. But we interesting conversations, but you won’t hard to pull all of that together. have found that knowing where that get repeatable value. People converse, ultimate expertise lies often is not but then what? What is the business goal PwC: Does making both identity helpful for an individual trying to get of this? Organizations might say they’re and conversation more visible lead a question answered. It’s not helpful not getting any repeatable value, so how to more accurate and complete because typically the person who has do they really know what it’s doing? It’s expertise location? the most expertise is not necessarily the same thing—you put workers in a TY: Yes. It all goes back to identity and in a position or has the time to answer factory and what are they going to do? what the employee is trying to do. It questions. So we can guide users to is one thing to locate a subject matter other people who might have less In the end analysis, the functions must expert, and many systems have been domain expertise, yet they are the support processes and mission that able to do that, but the real value of most willing and able to actually result in repeated value. That’s the expertise locations is getting feedback help and get questions answered. challenge and that’s what Socialcast is and getting a question answered or working on. We’re pushing the evolution getting some insight on a subject. You really just need your question of the tools and helping our customers, In that sense, the subject matter answered quickly, and in many cases you so they don’t get stuck with four walls expert and the person who is seeking don’t need to talk to the leading subject and a bunch of talented people and information must interact. matter expert in your company to get the nothing for them to focus on. correct answer. We look at people who Both are trying to gain something from not just have the most information or PwC: How does the recent that exchange. In many of the previous share the most information, but people acquisition by VMware change systems, the subject matter experts store who actually answer other people’s your vision for Socialcast? their information and build silos around questions in that domain. Then we can TY: Joining with VMware provides us themselves for reasons like job security point people who ask questions to with the opportunity to expand our because there’s really not any value those individuals. vision and advance as a core technology. in that exchange. So I give you that information, but what do I receive PwC: So you can actually see the as the subject matter expert? behavior to do this, and that changes the reward dynamic. By making that information expertise TY: Yes. Exposing the behavior changes exchange more transparent and open, a lot of things. We’ve seen CEOs go in, the companies—over time—see their view a question-and-answer exchange, subject matter experts move from and they’ll like it or they’ll leave a domain experts to mentors because comment. That action completely begins that exchange is now out in the open. to change the mind-set of individuals. You’re not rewarded necessarily for The SMEs’ willingness to share increases being a subject matter expert as much over time with more activity. Transforming collaboration with social tools 41
- 44. PwC: How didyou initially Harnessing the get involved in collaboration software? KG: I was one of the founding members power of the graph of the unified communications collaboration research and development site that we have in Galway, Ireland. Keith Griffin describes how emerging social That site focuses primarily on the unified communications products, such as soft and graph data technology can remove clients for voice video, instant messaging barriers to more effective collaboration. presence, federated learning systems, and integration with other unified Interview conducted by Alan Morrison and Bo Parker communications systems. PwC: Cisco is known as an IP router and switch company. Why social software? KG: When you look at our architecture side, quite a lot of assets are already in Keith Griffin there, either through acquisition in the Keith Griffin is lead architect for Cisco portfolio or from existing products— Systems’ enterprise collaboration platform such as presence and location, the client business unit. His background includes services framework for communications, 15 years of experience as an architect the ability to record, but based on top and development engineer at Cisco and of the networking layer that Cisco is Nortel Networks in the areas of unified communications, IP telephony, call center known for. software, and web-based collaboration. Then we also identified that things like policy, for example, could be used. If you consider some of the well-known social networking applications, they’re really about connecting with friends. In the workplace, you also choose how much information you want to share or not, but the social networking applications are not really about friends, friendships, and the enterprise. They’re about getting something done. 42 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 45. So if youwant to get something done, PwC: How do you treat e-mail in If you want to get you have to have policy rules and systems like this? Our experience security. Somebody might want to share with social activity platforms something done, you an idea with a board or a council, but has been that they compete with have to have policy that idea might not be appropriate to e-mail. If just a few people stick share with the entire organization until with or revert to e-mail, then a rules and security. it is a well-formed idea. You can apply conversion to something different Somebody might want policy rules to say what information, just doesn’t happen. to share an idea with what communities, and what people KG: These are not things that make can share. e-mail go away, but you could see a a board or a council, marked decline in the need to use but that idea might Again, we had assets in this area from e-mail so much because you have so an acquisition, but it’s an XACML-based many other ways of interacting. not be appropriate to policy engine—an XML-based standard share with the entire for sharing policy. So we were able to PwC: Should a wiki be built into organization until it use that again in the platform to tools like these at some level? enable policy. KG: We created a social content model is a well-formed idea. where you post information in a flexible You can apply policy Then, on top of that, we knew we form. You don’t necessarily say, “I’m would need to develop some new going to post that to a wiki, or to a blog.” rules to say what capabilities, such as tagging, social You post to a library and then the library information, what graphing, semantic processing, and can be shared using the policy model. search. We don’t necessarily intend to This method frees organizations from communities, and what be in the search business. That’s not committing to a blog and then struggling people can share. the goal. The goal is to use a search with the fact that that information is engine and couple that with some of the stuck as a blog post. They need to cut capabilities involved, like the graph and and paste the thing if they want to move the semantic processing. it to a wiki, for example. PwC: Search would seem to be a necessary component. KG: Yes, it absolutely is. But we also want to look at where we’re coming from. It’s very important that we focus on the areas where we make a difference immediately. Most organizations— not everyone, but most organizations— will have some form of search capability. We decided to make search a pluggable component to the system, so that it can either be a default offering that we create ourselves, or allow search from another vendor to be plugged into the system. We thought that was important. Transforming collaboration with social tools 43
