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Enterprise Social Software A Connectbeam White Paper …
Tags: collective expertise, collective intelligence, constraints, creativity, enterprise applications, informal social networks, information sharing, mation, networking tools, overcoming obstacles, self interest, share ideas, silos, social bookmarking, social networking, social software, team collaboration, traditional enterprise, worker productivity, workflows,Pages: 6
Language: english
Created: Thu Jun 5 21:40:01 2008
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Enterprise Social Software A Connectbeam White Paper
Unleashing the Collective
Intelligence of the Enterprise
Social Bookmarking and Social Networking lead to increased
worker productivity and faster innovation in the enterprise
Unleashing the Collective Intelligence of the Enterprise
Increasing team collaboration and unlocking employee potential via social networks.
Connecting Workers to Information Overcoming obstacles to productivity in the
In the enterprise of today, it's natural for people to
enterprise
collaborate and share ideas even when no one requires Enterprises compete in an increasingly globalized
them to do so. These informal social networks-working economy in which information grows exponentially by
on mutual self-interest-can unleash creativity and the day. Companies with distributed workforces find it
mobilize collective expertise across the organization. understandably difficult to harness the collective
However, most traditional enterprise applications hinder expertise of their extended organization. Without infor-
this level of collaboration through cumbersome, outdated, mation-sharing and social networking tools, workers
and rigid workflows that limit the creation and sharing are locked into organizational and informational silos.
of information and knowledge within the business. In Overcoming these obstacles and improving the flow of
many companies, it's common for multiple people to be information involves the following:
working on the same project and never know it.
Information sharing and discovery
These constraints have driven users in increasing Employees invest a great deal of time looking for
numbers to a new generation of consumer based Web the information they need to do their job - and
2.0-type applications and tools which they have begun often, they can't find it. According to a recent survey
to also leverage at work. These consumer based tools by Accenture, nearly 60 percent of managers say
allow individual workers to store and track information they can't find the information they need as a con-
pertinent to their jobs, but make it almost impossible sequence of "poor information distribution."1 Worse,
to share this knowledge with others inside the enter- somebody else in the organization may have pre-
prise who might be working on similar projects. cisely the information an employee is looking for
Additionally, these public tools require that confidential or may be trying to solve the same problem. But
or proprietary information be put outside the corporate because there's no way to connect these individuals,
firewall, which can place the entire company at risk. or for these individuals to discover each other,
multiple parallel efforts are pursued to little effect.
To meet this growing need for information access that Furthermore, when users do come across information
is easily available and secure, social software applica- they are often left wondering about the quality and
tions have emerged that are built and designed from context of that information. Often the same infor-
the ground up for the enterprise. These applications, mation would have been touched or consumed by
packaged as appliances, reside inside a company's several others in the company, but organizations fail
firewall, provide the same level of usability and features to capture that signature and miss out on an oppor-
of consumer social software, but direct them toward a tunity to build and harness the collective intelligence
collaborative business goal. At the same time, these of their organization.
appliances integrate easily into existing IT infrastruc-
tures, provide enterprise-grade security, and are seamless Finding people
for employees to adopt. Corporate directories are normally structured
according to name rather than area of expertise or
Social software applications allow workers to structure interest, so employees in effect have to know who
information anyway they like, share relevant data easily they're looking for in order to find them. This "top
from inside or outside of the company, connect with down" approach, in which people must know specific
like-minded people across the enterprise, and spur information (like a name) in order to discover a com-
collaboration anywhere in the company. mon area of expertise, is an obstacle to information
2
discovery and prevents employees with similar For enterprise users, a single high-quality result is far
interests from finding each other and sharing their more valuable than a large quantity of mediocre ones.
resources. These users need a search engine that can rank results
not by popularity, as on the consumer Web, but by use-
Creating useful business intelligence fulness to the individual who is conducting the search.
For the first time, enterprises can now compete and In this context, a useful or high-quality result means
increase their competitive advantage based on the one that can answer the following questions:
strength of their human capital instead of settling
· Who else did this same or related search inside my
for marginal gains through supply chain operational
enterprise?
efficiencies. This human capital must be identified
and empowered in a meaningful way in order for it · What did they find?
to be accessed, shared, and leveraged for competi-
· Did they like what they found, and if so, where is
tive advantage.
that information?
Some workers will take it upon themselves to engage in · Can I see it?
these three processes in order to satisfy the demands of
· Can I contact or network with this person?
their own job roles. However, if the businesses can formally
support these processes as a matter of company-wide Consumer search
IT policy, it will see wider spread productivity gains. While the corporate intranet is usually a user's first
Longer term, the payoff is even greater: a repository of resort for product- or company-specific information, the
collective knowledge that no longer depends on individ- public Web is still a vital resource. But, as mentioned
uals for its preservation. above, search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo tend
to rank results by popularity rather than value. A final
Existing solutions add pieces but don't solve issue with consumer search is that, because it isn't
the whole puzzle integrated with enterprise search, users may perform
the exact same search on both sides of the corporate
Employees at large organizations may use a number of firewall hoping to find the one answer they want, and
tools to enable information access and sharing, including wasting a significant amount of time doing it.
