Business Networks | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Enterprise 2.0 is not only about communities

April 28, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Since social media have been making its first steps inside enterprises and the context of enterprise 2.0 has been emerging, everybody has been talking about communities. As a matter of fact there’s no better tools to facilitate exchanges within communities, a very orld concept that was given a new youth by this “social revolution”. But this focus on communities, sometimes, makes things more complicated than expected.

Whether they could be communities of practices, of interest, of knowledge, of purpose, communities are supposed to make information and knowledge sharing easier in order each of their members get the most of the other’s and, at the end, everyone gets more than what he gives. Obviously, it’s a key issue for many companies but it’s still hard for them to measure it’s real value. As a matter of fact, the value of intangible is a field where financiers have still a lot of work to do and the fact companies makes things more complicated by forgetting to align knowledge with action.

In an operational point of view, organizations, for which it’s already hard to put numbers on the value of their community and determine the ROI of what improves them (so they ask their providers to take care of that although it should be their own job), often make mistakes when they have to select the communities on which they will focus.

First, becaucse they still are not very talented at identifying the real communities et often mistake those they would like to exist and those that really exist and need help.

Second, because focusing on the traditonal concept of community they loose sight of another kind of group that need this kind of tools and is not a community in the strict sens of the word but that is often forced to conform to a norm that does not fit its needs. It’s about the people who need to work together, in many cases in an informal way since it’s a resort when formal structures reached their limits. The best example was what was done at GE where what prevailed was “the need for people to deliver a process“. You should also have a look at this comment by Chris Jonhson.

This kind of group doesn’t form, can’t be managed, don’t necessarily need the same tools functionnalities as a traditional community. It may be quite disturbing for companies because it implies they have to take into account the way people acutally work, admit they need more freedom in the way they get organized….but it’s surely more lucrative because it’s easy to measure the impact of these new practices on operational processes and then to answer the “ROI question”.

Enterprises may aim at exchanging knowledge to improve everyone’s expertise or “technical and utilitarian” information to get things done. These two approaches are sometimes complementary but are very different in the way they have to be addressed. Applying to one the recipes that work for the other makes things more complicated and may prevent companies to get the more obvious and expected benefits.

Communautés, communautés-de-pratiques, Entreprise 2.0, réseaux sociaux d’entreprise, réseaux sociaux professionnels, réseaux-sociaux, roi

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: business networks, Communities, communities-of-practices, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise social networks, ROI, social networks

Social networks are the quintessence of enterprise web 2.0

February 27, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

The issue has been emerging for years but it’s now a hard trend : companies don’t consider internal use of web 2.0 as a prospective subject and started to work on its implementation. The network logic and the question of knowing how to implement it is now on CEO”s agendas. All the same, people in charge often can’t make head nor tail of it.
In the first years, the equation was as simple as web 2.0 = Blogs + wikis. No sooner companies understand what they could do with these tools that they were told about social bookmarking. Then RSS. Then microblogging. And now social networks.

So many new things that common people in common businesses may get lost, don’t you think ?

In fact the point is not to make a choice between all these tools but to make a rational use of many of them, each having its purpose, in an unified context. Continously switching from one to another is out of question : employees must have everything at their disposal at the same time and in one interface, without having to care about how they communicare together. Another point is that IT depts can’t afford building bridges between a multitude of tools that evolve independantly, depending on the will of each vendor. I don’t even mention the real risk of overlap as solutions become more mature and expand their scope.

In this logic, the emergence of social networks as the main issue doesn’t have to be understood as “one more tool” but, on the contrary, as the integration of what’s above in a consistant approach.

What kind of social networks do companies need ?

February 4, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Need for synergies, for connections, to do more with less ? Whatever the official reason is (and sometimes the unofficial one), companies are now turning back to the gool old network, renamed “social network” to stick to the the current climate, to find new pools of performance.

Because companies focus on efficiency, people’s network is not a collection a business cards lying about in a drawer. More, it’s more usual to collect external’s business cards than colleagues’s. The network got “webized” and companies are wondering of to professionalize a Facebook, internalize a LinkedIn. So social networks becomes entreprise-class applications, specialists quickly took a stand, traditionnal vendors tryid to add a “network” thing here and there. The fact remains that, behind an unique word and a sotfware feature hide many realities which embody the many visions company may have of social network. To make it short the question is : what is the useful kind of networks for a bsiness. According to PWC the future is “business networks”. But what are they ?

My point here is not to discuss what a network is. I’m convinced there is no generic and ideal form of network and that we need to adapt the one that matches our needs to our purposes.

External social networks are not only for marketing purposes

January 21, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Generally, when I talk about social networks for other people than employees, I’m answered “ah ? I thought you were not interested in all these marketing things”. This is the obvious proof that, for many people and many companies, when you aim at an external audiance it’s for communication and sale purpose, following a one way flow. Said differently : “outside we talk, inside we work and both have nothing in common”. Seen with a little distance it embodies the idea according to which it’s the company that condition its environment and not the opposite.