- 46. You can startwith a rough note that’s PwC: What’s the governance model just in your own journal. You can share for this kind of sharing? it in a group of close associates to KG: When you publish something to elaborate. You can hit the share button your library, access to that information and then decide to publish it in one place is governed both by what you decide or another, or change your mind later. It and what the policy is for that brings up all the different communities. information. The information can show If I go farther down the list, there are up in multiple places at once even all the individuals who are part of my though there’s only one copy of it, right? social network, who are part of open The copy itself doesn’t have a location, and restricted communities. per se. You can put it into the community of your systems engineers or your product sales specialists or whatever, without making a copy. Web PwC: What about finding things serendipitously? Can a system like this deliver information you didn’t 2.0 ask for and weren’t searching for, but the system says, “Based on some pattern, you really should be paying attention to this person, or you might want to follow this topic.” KG: We have the concept of the activity list and the watch list. A person on my “One of the reasons for choosing watch list can suggest things I should a Web 2.0 and widgetized type of look at, or the list will have something deployment here is the concept I’m actively working on. of contextual awareness. The application should be aware of what I’m doing now.” 44 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 47. PwC: What’s therole of triple store PwC: If social tools are going to PwC: How does the graph technology in systems like this? be successful, useful, and not just model affect enterprise search? KG: Everything that’s going on must add to the workload but actually Relational databases, by be RDF-ized and put into the system so subtract from the workload, you contrast with graph data, that you build a graph. [In RDF-ization, need passive and active expansion are about individual records or conversion to Resource Description and trimming processes. How and summarizing a bunch of Framework form, data is transformed do you use the social platform to records, not navigating through into subject-verb-object triples for more enhance the processes around the a data space. scalable linking at the data element workflow? KG: We call the concept that you’re level with the help of domain and KG: One of the reasons for choosing describing relational navigation. If I element relationship descriptions— a Web 2.0 and widgetized type of search for the term “Semantic Web,” richer metadata, in other words. See deployment is the concept of contextual a system with relational navigation the article, “Making Semantic Web awareness. The application should be will give me that three-dimensional connections,” on page 20 of Technology aware of what I’m doing now. view of people, communities, and Forecast, Spring 2009, for more information, so there’s the people, information.] One of the things that’s come out of there’s the communities associated Semantic Web in the last few years is with it, and there’s the information PwC: Data in graph form should Linked Data. Linked Data is really an in the center. You can bring the social help with relevance, shouldn’t it? excellent way to provide a foundation aspect to the search as well as the When something new happens to make contextual awareness feasible. unified communications. in the world, you want to be able Building a system from the ground up to navigate to it very quickly. allows technology choices. You aren’t The difference the additional social The system should alert you to tied to, let’s say, a relational model. You graph information brings is that the new relevant developments as don’t need to create a graph using tables activities users are mentioning in knowledge evolves. How in a traditional database. It actually is a the stream are now the activities of do you treat social and graph. That makes a big difference. That the community. It’s not just random knowledge graphs? Are gives you the flexibility to do the kinds activities and people who happen to be they treated separately? of things you’re suggesting. associated with the community. These KG: No. They’re combined. We are people working on this topic right haven’t created features in this area, From a user experience perspective, now. It’s an active and current thing. but the design of this graph is broader you can take a conservative approach. than a social graph. In our original You can avoid getting into advanced PwC: How does the social design philosophy around people, visualizations and delving into graph lend itself to communities, and information, both contextual awareness. The first step is applications development? information and people have some to offer an Enterprise 2.0 platform. Once KG: You can connect to your LDAP knowledge. Communities are where you you bring value and get people on that [Lightweight Directory Access Protocol] may contain some of that knowledge type of platform, then you can introduce directory and get started, or treat these in a persistent way. Our graph is not these more intelligent features and start systems as platforms on which you can inherently social. It’s just an arbitrary making life easier. build. Every single early customer that scope that we placed on it initially. we’ve had has done work on a social- enabled business process or tool for the platform. Transforming collaboration with social tools 45
- 48. The industry canoffer open interfaces In Andrew McAfee’s book on Enterprise We’ve seen some of the leading research through developer networks. With these 2.0 [McAfee is a Harvard Business groups in the world look at platforms interfaces, a university such as Duke School professor and the author of like this, where they might be doing joint can create certain kinds of libraries to Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative research projects. Maybe a major UK describe a classroom, a study group, a Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest university has some funding and is going teaching assistant, or a professor. [See Challenges], he talks about the fact to bring in a major US university for six the interview with Tony O’Driscoll of that in the social network, your direct months. They want that temporal view, Duke University on page 18 for more friends are at one degree of separation. so they have access to this community information.] It’s a business process If all you do is spend time making the for six months. that is social, but it’s built around the relationships you already have stronger business process. and ignoring the ones you don’t yet have Maybe they want to bring in a that potentially have more information university from China or from I’d make a distinction between what and more use for you, what you’re doing somewhere else and set up a longer- an API [application programming has limited value. term federation between both systems interface] such as OpenSocial can do, where they maintain their independent and what you can do by querying the But if you can see activities at more than systems but they share information. graph directly with SPARQL [SPARQL one degree of separation, a friend of a I think there’s going to be a lot of Protocol and RDF Query Language, part friend or a friend of a friend of a friend, opportunity for