Liens de la semaine (weekly)

• La notation se répand dans les réseaux sociaux d’entreprise

  « 2011 devrait voir se multiplier les systèmes de notation des utilisateurs et de leurs contributions sur les réseaux sociaux. Une évolution qui pose des problèmes, notamment éthiques, en entreprise »

  tags: enterprisesocialsoftware notation evaluation ethic management

  • devrait aussi voir se développer différents systèmes. Ceux permettant d’interfacer les applications aux applications métiers. Mais également les systèmes de « badges » ou de « scores », qui visent à  noter l’utilisateur en fonction de la quantité et de la qualité de ses contributions. Même si pour ce genre d’exercice, les critères restent « opaques », d’après le cabinet
  • inspirés de ceux qui sont intégrés à  des outils de géolocalisation grand public comme Foursquare – « posent de nouvelles questions éthiques en entreprise » et « devront être discutés avec les partenaires sociaux », relève Arnaud Rayrole. En effet, « certains risquent de penser qu’il y a un lien entre leur badge [notation] sur le réseau social et leur évaluation professionnelle », signale-t-il…

• Social CRM Helps Airlines Weather Winter Storms

  « The wintry weather across the nation is showcasing that perhaps no sector has had to learn more about social CRM on the fly than the airlines industry. What happens when a storm hits a region and the customer service phone lines jam up for Delta, United, Southwest, and other airlines? Customers log onto Facebook and Twitter and demand answers about their flight reservations and rebookings. »

  tags: socialcrm airlines customercare customerservice

  • Susan Elliott, spokesperson for Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, told ClickZ that her brand employs a team of nine agents on Twitter to handle customers looking for help. Delta tested a pilot program on the micro-blogging site late in 2009 that « lasted all of two weeks, » she said, before launching it full-blown because of its CRM value.
  • This particular type of customer service channel is unique, and we don’t have all the answers. We just continue to work, and the social consumer community will help us ultimately shape what this tool looks like. »
  • Additionally, social CRM poses new questions for brands. For instance, what’s the best way to sync up Facebook and Twitter initiatives? And, should firms recruit and hire social media-savvy people from outside the company, or ask their telephone reps – already doing live chat and e-mail in many cases – to learn Facebook and Twitter CRM, too?

• Social Networks: Cautious Engineers and Collaboration-Focused Suppliers

  « Despite the possibilities for collaboration, a Design News survey reveals engineers are avoiding social networks due to concerns around security and irrelevant information overload. »

  tags: socialnetworks intelectualproperty engineer security informationoverload relevance collaboration CAD plm socialproductdevelopment

  • So why can’t technology that’s popular ona personal level find traction for professional use among product developmentspecialists? Survey results revealed engineers’ chief concern to be fear ofexposing critical company intellectual property (IP), with 58.5 percent of respondents citing security as their primary hesitation. Loss of productivity was a worry for 40.1percent of respondents, while 29.3 percent said company policy precluded themfrom frequenting social networking sites on the job.
  • Beyond any one primary concern, however,the majority of survey respondents said existing social networks just weren’thelpful enough in terms of delivering access to relevant content or connectingthem to knowledgeable domain experts in their particular field or area ofengineering interest. Even joining engineering-specific groups on LinkedIn orFacebook resulted in a whole lot of noise and useless chatter, respondentsreported, as opposed to serving up focused, practical solutions to real-worldengineering problems. « 
  • Czarapata says at this point, he has more luck withtraditional engineering forums where people concentrate on solving a particularengineering problem, trade tips, and help troubleshoot engineering software orpost specific results on what they’re doing, including insight into what wentright and what went wrong.
  • While social network usage ranked highestfor knowledge sharing, as a resource for tapping into customer requirements(62.7 percent) and as a vehicle for networking (63.3 percent), only slightlymore than a third (34.3 percent) of survey respondents said they wereinterested in the technology as a platform for collaborative engineering
  • While engineering experts admit most generic social networksare not really tuned for product development, they maintain that socialtechnologies folded into next-generation design tools like CAD and PLM canfoster a more streamlined and effective social product development experienceby granting engineers access to information and resources that they require ona real-time basis.
  • PTC, which coined the term « social product development » several years back, is just starting to put thatconcept to the test.
  • PTC officials say. In addition,by putting the social networking capabilities in the context of the productdevelopment materials managed by Windchill, users are not bombarded by streamsof irrelevant status updates, but rather kept in the loop on the specificresources, design changes and project milestones that are highly relevant towhat they are working on at the time
  • « The biggest use case is definitely forcollaboration, » he says. « When you think about the job engineers do, it’sproblem solving and iteration that you do as an individual every once and awhile, but more frequently as a team. Engineers will benefit from social mediaalmost more than anyone else in a company

