social computing and collaboration for the enterprise ...€¦ · potential of their knowledge...

A D o c u l a b s W h i t e P a p e r

Social Computing and Collaboration for the Enterprise: Enabling Knowledge Worker Productivity

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1 The Focus of This Paper: SC&C for the Enterprise 3 Factors Converging to Change Knowledge Work 4 Common SC&C Usage Patterns for Knowledge Workers 5 The Technologies that Support SC&C 6 Areas that SC&C Can Impact 8

Doculabs’ Consulting Services in SC&C 16

Final Word 17

About Doculabs 18

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Page 1

rganizations have always looked to their knowledge workers for the expertise and creativity to develop new products and services. According to a recent study by McKinsey and Company, knowledge workers now exceed 18 percent of the U.S. workforce – in certain industries, such as healthcare and education, this number rises to as much as 75 percent.

Not surprisingly, organizations place a high value on their knowledge workers, paying them from 55 to 75 percent more than they do their transaction/process workers.1 But the productivity of knowledge workers varies widely, in part because of the vastly differing access to tools and technologies that organizations provide to these workers to support the ways in which they work. This fact has serious implications when we consider three major changes now taking place in the knowledge worker environment – changes that are beginning to impact the ways people interact with each other in the workplace:

Distribution and globalization. The workforce is increasingly more distributed – and more virtualized. As non-core job functions migrate to cheaper labor markets such as India and China, and the Western world continues to focus on innovation and productivity enhancements, its largest growth, from both a headcount and dollar-allocation perspective, is in the knowledge workforce.

Demographics of the Western workforce (particularly in North America). A number of recent studies have pointed out that a significant percentage of knowledge workers in the U.S. and Canada are of the baby boomer generation and nearing retirement age, to be replaced in the coming years by a younger workforce. This development has two serious implications for the organization: 1) the loss of knowledge capital as older workers retire; and 2) the need to equip the new and younger workforce with the most optimal tools for applying their creativity, thereby driving innovation and growth.

Cultural shift toward connectivity and transparency. Innovations in computing technology and related online services have enabled consumers to stay more connected in their personal lives. Furthermore, people are now interacting in a far more transparent manner across social networks that include not just close friends, but acquaintances and others with common interests. These consumers now expect to engage in similar interactions within the business environment, with the same degree of connection and transparency they have become accustomed to outside the workplace.

Introduction

1. James Manyika, Kara Sprague, and Lareina Yee, “Using Technology to Improve Workforce Collaboration,” http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com

O



These changes represent a transformational shift in how work will be done in the workplace of the future. The central question today is whether organizations can appreciate the pace at which these changes in the nature of work and the workplace are taking place. For those that do, the question is whether they will put in place the mechanisms and technologies necessary to maximize the potential of this transformational shift – and thereby maximize the full potential of their knowledge workers.

Social computing and collaboration (SC&C) technologies are foundational for maximizing knowledge worker productivity and for driving innovation. These tools provide capabilities to enhance interactivity, connectivity, and analysis; they are tailored for supporting global, distributed workforces. They excel at capturing knowledge capital that would otherwise be lost when knowledge workers depart an organization. Finally, most younger workers now joining the knowledge workforce have already achieved a comfort level with the concepts and tools of SC&C, and they have expectations of using similar approaches in their jobs.

The reality is that SC&C tools are now making their way into organizations, one way or another. Knowing this, organizations should take an active role in planning for the use of these technologies and ensuring their availability to the community of knowledge workers. This means following a structured approach that analyzes the usage patterns for SC&C, establishes clear expectations for the impact and benefits, employs the right technology solutions, and institutes appropriate usage policies, guidelines, and governance.

What about those organizations that opt for a “wait-and-see” approach? Doculabs contends that they will find their users doing what users all too frequently do: devising work-arounds – in this case, applying their considerable creativity to finding their own tools to make their lives (and their jobs) easier. This is almost certain to lead to increased risk exposure and compliance-related challenges – a far greater and more insidious problem for an organization than it would have been to take a structured approach to SC&C technologies in the first place. The fact is that few organizations have taken steps to calculate the cost of not actively addressing the needs (present and future) of their knowledge workers.

This white paper provides Doculabs’ perspective on how to succeed with SC&C within your enterprise and beyond. It includes discussions of the changing nature of knowledge work, some common SC&C usage patterns to enable for knowledge workers, the supporting SC&C technologies, areas of impact that SC&C can deliver, and a recommended approach for moving forward.

The reality is that SC&C tools are now making their way

into organizations, one way or another. Knowing this,

organizations should actively plan for their effective use by

knowledge workers.



