Enterprise Collaboration Playbook

HOW TO USE ENTERPRISE SOCIAL SOFTWARE TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU DO BUSINESS Getting started with an ESN...... 20 Setting social business goals...... 21 The blueKiwi Enterprise Transitioning to a new corporate culture...... 22 Consider transitioning requirements...... 23 Collaboration Playbook Using your new ESN...... 24 More ESN features...... 25 Make the most of your ESN...... 26 Define your strategy...... 27 Set your schedule and get started...... 28 About this playbook...... 1 Overcoming obstacles...... 29 Why enterprise social networks?...... 2 Overcoming obstacles - more...... 30 There’s a new way of doing business...... 3 Solving common business challenges...... 4 Building an ESN business case...... 31 Return on value cost vs. benefits...... 32 Features and benefits...... 5 Social Network Analysis (SNA)...... 33 New technologies supersede the old...... 6 Using return on value to map out benefits...... 34 A history of enterprise social networks...... 7 What CEOs need to hear...... 35 Social business success stories: BASF...... 8 Benefit: improved sales and marketing...... 36 Social business success stories: Burberry...... 9 Benefit: foster innovation...... 37 Social business success stories: Alcatel-Lucent...... 10 Benefit: optimise company talent...... 38 How we connect...... 11 Benefit: manage exception handling...... 39 Weak ties are the key...... 12 Return on productivity...... 40 What comes after weak ties...... 13 Tying it all together...... 14 France Post case study...... 41 Automating tie creation...... 15 Allianz case study...... 42 A collaborative culture...... 16 Manufacturing case study...... 43 Creating a social environment...... 17 Make collaboration a top company value...... 18 About blueKiwi...... 44 Start collaborating...... 19 Why choose blueKiwi?...... 45 How to buy blueKiwi...... 46 Footnotes...... 47

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Table of Contents 2 © blueKiwi 2012 We’ve done the latest research and we’ve pulled together this About this one-stop playbook to help you best integrate an enterprise playbook social network into your business.

Welcome to the Enterprise Collaboration Software Playbook. If you’re Social software enables people to considering launching an enterprise social network for your company, you’re in the right place. As you know, in the technology game there’s a rendezvous, connect, and collaborate lot of hype to play through, and this certainly is true for social business software. through computer-mediated communication and to form online Social platforms come in many shapes and sizes. There are different types of platforms available for different uses. Some will help you communities. In the case of enterprise accelerate your business, nurture innovation, and build strong social network software, it is adopted relationships inside and outside your organisation. But not all will make sense for your needs. So how do you find the one with the best fit? for use by a business and not for Start here. personal use.1

We cut through the hype to show you what really works. Specifically designed for those involved in the buying process, our playbook provides an overview of the benefits of enterprise social network software; the psychology behind interpersonal networking and collaboration; how to create an effective collaborative environment; how to establish a successful enterprise social network; how to build a powerful business case for implementing social network software, and finally how blueKiwi specifically can help you reach your business goals.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | About this playbook 1 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 1 In this chapter we’ll answer some basic questions about enterprise Why enterprise social software, one of the most-talked about technologies to hit the enterprise in the last decade. Where did it come from? What social networks? can it do? And how can it help your company or organisation?

Social collaboration saves the day. On March 11, 2011, a devastating earthquake struck Japan, interrupting the country’s transportation infrastructure. In Tokyo, thousands of people were left stranded, facing difficult choices: Wait until the transportation systems starts working, walk home, or find a roof for the night.2

The people of Tokyo responded. Government agencies, companies, and even individuals opened their homes to strangers. And a group of Japanese software developers came together on the Web to publicise the availability of shelter with an interactive map of Tokyo.

Twitter connects Japan. Using Twitter as their principal communication mechanism, the map was populated in a few hours with details on the temporary shelters. By midnight, over 180,000 people had accessed the map, and many stranded commuters were eventually spared the ordeal of spending a night out in the cold.3

What happened in Tokyo was not an isolated event. From the uprisings in Egypt to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, collaborative technologies have been used to share important information and inform the global Japan after the 2011 earthquake community.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 2 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? There’s a new way of doing business

The evolution of social business. Over the past 10 years, a new breed Staying ahead of the curve. The promise of enterprise social software of social and collaborative technologies has emerged in the workplace, is that it can enable organisations to meet the world of non-stop enabling businesses to solve exceedingly complex problems. business and effectively communicate, collaborate, and innovate in new ways, thereby paving the way to a new organisational culture, These new applications bring together an organisation’s diverse skills, where companies can respond quickly, stay ahead of the market, and perspectives, and problem solving approaches in a way that uniquely out-compete their rivals. benefits the business. Built on a platform where information and ideas are visible and shared across a corporate community, these applications are innovative by nature. With them, businesses are able to communicate and collaborate in new ways, design better solutions, and innovate with fresh Customers Marketing ideas and product offerings.

Collaboration is critical. Business is more complicated than ever. Companies are connected 24/7 and for many, the workday extends past Enterprise the typical business hours as critical business communication continues Social Network after hours and into the weekends. Collaboration among employees Partners across regions, countries, and even continents is not just the normal Sales operating environment for large multi-nationals, it’s also become the Human status quo for many small companies too. Resources

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 3 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? Solving common Exceptions, the unanticipated issues that require timely resolution to maintain competitive business performance — business challenges occur in every organisation.4

How to succeed with social business. Where social business successes One-off solutions don’t scale. These process “exceptions” slow the have occurred, the organisations focused on specific operational pain effectiveness of operations and negatively impact business performance points. That is to say, business processes or activities where the promise as a whole. With exceptions, employees spend a great deal of time trying of enterprise social software could make a difference. Operational pain to fix problems or find answers and often this work is duplicated over and points were also easier to get management buy-in, as they were often hot over, because the one-off solution isn’t shared. It is a wasted opportunity topics within the company and widely acknowledged as a problem. to capture and take advantage of important institutional knowledge.

Start with business exceptions. One of the most common pain points Collective knowledge accelerates problem resolution. Because is the “exception.” Within today’s typical company or organisation, exceptions negatively impact business operations, they are an excellent employees regularly encounter non-routine issues, which break the fit for an enterprise social network, which can capitalise on their standard processes. While standard processes are well documented, common elements. Employees can use their organisation’s collective knowing how to handle a problem outside their scope is not. knowledge, share information across organisational boundaries, and accelerate exception resolution. Even more importantly, eliminating The same goes for crisis situations, which are non-routine by the negative impact of exceptions can positively impact organisations’ definition. Knowing how and when to respond is critical. The wrong operating metrics. or haphazard response can have devastating effects (remember the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill).

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 4 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? Features and benefits

What does enterprise social software do? We define enterprise social network technologies as platforms or software applications that are usually web-based and enable large groups of people to: Top 3 measurable benefits • Collaborate across the organisation, fostering more effective commu- nication among isolated groups for greater cross-pollination of ideas 1. Increasing speed to • Engage in one-to-many or many-to-many conversations • Share information across a select group of people or share informa- knowledge access tion globally, like across a company • Access archived or persistent content and institutional knowledge. 2. Reducing communication costs Whether organised in a predefined structure, like a wiki, or found via search 3. Increasing speed to access How can it help your organisation? In terms of benefits, the internal experts technology and tools inherent in enterprise social networks can help organisations to: • Quickly identify expertise • Initiate cross-department and cross-boundary communications • Act as a collective, institutional memory • Connect and harness distributed knowledge • Become a catalyst for innovation, uncovering new opportunities and Results from their 5th annual social tools and technologies survey bringing new ideas together Source: McKinsey Global Institute, 2011 • Shorten business cycles and projects through better collaboration

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 5 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? New technologies supersede the old

The old guard of business collaboration is inefficient and outdated. Email, By contrast, an enterprise social network is accessible to all. No special intranets, or more traditional knowledge management tools are not based skills are required to share information. Unlike traditional corporate in social business technologies and therefore do not offer some of the intranets, enterprise social networks can also be used to discuss problems powerful benefits that enterprise social networks do. on the fly, find relevant knowledge, and get answers to questions.

