that is Web 2.0. Although being one of the organizers at the MIT CIO Conference I shouldn’t be critical about a panel but I could not resist posting this article. I was sitting in a panel on Enterprise 2.0 today at the symposium and I need to respectfully disagree with the distinguished panelists on what Enterprise 2.0 is. I was getting really frustrated when the panelists kept talking about platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, about how organizations should break down the barriers and leverage these platforms, ultimately getting onto the Enterprise 2.0 bandwagon. All the while I was sitting there and thinking to myself…. Are you guys kidding me? So you are telling me that if a Boss fires an employee tomorrow, he is going to do that through his Tweet or Facebook status or his blog? Or for that matter instead of sharing information within or collaborating within, I would expect my employees to sign on external websites and then hope that they’ll get their technical information there?
Hell no! These platforms which are Web 2.0 and NOT Enterprise 2.0. can be leveraged by companies to their advantage in specific functions and in specific scenarios but that does not make these platforms Enterprise 2.0. For example efficient mining of data from these social media platforms as explained in my previous blog post can be used for marketing & sales especially by B2C companies and specifically by the business development teams in those companies. If I were a B2B company with employees focused on coding up the next big algorithm, I would never ever encourage them to spend their time on these social sites during work hours. If any executive did so (as some do by claiming to be tech friendly) it just results in decreased employee productivity and is detrimental to the organization. That information and time spent on social sites is of no use at all and does not add to company’s bottom-line.
So the question is “What is Enterprise 2.0″?
The answer to that in my perspective is new technologies deployed within the firewall that result in increased employee productivity through collaboration and efficient sharing of information. It is sifting through and leveraging the collective intelligence within. So yeah you can say I already know this definition, but what’s new… can you give me some examples? Absolutely, there are tons of examples that we can talk about where Web 2.0 technologies can be deployed in a corporate environment.
Lets start with Twitter (for those who are obsessed with it but don’t know what to do with it). It is a obviously a great platform where we know real-time what people are upto. However, one of the biggest problems in most companies today is knowing what your fellow employees (across different sites, divisions, product lines) are working on. If each of us knew what our colleagues were working on currently, we could reach out to them whenever we are looking for information on that particular task, technology or challenge we ourselves are facing at work. And probably deploying an open source micro-blogging platform such Laconica can help companies overcome this challenge.
The next is an efficient way to capture data and leverage internal expertise. In a company with 9000 employees across the globe, I am sure there are experts and gurus that I should be able to reach out to within my company, if I faced challenges in my design/development tasks. However, since there is no way of knowing who that expert is within the company, the first resource usually most employees turn to is google.com. Ironic isn’t it? An expert is within your company (and yes he/she might have posted a blog on some random external site that you will probably encounter in a google result) but you still find it difficult to reach them directly within the company. The challenge for companies is therefore to make these so called experts catalog what they know or discover what they find into some platform within the firewall so that other employees can reach out to them or use that information. Companies also benefit in the long run because it creates a repository of information that can be tapped into later.
And last but not the least is to extend the concept of social search within an enterprise. More often than not, more than one employee in an organization searches for data (either internally or externally) on very similar topics. The searches maybe for research papers, patents, publications, tutorials and other information. In most cases we spend hours and hours searching for the right links. How about helping our colleagues (whom we have not met or know) and saving some time for them if they are looking for similar information? Absolutely, there are open source social bookmarking platforms such as scuttle that can help companies enable that. Extending the latest social search paradigms being implemented by companies such as Scour and deploying them within the firewall (without the pay rewards of course) also enables collaboration and efficient information arbitrage within a corporation.
There are umpteen examples like these which bring enterprise 2.0 into a company – applications that enable organizations to build IP within, break down barriers of communication within and leverage the talent within. It is definitely not opening up social media outlets to employees and hoping that a status message from a friend about what she did last night or their picture partying last weekend would inspire employees to write the next great algorithm or develop the next best drug. The ultimate Enterprise 2.0 technology according to me would be one which takes all the Web 2.0 collaboration and analytic technologies and puts them into a single platform that can be deployed within a firewall. Something similar to SocialText but perhaps even more powerful.