C&C means different things to different people. Our focus is specifically on bringing Web 2.0 capabilities to the enterprise, as well as to the extended enterprise. To understand where this fits in

the overall spectrum of SC&C usage, it’s important to understand some general concepts of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

Web 2.0 is widely defined as the new-generation Internet computing infrastructure that includes enhancements in areas such as social computing, mass collaboration, and interactive bi-directional web technologies such as wikis, tagging, and effective management of content. Enterprise 2.0 is generally understood as those organizations that have made the underlying cultural and behavioral shifts needed to realize benefits from Web 2.0, and have adopted Web 2.0 technologies to enhance the social, creative, and collaborative structure of their businesses.

In relation to business use of SC&C technologies, two distinct areas of opportunity exist. As shown in Figure 1, one area of opportunity is for a business to use interactive marketing for a broad consumer base. This approach entails the leveraging of consumer-focused social computing platforms built upon Web 2.0 technologies to better reach the business’s audiences. The technologies used would provide capabilities such as digital marketing, personalized communications management, online advertising, and other such methods, using popular consumer platforms such as Facebook, Linked-in, and Twitter.

The second area of opportunity (to the right in Figure 1) involves bringing Facebook and Twitter-like capabilities to the enterprise as well as to the extended enterprise.

It’s important to note that it isn’t Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, or other consumer platforms that will provide the preponderance of technology to support this effort. Rather, it will be a number of existing infrastructure and application providers, as well as new entrants to the SC&C marketplace, that will bring about an operating infrastructure for enabling an organization with Enterprise 2.0 concepts and capabilities.

This white paper focuses exclusively on the second area of opportunity – bringing social computing capabilities to the enterprise and to the extended enterprise. This is not to say that the first area is not a viable opportunity, or less beneficial than the second. Quite simply, they are two very distinct areas of opportunity. This white paper is directed to decision-makers in organizations that seek to enable the next generation of knowledge workers and to enhance the social, creative, and collaborative structure of business.

The Focus of This Paper: SC&C for the Enterprise

S

Figure 1: Areas of Opportunity for Social Computing and Collaboration Technologies

WiKi

Microblogging

Expertise Management

Shared Whiteboarding

File/Document Sharing

CONSUMER ENTERPRISE

REALM OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING

Calendaring

Discussion Forums

Portal

Polling

Blog

Video Broadcasting

Shared Workspace

Content Syndication

Web Conferencing

Instant Messaging

Presence DetectionCommunity

BuildingKnowledge

MarketSocial Filtering



t’s long been understood that collaboration and improved communication among knowledge workers increases an organization’s ability to leverage its institutional knowledge. Years

ago, systems such as Lotus Notes were among the first to highlight this possibility.

Recently, a number of factors have converged to enable a more transformative, systemic change in work patterns. These include the requirements imposed by globalization of a more distributed and virtualized workforce, the capabilities of cloud computing and the connectivity it enables, improved bandwidth, ubiquity of wireless devices, and user demographic shifts – as well as the hyper-adoption cycles of consumers for social computing technology. Figure 2 illustrates these highly inter-related factors.

With the convergence of these factors and the corresponding emergence of SC&C technologies, we believe that the time for a mainstream effect has arrived. In the words of Victor Hugo, “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” We believe it’s a statement that applies to SC&C.

What are the likely implications of these forces on knowledge workers in the workplace – and the nature of work? We’re seeing a number of shifts, including:

A shift from document-focused collaboration to conversation-centric collaboration. The serial review cycles that characterized document-focused collaboration will give way to a much more interactive form of collaboration, in which participants freely share ideas and opinions in close to real time, in forums such as Google Wave.

A move away from linear-thinking behavior by individuals to group-thinking behaviors. Related to the shift to conversation-centric collaboration, the product of this mode of collaboration is the product of the group. The work taps the expertise of multiple individuals and allows for the synergies of interactive feedback that can lead to creativity and innovation.

The use of social networking to broaden the participating audience. This new collaborative framework leverages what social network theorists call “the strength of weak ties”: It enables people to interact with their acquaintances or weaker ties, rather than just the people they know well (their “strong ties”). SC&C provides a platform for keeping in touch with a larger number of people, for longer periods of time. It is this ability that distinguishes SC&C from

traditional means of communication and offers the greatest potential for business applications. They make it possible to establish and sustain a network of weak ties that includes not just participants within the organization, but also entities outside it – partners and customers.