Email. In business, email functions as a personal productivity tool, Knowledge Management Solutions. Knowledge Management solutions providing one-to-one interactions. Andrew McAfee, in his Enterprise 2.0 (KMs) are used to capture and transfer existing knowledge. Although they book, describes email as a “Channel,” designed to keep communications can improve business performance by facilitating information sharing and 1-on-1, or private between the sender and receiver.5 retaining intellectual capital, they often become repositories of outdated information because KM solutions have not historically been incorporated By comparison, with an enterprise social network the group can view into daily work activities.6 information shared. Information is visible, can be easily consulted, and can be acted upon. And the sharing of information can be used to By comparison, enterprise social software enables organisations to dramatically reduce redundant work, improve employee efficiency, and not only capture knowledge, but also to create knowledge. Integrated increase productivity. into the daily workflow, they support free-form collaboration, enabling employees to connect across departments or teams. Collaboration is Company intranets. Intranets were designed to disseminate information driven by the desire to simplify how an employee does his or her job, to an organisation – not share or generate information among a group. making all potential resources accessible. In addition, because enterprise Adding content to a company intranet is often restricted to just a few social networks don’t enforce a set workflow, they create an environment company employees. of innovation, where new ideas and perspectives can come together.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 6 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? What’s different about them, and key to their collaborative A history of enterprise roots, is that Web 2.0 sites and applications become more 9 social networks valuable to each member as they attract more members.

The birth of Enterprise 2.0. Today, we refer to them as enterprise social networks, private social networks, or social business applications—but they all evolved from the concept of Enterprise 2.0, a phrase coined in 2006 by Andrew McAfee, author of the book, Enterprise 2.0.

What is Enterprise 2.0? McAfee defines Enterprise 2.0 as the use of emergent social software platforms by businesses or organisations in pursuit of their goals.7 These platforms, where information can conceivably be visible and accessible to all employees in a company, How are Web 2.0 sites different? The process of users connecting, include collaborative technologies born from some of the most influential sharing, and exchanging information is at their core, whether it’s applications of the last decade, including Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, multimedia, personal updates, facts, opinions, or page ranking of Twitter, Google search, and Blogger. search results based on value perceived by users. And Web 2.0 sites and applications were (and are) enormously popular. Today, Web 2.0 sites The roots of Enterprise 2.0. The term Enterprise 2.0 evolved from account for roughly 40 of the top 50 sites according to the website ranking Web 2.0, which was introduced by Tim O’Reilly in 2005 to describe the company, Alexa. changes we were seeing to sites and applications on the Web. Unlike their predecessors, Web 2.0 sites and applications all incorporated three The emergence of the enterprise social network. In 2006, the basic ideas into their design and functionality: they were free and easy technologies behind Web 2.0 sites and applications such as blogging, platforms for communication and interaction; they lacked an imposed social streams, wikis, and file/multimedia sharing began to appear in structure; and they incorporated mechanisms to let structure emerge collaborative applications designed specifically for a business, or as organically.8 McAfee describes, for Enterprise 2.0 use.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 7 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? Social business success stories

Collaboration changes everything. Social business applications create The solution. Their pilot project began in 2009 and then launched to communities that share common objectives: the success of the company the entire company in 2010, using a well-developed communications as a whole, the success of a team or department’s business objectives, strategy, including webinars, demos, and other learning events. BASF has or the evolution of corporate cultural and standard business process successfully grown their network voluntarily, adding more than 28,000 through the use of new and innovative communication tools. Interestingly registered users in the last 18 months.11 enough, all this can and has occurred without senior management intervention, or the need for internal or external consultants. Solution highlights and benefits. Today, their network features more than 2,300 spaces (communities) organised by expertise, interest, Profile BASF. BASF is a large multi-national chemical company based projects, and service engagements. in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. They employee more than 109,000 people scattered across 390 production sites. In 2011, their annual sales How has it made them more productive?12 topped 73.4 billion euros. • Helps employees find experts and potential stakeholders • Increases the value of knowledge through sharing Their collaboration problem. With such a large and distributed workforce, BASF needed a platform that could bring workers together, establish • Boosts efficiency through open communication across the organisation a common working culture, and improve the flow of information and communications across the globe. Their goal was to find a solution that • Facilitates online collaboration of teams and communities would help them eliminate their existing communication structure of • Reduces email by transferring conversation to a common platform hierarchies and teams and enable them to evolve to a network of formal • Provides a familiar working environment for Facebook Generation and informal communities.10

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 8 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? Social business success stories

Profile Burberry. Burberry is an international luxury fashion goods The solution. Burberry calls it one of the fastest programs they’ve purveyor founded in the mid-1800s and headquartered in London, deployed. Named “Burberry Community,” their enterprise social network England. The well known company employs over 6,600 people spread technology connected the globally dispersed employees and created a across 200 locations. In 2011, their annual sales were $1.5 billion dollars. wildly successful and consistent customer experience, using CRM, IM, and a social networking platform. Adoption across the company was energised Their collaboration problem. It was twofold - their dispersed workforce by their young workforce, since over 70% of Burberry’s workers are under needed a way to communicate effectively and they also wanted to create 30, making the move to an enterprise social network faster and easier.14 a seamless digital customer experience across all brand touch points from start to finish - from both a business and a technology standpoint. Solution highlights and benefits. Better connectivity and collaboration From in-house collaboration, to a social CRM program, to social branding, have resulted in a 21% increase in profit (Q4 2011), driven mostly, the marketing, to an online presence, they wanted an integrated digital media notes, by their social business efforts.15 “Burberry World.”13 How has it made them more productive? • Presents an accessible face to customers - with over 10 million Facebook fans • Allows real-time online conversations between customers and employees • Creates a user-centric community for sharing information about the company and spreading word-of-mouth recommendations about its products

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 9 © blueKiwi 2012 Why enterprise social networks? Social business success stories

Profile Alcatel-Lucent. With 80,000 employees, this international Solution highlights and benefits. Alcatel-Lucent rolled out a beta version telecommunications company is based in Paris, France. In 2010, their of their enterprise social network in late 2009. As of July 2010, there were annual revenues were just shy of 16 billion euros. 20,000 registered users (about 25% of their employees were engaged within the first three months), with approximately 200-400 coming on Their collaboration problem. Alcatel-Lucent has always had a progressive board each day. Now, over 60,000 employees have profiles and a full 25% approach to business. They have used social technologies like blogs, are actively using the software. Six percent contribute, which is higher forums, and wikis since 2008; however, all the tools were separate and than consumer social media but lower than the activity level at some there was no overall strategy for their use. This resulted in duplicate enterprises.18 identities, content that fell into silos, and information that was difficult to access or find since it was spread across too many platforms.16 Their careful study of what worked and what didn’t helped them develop a solution that has worked well. They supported this plan with a strong staff The solution. To let employees directly interface with the CEO, they and have achieved great results, without the high overhead that you might created Ask@Ben. Next, they introduced an enterprise microblog to link expect would be needed to manage a project of this scope. workers across the globe. As employees became comfortable with these technologies, they added more features, including comments and ratings How has it made them more productive? capabilities without filtration. They also incorporated external touch • Reduces overhead associated with meeting travel expenses and time points through blogs, YouTube, and Twitter to connect with the outside • Eliminates duplication of information caused by various redundant world. Internally, they developed a plan to consolidate their disparate social platforms business strategy by measuring their progress to see what was working.17 • Encourages a collaborative environment supported by employees specifically assigned to nurture this company value

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Why enterprise social networks? 10 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 2 The science of collaboration is fascinating stuff. In this How we chapter we explore psychology, sociology, and business theory to discover just how people connect and the major impact it connect can have on your business.

Developing a network. Now that you’ve seen the importance and the history of enterprise social network software, we’ll take a broader view and investigate our relationships as human beings. To truly understand how to collaborate effectively with these new technologies, it’s important to look at the way we make connections with other people. While you may think you already know what makes us click, read on—what you find will surprise you.