standardization. You of the W3C Semantic Web stack; see the then you can create very interesting can federate at a protocol level. Some article, “Spinning a data web,” on applications. You want to create those platforms can federate very well with page 06 of Technology Forecast, Spring applications, but you also want to open things like SIP [Session Initiation 2009, for more detail on SPARQL]. The the API so that people who want to do Protocol] and XMPP [Extensible system we use internally supports both this in their own setting in their own Messaging and Presence Protocol], methods. An API is constrained by what environment can do that as well. but there’s social federation, too. it’s able to do. With the OpenSocial API, you can make only the calls that the PwC: You could have two PwC: What have your customers API allows you to, but it is designed for organizations but because they been interested in doing with this systems that have the concept of social. define policies different ways sort of platform? So if I wanted to find out how many or they’re using the thing in a KG: It’s not all to do with social software of my friends of friends have posted different way, they can’t actually directly. For example, if somebody content on a particular subject, I could combine communities across wants to change how their intranet do that with OpenSocial. enterprise boundaries, which is works, they look at it from a completely what you really probably want to different perspective. That’s one of the do in some cases. things Cisco itself did. Our intranet of KG: That policy control is critical, and applications grew over 10 years and it’s one of the reasons that the focus is often not with a lot of structure. So so much on federated social software Cisco changed the user experience. among different groups. 46 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 49. Indexing the interestgraph 2 SIREn, Sindice’s search engine, can index 2 billion triples in 1 day on 2 machines, 4 to 4 to 6 times faster than conventional database indexing methods. 6 PwC: In a sense, it’s a redo of the the directory. It’s getting whatever is on These are just technology examples. home page. the web right now, and it can assemble It’s not that these things don’t exist. KG: Yes, but now it’s widgetized. And pages on the fly from individual data It’s just that you need to map what’s this is where governance comes in once elements because of the power of the available and what’s capable, and also again. We have our internal browser- RDF or Linked Data graph. That kind consider what the user is capable of based home page, but then we do all of dynamic publishing capability is at dealing with. I’d look at something like of our work in other applications. a much more granular level than RSS Sindice, and I would say that it’s fine. I They’re displayed close to each other, feeds. So if Stefan Decker published could probably navigate my way through but the two don’t even talk to each something at a conference last week, it, but I shouldn’t need to navigate my other. For example, we front-ended our it should be in that mashup now. way through it. It should happen engineering document control system very naturally. with a gadget-type definition as a unit Sindice is crawling, and it’s RDF-izing. of work or a unit. It’s creating triples from every site it can So we continue to do our user get its hands on, and it’s pulling that in. experience studies and research to PwC: So if you happened to be an It’s a demonstration of the plumbing- find the most optimal way to do this. HR employee you’d have a different level semantic interworkings that are view, one that’s tied to the HR emerging on the web. Of course, this has system instead of engineering. some obvious enterprise implications. KG: Exactly. This is a major step to Just think about the ability to pull in move from the Flash intranet to the individual data elements from LinkedIn Web 2.0 enterprise. profiles (or any external source) and combine them with your company’s PwC: One last question: What’s own internal profile information and emerging in this space that also the social information or stream hasn’t really been harnessed activity, all of which is referenced via the commercially yet? corporate directory. Once you’ve set up KG: Have you seen Sindice [http:// the linkages and domain descriptions, sindice.com/]? It’s a Semantic Web the profiles can be automatically index developed at DERI [Digital updated, and the system can infer new Enterprise Research Institute]. It ’s linkages, too. You’re actually using more coupled with the Sig.ma presentation information—the richer metadata—to tool [http://sig.ma/], which builds a link data silos together. social information mashup live from the web. For example, if you search on Stefan Decker [DERI’s director], it should pull in his picture from LinkedIn. It’s not like a directory where you’re going to get whatever is published in Transforming collaboration with social tools 47
- 50. 48 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 51. The CIO’s rolein social enterprise strategy Transforming collaboration demands an evolutionary approach. By Bud Mathaisel Social technology offers considerable An evolutionary CIO must adopt a new promise, but CIOs and business units style of governance and create a new are struggling to figure out how to use approach to deploying social tools. it effectively. A key reason is that most Social activities are inherently human social media outside the enterprise and unpredictable. The approach is just pure communication. Making and style must synchronize to the the same use of these tools inside the realities of social technology and to enterprise only imposes more channels the organization, both of which are on already overwhelmed staff. What’s evolving. This evolution determines needed are alternatives woven into the how CIOs need to introduce social existing IT fabric that help users sift technologies compared to previous through information and that augment business initiatives. CIOs actually may existing business processes, making it find themselves leading or pulling possible to alleviate rather than add to businesspeople along in this area— communications overload. (See the the opposite of the usual “IT is behind article, “The collaboration paradox,” the curve on what we want” complaint. on page 06 for more information.) Social technology efforts are likely to be different. Some popular social enterprise tools do meld communication and context This fundamental difference means for better collaboration, which is where that the evolutionary CIO enables the focus should be. But too many experimentation, with few clear a enterprises still assume that social tools priori outcomes to aim for but many can only mimic consumer use. That possibilities for gain. CIOs must assumption is why it is hard for the CIO prepare to try things, some of which to make a strong case for enterprise will almost certainly fail—and that’s a adoption of social technologies, and why reputational risk. The controlling CIO an evolutionary approach is warranted. may dismiss the capability as not secure, not controllable, or not productive. The progressive CIO may let a thousand flowers bloom but not know when to harvest them or walk away, and the enterprise may consider too many trials as tools in search of a purpose. Transforming collaboration with social tools 49