• “What is Content Analytics?, Alex”

  « “The technology behind Watson represents the future of data management and analytics. In the real world, this technology will help us uncover insights in everything from traffic to healthcare.”

  – John Cohn, IBM Fellow, IBM Systems and Technology Group

  How can the same technology used to play Jeopardy! give you better business insight? »

  tags: IBM watson insights questionanswering machine contentanalytics analytics languageware naturallanguageprocessing healthcare customersatisfaction customerservice

  • By combining advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and DeepQA automatic question answering technology, Watson represents the future of content and data management, analytics, and systems design.  IBM Watson leverages core content analysis, along with a number of other advanced technologies, to arrive at a single, precise answer within a very short period of time.
  • Amazingly, Watson works like the human brain to analyze the content of a Jeopardy! question.  First, it tries to understand the question to determine what is being asked.  In doing so, it first needs to analyze the natural language text.  Next, it tries to find reasoned answers, by analyzing a wide variety of disparate content mostly in the form of natural language documents.  Finally, Watson assesses and determines the relative likelihood that the answers found, are correct based on a confidence rating.
  • I am not talking about search here.  This is far beyond what search tools can do.  A recent Forrester report, Take Control Of Your Content, states that 45% of the US workforce spends three or more hours a week just searching for information
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be leveraged in any situation where text is involved. Besides answering questions, it can help improve enterprise search results or even develop an understanding of the insight hidden in the content itsel
  • The same core NLP technology used in Watson is available now to deliver business value today by unlocking the insights trapped in the massive amounts of unstructured information in the many systems and formats you have today.  Understanding the content, context and value of this unstructured information presents an enormous opportunity for your business. 
  • companies like Hertz can drive new marketing campaigns or modify their products and services to meet the demands of their customers. “Hertz gathers an amazing amount of customer insight daily, including thousands of comments from web surveys, emails and text messages. We wanted to leverage this insight at both the strategic level and the local level to drive operational improvements

• Giving employees the feeling of choice when you’re still pulling the strings

  « Most managers and leaders have the unenviable task of trying to get other people to adopt particular goals. Companies have agendas, and employees need to support those agendas if the company is to succeed. However, if you want your employees to live up to their full potential, it’s not enough that they do what you tell them to. »

  tags: management humanresources motivation goals autonomy empowerment

  • Autonomy is particularly critical when it comes to creating and maintaining intrinsic motivation. But in the workplace, goals have to be assigned. What’s a manager to do?
  • Explain why the  goal they’ve been assigned has value.
  • Allow your employees to decide how they will reach the goal.
  • Invite your employee to make decisions about peripheral aspects of the task.

• Trust is a Must | Accenture

  tags: trust accenture management

• Réseaux sociaux d’entreprise et management

  « ConnectCollaborateContribute. C’est à  la fois le slogan et la vocation de réseau social d’entreprise d’Alcatel-Lucent : Engage. Stéphane Lapeyrade, Communication manager en explique le fonctionnement et les objectifs, lors de son intervention à  Media Aces.
  Engage compte 41000 inscrits, 2000 groupes, 10 000 utilisateurs actifs et 2000 contributeurs par semaine€¦ Des chiffres qui donnent le tournis. D’autant que le réseau social interne est un nouveau-né : tout juste créé en 2010. La clé du succès ? La liberté. La liberté donnée, à  chaque collaborateur, de créer un groupe, sur le réseau social interne de l’entreprise. Libre encore, à  chacun dans l’entreprise d’y souscrire et d’y contribuer. »

  tags: socialnetworking alcatellucent casestudies socialbusiness enterprise2.0 silos management trust engagement