The tie’s the limit—and the secret. In 1973, Stanford professor Mark Granovetter published a groundbreaking paper in the American Journal of Sociology that focused on the various types of connections we form with each other. Rooted in social theory, “The Strength of Weak Ties’,” premise was this—we maintain strong and weak ties with other people. Our strong ties represent relationships with those closest to us, whereas our weak ties represent our interactions with acquaintances. In order to maximise the power of collaboration, you might think we would tap our strong ties to generate the most collective wisdom. However, Granovetter argues the opposite. Instead, he maintains, the magic lies in our weak ties.19

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | How we connect 11 © blueKiwi 2012 How we connect Weak ties are the key

This is true of our professional relationships as well. Strong ties do “Bridges help solve problems, gather not bring large networks together in the way that weak ties can. Since each weak alliance has its own set of strong ties, connecting two groups information, and import unfamiliar together through a weak tie opens up exponentially more information- sharing opportunities. By virtue of this new connection, we are then ideas. They enable work to be weakly connected with all of the strong ties in our weak tie’s network. accomplished more quickly and more (How’s that for tying up your tongue?) effectively. The ideal network for a Strong ties provide benefits. Strong ties are important in their own right. knowledge worker probably consists They cultivate their own sets of ideas and exchange of information within their network. However, strong ties lack a crucial component of effective of a core of strong ties and a large collaboration—they do not provide the opportunity to expand beyond their small group because so many of the relationships within them are periphery of weak ones.” redundant—people within these groups have similar strong ties.

Weak ties provide even greater benefits. When seeking innovation, it’s Andrew McAfee the bridge between groups that’s key. This becomes especially evident Enterprise 2.0 within a company or organisation, where the exchange of accurate up- to-date information is critical, and the influx of new ideas provides the lifeblood for change.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | How we connect 12 © blueKiwi 2012 How we connect What comes after weak ties

Potential ties provide opportunity. Beyond strong and weak ties lies Filling the holes between networks. University of Chicago Professor another valuable source of connections – the potential ties, which are Ronald Burt’s influential book Structural Holes reinforced this idea. He those that we will make down the road. They represent a treasure trove called structural holes, “a separation between non-redundant contacts... of good advice and resources—a virtually unlimited source of information [those that do not] lead to the same people, and so provide the same waiting to be tapped. The number of potential ties is even larger because information benefits.”21 There is unlimited potential in spanning a hole there are always more people we don’t know than people we do know. to bring together two networks, but it can be difficult to motivate people to do so. According to McAfee, they need to be “both well positioned and And then there are no ties. The last tie group in the equation is “None.” motivated – typically a rare combination.”22 So, many times holes remain. These are the people with whom we’ll never form connections. For now, Since these gaps essentially block the flow of information, they can prove these ties represent virtually all of the world’s population. As technology highly detrimental to an organisation. evolves, who knows? Maybe we’ll have the opportunity to connect. It’s our own brain’s management of billions of relationships that will need to keep pace.

No weak tie connections means no collaboration. If we don’t connect weak ties, our ability to spread information loses steam. Where there are “holes,” and groups or networks of workers remain untethered, we miss great opportunities. Granovetter says, “ ...Social systems lacking in weak ties will be fragmented and incoherent. New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavors will be handicapped, and subgroups separated by... geography or other characteristics will have difficulty reaching a modus vivendi [way of living].”20

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | How we connect 13 © blueKiwi 2012 How we connect Enterprise social networks are built for connecting workers Tying it all at any tie strength, and offer unique benefits to the together collaboration process

How to connect employees and teams through enterprise social How to build powerful collaboration. Like Facebook or LinkedIn, the networks. We know how to connect workers with strong ties, both through social networking sites we use for our personal and professional lives, traditional face-to-face interactions as well as through technological enterprise social networks can build powerful collaboration in a number channels and platforms. In fact, enterprise social network features like of ways: 24 activity streams, micro-blogging, and wikis serve this category well. But • Maintain thousands of weak ties how do you connect workers who’ve never met—the critical component • Aggregate related posts for ease of information-gathering in the secret weapon of connecting weak ties? This is where enterprise social networks are highly effective tools.23 • Provide search capabilities and therefore make it easy to find information and locate strong and weak ties; they can also convert potential ties to actual ones Time to innovate and grow. Implementing an enterprise social network • Display contact information as well as other background content provides endless opportunities for innovation and growth, helping to “solve longstanding and vexing challenges around knowledge capture and • Make it exceedingly easy to post (distribute) and also consume a sharing, locat[e] expertise, open up innovation processes, and harness the variety of information, either through “status updates,” photos, videos, hyperlinks to other sites, longer notes, or more, including ‘wisdom of crowds,’” notes McAfee in his blog “The Business Impact of IT.” redirects to more content And it’s a lot of fun. • Add an emotional element through media like photos, video, and audio • Can be accessed via mobile devices, which are starting to replace computers as the primary way to go online • Make interactions more engaging and even fun by blending both personal and professional content

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | How we connect 14 © blueKiwi 2012 How we connect Automating tie creation

1st generation automation. When enterprise social networks first What’s happening now and in the future. The current generation of appeared, they included automated methods allowing coworkers to meet enterprise social networks includes even more advanced, real-time, and and connect. Built on the words or short descriptions attached to user business relevant ways to connect employees. profiles (also known as tags) employees could search for and find one another based on the same or similar tags. Social recommendation engines. Often referred to as social recommendation engines, this sophisticated technology is able to track Then the enterprise social network would make “suggestions” – the patterns across the enterprise social network as it mines all kinds of application would recommend people with whom to connect and spaces business relevant communications, activities, discussions, wikis, and to join based on similar interests, or tags. much more. In real-time, the social recommendation engine is looking for ways to connect workers based on what they are doing, talking about, or Bringing employees closer together. This technology has done an interested in. incredible job of connecting employees who otherwise would never have met. As a result, it’s helped to unite employees spread over And it works! Social recommendation engines can magically bring two multiple locations and time zones, which is particularly critical for large people together through recommendations, when they are working on international corporations. the same or similar topic but based in different locations. Imagine how much time that can save the employees—and the company as a whole—as redundant work is eliminated.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | How we connect 15 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 3 In this chapter we explore how to grow an enterprise social A collaborative network. We’ll cover minimising resistance to change, how valuing and trusting employees improves collaboration, and culture ways to encourage collaboration within your organisation.

Handling change. To create a culture that will embrace an enterprise Breaking the status quo. There are several reasons for this thought social network, it is important to address the process of change, build an process. Behavioral Economist Richard Thaler attributes it to the environment that welcomes collaboration, and then continually reinforce “endowment effect,” where we value things in our possession more than the value of collaboration. we value a substitute that is potentially in our possession.26 Similarly, McAfee adds, the “status quo” bias directs our preferences. Plus, we need Overcoming our aversion to change. Change is hard and group adoption to give up something now for a benefit that we may not see for some time, of new technology can be a long and arduous process. It may not catch on the benefit is not guaranteed, and it is subjective—all reasons for us to like the wildfire you envisioned—so set your expectations to settle in for a stay right where we are, as Harvard Business School Marketing Professor bit. It might take months, even years to gain traction. Stick with it—when John Gourville notes.27 you change your collaboration culture, the rewards are worth it. Eliminating email. Since email is the primary incumbent collaboration Eradicate resistance. Even though enterprise social network technology technology, it remains the biggest competitor to an enterprise social is superior to its predecessors (and certainly much better than having network. McAfee describes this challenge: “Consider how high this sets no collaboration technology at all), people are psychologically disposed the bar. Email is freeform, multimedia (especially with attachments) to resist adoption. They need to believe that the benefits of the new WYSIWYG, easy to learn and use, platform-independent, social, and technology will far outweigh the time and effort that their learning friendly to mouse clickers and keyboard-shortcutters alike.”28 Pretty curve entails. In fact, studies show that the perceived value of the new hard to compete with, right? Well it is still a one-to-one or one-to-many technology must be at least nine times greater than the perceived value of channel (as we described in Chapter 1), and as such lacks the powerful their current tools in order to motivate them to make a change.25 Not an collaborative capabilities native to an enterprise social network. easy sell for anyone marketing new technology.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | A collaborative culture 16 © blueKiwi 2012 A collaborative culture With an enterprise social network, all contributors must feel free Creating a social to share their voices. Only then can the medium work its magic. environment