- 52. Figure 1: Theevolutionary CIO’s middle ground The best approach blends a progressive but planned approach to social tools with fiscal conservatism and some willingness to risk failure, considering that important tool capabilities are just now emerging. Willingness to experiment Conservative Liberal Use of social science Pragmatic Individual Personal risk tolerance Low High An evolutionary CIO, as Figure 1 Social technology warrants investigating Trust derives from a illustrates, stakes out a middle ground a number of opportunities. The that has two principal attributes. evolutionary CIO establishes strategy, clearly stated vision of First, the evolutionary CIO is liberal goals, and objectives, as well as the what the enterprise could on the technology and process for resources and ground rules to deal experimentation, while conservative with what is inherently not totally achieve with the use of fiscally. Second, the evolutionary CIO predictable. There are two important the technology, as well employs new skills from social science, elements. First, how should CIOs as the means that are balancing the individual motives of staff address the social science and politics of with the business goals to be achieved. social technology? Second, what are the evident to achieve The evolutionary CIO achieves a balance practical technical considerations? those goals. between the extremes of closing the doors to any social technology and Planning for the experimental nature of flinging the doors too wide open, social technology without purpose, hoping that the The CIO and the investigation team must enterprise will achieve something be able to experiment publicly, and any of value. wins or failures should not negatively reflect on their professionalism. A framework for evolving social Earning the right to perform this technology success experimentation is part of the CIO At its best, social technology blends with being a trusted advisor for emerging workflow tools and provides information technology. Trust in this case derives mining capabilities and organizational from a clearly stated vision of what the synergies. But, like baking a soufflé, the enterprise could achieve with the use of proportions are important. This section the technology, as well as the means that describes suggested combinations of are evident to achieve those goals. social science and technical elements for the evolutionary approach. 50 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 53. Figure 2: Wheresocial technology can provide value The base layers of the value stack provide a sound foundation, but the social identity and knowledge sharing associated with social software implementations make the rest more valuable by clarifying how information gets used and by whom. That function allows the harnessing of the “group brain.” Information relevance Ac Ac n tio tiv ca ity y lo aw aw se a ar rti en en pe e Bet reus es Ex ter d dge s s ecis le ions K now Social identity and knowledge sharing The “stack” Challenges Integrating data Knowledge and information and content Reengineering Business process processes Applications Embedding activity streams Ensuring speed Infrastructure and reliability The utility of social technology is a direct this article. Goals may evolve with There are many elements function of the level of adoption and experience, but it might be useful the effectiveness of people using it. Its to clearly express and reinforce the a CIO should consider highest potential is in harnessing the primary business goals throughout. adding to a framework “group brain”—the collective knowledge and capability of all employees and • Sensitivity to the cultural identity for effective social contributors—but without causing of the enterprise, anticipating technology trials. the communications overload created the behavior patterns and beliefs by legacy tools such as e-mail. (See that will play out during the trial. Figure 2.) An enterprise’s cultural identity would include the risk profile of the There are many elements a CIO should organization and the individuals consider adding to a framework for who are participating in the trial. If effective social technology trials. The the organization is extremely risk following eight serve as a starter list: averse, by nature or regulation, the trials need to incorporate any existing • Shared understanding of goal and communications governance policies purpose, down to what it means to and consider the need for new policies the individuals and the organization. given the unique traits of social tools. What are the business goals of the A process owner should be assigned social technology investigation? Some an ongoing role to assess behavioral possible goals are discussed later in alignment with risk management policies as part of the trial. Transforming collaboration with social tools 51
- 54. • A well-thought-outrationale information cannot be shared. The behind the authority granted to many-to-many capabilities of social individuals, including what access tools create some productive tension is allowed to information inside and for information privacy and security. outside the enterprise, and what Social technology trials could be an restrictions are placed on that access opportunity to update the privacy and repurposing that information, rules and reconsider how the risk by type. landscape is changing. • Best use protocol, such as what are • Initial and ongoing the expectations of users to contribute communications, both oral and or share. Are those who have access written. Social technology is about to the social tool encouraged to reply exchange, so communications skills or contribute through performance that foster dialogue are important, assessment rewards, or is participation both for leaders and participants. And entirely voluntary? Are guidelines leadership participation, promoting The good news distributed that describe what makes by doing, is one key. But too much is that much of a reliable and effective contributor? leadership participation can dissuade social technology is When and how are new communities other employees from joining. A formed, and what sunset provisions balance must be struck. independent of other are made for previous communities? technologies. • Clear leadership and ownership, • Optimal ways to encourage including a sponsor for the initiative participation, whether tangible, and an owner responsible for keeping such as compensation, intangible, it within the framework. This may such as public recognition, or both. not be the CIO or a member of the IT (See the article, “Turning handheld leadership team, but someone else power into enterprise clout,” on page who is part of the user group. At Egon 06 of Technology Forecast 2011, Issue Zehnder International, a user group 1 for more information about how was assigned to launch an intranet workforce motivation has changed portal called Symphony and then in the 21st century.) Can a CIO say in expand it to other groups. (See the advance what level of participation sidebar, “Microblogging in a new will constitute success? When success paradigm,” on page 09.) occurs, how are the results publicized? • Essential privacy and security rules, appropriate to the enterprise, understood, and reinforced. There are tradeoffs, because the more that people share relevant information, the greater the benefit. However, some information is confidential and privileged, and the boundaries need to be set in advance beyond which 52 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 55. Requirements of evolving How social technology initiatives collaboration methods will be different Most CIOs are skilled at the politics of Because the successful adoption of initial deployments, ensuring that key social technology is evolutionary, CIOs influencers understand the scope, can adapt their own strategic framework purpose, and goals of the initiative. to accommodate the investigation, the They buy into the effort to the point of identification of business