enterprise search, consumer search, employee directo-
ries, and consumer based social networking and book- Employee directories
marking applications. However, none of these tools For years, the employee directory served as an admit-
can entirely address the full scope of employees' needs, tedly crude social networking tool: it was the primary
and they are difficult if not impossible to integrate. In means by which people found each other within the
absence of a comprehensive solution, the full value of enterprise. But employee directories, by virtue of the
the enterprise's collective intelligence remains fact that they are structured by the very information
untapped. someone is least likely to know name and department
have failed to connect people very efficiently. What is
Enterprise search needed is a directory that can funnel search from the
Enterprise search is common to virtually all large organ- general (experience, area of expertise, or interest) to the
izations, and allows employees to look for useful infor- specific (name) rather than the reverse.
mation on their company intranet. However, too often
the enterprise search user gets results that mimic what Consumer based Social networking
they would find on the consumer web: that is, a large Networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook help people
number of results with the desired item possibly buried make new professional connections and discover existing
several pages back. And because the spiders crawling ones. They're a valuable tool for professional develop-
the corporate intranet may not be able to read outdated ment and career advancement. They are not, however,
formats or access legacy storage, the desired item very useful as a platform for knowledge sharing but
might never be detected in the first place. they could be. At present, the structure of the informa-
tion on these sites makes it difficult to locate people
with similar interests or areas of expertise.
3
An enterprise social networking tool that allowed relatively unobtrusive to their normal course of work, it
employees within an organization to locate subject can overcome many objections to adoption.
matter experts, find people who had worked on similar
projects, or get a fast answer to a specialized question, The requirements for an effective enterprise information
would be far more valuable. At its best, enterprise social access and sharing tool include:
networking could help make explicit the collective · Intranet and Internet search. Users must be met at
knowledge that was previously implicit in the work- their point of search, wherever they turn to it
force, residing in the heads and on the desktops of whether it's behind the corporate firewall or on the
individual employees. It would also allow workers to public Web.
establish relationships with subject matter experts to
whom they could return for more information and · Ability to connect experts (people) with specific
collaboration in the future. search keywords. This allows users to create pools of
subject-specific knowledge and easily locate subject
Consumer based Bookmarking and tagging matter experts.
applications
Many resourceful enterprise employees have turned to · Ability to create social networks for specific projects.
free social software such as del.icio.us to help them Users can share bookmarks and contacts so that
organize information and share it with other people everyone working on the project is connected and
who have similar interests. This software has broadened has access to the same materials.
peoples' awareness of how and why to share information,
and has introduced them to practices such as tagging · Dynamic user profiles. Allows users to stay up to date
and bookmarking. with other users' interests and areas of expertise as
they change.
As useful as they are, free services encounter serious
limitations when it comes to the corporate firewall. · Seamless integration with existing enterprise search
Large organizations cannot have confidential or technology. This makes the tool more manageable
proprietary information, or even references to such from an IT perspective, and eases user adoption
information, accessible from the public Web. As a result, because it "piggybacks" on their existing workflow.
employees using free services can use them to book-
mark only that information which is generally available · 100% behind-the-firewall security. An application that
(and likely not as relevant to their work as proprietary lives behind the corporate firewall keeps data com-
company information), or may use them to bookmark pletely safe and secure.
restricted information, thus potentially breaching cor-
porate security and compliance regulations as well as · Recognized as "Best of Breed" industry solution.
compromising corporate intellectual property. Proven success and reliability is essential. Enterprises
have too much at stake to take a chance on an
untried technology.
Enterprise requirements for efficient
information access and sharing
Connectbeam: Harnessing the power of social
The enterprise has its own specific needs when it
networking
comes to information access and sharing. Security is
paramount; search capabilities must be more robust, Connectbeam was designed from the ground up as an
extending to the far reaches of the enterprise; and enterprise social software solution. Packaged and deliv-
functionality must be flexible and seamless to integrate ered as an appliance, it combines the productivity and
with employees' existing work flow. knowledge-sharing enhancements of Web 2.0 styled
social software with the robustness and security of an
This latter point is of particular importance because it enterprise grade application. It is, as the description
has such an influence on rates of adoption. Employees suggests, a hardware appliance that resides within a
are more likely to resist using a tool if it forces them to company, behind the corporate firewall, and hosts the
adjust their work style. If it is easy to use, intuitive, and Connectbeam application. The solution integrates
4
seamlessly with existing enterprise and Internet search are not integrated with each other and do not work
engines while remaining completely secure, so that behind the firewall. Connectbeam is the first enterprise
companies can extract a greater ROI from their existing grade application to combine social bookmarking con-
intranet resources and infrastructure investments. This cepts with social networking, with the belief that social
means organizations are always in full and complete networks inside businesses will form and thrive only in
control of their Connectbeam software appliance. the context of information and discovery. Enterprise
users will want to build a social network of colleagues
Connectbeam social software effectively builds a if those colleagues can help them advance in their work
dynamic, self-updating repository of the collective and projects.