Factors Converging to Change Knowledge Work

I

Figure 2: Factors Converging to Change Knowledge Work

Advanced Device Availability

Globalization

Hyper Adoption Rates

Advent of Paradigm Shifting

Collaborative

Technologies

Cloud Computing

Large Scale Community Knowledge Capture/Exchange

User Demographic Shifts

Improved Bandwidth & Connectivity



C&C technologies serve a wide range of usage patterns that are common to knowledge workers across industries and roles. Figure 3 shows some of these common usage patterns and the user needs they serve. Various groupings of these usage patterns can then be

mapped to create usage scenarios that serve the specific requirements of particular groups of knowledge workers.

As an example, consider a service line manager in an insurance firm who is responsible for re-engineering one of the claims processing processes to make it more efficient and less paper-based. This individual would likely make use of the Searching, Learning, Collaborating, and Networking usage patterns for SC&C. The manager searches for expertise both within and outside of the organization, in the form of people, documents, and training that may exist within the organization, with a partner, or in the public domain. Once the manager finds and compiles the knowledge needed, they would likely collaborate with peers and the identified experts to develop the revised and optimized claims process.

Another example of a usage scenario is the Marketing function within a software company for developing market requirements documents and product requirements documents. The scenario is likely to make use of the Authoring, Polling, and Broadcasting usage patterns. SC&C greatly facilitates collaborative authoring by enabling interactive and asynchronous participation by members of the Marketing team as they collaboratively develop content for marketing collateral, making possible a far more open sharing of ideas and input to the final product. Polling capabilities allow the team to capture user ratings or votes, allowing an organization to research a community and more effectively target prospective customers. Finally, broadcasting capabilities provide a simple, asynchronous, “reply-optional” way for knowledge workers to share knowledge and to obtain quick answers to questions from experts across the organization within a short timeframe.

Finally, consider a usage scenario for field sales support. This function would be likely to draw upon the Search, Learning, and Collaborating usage patterns. To support field sales personnel requires the ability to quickly and efficiently find information about existing and prospective customers, via federated search. It also requires easy ways of educating geographically dispersed sales staff, providing opportunities for them to learn about new products and services. And collaboration capabilities allow field sales staff to easily share information with personnel at corporate headquarters or at regional offices and to share knowledge and expertise about accounts.

Common SC&C Usage Patterns for Knowledge Workers

S

Where the user needs to…

Find Information, People, and Talent

Search


Get Educated

Learning

Where users need to…

Work Together; Interact

Collaboration


Stay Connected and Informed

Networking


Announce, Ask, or Share

Broadcasting/Microblogging


Do Community Research

Polling


Jointly Create

Authoring


Track and Measure

Dash-boarding


Reach, Promote, and Persuade

Market


Share Rich Content

Video Share

Figure 3: Common Usage Patterns for Social Computing and Collaboration Technologies



ooking at the landscape for SC&C technologies, Doculabs categorizes the technologies into four groups, based on the primary functional capabilities:

Messaging

Collaboration

Broadcasting

Knowledge Building

Figure 4 is a schematic that shows the relationships among the various tools. It also shows the evolution of social computing functionality – in three generations:

The Messaging and Collaboration categories at the top of the diagram are the most mature, with the Generation 1 technologies (email, file-sharing, portal, etc.) that have penetrated enterprises of all sizes and will be familiar to almost all business users. Also in these two categories are some Generation 2 technologies that many organizations already make use of, particularly within certain groups or departments: instant messaging, discussion forums, shared workspaces, wikis, etc. It’s the Broadcasting and Knowledge Building categories at the bottom of the figure where the Generation 3 technologies prevail: microblogging, community building, expertise management, etc.

Generation 1 tools provided value primarily within the enterprise, in the form of capabilities such as unified calendaring or unified content and application delivery. Moving into the Generation 2 and 3 social computing technologies begins to provide greater value: both within and outside the organization, as these tools make it possible to involve partners and customers in collaborative communities.

But it’s important to note that the business application of these Generation 2 and 3 technologies also present some challenges, from a records management and compliance standpoint. The content generated through the use of these new tools requires an overall governance framework – and given that much of that content is likely to be the work product of knowledge workers, it will require some lifecycle management. This is why Doculabs recommends that SC&C be part of an overall information management approach. While SC&C-generated content need not be under the ownership of the same groups that oversee other process-centric information management initiatives (such as enterprise content management or business process management), over the long term, we believe it will be important to have continuity of thought across these areas with respect to information governance and information publishing.

Yet SC&C technologies are evolving quickly, and the changes previously mentioned – globalization, demographic shifts in the workplace, and the increasing distribution and virtualization of the workplace – are occurring at a rapid pace. We believe that organizations must begin to act now to provide the tools to support the new modes of collaboration and the requirements of their knowledge workers.