benefits, and personal ownership, and they extend the scale-up for broader use. Once CIOs their enthusiasm to the user community. are clear about how social technology is In addition to that commitment, social different and what that means to design, technology will demand continued skill goals, and internal politics, they can to keep the capability relevant. After look at the technology aspects—and almost any new IT tool or service is only then. The good news is that much introduced, some level of early adoption of social technology is independent occurs because of its novelty. Dick of other technologies. Even those Hirsch, senior consultant for Siemens IT social technologies that integrate Services and Solutions, notes that “How with existing workflows let CIOs you keep them involved is much different take advantage of this technology from the normal enterprise project life independence to do greater cycle. You must be much more aware of experimentation. people coming and going.” The ongoing relevance of a microblog, for example, Only for the experiments that stick depends on the freshness of ideas and should CIOs then perform the deeper continued motivation of the users. technology analysis of systems and data integration for the long term. Given Sustaining the initial rush is important. that the non-adoption rate is likely to Many collaboration approaches of the be high, at least initially, this approach past were initially hot, but soon devolved is the only sensible one. The following into maintenance headaches, data leak section suggests some changes to risks, and underutilized assets. The traditional strategic planning that missing ingredient has been a way to CIOs should incorporate in a social scale collaboration enterprise-wide technology adoption framework. without creating communications overload. Tools that integrate rather than Business drivers of social technology fragment the collaboration environment To gain enterprise acceptance, social and that filter via social analytics are the technology needs to have business solution, but every enterprise has social drivers, like any other enterprise circumstances that are unique. Thus, the software proposition. However, unlike continued success of social tools applied many applications that support work in the enterprise will require sustained process flows apparent to everyone, efforts at experimentation, especially in social software can be seen as a bit the area of social analytics. “squishy.” That’s because the “work process” of connecting people to make them smarter isn’t normally thought of as a business process. So some education of senior leadership and business stakeholders may be needed. In doing Transforming collaboration with social tools 53
- 56. so, it isimportant to highlight a number Previously, these conversations took of tangible contributors to employee place on phone calls, or not at all, as performance made possible by social the effort seemed an interruption tools. These can include the following: to the rigorous processes. Social technology enables this injection of • Pulling richer, more relevant new insights in real time and can context into human-computer help with results adoption. Tools interactions and moving away such as StreamWork use an activity from siloed information— stream familiar to those who have Third-generation social tools reach used consumer social tools such as their full potential when they integrate Facebook. Social technology could social information with nonsocial be the added part of an existing or business data. The richer metadata planned solution that just puts it that such an approach relies upon over the goal line and enhances can have a substantial impact on some other functionality. enterprise search, for example. Social identity becomes an additional • Tracing conversations—Social means of navigation, relevant to technologies can trace an online both search software and end users. “conversation” in ways that e-mail Conveying this capability to a range often doesn’t, in essence replicating of stakeholders—including data, what formerly took place in content, and knowledge management physical meetings. Displacing a CIOs must be willing groups—as well as business units will number of physical meetings with to experiment more. be important. a more reproducible and traceable replacement both extends the Most CIOs value their • Embedding the collaborative value of “meetings” and is a more command of events and communication venue (usually eco-friendly solution. precision in all they do, called an “activity stream”) into existing applications or suites— • Enhancing governance, risk, and so this new approach Social technologies can be aligned compliance—Many developments in may be uncomfortable to a workflow context, bringing markets or inside the enterprise can collaborative potential to where be quite ambiguous in meaning and for many. employees are working. The more the degree to which they create risk strategic and specific the workflow for the organization. Putting such process, the more likely the developments in front of a broader, endorsements will be universal from more diverse internal audience senior management and the key for consideration and discussion influencers within the enterprise. can enhance governance, risk, and compliance. • Adding tacit knowledge to otherwise structured workflows— SAP’s StreamWork, for example, injects “unstructured collaboration into a structured process,” Hirsch says. It’s feasible to merge a stream of unstructured dialogue about subjective supplier qualifications into the formal enterprise resource planning (ERP) procurement process. 54 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 57. The evolutionary CIO’s checklistof information sources should include an expansive consideration of data, with a focus on pattern recognition capabilities to connect the dots. Transforming collaboration with social tools 55
- 58. Formulating goals Components of the Regardless of the other When formulating goals, it is important technology strategy to establish the key metric or metrics Given the investigative nature of social technical considerations, for each goal, measure them, and make technology trials, the evolutionary the value in social course corrections. Goal formulation can CIO needs a different planning also draw on approaches learned from framework. Some of the same elements technology will be business process redesign. The mantra of traditional IT strategic planning in the effectiveness of business process redesign during the apply, although CIOs must be willing of information 1980s was to break old glass (procedures to experiment more. Most CIOs value and approaches) through changes in their command of events and precision integration and behavior, process, and technology. in all they do, so this new approach pattern identification. It’s back to the future with social may be uncomfortable for many. In technology, as that is precisely the order this experimental mode, the CIO will that applies. The emphasis on politics closely monitor and more flexibly and team constructs described earlier change elements of information systems, is part of the behavior focus. Process infrastructure, and staff competencies. changes are what will bring results and The following sections describe four warrant all the discipline CIOs have major components to a social technology used in business process redesign for strategy that differ from traditional IT deployments. strategic planning for IT. Other process changes could be more More complete information sources formal, such as a change in the work Social technology will include structured breakdown structure that requires and unstructured data. Structured an explicit checkpoint in an activity data in the context of social technology stream before a process is complete. For could include the total number of example, a hiring process could mandate postings and comments made by that social technology be used as the employees on a topic as an index of who exchange mechanism, replacing a prior the experts are in any given domain. loose process of seeking inputs on a Unstructured data could be subjective candidate before extending an offer. descriptions of knowledgeable people. In social contexts (inside or outside the enterprise), there is no substitute for a qualified source to influence those who seek information. Organizations sometimes want a pause button in the middle of a transaction that can be used to collaborate and confirm the transaction. Indexing this unstruc- tured information, keeping channels open dynamically, and keeping all information as real time as possible are important. 