Enterprise Software | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Tomorrow’s businesses need strong processes and deep automation

January 3, 2012 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

Summary:Tomorrow’s business will give people and their peculiar skills a good deal to increase overall performance. Creativity, problem solving, exception handling…everything that has nothing to do with processes and automation. But if excellence is not reached on these points if will be difficult to develop knowledge work and even to give it time to happen.

When we talk about the future of enterprise, we often mention the need for getting rid of the rigidity of processes, autonomy, processes, making the system (organization and IT) serve people instead of making people serve the system. It need a very scarce resource to work : time. It also need trust and a strict definition of the limits of autonomy, understood by all. Without that, tomorrow’s enterprises won’t last under this form.

I often say that the largest part of employee’s activity is and will be more and more about exceptions handling and problem solving what supposes to have time for creativity, innovation; knowledge and practices exchanges etc.. In fact that’s only half true. That’s true when everything that could be automated has been (some things that could not be automated have been , in fact, automated but that’s not our point today). As long as everything needs no judgement and does not tolerate any exception has been modeled and given to the appropriate tools. This is the one and only condition to make people focus on what they excel at and are much better at than any software. If it’s not met, “essential routines” will require most of their time on tasks where their added value is poor and where they’ll be rather sources of errors.

That said we have to admit that the dawn of social tools in the workplace brought more confusion to things that were not easy to get. Before, it was very common for employees to capture data on many different tools. This the reason why lots of information where not captured or updated because doing so was both boring and time consuming. “Social” brought a new layer of troubles. In addition to capturing data in traditional business tools, employees had to switch to social tools to say “I’m doing this and need some help to solve that problem”, identify the right resources to progress. Reason why most people stick to the basic, well known, lowest common denominator of their work. Today we’re seeing a solution slowly emerging with the integration of social and business tools, the latter being able to send signals into the firsts, not participating into the conversation but becoming conversations starters. Globally speaking, the ability to easily, directly (even automatically) link an object (document, event generated by a business tool) to the conversations that relates to it will be essential.

If the first point misses, time lacks and energy goes (is wasted on ?) essential but repetitive tasks where the human factor has a poor added value. If the second misses, the new social layer will be more a burden than an opportunity.

Going further, we can even add that if these foundations are not perfected and solid, anything that will be added to move toward new organization models will generate more troubles than benefits.

It’s always easier to be agile and mobile when one’s feet are on a solid ground rather than a friable one.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: automation, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise software, exception handling, exceptions, problem solving, process, social business

Understanding social messaging concept and tools

April 1, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary :enterprise social messaging is much more complex to understand that a simple enterprise Twitter. It’s about articulating flows, value creation, usage in a very constrained environment. While there are lots of solutions providing social messaging functionalities, the concept is still hard to get for organizations that still lack keys for understanding. A situation that may change with the recently published study from N:Sight Research.

At first sight, social messaging is a very simple thing. A tool allows people to publish status updates and follow updates depending on the publisher or the topic. In short, that’s enterprise Twitter.

Beyond this shortcut that simplifies the concept, relies a complexity that organizations are still struggling to get. Behind principles that look quite simple relies the need to articulate all these things with business goals, workplace constraints, make it support usage scenarios that make sense. At the end, organizations find themselves having to choose between a large number of solutions with using criteria that are not only functional but may take into account the articulation of functionalities and sense and a business context.

N:Sight recently issued a comprehensive study on social messaging. It consists of a very clear analysis of business needs, what it means in terms of usage and functionalities and ends with a benchmark of 14 vendors based on these criteria.

This study will help organization to understand what it’s all about, determine their assessment criteria and benchmark a wide range of solutions.

Here’s a management summary. The full study can be purchased here.