I can go on but will stop here and respond to any comments or ideas from you on the topic. I know most of you were expecting that I would write about how my panel on Virtual Organizations went at the MIT CIO conference and yes thats coming next including my comments on “Cloud Computing” – yeah the new Buzz word provided I get time. Life has been crazy as always and I need to find time…
13 comments
May 21, 2009 at 4:28 am
Prabhod
First question – isn’t this facility already available in companies. Maybe not to the extent that you mentioned? I get the over all idea of what you are trying to say, but I assumed that these are too Trivial not to have them in large organizations (then again I have very less work experience). Second – would you consider CRM’s and ERP’s as Enterprise 2.0. Finally I think and that is my company’s goal as well is to reduce redundancy and increase efficiency using business process automation is another thing that I consider Enterprise 2.0 what do you think?
May 21, 2009 at 4:52 am
Tushneem Dharmagadda
To answer your first question, No. Startups are always ahead of the curve and are implementing some of these technologies but large corporations are still figuring out what to do. They have legacy systems, outdated cultures, bureaucracy and tons of data to deal with.
Yes, CRM’s and ERP’s can be clubbed under Enterprise 2.0 but the new buzz word is GRP – “Global Resource Planning” and it ties into the concept that organizations are moving IT out of enterprise into the Cloud.
Absolutely business process automation can be clubbed under Enterprise 2.0. To be honest there is no specific rule on what can be tagged with a certain term. They are all paradigms and tie into the objectives that a company wants to achieve.
May 27, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Moushumi Kabir
I absolutely agree, start-ups are way ahead in utilizing technology than large corporations. The challenge with the latter is bureaucracy, internal politics, and most importantly very outdated data/techs. It can be very shocking to see how haphazard internal work environments are within many corporations.
I personally think there are bigger challenges in gearing public companies to adopt Enterprise 2.0 (as I know it, many of those mentioned in this blog): Accountability and fear of trying/loosing job.
May 21, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Raj Melville
Tushneem
Were the panelists on the Enterprise 2.0 panel were literally proposing Linked In or Twitter or Facebook as opposed to the functionality that they represent?
I think the issue as you point out is providing a collaborative environment behind the firewall that allows people to do the kinds of things they are used to doing in the social media space.
Some of this would be:
-Creating a profile
-Providing status updates
-Being able to sbscribe or follow people
-Publishing shared content
-Sharing pointers to content and categorizing them (shared book marks)
-Creating discussion threads
If you add up all these functions on a secure platform the end result is enhanced productivity by reducing the time spent searching.
BTW there are a few platforms that target the enterprise and provide such functionality.
One such platform that attempts to provide most of this is Collabor http://www.collabor.com/
As in all cases, implementing a technology does not result in success unless people are motivated to use it.
That is where the top level example setting comes into play.
May 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Tushneem Dharmagadda
yes the panelists were proposing extending web 2.0 platforms as is into corporations. Most of them were also from a B2C background so they completely missed what is actually enterprise 2.0 until the Q&A when a reporter reminded them that the topic was NOT Web 2.0. Even then some of the panelists kept arguing about opening up social networks in companies which was wierd. I don't know much about Collabor except that it is Sandeep's company. Should probably look at it more.
Totally agree that the first issue to tackle is to create a culture where employees are willing to share what they know and what they do. The direction has to come from the top as you rightly said. The second biggest issue to tackle is searching the content efficiently which I think is what most companies face. For example Sharepoint makes it so easy to create content but to search for data in it is a nightmare.
May 23, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Gopi Bala
Tushneem, A few questions pop up…
Shouldn’t Enterprise 2.0 be the new state of the organization at some medium-term point in time and not simply a collection of technologies abetting existing processes, however efficient or inefficient? What best describes this state?
Just because you have the E2.0 tool for sharing does not mean that people in the intranet or private cloud will necessarily be motivated to share or post informtion about themselves or their expertise etc. – should we be thinking about incentives/rewards/punishment for building out a ecure, value-adding private cloud based knowledge management/ exchange system?
Why is it labeled “social search” if I am simply doing a private search within an intranet or private cloud?