Social business needs a trusting and valued atmosphere. While we’ve underscored the benefits of enterprise social networks, for this growth to take place in an organisation, we must set the stage by defining first what an organisation needs to become a social business. Before the tools are even in place, an enterprise needs to cultivate and encourage an environment where employees are foremost collaborative and feel free to share their ideas and work in an open and team-oriented culture.29

Create an environment to support all kinds of users. Since each person will relate to a different spot along the introvert-extrovert continuum, his or her need to interact with others in order to generate ideas and creativity will vary accordingly. However, in all human endeavors, we benefit from the constant exchange of information. Once the environment is ripe for collaboration, the applications help it happen.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | A collaborative culture 17 © blueKiwi 2012 A collaborative culture Make collaboration a top company value

Attracting collaborative people. First, you’ll need to prime your Investment bank Goldman Sachs explains their approach this way: people. One of the most important places to start is with your human “In a hiring process that is legion across business-school campuses, resources (HR) team. As they make new hires, they should be seeking out candidates interview with as many as 60 senior members of the firm. collaborative qualities in these prospects. Rejection by just one scuttles an interviewee’s candidacy. The interviews are clearly not about intelligence or focus; GMAT scores and university Trusting and valuing your people. Next, you need to show your people grades attest to these traits. The interviews are purely and simply about the love. We are accustomed to top-down, unilateral forms of leadership whether the candidate’s talent, drive, and ambition are married to a when it comes to business. Enterprise social networks enlist a completely willingness to work collaboratively with others.”31 different model. They rely on a true democracy, where each employee is encouraged to contribute and let his voice be heard by the group.30 From Empower employees. Therefore, it is imperative to provide an this organic growth comes great cross-pollination and other benefits of environment of trust and appreciation, empowering employees to collaboration that would not be possible otherwise. By connecting weak engage with and embrace your new enterprise social network so that ties and delivering innovative filtering and recommendation capabilities, your business can enjoy a “collaboration environment that is easy to we increase our ability to harness massive amounts of information and search and navigate, capture and spread knowledge, provide high-quality innovation. answers to important questions, and increase both the number and strength of ties among people.”32 When you foster an environment where employees feel secure and valued, they will collaborate in ways you’ve never dreamed of.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | A collaborative culture 18 © blueKiwi 2012 A collaborative culture Start collaborating

Eight specific ways to start collaborating. When you’re ready to kick off 5. Set-up local, virtual, and cross-department groups. Let people or roll out your enterprise social network project, these eight ideas will participate spontaneously in a variety of groups with different help get your group connected. business objectives (simple or complex ones).

1. Don’t limit your pilot program to one or two communities. If you 6. Populate some initial content and people. Users learn by example so limit it to just a few, you might miss that wildly successful team or make sure there’s something new on the home page every single day department group. Keep in mind that the value of business social (items, polls, ideas, or more) as well as new people to connect with. networking is proportional to the number of people involved. This will encourage them to return daily.

2. Recruit your Champions. You will need a Community Manager 7. Set up email notifications. Email notifications help ease the dedicated to your project. Choose people that will be enthusiastic transition to the new platform. Use them automatically to notify the about the program’s potential and who aren’t afraid to try new things community when an action occurs, like the posting of new comments or to use new technology. or a shared file. When you kick off your enterprise social network, they help keep online conversations flowing and drive repeat traffic 3. Include an influential senior person. If you don’t hold the budget, to the pilot. involve the person who does. If that’s not possible, engage a senior person who can make things happen. 8. Promote, launch, and follow up. Send several email communications to your pilot participants to get them excited. Host an event to launch 4. Pilot around specific business goals. A real-world scenario allows the pilot. Schedule and follow through with progress reviews, as they you to see how the software performs under real use. Think about help to keep your new enterprise social network moving along. creating a group that can solve problems or “exceptions.”

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | A collaborative culture 19 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 4 In this chapter we address how to get started with an enterprise social network (ESN)--the features you’ll need, Getting started creating a winning strategy, and overcoming objections. with an ESN

Set your goals. Like any new business strategy, we begin with identifying Remember, there are several important objectives that a social business goals. What do you want to accomplish with your enterprise social strategy can accomplish:35 network? Most importantly— is everyone, including upper management, • Cross-silo collaboration: Fosters more effective communication on the same page? among isolated groups for greater cross-pollination of ideas • Archive institutional memory and amass collective knowledge: Building collaboration across an organisation. Sometimes different Bring together all your organization’s great ideas, employee brain departments or teams within an organisation can have competing power, documents, communications, and other ideas in one an easily business goals. For instance, the financial team that needs to keep costs accessible format low may be in direct conflict with the product engineering team that • Handle business “exceptions” with ease. “Exceptions” become a needs to meet a tight product deadline. These are mutually exclusive thing of the past since every “exception” and its solution is docu- goals, so collaborating across departments can be tricky.33 mented, searchable, and easily found by all participants • Identify emerging opportunities: With more heads in the game it’s Once your organisation’s goals are aligned, the full force of enterprise easier to find the opportunities—and issues—on the horizon social software can be brought to bear. So make sure you sync up • Locate expertise: Identify the person or people best equipped to objectives among different groups before you get started. And even provide the right answers more important, make sure you have goals that you can accomplish and measure. Nebulous goals like “enhanced communication and collaboration” can set you up for failure. By comparison, with well-defined business goals, you can easily track the impact of an enterprise social network on your business.34

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 20 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN “The biggest determinants, by far, of whether you will be Setting social successful at social business are leadership and culture.” business goals Charlene Li, Founder of the Altimeter Group

Here are some thought-starters for your social business goals:

1. Do you want to facilitate communications among employees in different offices?

2. Do you have silos or closed communication paths within your own organisation that you would like to take down?

3. Do you want to harness collaboration for stronger innovation?

4. Would you like to capture the answers to “exceptions” so that they no longer tie up time and resources?

5. Are you interested in speeding up your employee onboarding process?

If you’d like, take a moment and write down your goals.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 21 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN Transitioning to a new corporate culture

As with any transition, you’ll hit some bumps in the road. Hang on! • Integrate with your environment: Integrate the enterprise social They are temporary roadblocks and once you’ve built your new system network directly with your existing software or, if you do not have any of communication and collaboration, you can move ahead of the tools in place, just implement it directly. competition. • Make it easy to collaborate: For employees to jump onboard, make it easy to move to the new application by incorporating the enterprise Here are some strategies to consider as you decide how to integrate your social network into everyone’s daily workflow. enterprise social network: 36

• Turn off the old communication system: If you have another collabo- ration tool that is out-of-date and out-of-mind, you can shut it down cold turkey. Have group or team leaders transition to the enterprise social network first and work there moving forward. For instance, they can elect to only share information and respond to employee questions via the enterprise social network.

• Dispatch your believers: Send out your most vehement early adopters of the technology — your Champions (more about them in a minute) — to continually educate and motivate your group or department.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 22 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN Consider transitioning requirements

Some questions for you:

1. Are you able to transition from your current collaboration tool immediately?

2. Will you need to integrate your new enterprise social network with other applications?

3. List some Champions that can evangelise the system for the entire organisation.

4. Think of ways to encourage people to use the enterprise social network in their daily workflow, like recognition for posts.

If you’d like, take a moment and write down some thoughts on how your organisation can get started.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 23 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN If you’re connecting ties of any strength, then the core Using your features of an enterprise social network can help. new ESN

What features do I use? Enterprise social networks include a variety of Public and Private Spaces. These are the communities you create to different features to help you achieve your business goals. Here’s a quick enable your employees, as well as customers and partners, to share review of the core features you’ll work with and how they can help. information. Create as many as you need to support your business objectives. Set security (open or closed) based on the overall community Activity Streams. Foster real-time communication and provide a forum for objectives. answering questions. If you are connecting weak ties, activity streams do a great job in establishing these connections. Since they maintain large Messaging. Share information with one or more enterprise network numbers of weak ties, it’s easy for a user to communicate with thousands members. Messages can go across your network and are not associated of people and post different types of updates. They’re also useful for with a single community. Use messaging instead of email to group all finding potential ties. relevant communications together in your enterprise social network.