Management summary social messaging vendor study

View more documents from N:Sight Research GmbH

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: enterprise software, microblogging, social messaging enterprise-social-software, software, twitter

What social Media Lack ? Intelligence

September 10, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : the increasing quantity of information generated by social media and the need for dealing with all this information regardless to its source is a barrier to an effective use that relies on users ability to priorize, classify and organize things into a hierarchy. Because of that, only a little minority is not scared by the flows that flow on their screens. To make future information systems usable we need to embed a kind of intelligence in the product rather than relying on the ability of a few people to use the tools in order to channel the flows and highlight what matters to each user, the ultimate step being to build conversing tools. After having tried to use the 2.0 logic to improve BI, now it’s time to use BI to improve 2.0 tools.

One of the main barriers to the use of social media in the workplace and to the transformation of work is that users feel lost. Two points are hidden behind this vague concept :

- lack of context. I won’t elaborate this point because Sameer Patel wrote an excellent post about this issue. Originally about Google Wave it can, in fact, apply to a wide range of things.

- fear of the mass of information that’s generated, of not being able to deal with it and manage it.

I think most people agree on the first point (now just wait to see how it will be turned into actual features), so let’s talk about the second.

If you are familiar with these tools, would it be at home or at work, you know that quantity is not a problem and is rather an opportunity once you know how to filter and prioritize. It can be done technically with the right functiunalities or tools, humanly by relying on the social filter made of your network. Information is like water, what matters is not to have less but to regulate the flow.

Now try to imagine the average user (what means 90% of users), facing any kind of stream (twitter, friendfeed or Facebool) and how his face’s going pale. Of course, these users can be trained, of ourse as time goes by more and more users will be comfortable with information flows. But what matters is today, and today it’s rather complicated. Missing the latest hilarious video shared by one’s uncle is not prejudial but things are not the same in the workplace. Add to that the the fear of admitting in front of colleagues that one didn’t see such or such important information, and you understand why there is a real problem.

The value of social media in the workplace relies on intelligence on two aspects :

- the intelligence people share with the tools

- the intelligence they use to survive in the flow and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Today the more active users on enterprise social platforms are those who meet the second criteria, sometimes because they already do it in their personal use of the web, sometimes because they learn quickly. That poses two problems :

Software is business by nature, information social by purpose

August 6, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

At the first times of the coming of 2.0 tools in the workplace, they used to be conscientiously locked into secured experimental bubbles in order to tame them in a safe context. This kind of approach showed its limits and its counter-productive nature.

- the tools in questions were isolated from traditional applications (directories, workflows, business tools) they didn’t communicate and exchange with. Yet the proper of these tools was to improve discussions and information sharing. None of these are spontaneous and most of times they are caused by a situation, a context, a stimulation. What makes a situation, a context “happen” in the workplace ? Elements coming from business tools. Consequence : discussion was kept away from what caused it, problem solving from what constitutes the problem. Result : no participation.

- consequence of the previous point : the utilization of these tools was not integrated in user’s work flow. Since a tool is not linked to business systems, the usages and interactions it supports is not linked to business either. Moreover, it was a key lessons from many experimentations : the tool didn’t have to impact people’s day to day job, bring any change or confusion.What a paradoxical situation for many users : since discussions, sharing, exchange are parts of knowledge workers work flow, everything was done to make social software be used for anything but that.

So, integration and unification of both work and information flows are indissociable.

Slowly, reasion is taking the upper hand and the importance of integrating social software in the existing application landscape and in employee’s work flow is now understood by most people. A better integration of social applications with business applications is needed and that’s good.

But isn’t there something that sounds strange ? That means that, first, the value proposal and the positionning of these tools was not clear for all players and, second, that no lesson was learnt of many years of trial and errors : building bridges means than there is no understanding that we’re talking about one sole things.

Saying that social and business have to be more integrated shows that the first is not seen as being a part of the second yet. It means that they are still thought separately.

So it seems surprising :

- that many players in these field consider they are social before being business and are too focused on their own beliefs to understand business needs and constraints. Social is a means that is there to serve the business and not an end business has to give a reason to exist.

- that many companies still think that “social” is complementary since it’s a part of the very nature of business, most of all at times when communication, in all its forms, is key to execute many process. But, to some extent, it’s less serious than the previous point that, once fixed, will stop confusing the way businesses understand these things.