Should we be careful about advocating a “one size fits all” (read, enterprise) platform (whose piece parts are the various E2.0 core technologies you mention) versus “best of breed”? History tells us many domains, including monolithic ERP, “enterprise management” frameworks etc. etc. have been spectacular implementation flameouts or have recorded abysmal adoption rates within enterpises. Some additional logic would be helpful on your position.
The MITCIO 2009 conference was instructive in tabling many contradictions for offline reflection…. Looking forward to your next post..
May 24, 2009 at 2:53 pm
tushneem
Gopi, In one way yes Enterprise 2.0 is a new state of the organization. The state in my view as I mentioned is where the enterprise becomes agile, collaborative and barriers for information are broken down. Regarding culture, it is absolutely true. No technology can succeed without HR structures that motivates employees (incentives, rewards etc).
I label it social search within Enterprise because you are taking advantage of what other employees have already searched for or have found useful. In this case social purely means involving fellow employees and leveraging each other’s knowledge within the intranet.
yes ofcourse, one size does not fit all. As I mentioned above, if I were a purely B2C marketing company I would add more of facebook or twitter into the mix. If I were an advanced technology B2B company, I would take advantage of internal solutions. The E 2.0 solutions can also morph into different forms even within the same organization.
May 23, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Sandeep
Tushneem:
Firstly – was hoping to catch up with you at TiECON, but did not see you. Everybody who attended MITCIO said you did an awesome job there. I was following the conversation on twitter.
Secondly, my feedback to your post. Very well written. At Collabor, we do not believe that E2.0 is a “product” space. It’s a solution space – products help in delivering the solution. Social Media will not be part of the solution, but will help in designing products that focus on the enterprise.
Now as far as facebook and twitter within the enterprise – while some companies may do this, it will never be a broadbased acceptance – an analogy is “Why don’t companies use yahoo or hotmail for email?”. The answers lie in information ownership, security, adoption strategies and integration within internal application stacks. Also, the cost of technology makes it easier to fit a solution to specific needs rather than change needs to fit a “available” solution.
Each company’s E2.0 solution will be different. Depending on internal cultures (as you hint), adoption and belief there will be different solutions. Some will want the basic – blogs, forums, wiki – others will want to introduce new media like audio, videos and photos – yet others will bring in web conferencing, IM, KM, ECM, CRM, ERP and try to tie it all together through “social” networking features – connecting people, creating groups, etc. We built a Collaboration Maturity Model to map this behavior and I will be happy to send you the whitepaper.
The parallels here are – SAP/ERP as a product become popular as a part of a Re-engineering the Corporation solution; ECM (Content Management) became popular around the Webification solution; similarly some such products will benefit from the E2.0 solution.
Net Net
1. facebook and twitter are not E2.0 – but will give some ideas which will become part of the solution
2. E2.0 is not a product, but a solution. Products like SharePoint and ours (Work 2.0) will find a role depending on the level of the solution implemented.
May 24, 2009 at 2:55 pm
tushneem
Sandeep, you should have been on this panel. I’d love to read your white-paper on Collaboration Maturity Model to learn more.
May 24, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Raj Melville
Atimely and pertinent article in the lastest Businessweek (June 1) “Managing the Tweets”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_22/b4133000631535.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories
May 25, 2009 at 11:39 am
Hutch Carpenter
Dead on here Tushneem. There is no way enterprise would use these services for their internal work. As sites where they can engage customers, potential employees and partners, I can see using the Facebook and Twitter. That fundamentally is a marketing function.
But internal work will not use these services this way. They need dedicated sites (SaaS or behind the firewall) with the security and authentication expected for any enterprise app.
Perhaps some day these services will offer specific enterprise-grade versions of their sites. Then it makes sense to discuss their use inside the enterprise.
May 28, 2009 at 1:45 pm
E2.0: For heaven’s sake it is NOT Facebook & Twitter… « Fredzimny’s CCCCC Blog
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June 8, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Aaron Fulkerson
Thanks. I have written at length, perhaps even shrilly at times, about the absurdity of a direct mapping of social media (Web 2.0) tools to the enterprise. Rather than socializing and self-enrichment businesses need to concern themselves with solving mission critical business problems. To this end, I’ve written about Collaborative Networks being very different from Social Networks and Social Software. Most recently I wrote at Ostatic.com about this.