56 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 59. How social toolscan link silos and enable the “group brain” 2 1 Bill posts a new Bob is facing a parts demand forecast for shortage in Japan. He flash memory that keeps trying to find evaluates the situation other sources, but in Japan. can’t. Knowledge management Data management 3 Jaelin sees Bill’s report and looks at the same smartphone camera 4 components list that’s Mary alerts Bill affected by the flash to Jaelin’s post memory shortage. about the components. 5 Bob calls Bill to talk about Content management some of the specifics of the Data management demand forecast. He incorporates confirmation of the tight supply from the knowledge management system into the procurement system. Data management 6 Better decisions with Tomas sees the buzz about parts shortages and pulls all the silo linking information from the silos together. Bob and Mary are part of procurement and have been looking at information just in the data management silo. Jaelin has been limited to information in the Knowledge management content management silo, and Bill and Tomas have been accustomed to looking at information just in the knowledge management silo. Sherry, 7 the CFO, is preparing remarks for a speech to analysts, part of an analysts’ Sherry sees the summary information in Tomas’s activity day session her company has scheduled. feed on her dashboard and talks to Bob and Bill. She makes sure to With the right information architecture alert shareholders and analysts and more integrated social tools, the to the shortage and how it will people who have struggled with siloed affect smartphone shipments. data and content can share information in ways they couldn’t before. CFO Transforming collaboration with social tools 57
- 60. The evolutionary CIO’schecklist of Social technology tools with information Social technology has information sources should include an integration and filtering capabilities expansive consideration of data, with There will be new tools to consider, the potential to address which thoughtful employees could and they may be unfamiliar to most several perennial goals use their innate pattern recognition CIOs. (See the article, “Enterprise capabilities to connect the dots. success with emerging social for enhanced, more Regardless of the other technical technology,” on page 26.) Moreover, efficient collaboration considerations, the value in social organizations may need to try many and communication technology will be in the effectiveness tools before they find one that best of information integration and pattern fits the organization’s culture and in a flexible and identification. As the adoption of social processes. For CIOs who want to start low-cost way. technology evolves, some of the most by leveraging current investments relevant sources may be outside the in infrastructure, the major ERP normal internal information systems, vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, and CIOs must decide how to provision and customer relationship mana- those sources while following important gement (CRM) vendors, such as ground rules for governance, risk, salesforce.com, provide social and compliance. technology to work alongside existing suites. Startups such as Socialtext or Socialcast allow best-of-breed style integration. Tools such as Cisco Quad 58 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 61. provide a unifiedcommunications- researching this issue of the Technology Social technology has the potential oriented platform with data layer Forecast, PwC found only a few IT to address several perennial goals for interconnection for filtering, pattern organizations that had staff with enhanced, more efficient collaboration recognition, and search capabilities. competencies in social technology and communication in a flexible and TIBCO’s tibbr offers an approach that explicitly. According to CIO Rick low-cost way. Although an initiative may take advantage of deep integration Napolitano, ARINC uses summer interns could start as skunkworks independently with the company’s existing middleware as part of the IT investigation team, of IT, its requirements to link into platform, which may integrate into the because they generally are younger the databases, infrastructure, and overall information fabric quickly. Other people with personal experience in processes managed by IT will mandate tools may be optional components of the social technology outside the enterprise. that the CIO lead. CIOs must develop a existing database management system The issue is not usually lack of interest framework and then adopt and support already in use. but lack of investment. Mistakes can social technology in an exploratory, occur in how enterprises adopt social evolutionary way. Doing so will align Implications for infrastructure during technology, especially in areas of use cases for social technologies to the the production phase privacy and security, so CIOs do need culture and business strategies of the Some CIOs have decided to pilot social a plan for acquiring or developing staff enterprise and ensure effective and technology outside their enterprise on competencies. Social technology is here meaningful adoption. cloud services, either temporarily or to stay, in some form, so the investment until a pattern of use develops. This will pay dividends and is a way to decision recognizes that an evolutionary engage IT staff who want to apply their approach must be careful not to invest personal experiences to the enterprise. too heavily in highly tailored tools during the early phases of deployment. Don’t just sit there— Social technologies may lend themselves evolve something readily to cloud services. In this way, By any indication—media attention, social technology is different from investor interests, initial public offerings other IT investments in the past, when (IPOs) and pending IPOs, personal consideration of the long-term aspects use—social technology is hot. At the of the investment were assumed. For moment, the technology promises IT, social technology is more organic different capabilities for different and needs to be planned and kinds of enterprises, and the activity managed accordingly. stream paradigm is already being blended into ERP, CRM, and supply New IT department competencies chain management (SCM) applications The skills needed in an evolutionary from the major vendors. As with some approach are often different from other recent IT innovations, social or at least extensions of preexisting technology gained momentum outside skills. This is true for the evolutionary the enterprise first and then achieved CIO, as noted earlier in the flexible sufficient critical mass to become approach to planning, and for the staff relevant to enterprises. that will perform the investigations. In Transforming collaboration with social tools 59