The Technologies that Support SC&C

L

Figure 4: Categories and Generations of Social Computing Technologies

Messaging Collaboration

Broadcasting Knowledge Building

Instant Messaging

Email

Presence Detection

Unified Telephony

File / Document Sharing

Discussion Forums

Shared Workspace

Calendaring

Shared Whiteboarding

Portal

Audio Broadcasting

Video Broadcasting

Blog

Web Conferencing

Microblogging

Content Syndication

Wiki

Community Building

Knowledge Market

Polling

Expertise Management

Social Filtering

Generation 1 Generation 2 Generation 3

Legend



The market for SC&C technology solutions includes both pure-play providers and infrastructure vendors that have made clear their plans to participate in this market space. Note that this is currently a highly fractionated market of suppliers and solutions. We recommend that organizations evaluate prospective SC&C solutions carefully to ensure they provide the best value and meet the needs of the intended applications within the designated usage scenarios.

Following is a list of providers representative of both these categories.

Atlassian Confluence

Connectbeam

Jive Software

Near-Time

Newsgator

Six Apart Movable Type

SocialText

SpikeSource SuiteTwo

Traction Software

Worklight

Adobe

Cisco

EMC

Google

HP

IBM

Microsoft

Open Text

Oracle

Infrastructure Suppliers Pure-play Suppliers

Figure 5: Suppliers in the Social Computing and Collaboration Market Space



here should organizations expect to see impacts from their investments and usage of SC&C technologies? We believe there are four categories of impact or benefit that organizations can realize:

Efficiency – improve the productivity of knowledge workers

Reach – enable knowledge workers to build deeper and more meaningful relationships, both within an organization and with customers and partners

Innovation – facilitate knowledge workers’ idea generation and help manage the process by which new ideas, inventions, and approaches are translated into services or products that meet the needs of the market (and potentially anticipate those needs)

Control – manage information in a way that is efficient, secure, coordinated, and deliberate, while minimizing the consumption of resources from the people, process, and technology perspectives

Efficiency

SC&C technologies can have a significant impact on operational effectiveness, helping to improve the productivity of an organization’s knowledge workers and making it easier to interact with subject matter experts throughout the enterprise. But SC&C also enables cross-functional leveraging of skills, thereby helping to optimize a wide range of business processes. And it can also have significant impact on the customer experience by providing vehicles for communicating with customers and by reducing the cycle time for customer service.

Additional impacts on efficiency include:

Increase in employee productivity as a result of more effective information search and version control

Decrease in time required to resolve customer issues through better capture of customer-related information and more effective dissemination of customer-specific knowledge and content

Improved quality of products and services through the availability and application of enterprise knowledge and expertise

One way to think about the efficiency impact is to consider how ad hoc interactions between knowledge workers and subject matter experts are currently handled. In most organizations, these interactions – and, in some cases, the innovations they produce – are not captured. Instead, the knowledge shared between the parties is lost or stored in information silos. The technologies of SC&C can help turn such ad-hoc interactions into intellectual capital that can greatly improve operational efficiency, and potentially the capacity for innovation as well.

Reach

In the context of SC&C, “reach” refers to the ability to build deeper and more meaningful relationships, both within an organization and with customers and partners. As such, these technologies can have a strong positive impact on a wide range of functions – from Sales and Marketing, to Customer Service, to partner relations.

Specific impacts on an organization’s reach include:

Improved customer acquisition and retention through more effective marketing and customer relationship management

Enhanced conversion of sales leads through more effectively targeted campaigns, tailored to the customer and conducted across multiple channels

Improved teamwork and transparency with partners, effectively making them a strategic part of the overall solution

Areas that SC&C Can Impact

W



Innovation

SC&C technologies enable organizations to respond to market demands and create new and higher quality products and services. These technologies help improve the efficiency of the product development process by maximizing the application of expertise in the enterprise and extended enterprise, far more than is possible under existing approaches. Innovation tends to be the result of deep interaction between individuals with different skills, approaches, and opinions, and SC&C brings these multiple individuals and their varying perspectives into the process.

Specific areas where SC&C has an impact on innovation are:

Ad hoc interaction among subject matter experts to share knowledge and expertise through expertise mining

Improved innovation through better product and service integration, as a result of deeper and closer relationships with partners

Ability to provide customers the solutions they really need, based on their direct feedback

Increased opportunity for cross-sell and up-sell to customers through product innovation

Doculabs considers SC&C to be a key part of an organization’s ability to innovate efficiently, and this applies to organizations developing products for markets of whatever size: local, regional, or global.

