At first sight nothing changed. Cases start with a problem, explain what has been done and the results got. But it does not seem to work as well as before. The reason is quite simple : in the past cases were about softwares that treated and automated many tasks and helped to improve such or such thing. The only software was shown at the cause of how a given business went from a situation A to a situation B. It was credible and everyone believed it. Anyway, people believed all the more since everyone was implementing the the software, helped with the same consultants who where using the same methodologies, getting to the same implementations. Of course, one may object that from the case to the implementions there were lots of impressive gaps. That’s a fact : as every business is different from another, there are human, managerial, organizational and cultural factors that are neutral. But the nature of the projects made that people only need to have the proof that “the software could do it”, provided it came from a credible company.

Another factor had signifcant consequences. If all companies used to implement the same things, the same way, made the same choices, it was also because they were asked to be “comparable”. Investors knew that they could not compare apples with bananas so, even unconciously, they initiated a pressure that lead to the same choices and made companies adopt the same practices and technologies. Who would have risked to be pointed at because of nonconformist management, technology or organizational choices that would have made that their results and operations could not have been compared point by point with their competitors, using the same indicators in the same context.

Enterprise 2.0 cases differ for two reasons.

The first one is because enterprise 2.0 software do nothing by themselves, that everything relies on human and managerial variables…which were the “hidden variables” in the 2000’s cases. But, this moment, the soft was enough whereas everybody understands that today’s issues are elswhere. Very few companies wanted to explain how they dealt with political, cultural issues, with internal battles for power, how their HR tried something that could be seen as too disruptive to be publicized. More, let’s be honnest about it, even if they did it would not be of any use. Answers brought by a company A to these questions may be radicaly different from those who’ll fit a company B. An enterprise 2.0 case may ask questions, but everyone has to find his own answers. What leads us to the second point.

Let’s remember one of the key principles of enterprise social media. “Make businesses less similar”. So it’s logical not to find any standardized answer to the “how to succeed” question. It’s about understanding logics, to know what are the main issues but there is no way to find a ready to use recipe. If, on some projects, the profusion of technology could hide the lack of understanding or reflection, what is sure is, in enterprise 2.0 projects,  methodology must support common sense and can’t substitute for it.

But there’s a good news : many people used to criticize ERP projects for not creating any competitive advantage. It’s logical since all business had to be comparable, adopt the same recipes, so they were all moving on parallel lines without any chance to make any difference. Ultimately, what was gained in productivity benefited to customers through competition on prices but in no way to businesses. Here, it’s the contrary since the benefits broughts through software depends on factors that are unique to each company. Knowledge, culture, human capital, innovation potential…that’s what distinguish two companies even if they look similar. That leads to think that a successful implementation of social software will be much more differenciating than any other IT projects. But are they still IT projects ?

Enterprise 2.à cases tell us “it’s possible…others did it !”. We’ll have to content ourselves with that. If some are waiting to find the case that will perfectly match their own business…same culture, past, market… they may wait a long time.

adoption, étude de cas, culture, Entreprise 2.0, implémentation, social-media, social-software

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Who would accept to make everything he writes on his word processor public ? No one. In the other hand, starting a work on one’s own and invite people to collaborate as and when needed because some help is needed, because it’s better to ask a specialist to write a specific part, because proof-reading is needed or because the manager needs to know how things are going on without getting a daily report makes a lot of sense. One starts on his own and widens the scope of the human, social and knowledge capital that is used he can’t do more, when he realizes he won’t be able to deliver on time or when he faces his limits. I think that enterprise 2.0 has a lot to learn from that, most of all on the adoption side. What drives collaboration is “me, the goals I’m assigned, my tasks, my issued”, and if we want to bring people to the logic that will make them help their colleagues, they first need to understand how this logic will serve them. Then for the same reasons they bring themselves to “invite” people on their Google Docs, they’ll initiate the famous conversations that are so important in the 2.0 culture.