- 62. PwC: How dopeople collaborate Why collaboration better and more effectively, especially as teams get larger and more distributed? People on one hasn’t changed team often need help from another team in a different place, in a different unit. Maybe these teams much—yet don’t even know each other. SL: That’s the problem of collaboration. The general problem case is that we’ve Sheldon Laube focuses on the essentials that made no fundamental progress over the still need to emerge to create real improvements past 30 years in using tools that help that group of people do their jobs better, in enterprise collaboration. other than e-mail. Interview conducted by Alan Morrison, Bo Parker, and Bud Mathaisel PwC: How does social networking help solve that problem? SL: The jump to solving that problem through things like Facebook and Sheldon Laube Twitter just is not obvious to me. Get rid By the time this issue of the Technology of the words “social network.” Forget Forecast is published, Sheldon Laube that for a second, because when you will have retired from PwC, where he most say it to anyone else who is not in our recently was chief innovation officer. His conversation, they think Twitter career has included stints in C-suite and Facebook. positions at CenterBeam, USWeb, and Novell. Between 1985 and 1995, he was CIO at Price Waterhouse (PW) and was That’s why companies get confused. behind the firm’s decision to license the first The question is, how do you make 10,000 copies of Lotus Notes ever sold to teams more effective through the an enterprise. After his return in 2003 to use of technology? what had become PwC, as chief innovation officer he led the US firm’s iPlace web- PwC: That’s why Notes was based idea-sharing initiative.1 brought in back in 1990 or so. 1 See “PwC iPlace—Six Factors Behind Our Success” at SL: That’s why Notes was brought in, the PwC Innovation Blog (http://pwcinnovate.wordpress. and that’s what [web pioneer] Tim com/2010/07/23/pwc-iplace-six-factors-to-our-success/) for more information on iPlace. Berners-Lee had in mind. The web was initially a collaboration environment. The world of collaboration was set back by a mere 15 or 20 years because the web turned into a one-way publishing environment, instead of a collaboration medium. 60 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 63. Milestones 1990 1990s: Bulletin boards and Notes databases 2000 2000s: Web for publishing, not collaboration 2010s: Dynamic communities 2010 Back then, there was a domain: PwC: The WELL [Whole Earth cards in, and each card could support computer-supported collaborative work. ’Lectronic Link] had been around. eight modems and whatever it was. There were conferences. But soon, all SL: The WELL had been around, and There was a pretty clear limit, and of of the money got sucked into a one-to- there had been these places you could course the notion of security and access many publication model. go—such as CompuServe and some never existed. others like that—and the notion was So what’s happened is that because of always exactly the same. It was, “I would Ray Ozzie’s vision [Ozzie led the social media, with people interacting on like to be able to share something that development of Notes, and then Groove, a more peer-to-peer level, people have others could easily see.” Those notions which was acquired by Microsoft. He started asking about web collaboration were all one to many, or many to many. was one of Microsoft’s CTOs and then its once again. chief software architect until the end of Things like the WELL facilitated 2010.] was always about collaboration. PwC: Every time you try and get discussions. You’d read through the It was never about e-mail. The point off of e-mail, you find yourself posts and maybe somebody had an was, how do you allow people to self- inexorably held back. answer to your question, much like assemble into working groups? SL: There have been some attempts. threaded discussions now. That hasn’t Google Wave was a good example, and changed dramatically. PwC: Notes was the now there are new ones. What’s being do-it-yourself WELL? attempted are dynamic communities The thing was, I couldn’t set up my own SL: Yes, but Ozzie’s vision was bigger that are sensitive to your temporal work. discussions very easily. In other words, than the WELL because it was aimed In other words, the community would if I just walked into work and said that I at companies. Back in 1990, everybody change as you move from task to task. wanted to set up a bulletin board system was starting to understand the power to discuss the latest tax news, that was of a database, dBASE. That was one of When I’m doing my timesheet there’d be not a lightweight operation. From a the top popular products. That’s what one community, and when I’m working technology point of view, you’d get a people did with computers. But dBASE on a project, there’d be another. PC and put in a card that had multiple was a one-user database. connections to modems so people would PwC: In 1990, what was the dial in. You had to be pretty savvy just to By comparison, Notes was this magical aspiration and how was that run one of those. thing that allowed you to do everything aspiration informed by the you could do in dBASE, and with no experience with Notes? And from an enterprise point of view, effort it became a completely distributed SL: In 1990, remember, most companies it wasn’t scalable. The biggest bulletin database that everyone could see and did not have e-mail. You dialed up and board systems you could buy maxed out you could simultaneously update it. It logged onto a bulletin board system. at 64 simultaneous users because the was an amazing vision for 1990. CompuServe started coming out, but PC had only eight slots—you put these there were bulletin board systems and AOL had just been started. Transforming collaboration with social tools 61
- 64. 200,000 Notes use at PwC Number of Notes databases at Price Waterhouse in the early 1990s Number in 2006 before the purge 900,000 When I first talked about Notes to to throw together a database and with PwC: By 2000, what were the people here in the firm, I would stand the press of a button, anybody on any collaboration aspirations? in my office in New York [at Price desktop had access to it, without any SL: In 2000, the web itself—even Waterhouse]. As people would walk IT involvement. though it was one to many—faced down the hall to the chairman’s office to the same set of issues. There were an pay homage to the chairman—I was on It also had enterprise-level security, unlimited number of websites with the same floor just by random chance— encryption, and scalability—all of that many individuals—lots of one to I’d grab them and say, “Come and take was in 1990, in the first version of Notes. many—but when you get a lot of a look at this.” And I’d show them Notes ones, that’s still a big number. on my desk because it was the only Sure enough, it went wild, and with copy running. nobody doing anything, other than us In the age of the web, these issues getting it out there, we went from no became even more acute to everyone After five minutes people said, “You databases to about 200,000. At the else in the world, because 900,000 know, we could share information like great purge of five years ago, there were websites ain’t nothing. I remember when this.” I could put in a question and the something like 900,000 Notes databases. there were still 300, when you could go community could come together and to wherever the directory was, and each answer questions. Tax people would look The knowledge management