Control

In the context of SC&C, “control” refers to managing information in a way that is efficient, secure, coordinated, and deliberate, while minimizing the consumption of resources from the people, process, and technology perspectives. Components of an effective strategy for control include security, change control, version management, audit control, technology standardization and consolidation, and records management.

Organizations that properly control their social computing and collaboration-related activities are:

Less likely to suffer costly compliance- and discovery-related expenses

Less likely to lose information assets – whether inadvertently or through malicious intent

More likely to retain content and knowledge over time and ensure its accessibility to those who need it

Very likely to reduce the costs of technology infrastructure, operations, and software licensing

Most organizations understand the need to establish more control, security, and standardization. However, few are able to put these aspirations into a tactical plan that they can then execute and realize the degree of control that’s desirable for their organizations. As SC&C technologies are rolled out, however, the foundation of effective control helps to ensure easier retrieval of information and easier dissemination of knowledge, as well as the security of the organization’s information assets.



Scenarios of SC&C Impact

The next four pages provide a systematic drill-down into each of these four areas of potential impact – i.e. efficiency, reach, innovation, and control – and what to expect if you take action and begin to plan for a rollout of SC&C technologies, versus what to expect if you take no action toward SC&C. Together, these graphics provide a “first cut” at the potential costs of failing to take action with respect to SC&C technologies. What if an organization does nothing? Earlier in this paper, we suggested that the tools are such that users will find – and use – their own tools, with severe consequences for the organization. The graphics provide a clear picture of what those future consequences will be from the standpoints of efficiency, reach, innovation, and control. What if an organization begins to take action with respect to SC&C? What if it takes steps to evaluate the needs of its knowledge workers and to plan for the procurement and deployment of select SC&C tools? Likewise, the graphics on the following four pages show the consequences of developing a clear strategy and approach to rolling out these tools, and the result that the organization can expect in terms of its efficiency, reach, innovation, and control. Each of the four graphics presents three scenarios: 1) a characterization of the likely current state, 2) a projection of the likely issues and impacts if no action is taken with respect to SC&C, and 3) a projection of the likely results and impacts if the organization makes strategic and tactical changes to embrace SC&C. At the bottom of each page is a series of scales that identify the relative heuristic impact of the scenarios on key performance factors as it relates to the enterprise itself, customers, and partners (right is always better).



Figure 6: SC&C Impact on Efficiency

ENTERPRISE

PROCESS OPTIMIZATIONLOW HIGHSEARCH EFFICIENCYLOW HIGH

WORKER PRODUCTIVITYLOW HIGH

PROCUREMENT OPTIMIZATIONLOW HIGH

Current State Future State NO Action Future State WITH Action

EFFICIENCY The ability to incrementally improve operational effectiveness, while minimizing all forms of risk with a goal of improving productivity, process optimization, and improved customer experience

STRATEGY / APPROACH ISSUES / RESULT IMPACT

§ Desire to improve operations throughout the organization§ Lack an understanding of how SC&C can improve

efficiency and how to approach the use of the technology

CU

RR

ENT

FUTU

RE

NO

AC

TIO

NFU

TUR

E W

ITH

AC

TIO

N

§ Continue with the status quo§ Take a “wait-and-see” approach

§ Establish a strategy for SC&C§ Consolidate existing technologies and adopt standards

for SC&C§ Provide a cost-effective, accessible, and highly available

platform for SC&C

§ Massive content duplication and version management issues§ Long cycle times, high levels of inefficiency and error in

cross-functional activities§ Difficulty evaluating and adjudicating customer

complaints

§ Large operational risk related to customer-facing activities (e.g. sales, implementation, customer communication management) and cross-functional activities (e.g. contracting, product development)§ Operational goals often missed

§ Business groups leverage non-standard, third-party solutions to create content stores and private social networks to make collaboration easier§ Little or no cross-functional leverage of skills, resulting in

little or no process improvement

§ Localized procurement of solutions across the organization leads to higher costs and vendor management inefficiencies§ Organization may be trading operational risk for other

more serious but less obvious types of risk (e.g. compliance, e-discovery)§ Processes are inefficient and remain so

§ Easier and faster to find and disseminate content and information § Easier to find and interact with subject matter experts

within the enterprise§ Greatly reduced cycle time to resolve customer

satisfaction issues

§ Improvements in customer service and customer satisfaction § Reduced operational risk without impacting other risk

types (e.g. compliance, e-discovery)