  • A commencer par l’édition d’un profil personnalisé. Comme sur Facebook, Viadeo ou Linkedin. Seules les cordonnées (mail, teléphone,€¦) proviennent de l’annuaire de l’entreprise. Pour le reste, chacun renseigne son profil à  sa guise : description, parcours, expertise, centres d’intérêts professionnels€¦ ou non. Chacun choisit la ou les photos qu’il souhaite associer à  son profil, y compris des photos personnelles.
  • Les salariés américains n’hésitent pas à  publier des photos relatives à  leurs hobbies
  • Plus étonnant encore, les groupes ne sont pas limités à  un usage strictement professionnel. Certains groupes se créent sur des thématiques fédératrices et personnelles, comme la photo ou la cuisine,€¦ Oui, c’est étonnant mais permis. Voire encouragé
  • Seconde clé de cette réussite : l’implication du management. En particulier celle de Ben Verwayyen, le nouveau directeur général d’Alcatel-Lucent (depuis 2008). Intervenant actif sur Engage, le DG donne le ton et incite, de fait, les salariés à  intervenir, créer et prendre la parole. Son blog interne est d’ailleurs ouvert à  tous les commentaires.
  • Les débuts ont été timides. Les premiers group owners (créateurs et adminstrateurs d’un groupe) et leurs premiers membres hésitaient un peu à  intervenir, et plus encore à  sortir du langage mainstream et ultra-positif des échanges convenus que l’on connaît en entreprise€¦ Mais très vite, voyant que la liberté de parole et de ton étaient implicitement et explicitement autorisée par le DG lui-même, Les échanges se sont faits plus authentiques
  • les chiffres sont là  : en moins d’un an, sur les 73000 salairés du groupe, 41000 se sont spontanément inscrits sur le réseau social de l’entreprise
  • Stéphane Lapeyrade souligne l’attention particulière qu’il porte à  la mesure des usages du réseau : le ciblage des groupes, les éventuels doublons, la possible surcharge d’information, le risque de fracture numérique€¦ Et peut-être même la constitution de nouveaux silos.
  • A l’évidence, Ben Verwayyen l’a très bien compris. Et mis en oeuvre. en passant d’un management  Command and Control à  un management Trust and Engage.

• AT&T Helps Internal Leaders Engage Their Employees Through Social Brainstorming

  « At the IBM Lotusphere and Social Business Industry Symposium conferences, I talked to Blair Klein, Executive Director of Emerging Communications, at AT&T and Mark Glyshaw, her team’s Principal Technical Architect about their internal Enterprise 2.0 network called tSpace and their social brainstorming tool, tStorm, implemented internally in 3Q2010 »

  tags: socialnetworking at&t casestudies socialbrainstorming innovation tStorms culture leadership trust decisionmaking

  • Ms. Klein described a scenario of how an executive in the Small Business unit began with blogging to develop a regular communiqué with their organization and created a following both within their group and across the organization. They use a tStorm social brainstorm activity to continue the conversation beyond their team meetings and all-hands calls. This town hall model leads to greater engagement with their employees and relevance to the wider organization.
  • This model works in particular because the leader has taken the time to transfer her conversation from the traditional conference call mode into an online social environment.
  • This takes culture transformation in the work behavior of employees, which takes keep the drumbeat of “this is the new way to work with me.”
  • What is interesting about AT&T’s tStorm is that this is easy to deploy rapidly for any executive who wants to sponsor a discussion for their organization.
  • For the leader this means that you will need to participate directly€”not have an assistant do it€”to develop the belief and trust in employees that you are earnest in working this way.
  • It is not about making decisions democratically unless that is your leadership style, but about being open to feedback€”a sign of a leader people want to follow.
  • To date, they have had well over 500 new ideas suggested, with 50 currently being implemented.
  • They have nearly 5 million lookups on the corporate directory per month. That shows employees are keenly interested in finding each other. As a whole, this paints a picture of an organization that is moving towards greater agility, developing employee relationships and engagement, and helping their leaders use the power of collective intelligence to solve their pressing needs.

