3 web 2.0 tools enterprises must consider

I often touch on the need for professionaling web 2.0′s tools and usages in order to make them consistent in a corporate context. But we also have to keep in mind that there are some tools and usages that exist on the general public web that businesses haven’t considered yet and that they should bring inside their firewall.

Why three tools ? Because I didn’t find more. Even if I more addicted to the Harvard Business Review than to Techcrunch, it seems to me that as regards tools the essentials are behind us. Some cobble things up, make improveent, build mashups but no new logic comes and bring something really new in the extensive catalog that already exists. I was really looking for some new logics and not for an nth copy of something that already exists.

If you look at web 2.0 tools, very few are those that businesses have not try to implement for internal purposes yet (which does not mean they successfully managed to do so). Blogs : done. Wikis : done too. Social Networs k : they are learning. FlickR and YouTube like ? Done. Google Docs : done. Bookmarking : done. Then come some new services that are nothing but mashups. Let’s end the list.

3°) Silentale

I’ve put silentale on the third step of the podium because it’s not available yet so I rely on the promise that was made at the last LeWeb08 conference when won a special award from the public. The ability to gather and funnel all your conversations, exchanges, wherever they take place is an interesting productivity booster. This is a part of the “personal information supply chain” I’ve already developed here. A part of the corporate plumbing.

2°) Dopplr

To be honnest, Iwould  never have thought of mentionning  Dopplr here if I hadn’t have a conversation with a friend weeks ago. He works for a company that has subsidiaries all over the world and which teams are send…all over the world too. Experts can be in a local headquarter or send to join temps in a place near you, in the jungle or in the middle of the ocean. “Sometimes we can be 10 at the same time in NYC, each one coming from a different country….plus our NYC team. But it can also happen in the middle of nowhere without any of us knowing others people from the company are there. So we’d like to use Dopplr but, considering our industry, we can’t rely on a public platform. A prive dopplr would do the job”. What may seem of a secondary importance for sedentary businesses may be essential for those where mobility is the norm. And not only for human reasons…

1°) Seesmic.

Here is the big winner, coming in an easy first. It take a long time for businesses to recognize the business value of asynchronous and public conversations between the members of their staff. Video seems to be gadget for many of them. But the video asynchronous public conversations, instead of cumulating all the barriers bring a sudden ray of light as its ROI is obvious. Perhaps it’s also because of the current context.

Imagine that you need your sales team to be more efficient (I know…nobody cares about that today ;-) ). They are asked to qualify their leads better, to react in an adapted way to each situation…. The solution has a name : training. But how can an expert trainer work with people all over the world knowing that it’s just not possible to put him on a plane every morning !

A case can be imaginated. Everyone is asked to register his sales speech when he can. The trainer can see them one by one, make corrections showing what to improve, the the sales person start again… It’s more efficient than a videoconference because it does not disturb people’s own agendas, it allow corrections, it allow to teach by the example and, most of all, conversations can made accessible for all so that a real expertise library is available on the intranet with cases, real examples, corrections etc…

Only a blind person would not see the ROI here. And it’s only a quick and dirty example.

Ok…maybe none of these players are interested in this kind of market.

And you ? Do you see others ?

Digital natives, e-culture, e-students

Everybody focuses on the digital natives, the e-culture, and how those who are coming after us will deeply transform organizations.

Another point is the underlying question of the use of new tools in the educational process. Because Digital Natives are Digital Learners, what perhaps count much more than anything else, if they can’t learn, their difference may of very few use.

It points at important issues regarding to the way the eductional system and their professors are interacting with them.

What consequences can be drawn from these quotes :

  • my parents use e-mail … I text instant message
  • 76% of my teachers never used wikis, blogs, podcats
  • once a weekn 14% of my teachers let me create something using new technologies ; 63% never…

Humm…aren’t they the 21th century students and the future of our workforce, those we’ll have to rely on to face dramatically new business challenges ?

Archivists : a new performance lever

Everything started with this note about Lille Business school and some talks with an archivist, a job I didn’t know at all, or, as a lot of people, a job I thought I knew things about. It gave me the idea to make a little poll around me about how this function was considered within their companies.

I think the result won’t be a surprise for anybody. I’ve been talked about “temple keepers”, the people who know “were information is”. With a strong “achive” connotation. It’s like people were talking about old relicts for those who want to learn about the past but without any use in the day to day job, noboday talking about topicality, intelligence, digital information (as if archivists only knew paper).

Nothing to do with the talks I had with the above mentioned person. Nothing to do with what is made in Lille. A the time when information is  becoming more and more strategic, when it’s the basis on collaboration between people, when 75% of the companies’ value is made of intangible assets, it’s somehow a worrying situation.

What do companies need ? Funneling and organizing information that’s pouring into an always increasing numbers of channels. Of course, there’s still “paper information” that’s about both topicality and content. But there are also feeds coming from business/competitive monitoring on the web, since more and more companies try to take the most of each employee as a point of contact with their ecosystem. Of course the number of sources can be reduced but it’s more about closing our eyes to reality than trying to face it. [Read more...]