IMPACT POTENTIAL

PARTNERS

RESPONSIVENESS TOLOW HIGH

CUSTOMERS

CUSTOMER SATISFACTIONLOW HIGH

OVERALL RISK PROFILEHIGH LOW

ERROR RATESHIGH LOW

Page 11



Figure 7: SC&C Impact on Reach

ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS PARTNERS

LOYALTYLOW HIGH LOYALTYLOW HIGHLEAD CONVERSIONLOW HIGH

COST OF SALESHIGH LOW

NEW CUSTOMERSLOW HIGH

ACQUISITION COSTHIGH LOW LEVEL OF TEAMWORKLOW HIGH


REACH The ability to build deeper and more meaningful relationships, both within an organization and with customers and partners


§ Desire to enhance internal and external communications to build better relationships§ Have little or no understanding of how SC&C

technology could assist in achieving the desired goalCU

RR

ENT

FUTU

RE

NO

AC

TIO

NFU

TUR

E W

ITH

AC

TIO

N




platform for SC&C

§ Difficult and costly to adapt communications effectively to a customer or partner § Significant operational and governance challenges

unifying customer and partner management across multiple channels

§ High cost to communicate and build customer and partner relationships § Customer and partner retention not as high as it could be

§ Business groups leveraging non-standard third-party solutions to communicate and collaborate with partners and customers§ Other parts of the organization take no action to

improve customer and partner relationships

§ Loss of market share to competitors who successfully adopt SC&C tools to improve customer and partner relationships§ Perception by the market that the organization is getting

complacent, not leading

§ A managed, secure SC&C platform that users and business groups can leverage to improve customer and partner relations in a cost-effective manner§ Ability to build unified multi-channel communications

with maximum re-use

§ Quality and consistency of customer and partner communications increases; improved perception in the market§ Significantly increased ability to cross-sell and up-sell

customers§ Ability to conduct one-to-one marketing, with the need

for little incremental effort

IMPACT POTENTIAL

TRANSPARENCYLOW HIGH

Page 12



Figure 8: SC&C Impact on Innovation


PRODUCTS/SERVICES OWNEDLOW HIGH DEPTH OF INTEGRATIONLOW HIGHCOMPETITIVE ADVANTAGELOW HIGH

TIME TO MARKETSLOW FAST

PRODUCT DEVELOP. COSTHIGH LOW

PERCEPTIONFOLLOWER LEADER KNOWLEDGE SHARINGLOW HIGH


INNOVATION The ability to create new products and services in a manner which is more efficient, higher quality, and maximizes enterprise and extended enterprise expertise more than traditional approaches


§ Desire to improve how an organization fosters and monetizes innovation§ Have little or no understanding of how SC&C

technology can enable innovation or how poor collaboration can impede competitivenessC

UR

REN

TFU

TUR

E N

O A

CTI

ON

FUTU

RE

WIT

H A

CTI

ON




platform for SC&C

§ Massive content duplication and version management issues § Information not available freely across the enterprise,

particularly between the organization and its partners§ Difficult and expensive to track and leverage innovation

across the enterprise

§ Longer than necessary time to market § Poor visibility into customer perception and experience

of corporate brand, products, and services

§ Business groups leveraging non-standard, third-party solutions to facilitate innovation within their business areas§ Other parts of the organization take no action to help

foster innovation

§ Loss of market share to competitors that successfully adopt SC&C tools to improve innovation and monetization of innovation§ Superficial, non-strategic relationships with partners and

customers

§ Ability for users and business groups to leverage a managed and secure SC&C platform to improve innovation across the enterprise

§ Significantly reduced time to market§ Greater visibility into customer experience and options,

which can lead to better innovation § Deeper relationships and information-sharing with

partners, leading to effective innovation

IMPACT POTENTIAL

RELATIONSHIPTACTICAL STRATEGIC

Page 13



Figure 9: SC&C Impact on Control


SUPPORT IMPROVEMENTLOW HIGH PARTNER IP PROTECTIONLOW HIGHCOMPLIANCE RISKHIGH LOW

STORAGE REQUIREDHIGH LOW

CONTENT LOSS POTENTIALHIGH LOW

CUSTOMER DATA SECURITYLOW HIGH CONTENT ACCURACY/QUALITYLOW HIGH


CONTROL The ability to manage information in a way that is efficient, secure, coordinated, and deliberate, while minimizing the consumption of resources from the people, process, and technology perspectives