Wikis are especially helpful for document collaboration because they eliminate the closed-channel, back-and-forth of email and the confusion wikis of trying to work with multiple, rapidly changing versions. Microblogs Public & private spaces When employees use these to share information, thoughts, Microblogs. What features and opinions, they help identify expertise and facilitate communication. do I use? Microblogs are also great ways to communicate with large groups of people and their viral nature makes them good incubators for weak tie Activity streams building. Messaging

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 24 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN More ESN features

Expand the use of your enterprise social network. These features build Ideation. Enterprise social networks create an environment where on the core foundation. They will help you take your collaboration to the ideas can germinate. Share a contribution as an idea. Ask your team or next level. community for feedback. If accepted, track your idea through its initial phase to final implementation. Content sharing. Use your enterprise social network to share content and work collaboratively. Upload documents, videos, presentations, links, and Mobility. Stay connected and up-to-date wherever you are with the mobile much more. Use version control to keep up with the latest changes. Post version of your enterprise social network. For employees on the road, a notes to your content, add comments, tags, or whatever you need to make mobile app version of the enterprise social network is critical to keeping it more accessible to your social workplace. You can even organise it into them in the loop. folders to make it easy to find.

Integrations with existing tools. Enterprise social networks succeed when they become part of employees’ daily workflow. As needed, make Content sure you integrate your enterprise social network with other key company Mobility sharing business applications.

Surveys. Use surveys to get quick and relevant feedback on almost Surveys anything. These can be done within a team community, across the company as a whole, to your customer community, or to just a select Ideation group of customers. Tasks Existing Tasks. These are particularly useful for project-based communities but tool they can be applied anywhere. Use tasks to assign work, track milestones, integration and manage work from end-to-end.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 25 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN “Enterprise social networks allow executives to realise Make the most the dream of creating an up-to-the-minute repository of of your ESN everything an organisation knows.” Andrew McAfee

Some questions for you.

1. Take a moment to review the two pages covering ESN features. Which would help you achieve long term goals? How?

2. What features will you use to share information across your organisation and in public communities?

If you’d like, take a moment and write down some thoughts on how your organisation can get started.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 26 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN Define your strategy

Let’s launch! There are several strategies you can use to integrate your Evangelise. Identify and organise your Champions, or your believers—the enterprise social network into your corporate culture. First, you’ll need early adopters who can get started right away. These are the people that to make sure that your company’s values reflect the importance of social will advocate for setting up an enterprise social network. No matter where business—and that you communicate this to everyone. Then you can they live in the business organisation, these people can be powerful support adoption with incentives and policies. agents of change. Typically, they are Generation Y, the Millenials, or the “Facebook Generation” that has already reached a level of comfort Communicate. Scream it from the mountaintop! If your employees don’t working with social platforms in their personal lives and are very tech know that there is a new technology in town then they cannot use it. Get savvy. When you support this group and make it their mission to convert the word out that you are starting an enterprise social network and that the “non-believers,” you are on your way to energising the entire group.37 you will be providing the support needed to get it off the ground. Clearly state the goal so that your organisation embraces it and makes it its own. Reward. Reward those who make the switch either with prizes or other incentives and offer continual encouragement. Conversely, you can Educate. Give your employees good reason to adopt the technology. As we change behavior by monitoring use or only posting information within the discussed earlier, there may be a knee-jerk resistance to taking on new new platform.38 When your upper management team regularly and visibly “work.” When you make a strong case that cites their increased efficiency, participates, it sends a powerful message to the entire organisation, so realisation of operational goals, or achievement of financial goals, they make sure that they are posting content and using the new technology as will be motivated to use it. Remember to organise and provide excellent their primary communications effort. training.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 27 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN Set your schedule and get started

Timeline. You’ll also need to set a timeline. While it’s not a hard and fast A plan should be taking shape. Hopefully, it’s all beginning to gel in your rule, it can give you a clearer picture of how you’ll implement the program. mind. Next we’ll talk about the obstacles you may have to hurdle. And you can always adjust as you move along. Use this area to jot down your ideas on timeline, when to start, who to Some good advice to consider as you deploy :39 include, etc. • Change is good. Understand and accept that you will lose some control as new voices emerge. • Stubborn people do exist. Be ready for managers (and employees) to resist implementation. • Top down support is a must. Make sure you have the executives’ support. • Pilot projects are a great beginning. Stay focused on concise, measurable goals and work to achieve them. • Go past projects to also include other activity. Cast a wide net with your pilot project. Don’t just include a few teams or groups. • Focus on culture, not technology. Your new enterprise social network will facilitate change, but the change must occur in your organisation. Build an open culture, don’t encourage closed towers or use allow information to be used as currency.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 28 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN CEOs and other high-ranking executives harbor various fears Overcoming about enterprise social networks, but industry experts, like Andrew McAfee, have found little evidence to corroborate obstacles these worries.40

Change is hard. When you make a big change in an organisation, there are Others worry about the brand, thinking customers might post incorrect bound to be challenges—and challengers. Deployment of new technology or negative comments. Since content is self-corrected by the community, is certainly a good example. In addition to the technical difficulties that it’s usually highly accurate. Any negative posts can be turned into good can accompany a transition, there’s also the human factor. You’ll likely public relations as the company remedies them on large scale with a meet resistance from many colleagues before the software is even tested large audience.43 in a pilot project. Change is hard, and people are hard on new things, especially applications they’ll need to start using in their daily workflow. Regarding productivity, management worries that employees will waste the company’s valuable time. In reality, people use enterprise social The five myths of Enterprise 2.0. There are several reasons why CEOs are networks responsibly to grow professional contacts and knowledge afraid to pull the trigger on evolving to a social business. McAfee calls bases.44 Finally, CEOs fret that a leaderless project won’t be executed these “The Five Myths of Enterprise 2.0.”41 correctly. However, research shows that group efforts are more powerful and generate more ideas. Myth #1: The risks of enterprise social networks outweigh the rewards. Some CEOs worry that the company will leak sensitive McAfee notes, “attribution is the norm for enterprises,” meaning that information or will be subject to noncompliance if employees broadcast people like to get credit for their work, so enterprise social networks don’t illegal activities. Yet real-world results show that sensitive information have the anonymity associated with the Internet. Bottom line? The rules can still be safeguarded and company employees effectively self-police of business etiquette also rule enterprise social networks. The rewards of enterprise social networks. As a result, problems are found early—and enterprise social networks absolutely outweigh the risks. don’t grow over private emails.42

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 29 © blueKiwi 2012 Getting started with an ESN Overcoming obstacles – more

Myth #2: Enterprise social networks need a business case with a high Myth #4: Enterprise social networks help close colleagues work ROI figure. Since enterprise social networks are frequently an IT expense, together better. Remember the tie discussion from Chapter 2. We’ve seen many CEOs pin their justification to an ROI. However, there are also many that these networks work with all levels of connection – strong ties, weak subjective and intangible benefits that are inextricably linked to the ties, potential ties, and even no ties at all.47 outcome yet difficult to quantify. Instead, CEOs should judge success by other metrics too, including anticipated cost and timeline, potential Myth #5: Enterprise social networks can only be judged by the benefits, and productivity gains.45 We’ll discuss ROI further in Chapter 5. information they create. Much of your enterprise social network will be evolving in real time, so it may appear rough and unfinished. But even Myth #3: If we build it, they will come. The reality? People are busy with unpolished information, these networks provide valuable content and find it hard to incorporate new technology into their workflow. that can be traced back to the people that generated it—and this is Additionally, they don’t want to be seen as shirking responsibilities for a where the real secret of powerful collaboration resides. Once expertise is “social” endeavor so they may add some content but nothing meaningful. located, the potential for innovation is limitless.48 Remember, your enterprise social network won’t grow on its own without proper nurturing. To be successful, employees need to be educated on Don’t let obstacles defeat you. These five myths stop some CEOs in their the mission, provided with constant support, given incentives, and shown tracks. There are many reasons, whether real or imagined, to shelve your that the upper level management is participating. Since the personal social business plans. But don’t even think about it. social network revolution grew quickly and exponentially, CEOs expect its enterprise counterpart to do the same. Yet as we learned earlier, adoption Your competitors are running theirs right now and thriving. And it won’t 46 is a long process, and CEOs must adjust their expectations accordingly. take long to put you ahead of the curve now. Don’t you want a piece of the success story?