intelligence of the enterprise. The tool addresses several
key areas: In addition to Connectbeam, companies such as IBM
and BEA Systems both produce applications that integrate
· Information discovery and sharing. Connectbeam with their other software suites, while the UK-based
helps contextualize and categorize information from company Cogenz provides its own hosted service.
systems inside and outside of the company, using a rich However, each of these applications leaves out key
application framework of social tagging to evaluate features. A review by David Greenfield in eWeek notes
search results based on the usefulness of a particular that, of this group of four major enterprise social soft-
term to others in the enterprise. Whether the user ware vendors, only Connectbeam has a security feature
searches from the corporate intranet or the Internet, restricting group access by preventing groups from
Connectbeam shows the collective intelligence of seeing each other's bookmarks and bookmarked docu-
his/her social network at the user's point of search. ments2. Greenfield goes on to say, "While every product
but Cogenz's Enterprise Edition returns bookmarked
· People discovery. Connectbeam helps people find results within search results, only Connectbeam does so
each other based on expertise. As users search for infor- on leading enterprise search platforms such as Fast and
mation, the Connectbeam application provides not only Google."3
search results but also the names of other users who
are interested in or related to the search term. It also In addition to providing the most thorough enterprise
enables social networking by allowing interested parties and secure enterprise social bookmarking appliance,
to form or join a social network around communities of Connectbeam has also been recognized as a strategic
interest. By reducing the time and effort necessary to partner by major industry players and garnered numer-
coordinate like-minded groups, this naturally increases ous awards and recognition from the analyst and pub-
the value of collaboration. lisher community. It was named a Cool Vendor of 2007
by Gartner and a Trend-setting Product of 2007 by KM
· Community. Connectbeam creates social networks World. Network Computing Magazine called it "a pioneer"
that include professionals whom users can call upon for in the tagging and social bookmarking space, while
assistance with specific projects. Users working on simi- Social Computing Magazine wrote that "Connectbeam
lar projects can form communities to keep stakeholders has mastered Social Search."
in sync. Communities can be restricted (by invite only)
or discoverable by all (anyone can join and contribute).
Conclusion: Collective intelligence as a
· Expertise and profiles. Dynamic profiles of individuals competitive differentiator
are generated based on their social bookmarking and Large enterprises are finding it increasingly difficult to
social networking patterns, providing users complete gain operational competitive advantages as trends like
flexibility around levels of visibility, thus making it easy globalization and outsourcing make it possible for even
to find the right resources. the smallest companies to compete effectively with
larger players. The enterprise still has one significant
Consumer based services such as del.icio.us and competitive advantage, however: its collective intelli-
LinkedIn offer some portion of these feature sets: gence. The accumulated skills, knowledge, and experience
del.icio.us enables tagging and bookmarking, while of enterprise employees, combined with large companies'
LinkedIn supports social networking. But these services extensive archives of data, research, marketing collateral,
5
and other materials, can all be put to better use for the that leverages an organization's existing technology,
business. Connectbeam provides the infrastructure to provides 100% security, and significantly increases
produce immediate employee productivity gains but productivity. And, by providing an organic structure for
more significantly, it allows enterprises for the first time knowledge and information assets, it is a tool that
to measure and empower its human capital. becomes more valuable with time and use.
In a research report on enterprise social software, Allowing people to connect in an organization gives
Gartner's Nikos Drakos suggests that the success of them access to the information they need, accelerates
social software is determined in both the short and the collaboration and unlocks the collective intelligence of
long term. Good social software makes it easy and fast the enterprise - an increasingly vital asset that has been
for a user to contribute - but it also allows users to capi- overlooked and undervalued. By supporting the growth
talize on the contributions of others for future benefit: of informal networks with Connectbeam social software,
organizations eliminate information bottlenecks and
"Successful social software is characterized by the radically improve performance across the enterprise.
frictionless immediacy with which user contributions
become part of an existing body of information... Footnotes
Participation is usually not prescribed as part of a
1 http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_
formal process, and it is self-selecting (that is, partic-
display.cfm?article_id=4484
ipants are free to decide whether, when and how to
participate). However, participation is a necessary, 2 http://www.eweek.com/article2/
but not a sufficient condition for success. The hall- 0,1895,2168780,00.asp
mark of successful social software applications is
not that they make it easy to contribute, but, more 3 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2168781,00.asp
importantly, that they pool user contributions for
further use or refinement."4 4 Nikos Drakos. "Enterprise Social Software to Boost
Efficacy of Non-Routine Work," Gartner, September 4,
By implementing Connectbeam's social software appli- 2006, p.3
ance, businesses can provide employees with a flexible,
time-saving information access and sharing application
Connectbeam, Inc.
605 Ellis Street, Suite 100
Mountain View, California 94043
Tel 650.980.5080
Fax 650.249.1656
www.connectbeam.com
© 2008 Connectbeam, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Connectbeam, the Connectbeam logo, Connectbeam on Demand, and the Social Appliance are
trademarks of Connectbeam, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.