That’s the evidence that, for 99% workers, things are not social by nature but by need. Everything starts with a (personal) taks, with (personal) limits that are faced and with the need of making all these things “social” in order to get out of the situation. Such a logic can lead to a systematic sharing not because people want to share but because they realize they have to. Conversely, any systematic sharing that would not be the result of this reasonning would be against people’s nature and causes apprehension.

What conclusions can we draw ?

- in practical terms : if we want to “educate” workers,  we must start from their true personal situation, their day to day job, what they have to do, the processes and routine they follow and build the social logic around it. Believing that day to day work will adapt to social is a mistake. In the ongoing arbitration people carry out at work (do or don’t, what to prioritize) the social vs process battle will always be won by the process and the usual routine (what I even find reassuring in some ways). The only way not to set the one againts the other is to articulate, make them become complementary. A link that can be brought by the social routine.

- in technical terms (tools) : the chosen tool(s) must allow users to follow the above mentionned logic. To start from them to end by opening themselves to others. That will help them seeing sharing not as a constraint but as a solution. It implies that the tool must be seen as a personal business and productivity tool even by those who are impervious to the social approach, in order it will be used even by those who share few things, even nothing at all. This is the only way to make everybody put at least one finger in the system what will help leaders to drag the others along.

At this point the BPM discussion and the building of social logics and interactions around lowly ERPs and CRMs. If I can’t see a single tool managing both formal and non formal data, the time is near when businesses will  require that the shift from one to another can be done in one click, that the “social” could start mechanically, spontaneously (so both a human and software mechanism to implement) from the structured (and structuring) processes.

PS : obviously it’s less stylish, less “purist” than organizing social fireworks that would not leave any other alternative. Maybe it’s only an intermediate solution. But it relies on what currently exists and the deep nature of people as a lever rather than fighting it.

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One of the social CRM principles is to create attention, then relationship in order to “pull” the business. It’s not about jumping at the first comer and try to make him buy something but to make people come by themselves, in a trusted context, in order to build a relationship that goes far beyond the only fact of quickly reaching a sale transaction.

On the opposite side, the traditional marketing approach has one main goal : generate leads, that’s to say a list of qualified names ready to be wolfed down by a starving sales team.

Two cases to understand the difference.

1st case : imagine a store where the salesclerks are nice, give you all the information you ask for without trying to “flog” anything you don’t want to you. Imafine another store, where a vulture jumps at you at the moment you open the door and asks you to give your name, address, phone number, email address to bring you into the logic that will make you buy something, whether you need it or not.

2nd case. Imagine you are managing a company’s online presence (large business, no good or bad repution, b2b market) and, above all, the social networks side. Imagine you managed to develop the brand, deliver your message, that people are getting interested in what the company is, what its business is. And imagine that, one day, Directors X and Y rush into you office and say : we need the phone numbers and emails of all our “Facebook Fans”, of all our followers on twitter…then disqualify, block,  all those who don’t have the power / the position to make their company buy our products. What would your reaction be ?

Some may argue that, things will have to change whether businesses like it or not anyway. Even IBM tells us that advertising as we used to know is dead. Conclusion : the goold old lead generation is dead, goodbye vultures and welcome teddy bears ! I have to admit that I would really like it to happen (as for me, I can’t stand giving any personal information to know more about a product…rather contact the contenders if they are more open and friendly…and don’t try to contact me…I’ll find you if I need to)…..but I’m quite skeptical about that.

Maybe both methods could lead to the same results. But there’s nothing sure, and even if it was possible it would take more time, what is something businesses are running out of. So should we throw the baby out with the bathwater ? No, there are indisputable trends that will make businesses change the way they behave. But the answer is not in choosing the one and the other, it’s to find the right balance according to the context, the need, the target. Territories will have to be well defined and “traditionalists” will surely have to learn some good manners.

According to me, both will co-exist and will be assigned to different people who will have to learn to understand each other and work together. Extremists will have to make concessions anyway. At the end, it’s the action of selling that will be deeply transformed. You didn’t know ? Traditional selling is dead and salespeople will have to learn how to be counselors instead of haggling over everything.

More questions than answers here…but a surely a future hot topic.