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Getting started with an ESN 30 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 5 This chapter provides a solid business case for an enterprise Building an ESN social network. We show you how to define costs and timelines and perform a value/benefits or time-saving analysis. You’ll see business case exactly how to present your business case—and win.

Your business case for an enterprise social network. Making an What to consider when you calculate ROI. When you calculate an ROI, enterprise social network part of your company’s game plan requires one there are two important measurements to consider—Return on value and major play: Making sure that all stakeholders are on board. They must return on productivity. believe in its importance and its power to transform the collaboration at your company. Here are a few facts and ideas to build on when making your business case.

Calculating the ROI. As you compile a clear picture of the project’s scope, you’ll likely get the question of “what is the expected ROI?” While it is important to consider ROI when you’re adding infrastructure, personnel, technology, or other new components to your business, the ROI of enterprise social network software, as we’ve shown, is not easy to pin down. The benefits can be subjective and it can be difficult to map out exact costs and even timing, especially when deploying large and complex projects with thousands of users.49

McAfee does note that for most of the companies he has studied, an enterprise social network pays for itself. This assertion isn’t based on a The blueKiwi ROI calculator. You can test your own traditional ROI formula; rather it’s based on his years of research in the assumptions with the ROI calculator on our website. field of business technology.50

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 31 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Gains from an enterprise social network can be dramatic; Return on value they include enhanced satisfaction scores, lower attrition, cost vs. benefits and ultimately higher revenues.

Anecdotal evidence surfaces first. From a financial perspective, return A complex measurement. Return on value can be difficult to measure on value is not a powerful justification for acquiring an enterprise social quantifiably and is often tracked in terms of fundamental changes in network platform. Understandably, claims of business gains in top line collaborative behavior and interaction. Increasingly, CEOs are noting revenue, rate of innovation, or level of satisfaction are met with a healthy that enterprise social networks bring tremendous value to organisations dose of skepticism. After all, there is no proven equation that connects the by aggregating the right expertise and information and fostering dots between social business and business performance—at least not yet. collaboration. Organisations already enjoying the benefits of enterprise social networks extol concrete anecdotal evidence, but ultimately the benefits must be However, return on value is still hard to predict when the enterprise measured by the success of overall business performance, and this takes social network is just in the planning stages. Even with full support time to materialise. from management and a strategic plan in place, projecting a measurable outcome is difficult because the specifics of how and what the enterprise Innovations in product development result in a richer sales pipeline, social network will target have not yet been determined. There may be improved quality, and on-time project delivery. These benefits depend significant benefits, but what will they be? upon a large number of variables—the industry, the business function, the extent of executive support, the strength and motivations of community managers, the adoption rate of the platform within the organisation, the familiarity of users with the platform, and many more. With nearly five years of data regarding enterprise social networks, there is sufficient information to develop a planned approach that will result in success.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 32 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Measuring Success with Social Network Analysis (SNA). A recent innovation in the field for assessing success is the Social Network Analysis (SNA). This process measures the patterns of interaction— information sharing, problem solving, coaching, and mentoring—that make up the less visible, often informal side of an organisation. Using surveys and other tools, SNA can map the “social networks” that exist outside of organisational charts or process diagrams.51

Over time, SNA can track patterns and changes. Armed with this information, an organisation can see its communication structure and can implement specific strategies to reorganise itself and improve collaboration. In fact, a recent SNA conducted at Novartis helped reveal a pattern of communication—and parallel innovation approaches—that helped them combine teams before they reached a critical stall point in developing a new vaccine.52

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 33 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Using return on value to map out benefits

This is key. When you identify the expected benefits you’ll gain with an Further, there is no correlation between adoption and results, as many enterprise social network, you can accurately gauge your success. For users may not be using the software regularly, even if they’ve “adopted” example, if you’d like to save time and money, measure the savings in it. Since you’ve seen how difficult adoption of new technology can be, it is travel time and costs gained by conducting global or otherwise travel- not the place to hang your hat on the success of the program. Instead, pick intensive meetings online instead of in person. When you apply a return a specific challenge to overcome and watch what it does.55 on value (or similarly a cost versus benefits analysis), you can see where subjective elements like shifting meetings can make a real impact.53

Don’t focus on adoption rate. The one thing we don’t recommend studying is the adoption rate of the new software. It takes into account how often people access the platform or how long they stick with it.54 This metric has been often used as the typical yardstick of success, but it can deter and depress many a CEO.

“Many believe that if organisational barriers to the use of social technologies diminish, they could form the core of entirely new business processes that may radically improve performance.” How social technologies are extending the organisation McKinsey Quarterly, Nov 2011

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 34 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case What CEOs need to hear

Three powerful benefits. If you need to get your CEO’s attention, share these three competitive advantages that enterprise social network technology can help you achieve:56

1. Imagine harnessing everything your employees know. Lew Platt, who ran HP, a highly respected and very successful technology company for decades, once quipped, “If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.”

2. Connect weak ties and change the way you work. Connect weakly tied employees to reap exponentially more collaboration, innovation, and growth. Before enterprise social networks, we lacked the technology to really take advantage of these professional acquaintance ties. Now we can exploit them indefinitely. See Chapter 2 for a refresher on connecting ties.

3. Become a magnet for the Millenials. As Generation Y, the Millenials, or the “Facebook Generation” play larger roles in the workforce, their style of collaboration will be king. The social technologies they are familiar with are infiltrating the business world as well.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 35 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Benefit: improved sales and marketing

Some specific expected benefits for a return on value. Enterprise social networks improve the performance of sales and marketing teams in these ways: • Facilitate the “conversation.” Increasing communication and information sharing among teams increases the ability to continually repeat successful sales strategies. Top 3 measurable benefits • Find the best prospects. Help marketers zero in on their prospects with customers and target them with the resonant messages and offerings. • Reduce the cost of a sale. Cut the length of a typical sales cycle by making business information centrally accessible to every member 1. Increasing market effectiveness of the sales team. They’ll also be able to connect to each other via activity streams and messaging, keeping dispersed team members in the loop. 2. Increasing customer satisfaction • Connect everyone. Transform pyramids into circles—circulating information among a larger group of people, rather than just the few partners at the top of the ‘pyramid.’ Since great ideas can 3. Reducing market costs come from anywhere, flattening the pyramid to a circle yields more comprehensive, powerful conversations and better, stronger ideas.

Results from their 5th annual social tools and technologies survey Source: McKinsey Global Institute, 2011

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 36 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Benefit: foster innovation

Incite innovation. Innovation is increasingly viewed as the primary growth driver for companies as they battle stronger competition and pricing pressures. And innovation is not just limited to new products and services—ideally it can occur throughout the organisation. Through a forum that encourages open collaboration, innovation can thrive.

Generate ideas. Since it is people, not processes, who create ideas, you need a two-fold approach to generating new ideas. Use an ESN to find and tap the unknown expertise already in your organisation. Second, connect people inside and outside of your organisation so that they can cross-pollinate ideas and eventually focus their collective knowledge on selecting the ideas that should be implemented.

Funnel ideas to create real value. Innovation happens in three distinct phases: the emergence, incubation, and industrialisation of ideas. In addition to the number of ideas created in the first phase, a critical success metric is the reduction of cycle time to move ideas through the latter two phases. By pushing collective ideas through the network in real time, enterprise social networks greatly accelerate the process.

Reward creativity. Identify and reward those who create this exciting environment, thus propagating the cycle of creativity. Regardless of where they work in an organisation, all participants can shine through enterprise social networks.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 37 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case With an investment in social software tools, OSIsoft saw a Benefit: optimise 22% reduction in its customer support team’s average time to 57 company talent issue resolution.

Improve Human Resources with engaged employees and clearly identified talent. The HR department is critical to the recruitment and onboarding of new employees and the nurturing of the existing talent pool. Make sure they are a key component of your enterprise social network launch.

Reward your Champions. Although designed for group collaboration, an enterprise social network makes it easy to see when an individual’s contributions stand out. Human resources can efficiently track and reward employees that make a difference.

Attract and keep ‘Facebook Generation’ talent. Since this group is extremely adept at using social media, the enterprise versions of the software become an easy way to recruit and use their talents.