Preconceived ideas that were true at a given moment but shows we are now entering a new era.

Enterprises far beyond enterprise 2.0

January 20, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I amused myself proposing a few tracks on what enterprise 2.0 may be in 2009. But I think pushing the reflection beyond would be worth : enterprise 2.0 is only a side of a much complex reality that is enterprise and will be of any use only in a global framework. Since enterprise, and economy in general, can be defined as the place where more and more numerous interactions melts, believing it can be improved by only cosmetic improvements. Evry initiative that’s not aligned with a macro vision that will take all these considerations into account won’t bring anything worthy.

So, let’s put ourselves in the main player’s place.

• The top management

The less we can say is that top management is very worried. Because of the downturn, CEOs are trying to protect the organization. It’s hard to find more revenue so, in order to preserve the result they want costs to be cut. Or spendings, which is not the same thing. In the other hand they know that if they keep on cutting costs, they will soon be unable to make any cent go in the bank so they try to find how to make work more efficient, to work on costs instead of expenses. And, finally, the idea of business networks comes to the surface. But how to make it happen ?

On the other hand, this crises is about something deeper that worries them a lot. Always promising more has its limits and now it seems that these limits have been reached. Do they have to stop promising the moon since they know organization’s performance have its limit and trying to balance it with financial performance leads to the situation we now know ? Do we have reached the limits of a system and is this crisis the consequence of a management model failure. Do we have to reinvent the way we do business ?

In brief, an increasing demand for more responsability and sustainability in management, that is not so far from a tendency that brings many companies to think their development together with their human ecosystem’s in order not to ruin their tomorrow’s markets.

Many issues that have a lot in common and that, without forseeing the answers that will be given, will have to be taken into account this year.

Enterprise 2.0 : my predictions for 2009

December 18, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 3 Comments

Honestly I was not sure I would conform to the annual predictions tradition. Finally, since my 2008 edition was not that bad (shift from “social tools at people’s disposal” to the acknowledgement it needed inclusion in business process) and Susan kindly asks for it, I’ll try to do something interesing this year.

That said, I will divide my note in two parts. As any good “thoughtleader” sometimes mistake predictions for his own wishes, I’ll try to be lucid enough to clearly separate both and end my note with a few pious hopes.

Let’s start !

CE0 concerns : network driven business models

December 16, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

What are CxOs real concerns ? How do they undertsand current issues ? Lots of people are talking about the need for companies to change in order to evolve in the context that is theirs now but it supposes the “information” has reached the highest decision makers and that they really understand what it’s about if we want things to slowly happen.

It would be very usefull for all the people who are “pushing” ideas and evangelizing to know the gap (if any) between their ideas and what CEOs really think.

Fortunately the work was done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in its 11th “CEO Survey”, titled : “Compete and Collaborate : What is Success in a Connected World”.

One year after predicting that three main trends will impact enterprises (Globalization, connectivity, communities), PWC follows the same way and focuses on the way business models will evolve and, most of all, on the way to create value with employees but also with competitors. With an underlying question : is building business networks a prerequisite to create value in today’s economy ?

Said in practical terms, companies are torn between two forces : collaboraton and collective actions in the one hand, competition and individualism in the other hand. The whole while considering the impact of a strengthened collaboration on power diffusion and control loss by management.

The report being freely downloadable, I’ll only focus on a few points.

1°) Current context

• New growth levers will be agility, talent and technology

• The downturn will bring many opportunities for mergers.

• An interconnected world is more exposed to risk but also offers much more opportunities

2°) Impact on business models

• Companies say their people are more important than ever but they still don’t translate it in concrete facts.

• Middle and junior management weakness is a real barrier to change

• In order to face this block, companies have to involve employees in the change process, build connected organization, develop people continuously, make people accountable at every level and make change become the norm.

• The HR function will have to work in front line, besides top management in order to drive change and not only being a support.

• Companies know of to collaborate on an opportunistic basis. But they still can’t “industrialize” that and learn from their experience. Opportunistic collaboration does not have to be an exception anymore but an organizational principle.

• Higer productivity will only be reached through new communication technologies, global networks and innovative management.

• Networks that were only use to transfer knowledge in a small perimeter will have to be deployed to deal with wider strategic issues; both internally (employess) and externally (partners,cliens…)

3°) Conclusion

• Growth must be responsible

• Defining the conditions for a long term success with clients is essentials. Short term objectives are not enough anymore.

• To make collaboration efficient, the objectives, the operating modes must be redefined, involving all the stakeholders?

PS : not a word on enterprise 2.0 : the evidence that the work around the concept has ended and the time of implementation has come. Lucky we are, it’s on CEOs agendas !