And you, marketing and sales professionals, what do you think about that ?

lead generation, marketing, social crm, vente,attention

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So if you live in the Valley and want to be a part of the adventure, just click here to learn more.

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First point, as mentioned in the post where I found this document, there’s  nothing really new. Many of these issues have been discussed for years, some are more recent but even when names change, the topics themselves don’t.

Second point : cloud computing is on the top of the list. That’s the evidence, but did we need some more, that the topic is really a true current concern. But we have to be careful and don’t make numbers say what they don’t : being interested in something does not mean adopting it, it even may mean finding arguments to find it. As a friend of mine who works as a plane pilot, often says : “The reason why I’m interested in plane crashes is because I want to avoid them, not because I want to have one”. Behind, nothing emerges (I don’t consider the difference between 47% and 51% as significant).

Third point, the most interesting one in my opinion : the link between many of these topics. BI and BPM : don’t you think that one the the current challenges is to enrich BPM with BI ? Aren’t wikis, blogs etc.. and collaboration tools the two sides of one only thing ? By the way, to enrich BI, isn’t it necessary to harness the value contained into the unstructured information carried by blogs, wikis and social networks ? Good news : social networks come one rank behind. As for content management, isn’t it the formal alter ego of social medias ? Here again, two sides of one global issued.

So, at first sight, there’s a kind of coherence that is a good news. On the other side I’m afraid that all these issues may be thought independantly, without any articulation between one and another just when they must be thought jointly if we don’t want to see things that are complementary by nature confront each other. Keep in mind that operations are expecting such a coherent and integrated approach from the IT depts instead of technological projects isolated the one from the other which lack of coherence have negative impacts on adoption and value creation.

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I’d like to thank Frédéric Domon and Harold Jarche who managed to get us on the project and coordinate our work.

People who contributed : Harold Jarche, George Siemens, myself, Frédéric Cavazza, Clark Quinn, Cédric Deniau, Jay Cross, Florence Meichel, Charles Jennings, Frédéric Domon, Julien Pouget, Lilian Mahoukou, Christophe Deschamps and Anthony Poncier.

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- since the  network logic has been know and used by many professionals and managers for years (even centuries), everybody seemed to be under panic when the social networks trend emerged. What the difference between both ? Can we imagine that networks could not be social ?

- the great transhumance toward social networks made people forget offline networks (ie in real life with visual and hearing contacts). Since internet was about to allow us to connect to thousands people without leaving our chair and screen, to generate networks in one clic, why should have we wasted our time with people who don’t understand what we’d like them to do, who ask questions and even have doubts.

This second point is what this post is about.

As surprising as it may be, one click self-generated networks, that work and produce great tangible results on their own, never existed nor worked. The only issue is that lots of people believed that, hence painful wakenings and a sudden questionning : how to make these networks work ? How to create and build them ? The same questions also works for communities…

When I’m asked to define what online social networks are and what are the benefits, I often say they allow to get rid of time and space constraints we face in our real and “physical” life when we need to deliver something, engage conversations with people we know or ask our contacts to identify people we don’t know and who can help. That implies we can rely on a “real” network, that actually works, and which results are only limited by its members ability to “materialize” it (have a view on people outside our level 1 contacts) and to find the time to organize it and use it.

Any network or community won’t be created by a tool, the latter only helping to materialize and fluidify. That’s also what says  this report on social networks

“Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks,”

The conclusion is easy to draw : starting from a tool, as brilliant as it could be, to generate networks fails most of time. What should be done is to built real networks and communities in real life and then bring them online. Explaination : thinking that launching a technological project will prevent to work on issues like sense, teambuilding, membershif, the understanding (and even the definition) of a shared goal etc…is a mistake. On the contrary, it’s a preliminary work that has to be done before the launch of any online project. Of course, tools increase the power of what is done “IRL”, they serve as catalysts. They increase…but seldom create.

This is valid for businesses who aim at improving the value they draw from any kind of network, whether internal (with employees) or external (with clients, prospects, “people”). As the post concludes, it’s not one more communication chanel that has to be managed like any other, but a strategy has such that needs a new state of mind.

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