Maintain the new norm of open sharing and transparency. Enterprise social networks are all about transparency and collaboration, something the business world is now recognising as essential to its success.

Train and integrate new employees. With an enterprise social network, the collective knowledge and opportunities to meet dispersed colleagues are there at the ready, so new people can jump right into the conversation.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 38 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Benefit: manage exception handling

Enterprise social networks manage exception handling. As we established earlier in Chapter 1, companies are dealing more and more with events and issues which are not easily handled by the standard process and have no immediate answer-- the“exceptions.”

They can be a huge time drain as people struggle to resolve an issue that has not been seen before, either attempting to fix it with a guess or starting over to reinvent the wheel.

One great thing about enterprise social network software? They are great at handling “exceptions,” for the same reasons that they’re great at coordinating collaboration—they help people cross organisational borders, find expertise, consolidate institutional knowledge, incubate innovation, and move it all forward in real (fast) time.58

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 39 © blueKiwi 2012 Building an ESN business case Alcoa Fastening Systems regained 61% of its time when it cut Return on that much on compliance activities using [enterprise social 59 productivity network] software.

After benefits it’s important to consider return on productivity. With More network activity drives business value. Both return on value this measurement, you see less dramatic results than with a return on and return on productivity depend greatly on the level of adoption and value; however this type of productivity assessment is also much more enterprise social network user engagement. Greater adoption of course measurable than a return on value since it has direct links to an existing drives higher network effects and can substantially grow the business communication or collaboration process. value.

Saving time and resources. Enterprise social networks drive efficiencies As companies gain traction with their enterprise social networks, the when they replace routine communication and collaboration processes benefits continue to build. More voices and the greater exchange of like email, resulting in productivity gains that save time and resources. knowledge exponentially create greater innovation and collaboration. The newer technologies reduce meeting time, information search time, and perform other time- saving activities. With open information distribution models displacing closed information loops like email and in-person meetings, all pertinent people are included and know that the information exists.

Most importantly, it is easier to track the time saved in reviewing messages, sending replies, or searching for information and other routine work activities through a time study evaluation. And these gains accrue more homogeneously to organisations across industries and business functions.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Building an ESN business case 40 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 6: Case studies In this Chapter, you’ll see how blueKiwi has helped companies with their France Post collaboration and innovation goals. Whether connecting employees across the globe, streamlining processes and optimising ideas, reducing costly travel and meeting costs, or otherwise creating stronger working case study ties, blueKiwi makes it easy for companies to grow their business.

Profile France Post. La Poste is the most diverse of European postal Due to this success, La Poste has expanded the original project scope operators and the leading provider, distributer, and integrator of consumer beyond DIDES to encompass three new communities within La Poste. retail services. Headquartered in Paris, the company employs over Additionally, BlueNove will go beyond incubating ideas to helping 268,000 people throughout France. Their total revenue for 2011 was over employees transform them into concrete projects. €21.3 billion euros. Solution highlights and benefits. With 400 members, DIDES’ BlueNove Their collaboration problem. The Department of Innovation and Services generated 16 000 visits, 2000 usable notes, and 1000 comments within (DIDES) at La Poste was created to address technological change and the first few years of deployment. increased competition by driving business and process innovation. DIDES is organized horizontally across four operating divisions and needed to How has it made them be more productive? accomplish three objectives: Provide an environment that encourages • Optimized group collaboration and innovation through the exchange open exchange and social collaboration to inspire innovation, connect of information and capture of collective knowledge geographically dispersed team members to gather ideas and build • Strengthened internal relationships stronger relationships, and reduce dependency on costly in-person meetings. • Increased productivity by creating a repository for important information

The solution. With blueKiwi’s help, DIDES created an internal network • Built collaboration among departmental teams and across geographically dispersed project teams called BlueNove. Employing real-time posts and notifications, they created an archived and easily accessible, searchable community for • Drove significant labor savings when meetings were moved online critical collective knowledge, increased engagement and interaction between geographically dispersed employees, and reduced labor and travel costs when members connected online instead of in meetings.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Case studies 41 © blueKiwi 2012 Case studies Allianz case study

Customer profile. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, The Allianz Group How has it made them more productive? is one of the leading integrated financial services providers in the world. • Simplified the process of collecting and integrating feedback from Allianz offers a comprehensive range of insurance and asset management employees in the field products and services to approximately 78 million customers in over 70 • Created synergies between agencies, strengthened team bonding, countries. Their total revenue for 2011 was more than 103 billion euros. and improved sales efficiency • Enabled Allianz to collect valuable information on new product Background. In the Paris area, the company had 21 different lab agencies offerings through easy to use surveys that tested new products and selling methods. Around 60 collaborators and agency managers staffed these various labs and needed an effective • Eliminated redundant work with an accessible forum where way to collaborate. employees can share files, questions, and best practices

The solution. Allianz used blueKiwi to create an enterprise social network to facilitate weekly corporate communications from the division director in Paris, circulate surveys soliciting feedback about new products and selling methods, and share file templates, questions, and best practices among its collaborators. “Just providing a tool does not work. Regular contact and reactivity were key to ensuring the success of our Due to the success of this initiative and other endeavors launched through community and establishing the governance rules that their enterprise social network, Allianz has grown their entire network best served our organisation.” to include more than 80 spaces (communities) organised by department, project, and service engagement. Many of their employees realized great gains in efficiency and were able to free up more time to spend — Karine Lazimi with clients. Head of Innovation and Community Management

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Case studies 42 © blueKiwi 2012 Case studies Manufacturing case study

Customer profile. A manufacturer of automatic controls, their solutions The solution. Their blueKiwi pilot began in 2010, when they launched improve the comfort, security, and energy efficiency in homes, offices, a handful of communities across different domains and subjects. They stores, and public spaces. They are headquartered in France, with started small, so that the organization could learn and capitalize on their operations in over 50 countries and they employ 8,000 people worldwide. new experience. In 2011, more project and department communities In 2011, they posted sales of €950 million. were launched using a proven methodology and guided by a designated sponsor. In 2012, they launched their company-wide global deployment. Their collaboration problem. They recognized the need to improve collaboration across the organization, as well as in several key business Solution highlights and benefits. Today, their social business solution has groups. In their software development group, they wanted to make their more than 700 users and 70+ communities. Their platform statistics show development practices more consistent, grow the collective knowledge, an extremely active user base with more than 60,000 pages viewed and and provide a single platform for communication and information over 14,000 comments. sharing. For their logistics group, they wanted to build a repository of best practices, encourage employees to share local initiatives, and increase How has it made them be more productive? their overall collaboration. Lastly, for their community of field testers, • Improved how information is shared and used across departments they wanted to improve their feedback collection process, which would • Established a true community across a distributed workforce, where enable them to detect issues faster, capture ideas, and better understand employees can capitalize on shared information how consumers use their products. • Simplified the process of collecting and integrating product feedback from the field • By sharing best practices, ideas, and experiences across regions, they have enabled their employees to work more efficiently

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Case studies 43 © blueKiwi 2012 Chapter 7 In this chapter, we’ll show you how blueKiwi can help you About blueKiwi achieve your goals of greater collaboration and inspired innovation.

The social business revolution. Over the past few years, enterprise social The blueKiwi platform. blueKiwi has designed a platform to help networks have become a reality for many companies, and a growing companies not only adapt their organization to better collaboration, but preoccupation for the rest. What first appeared to be a fad limited to also to take advantage of their conversations to increase innovation and a few economic sectors is now becoming a generalized phenomenon competitiveness. throughout the business world. Many questions still remain, but the • Connecting employees, partners, and customers. With its robust en- wheel is turning irreversibly towards change. terprise social networking platform features, blueKiwi enables orga- nizations to create and manage powerful networks where employees, partners,and customers can easily share their ideas, knowledge, and best practices, in a secure enterprise environment. • Accelerating business growth. By capitalizing on informal exchanges and bringing individuals closer together in one social space, blueKiwi enables businesses of all sizes to accelerate their commercial produc- tivity, increase their capacity for innovation, and take advantage of previously hidden employee talents. • Capturing business changing ideas. With its ability to connect all of the different levels of tie strength among its employees, custom- ers, and partners, blueKiwi’s enterprise social software encourages innovative thinking, allows knowledge and information to flow across teams and departments, and creates environments where critical skillsets are found and leveraged.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | About blueKiwi 44 © blueKiwi 2012 About blueKiwi Why choose blueKiwi?