A product is “business” or is not. There’s no room for “almots” or “yes but”. Any information is not social or business. It’s business or not and has to be able to be the subject of “social” actions. Moreover we can wonder if the strongest barrier to social software adoption is the fact we tried to socialize people inside new tools instead of making it possible for them to “socialize” information wherever it is without having to launch any new tool that adds the impressive list of already existing one and forces them to split their attention to take one more information source into account while what stimulates information production inside the tool is always outside the tool and can be found anywhere, in any other business application.

sParadoxically, Social software will be a major and adopted trend the day when there will always be business applications in the workplace and social will be a transparent layer nobody will even notice. Articulting social with business, building bridges may be a a good first step but in order to create value for and with users one more step will be needed : fusion.

PS : I purposely use quotes when I say “social” or “socialization”, admitting that I’m using comfortable buzzwords that gives senses without having to say what it exactly means. Maybe explaining, and even debunking, the S word is necesary. Let’s say that, applied to information, it means the ability to share it, push it out of its original container and interact on / around it out of any organized and planned approach. Applied to people it would mean enabling them to identify, connect to and interact with / on people out of any beforehand defined system.

enterprise-social-software, intégration, logiciel d’entreprise, social software, social media

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: enterprise software, enterprise-social-software, integration, social media, social-software

Freemium and enterprise software : frustrate the right person !

February 26, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

The freemium model, that is everyday more popular on the web, is now entering the world of enterprise software. What is it about ? Allowing people to use a software for free, with basic functiunalities that are enough for a minimal use, while proposing a premium version, richer, paying, and try to make most users switch to the latter once they’ve experiencied the free one.

The secret of the switch : make users feel they could do even more if they decide to use their credit card and pay. In fact it’s not a business model but a marketing tactics that leverages frustration. Has a good friend of mine often says : “that about showing a very small parts of one’s pants to give others ideas they didn’t have at the beginning”.

So this model in entering the enterprise with the same logic : allowing to start with simple usages for free and betting that, discovering everything that would be possible, organizations will switch to a paying version to host more users, have more functunalities which interest takes time to emerge etc…

Copying a model sometimes works…but translating it is better.

An easy way would be to apply the model that consists frustrating users who will always want more.. But a fundamental difference exists : when I’m on linkedIn or Flickr, when I want to go further with a service, I weight the pros and and the cons and if I come to the conclusion that’s worth the price, I take my credit card and I pay. But is the same in the workplace ?

Allowing people to upgrade themselves ? Unthinkable and not serious. Not only I can’t imagine that people would pay for what’s a corporate responsabilité but, more, I don’t think that enterprises would tolerate that users won’t be able to benefit from the same functiunlaties not depending on hierarchy but on their own will.

Thinking that people will ask their employer to upgrade ? Bad idea because frustration will be pushed from the end user to the administrator, the first not knowing what’s the cause of the limitation. More, nothings proves that, even if bombarded with requests, the administrator will be able to change anything since he doesn’t have the financial power. And I don’t imagine the administrator explaining that “we’re using a free version and don’t want to pay a cent to make users have more functiunalities”.

Conclusion : the frustration logics works when it impacts the person who can decide and pay or, sometimes, to someone who directly reports to him and can convince him with tangible arguments.

When you want to frustrate a decision make, you have to choose the right limitations. It will be more about scalability, number of licences, integration with existing tools than about practical things that improves the user experience but which benefits can’t be understood by people that have not the same use of the tool. On the other hand, frustrating the users by showing him everything he would be able to do but is impossible at this time is useless and even counter-productive. End users should even not be aware of the limitations, the risk of seeing them puting the tool in quarantine being very high.

When the freemium model is applied to enterprise software, it’s important to know who’s the right person to frustrate and decide of the limitations according to that. On the contrary, frustrating someone who does not have the power to pay to improve his experience is more than pointless: it’s dangerous.