Accenture | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Social networks : are companies looking for the ROI or something else

January 29, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

Whatever people may say, it’s still the hot issue of enterprise social networks. Considering ools that that are not processing tools strictly speaking, benefits have to be found on the new way of doing things they make possible rather than in the tools themselves that are only enablers. As I wrote here, benefits are not on the cloud but in the operational reality.

This said, the answer is still hard to be found.

So we may follow Forrester :

I found the list of direct and undirect benefits very exhaustive and clear. But is that enough ? No. If we can explain, for example, how intangible assets contribute to value creation, we cannot explain in which measure. Let’s consider the CISCO case. Chambers can give a backed up by figures ROI in terms of capacity to drive projects and in financial terms, but I’m not sure that when the decision was made had any figure he was automatically sure he would reach.

Tags and networking drive E 2.0 adoption…and relativize importance of collaboration

June 26, 2007 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I wrote a few lines about the discovery of the power of web 2.0 tools at accenture a few months ago. This article from socialcomputing magasine tells us more about what’s happening there.

The conclusion is that adoption is really driven by tagging and social networking functions. A very good start according to me. But it seems some people are not satisfied because such practices are taking E2.0 concept far away from the conception they have of it. I was quite surprised to read Tom Mandel’s words about it :

“These technologies seem to lean more in the direction of social networking and rather away from collaboration.”

And so what ? Does it mean E2.0′s ultimate goal is collaboration ? That E2.0 is mainly about collaboration ? I’m very far from thinking that. Enterprise 2.0 is about a lof of things and collaboration is only one of them. More, and I’ll explain it in a later note, I think collaboration has to be redefined in a 2.0 context…

Whatever, the conclusion is splitting hair because things tends more towards social networking than collaboration is useless.

Another point is that, in order to make people make things together (I prefer this term rather than collaborate), we should give them the opportunity to identify each other, know each other, and build a trusted relationship. Networking may be a first step to collaboration, so be patient. And isn’t tagging a first form of collaborative practice ?