§ Have a need to consolidate system and content repositories§ Provide recommended technology standards, but unable

to enforce these standards

CU

RR

ENT

FUTU

RE

NO

AC

TIO

NFU

TUR

E W

ITH

AC

TIO

N

§ Continue with status quo§ Take a “wait-and-see” approach

§ Establish strategy for SC&C§ Consolidate existing technologies and adopt standards


platform for SC&C§ Lock down desktop and establish security and audit

policies to ensure data security

§ Significant content duplication and version management issues§ No unified records management capability (paper and

various forms of electronic information all treated inconsistently)§ Little or no control over intellectual property

§ Large information risk related to information “leakage” and loss, safety, and data security§ Large compliance risk and costs

§ Frustrated users leveraging public cloud-based services for SC&C§ Business groups leveraging non-standard third-party

solutions which may not integrate well with existing IT infrastructure

§ Critical business content may be housed outside the enterprise, with little or no control§ Loss of records management control on content stored

in public cloud§ Fragmented collaboration tools can lead to poor

adoption and value to users

§ Content and information easier to find and disseminate§ Speed to market drives business groups to leverage

enterprise standards and infrastructure§ Desktop control minimizes information loss, but may

frustrate users

§ Enterprise content is secure and potential for information loss is minimized§ Storage costs are reduced, while improving productivity

and information quality§ A more unified SC&C platform allows for better user

adoption, participation, and recognition of business value

IMPACT POTENTIAL

Page 14



Planning for SC&C

To realize the impacts of SC&C, Doculabs recommends that organizations establish a clear plan and approach for how the technologies will be used, and, for some organizations, that they take steps to prepare for the management of the content that will be generated though the use of these technologies. The table below lists out the activities that should be a part of this planning and preparation, showing the level of importance that each activity has for the four areas of impact previously discussed in this white paper.

As shown in the table, the activities begin with the creation of a vision and strategy for how SC&C will fit into the organization. Next, the organization must evaluate existing solutions and approaches to assess their fit with long-term goals. If existing solutions and approaches do not help meet those goals, the or-ganization must establish a plan to phase out these initiatives or solutions, and take steps to evaluate, procure, and implement the necessary solutions or solu-tion components.

Doculabs also strongly recommends putting standards and structure around information management and information security. This includes activities such as taxonomy and metadata development, definition of program ownership, creation of content lifecycle policies, evaluation and enhancement of content security.

Vision and Strategy

User and Group Demographic and Behavioral Analysis

Solution Portfolio Review and Analysis

Organizational Change Management and Community Building

Taxonomy / Metadata Modeling

Content Lifecycle Management Plan

Records Management Plan

Program Control and Leadership

Content Control and Security Policy

Moderate Moderate Moderate

High Low High

High Low Low

High Moderate Moderate

High Moderate High

Moderate Low Low

High Low Low

Moderate Low Low

Moderate High Moderate

Moderate

Moderate

High

High

High

High

High

High

High

Social Computing and Collaboration Activity Efficiency Reach Innovation Control

Figure 10: Planning and Preparation Activities for SC&C

Page 15

Level of Importance of Activity by Impact Area



oculabs offers a range of consulting services to assist organizations in the planning and preparation for SC&C. These include the following:

Segmentation of User Demographics, Behavior, and Roles. Doculabs will analyze and segment user demographics, identify preferences for SC&C based on the segmentation, and provide understanding of the likely breakdown of content contributors vs. content consumers across the organization, which can be used as a planning assumption.

Usage Scenario Prioritization/Process Optimization. Doculabs will identify key usage scenarios and patterns for SC&C (such as learning, search, polling, broadcasting, etc.) and will identify how current processes can be optimized through such patterns.

Future State Conceptual Design. Doculabs will recommend a conceptual design for the future state business use of SC&C, identifying the key components required for the business.

Deployment Roadmap. Doculabs will identify the key initiatives and projects required to move to the future state and will define the resource requirements, dependencies, and ideal staging.

Technology Assessment and Recommendations. Doculabs will analyze the SC&C technology landscape and make specific recommendations for solutions to include in the future state architecture. This will include a detailed analysis of the pros, cons, and trade-offs of the various solutions, considering the planned business use of SC&C.

Community Development and Change Management. Doculabs will work you to develop a plan to ensure high levels of adoption and to encourage the growth of user communities for SC&C across the organization.

Content Lifecycle Management. Doculabs will help develop models needed to ensure that the content generated through SC&C applications has the appropriate lifecycle management and content classification associated with it. This phase will look to incorporate existing work completed in these areas, in order to avoid duplication and to leverage the current investments of both IT and business.