A proven solution. Hundreds of thousands of business professionals use blueKiwi customers. Every day, our customers rely on blueKiwi to out blueKiwi’s solutions to reach their business goals. blueKiwi can point collaborate, out communicate, and out innovate the competition. From to concrete client victories, with more than 300 completed projects and small companies with a few users to large enterprise and government hundreds of successfully created networks around the world. organizations with tens of thousands of users, blueKiwi customers can be found in most major business sectors, including Business Services, Since its first release in 2006, blueKiwi enterprise social software has Education, Finance, Government, Insurance, Manufacturing, Utilities, and enabled businesses and organizations to perform better. Retail.

An innovative technology leader. Recognized by industry expert Gartner blueKiwi customers are: since 2007, blueKiwi’s enterprise social software makes it easy for • Driving company innovation companies to outperform the competition. With blueKiwi’s flexible and • Increasing productivity, lowering costs, and speeding time to action scalable software, you create a uniquely productive and collaborative • Energizing sales, marketing, and product teams work environment—promoting internal collaboration among employees, information exchange and productive interaction with and among partner • Improving communication and growing customer and employee channels, and strong customer loyalty. loyalty • Facilitating new employee on-boarding and employee training • Managing documents, events, and tasks for projects or interest groups • Establishing a culture of openness where sharing ideas and construc- tive feedback are the norm

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | About blueKiwi 45 © blueKiwi 2012 About blueKiwi How to buy blueKiwi

blueKiwi software comes in three editions: Professional, Premium and blueKiwi Enterprise Edition. This solution is best suited for organizations Enterprise. Each edition is designed to meet the needs and requirements wanting to roll out a comprehensive social business solution. The of different organizations. blueKiwi Enterprise Edition is our most comprehensive enterprise social network offering. This package offers all of the functionality in the The blueKiwi Professional Edition. This solution is best suited for Premium Edition, plus the ability to seamlessly integrate the blueKiwi organizations planning to improve internal and external collaboration social platform into your existing IT infrastructure and applications. The within a specific department or project scope. The blueKiwi Professional Enterprise Edition provides all the tools you need from authentication and Edition includes all the necessary components to build and manage an widgets, to connectors and APIs. internal social business network or external community, including core functionality such as user profiles and pages, social sharing, blogs, polls, Find out more. All editions can be customized to your organization’s and customized capabilities. needs and include the ability to purchase additional licenses, modules, and consulting services. The blueKiwi Premium Edition. This solution is best suited for organizations who want to turn their group and community conversations Contact us today. We are ready and equipped to help you transform your into actionable company collaboration by providing additional tools for business by harnessing the powers of collaboration and innovation. As productivity and access when away from the office. The blueKiwi Premium you’ve seen, many companies are just starting to realize the tremendous Edition is our most popular offering, containing all of the features of productivity gains offered by enterprise social networks. The revolution is our Professional Edition, plus enhanced capabilities for collaboration just beginning. Contact us today to take your organization to a new level and mobility. With interactive wiki’s, personal dashboards, mobile of communication, collaboration, and open innovation. applications, and enhanced surveys, customers can effectively leverage and extend the power of their network.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | About blueKiwi 46 © blueKiwi 2012 Footnotes

1. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press) p. 69. 14. Ibid. 2. Nobuo Sato and Mayuka Yamazaki, “How Generation Next is Rebuilding Japan,” HBR 15. Ibid. Blog Network, May 17, 2011 (4:11 p.m.), http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/05/how_ 16. Dion Hinchcliffe, “ Enterprise 2.0 Success: Alcatel-Lucent,” ZDNet Enterprise Web 2.0 generation_next_is_rebuild.html. Blog, January 31, 2012 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/enterprise-2-0-success- 3. Ibid. alcatel-lucent/1917 4. Megan Miller, Aliza Marks, Marcelus DeCoulode, “Social software for business 17. Ibid. performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance 18. Ibid. improvements”, Deloitte Center for the Edge, 2011, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/ 19. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press), 81-88. Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_%20Social%20 Software%20for%20Business_031011.pdf 20. Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” America Journal of Sociology, 1973. 5. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press), 47. 21. Ronald Burt, Structural Holes (Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 17-18. 6. Peyman Akhavan, Mostafa Jafari, and Mohammad Fathian, “Exploring Failure-Factors 22. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press), 90. Of Implementing Knowledge Management Systems In Organizations”, Journal of 23. Ibid., 91-92. Knowledge Management Practice, May 2005, http://www.tlainc.com/articl85.htm 24. Ibid., 201. 7. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press), 73. 25. Ibid., 169. 8. Ibid., 47, 51, 63. 26. Ibid., 168. 9. Ibid., 46. 27. Ibid., 169. 10. Dion Hinchcliffe, “Enterprise 2.0 success: BASF,” ZDNet Enterprise Web 2.0 Blog, 28. Ibid., 171. February 15, 2012, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/enterprise-2-0-success- 29. Ibid., 207. basf/1939 30. Ibid., 207. 11. Ibid. 31. Lynda Gratton, “How to Foster a Cooperative Culture,” HBR Blog Network, January 15, 12. Dr CheeChin Liew, “CCS102 The Emergence of Business Networks and Communities 2009 (5:15 p.m), http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2009/01/four-ways-to-encourage-more-pr. - connect.BASF”, presentation, Lotusphere 2012, http://www.slideshare.net/basf/ html. socialconnectbasf 32. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press), 211. 13. Dion Hinchcliffe, “Social Business Success: Burberry,” ZDNet Enterprise Web 2.0 Blog, February 6, 2012, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/social-business-success- burberry/1932

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Footnotes 47 © blueKiwi 2012 Footnotes

33. Andrea Ovans, “Getting Credit for Making Other People Shine,” HBR Blog Network, 49. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press). p. 189 Thursday June 2, 2011 (12:59 p.m), http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2011/06/ 50. Ibid., p. 191 getting_credit_for_making_othe.html 51. Robert J. Thomas , “Collaboration as an Intangible Asset,” HBR Blog Network, June 16, 34. Megan Miller, Aliza Marks, Marcelus DeCoulode, “Social software for business 2011 (7:37 a.m.), http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/collaboration_as_an_intangible.html performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance 52. Robert J. Thomas , “Collaboration as an Intangible Asset,” HBR Blog Network, June 16, improvements”, Deloitte Center for the Edge, 2011, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/ 2011 (7:37 a.m.), http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/collaboration_as_an_intangible.html Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_%20Social%20 Software%20for%20Business_031011.pdf, p. 4 53. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press). p. 189 35. Ibid., p. 8 54. Megan Miller, Aliza Marks, Marcelus DeCoulode, “Social software for business performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance 36. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press)., p. 173- improvements”, Deloitte Center for the Edge, 2011, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/ 184 Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_%20Social%20 37. Ibid., p.182-183 Software%20for%20Business_031011.pdf 38. Ibid., p.175, 192-194 55. Ibid. 39. Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li, “Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So Social Web,” MIT Sloan 56. David Kiron, “What Sells CEOs on Social Networking (an interview with Andrew Management Review, Spring 2008 McAfee),” MIT Sloan Management Review, February 2012 40. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press). P.158 57. Megan Miller, Aliza Marks, Marcelus DeCoulode, “Social software for business 41. Andrew McAfee, “Shattering the Myths About Enterprise 2.0,” Center for Digital performance: The missing link in social software: Measurable business performance Business Research Brief, May 2011 improvements”, Deloitte Center for the Edge, 2011, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/ 42. Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, (Boston, MA, 2009, Harvard Business Press). p.157-159 Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_%20Social%20 Software%20for%20Business_031011.pdf 43. Ibid., p.153-154 58. Ibid. 44. Ibid., p. 146 & 150 59. Ibid. 45. Andrew McAfee, “Shattering the Myths About Enterprise 2.0,” Center for Digital Business Research Brief, May 2011 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid.

Enterprise Collaboration Playbook | Footnotes 48 © blueKiwi 2012 For more information contact us: [email protected]

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