people week you’d see more added, right? at it, and intuitively they understood this said, “Oh, this is out of control, it’s notion: There is some community that is wrong.” It was all about informal But the web really put this problem in thinking about the stuff we’re thinking knowledge. They said, “How do you relief because you can think of each about. How can we tap into each other know what’s right and who is saying website as a database, as a wiki, or and share knowledge or collaborate? what to whom?” A lot of it was out of whatever, just conceptually. It faces date, except for the fact that there the same set of issues. How do you Our philosophy in the early days of Notes were people using it in valuable find the right ones? The problem isn’t was anybody could create a database. ways—otherwise it wouldn’t exist. any different. This was a lightweight operation and it was so simple. The original Notes You get to 900,000 databases—and was like dBASE, just a form, and you those are all mini collaborations—that basically lay it out and you say, this is a was the aspiration and it worked. What field, and it’s either a number or it’s a happened, and it happens over and character, or it’s a rich text field. So it over again, is the IT people said, “We’ve was very easy for anyone in the firm who got to get it controlled, and then you had an idea like this. It was very easy need to add all of these enterprise application features.” 62 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 65. Then there wassearch. Google and others have shown that through pure computational force you can get pretty “Then there was search. Google good about allowing a lot of people to and others have shown that find information that’s useful to them. We can argue about how good it is, through pure computational but while there might be half a billion force you can get pretty good people on Facebook, there are billions using the web and Google every day and about allowing a lot of people getting useful—at least in their minds— to find information that’s information out of that. useful to them. PwC: Although search inside of enterprises remains very difficult…. We can argue about how good SL: Because it’s the scale problem in it is, but while there might reverse. There’s not enough information to allow the techniques that the Google be half a billion people on search people developed. The way Facebook, there are billions Google PageRank works is the true law of very large numbers of people using the web and Google every independently choosing to link to day and getting useful—at least X, Y, and Z. in their minds—information Enterprises don’t even allow that. It’s out of that.” exactly contrary to their belief. The only links are the ones they approve, right? PwC: With a social layer of data, there could be a human-assisted element that you could just search. That’s what Cisco and other vendors have been talking about. SL: That’s an interesting hypothesis, but there’s no empirical evidence that that will get you a good answer. Transforming collaboration with social tools 63
- 66. PwC: If youlook at ranking What will Egypt look like in five years, and reputation and all of those for example? The answer is indefinable, qualitative attributes we try to but Twitter is very useful in helping you assign to people and things, there form a thought about that. You watch is a way to fill the gap that exists this stream of discussion and comment, when you’re not doing the very and it lays out a probability cloud of large numbers. what’s happening there, and that gives SL: I think you’re right. That’s a good you some insight. insight. What we’re learning is that social technology lends itself more So social technology brings people back toward the unstructured problems. in around the unknown, which is why In other words, with all of the brute it’s interesting. force sorts of things—search, just for example—you’re looking for an answer that’s a definable answer, that’s a small range of answers. The social stuff gets you a range of options about the future or even about today. “Social technology brings people back in around the unknown, which is why it’s interesting.” 64 PwC Technology Forecast 2011 Issue 3
- 67. Contents We’re here to help To have a deeper conversation about how this subject may affect your business, please contact: Features 2011 Tom DeGarmo Rob Scott Issue 3 The collaboration paradox Principal & Technology Leader (US) Principal & Technology Leader (Global) More social information helps +1 (267) 330 2658 +44 (20) 7804 0156 the workforce find what it’s thomas.p.degarmo@us.pwc.com robert.w.scott@uk.pwc.com looking for. Bo Parker Managing Director Center for Technology and Innovation +1 (408) 817 5733 bo.parker@us.pwc.com 06 Comments or requests? Please visit pwc.com/techforecast or send e-mail Enterprise success with to techforecasteditors@us.pwc.com emerging social technology Innovators are learning to build graphs to help users locate the information they need—and each other. 26 The CIO’s role in social enterprise strategy Transforming collaboration demands Photography an evolutionary approach. Gene Smirnov: Cover, page 18 Gettyimages: pages 06, 26, 30, 48, 55, 58 Printing This publication is printed on Mohawk Superfine Smooth. It is a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifed stock using 30% post consumer waste (PCW) fiber and manufactured with renewable, non-polluting, wind-generated electricity. 48 PwC (pwc.com) provides industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for its clients and their stakeholders. More than 155,000 people in 153 countries across our network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice. © 2011 PwC LLP. All rights reserved. “PwC” refers to PwC LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership, or, as the context requires, the PwC global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a sepa- rate and independent legal entity. This document is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors. BS-11-0340 28200cvr.indd 2 8/22/2011 1:58:42 PM
- 68. pwc.com/techforecast Subtext Social graph mapof people and how they’re connected. In relational form, A the social graph has interesting but limited utility. In Resource Description Framework (RDF) graph form, however, it can be a powerful means of navigation. In this form, the social graph can be connected to a larger knowledge graph that can help make the whole more intelligible. Interest graph map of interests and how they’re interrelated. Following A interests, rather than just people, can be a way to reduce information overload. When connected to the social graph and the larger knowledge graph via RDF, a map of interests can make content much easier to browse or to search and retrieve. Social media Blog, microblog, wiki, and other kinds of many-to-many postings on the public web. Contrast social media with collaboration-generated media inside the enterprise, a very different form of online information. The latter media are also evolving to a many-to-many paradigm with the help of an activity stream, but that’s where the similarity ends. Sense making Gaining an initial understanding. Enterprise teams need to engage in sense making as part of any major business process. The ad hoc nature of sense making contrasts with more predictable kinds of execution, the kinds of tasks addressed by transactional systems. Collaboration systems attempt to make sense making easier. Collaboration teams work together to create value. Technology, even the How web, hasn’t had much impact on collaboration over the past 20 years yet. Changing that situation is becoming more feasible, but only with the right vision and long-term commitment.