Governance Model and Framework for Policies and Procedures. Doculabs will work with you to develop a workable governance model for an SC&C program or Center of Excellence, and will assist in defining an overall framework for the types of policies and procedures needed to give users the proper guidance for SC&C usage that also takes compliance and risk management requirements into consideration.

Doculabs’ Consulting Services in SC&C

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his is not the first time that a consumer-led change has made its way into the enterprise. In the past, however, it has taken some time for those consumer-driven changes to establish themselves as mainstream technologies in business. Consider the mass

consumerization of web search via Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and – finally – Google. Workers have been demanding an analogous search paradigm for the shared drives they rely on in the workplace. Now, more than a decade after widespread consumer adoption of Internet search, the tools for enterprise search functionality are finally being made available via technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint, Autonomy, and FAST.

What’s different this time? The difference is that the adoption cycle for SC&C within a business context will be far shorter. It is fair to assume that within a three- to four-year period, the use of something as basic as email will materially evolve, compared to its current usage. The reason: if corporations don’t make SC&C technologies available to their users as business solutions that they can use to perform their day-to-day jobs, it will soon be very easy for them to find similar tools offered to them on the web – for free or at a very low cost. Those organizations that choose not to act will suffer the hard-dollar and opportunity costs in three areas: increased risk, inability to manage the total customer experience, and a significant degradation of knowledge worker productivity and innovation, compared to their competitors.

This white paper argues that the risk of inaction is far greater than the risk of taking careful action to move toward a transformation led by social computing and collaboration. We believe these technologies – and the capabilities they provide – are quickly becoming central to an organization’s ability to deliver on its corporate strategy. This is no longer just a technology discussion; it has become a strategic imperative to better utilize human capital within an organization and leverage its information assets.

Recognize that, early on during a breakthrough innovation cycle, not all uses of the technology are readily apparent. It is going to take some time to identify the many potential usage scenarios for SC&C that provide greatest value within a particular organization. However, we’re also noting differences between initiatives involving SC&C and those that an organization might have undertaken in the past, in areas such as enterprise content management, records management, or business process management. SC&C is capable of being far more iterative in its deployment model, which is good news for organizations that are poised to take this step. But a framework can help an organization put a solid foundation in place, while also providing an understanding of the organization’s cultural predispositions and forecasting the likelihood of certain behaviors within the context of social computing and collaboration.

Granted, it’s difficult (although not impossible) to quantify the business benefits of SC&C in hard dollars. While an organization can realize hard-dollar savings from the deployment of SC&C, that is not the overriding reason to consider these technologies. Rather, it is recognition of the cultural shift in human behavior and of the preference to work more transparently, inclusively, broadly, and virtually that makes this consideration central to an effective business strategy. We would contend that ignoring this shift and this new state of interaction presents a significant risk to the long-term viability of a business.

The movement toward social computing could well be the most significant technology-driven paradigm shift for the business world since the advent of the Internet. When the Internet “happened,” we could not begin to envision its implications – in either the business or the consumer spheres. But the web is now a way of life, and those businesses that were slow to adopt were either marginalized or significantly disrupted, forced into “catch-up” mode while the early adopters positioned themselves for a commanding competitive advantage.

For all these reasons, we believe it’s time for organizations to begin to take action and develop a vision, strategy, and roadmap for bringing social computing and collaboration into the enterprise – and for using those tools both within the enterprise and beyond. We submit that the guidelines and the mechanisms outlined in this white paper are a good place to start.

Final Word

T

The movement toward social computing could well be the most significant technology-driven paradigm shift for the

business world since the advent of the Internet.

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About Doculabs

Doculabs is a consulting firm that helps organizations develop sound technology strategies for content- and process-related applications, including social computing and collaboration (SC&C) technologies. Our engagements focus on helping clients leverage their existing enterprise content management (ECM) investments on a broader enterprise basis through objective analysis and in-depth market knowledge. This approach is based on our fundamental belief that in order to protect a client’s long-term interest, technology advisors should not be implementers. Doculabs helps clients deliver on their technology objectives through consulting engagements that address ECM and SC&C opportunities such as strategic planning, center of excellence creation, taxonomy development, and maturity assessments. Through more than a thousand engagements for organizations facing technology-, compliance-, and process-related challenges, our proven approach has provided our clients the information and advice they need to make confident and well-informed decisions. Hundreds of leading organizations in the Global 2000 and in state and local government have turned to Doculabs for assistance with their technology strategies. For more information about Doculabs, visit our web site at www.doculabs.com or call (312) 433-7793.

200 West Monroe Street Suite 2050 Chicago, IL 60606 (312) 433-7793 www.doculabs.com E-mail Doculabs at: [email protected]

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