• Business or Pleasure? – why not both: Gamification – yet another one-size-fits-all?

  « Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications (also known as « funware »), particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading web sites « 

  tags: gamification gaming rewards humanresources timemanagement time

  • The thing is, each of us values our own time differently. Some people just love to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, some like to hang out and do nothing – and all the usual shades of grey in between. Some people have enormous amounts of knowledge to share, others just love to hear themselves talking (bis). What’s in it for them? Truth is, it depends – per person
  • We have the salary system, where we try to reward equally and measure employee input, and compensate that with employer input: money. Does that work? After a while, the system ends up keeping employees just not dissatisfied enough
  • What do people do that feel disappointed with the traditional reward system? They try to take back some of their investment – time. Show up late, leave early, have long lunches, meetings, or toilet visits, whatever: they take what they think is rightfully theirs
  • you invest time, which you value at something. You expect something back, a result, that will give you some level of satisfaction. Of course your satisfaction will increase and diminish over time, so the result should change along with it. If you look at reasons why employees leave the company, you get a nice view:
  • Young employees (in their twenties) don’t like to spend much time on travel or company events. They want it fast and find it hard enough as it is to discipline themselves into an 8-hour working day. After a few years, personal and work development, daily work and reward come into the picture. After 5 years, reward and personal development have become the main reason for exit.
  • can you guide that with a few simple generic gaming rules? Really – I don’t think so. Look at yourself: what motivates you know, what did 5 years ago, and what did 10 years ago?

• Can Social Media fix bad customer service?

  « Social media monitoring and response will never replace a traditional customer service organization. The two can only complement each other. If either side are lacking in commitment the customer experience will suffer. Due to the prevalence of social networking and its adoption by customers of almost any company, customer service will probably always continue to have need for a public extension of its heretofore “private” (that is, between the customer and the company) existence. But a shiny social media presence is nothing without a solid customer service organization behind it. »

  tags: socialmedia customerservice socialcrm monitoring organization

• 7 critical aspects of Tibbr’s big step forward for enterprise social software

  « Earlier this week I gave the opening keynote at the Sydney launch of Tibbr, the new social enterprise offering from TIBCO. I hope to have the video of my presentation up before long.

  Before the event I summarized some of the very positive commentary on Tibbr since the San Francisco launch two weeks ago.

  It’s now time to offer my own thoughts. Here is what I think is most interesting and important about Tibbr. »

  tags: socialbusiness enterprise2.0 tibbr tibco integration activitystream expertslocation expertise filtering enterprisesocialsoftware

  • Tibbr at its heart is very simple €“ you can follow the activity streams from individuals, discussion on particular subjects, and from applications. Bringing these all together in one interface means that all activity across the organization relevant to the individual can be brought together in one easy-to-use interface.
  • This is critical, because the reality is that most social software suites today are an overlay to core enterprise applications €“ they enable conversations and collaborative work but don’t link in a meaningful way to core systems such as CRM or ERP systems. Tibbr is from the outset linked to all applications, drawing on the 140 technology and application adaptors that TIBCO has developed. An open SDK is available for companies who have in-house applications that they want to integrate with.
  • llowing people to follow subjects immediately surfaces those who are interested in a particular topic, and from there it is fairly easy to identify who has expertise and is highly regarded in the group
  • Work and personal stream integration.
    Tibbr allows staff to pull in their personal streams such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into the . This has to be approved by the corporate administrator as something they wish to allow. However given the blurring of work and personal boundaries for many professionals (not least that they want to build relationships with people they do business with) means that many organizations will choose to allow this.
  • Part of the solution is in training people in how to use social media well. I know many masters of Twitter and other consumer social tools. However many others start the wrong way, get frustrated, and sometimes give up. Knowing how to select who to follow and manage multiple streams is a skill set that is yet to be learned by many corporate staff. Those skills need to be complemented by automated filters.

• Lotusphere 2011: Social Business Here Comes IBM

  « What that means for IBM in 2011 is that this year they’ve decided to fully embrace social business – and to not only eat their own dogfood but to breed their own dogs. That’s the level of their commitment. (BTW, IBMer Jen Okimoto, whose tweets are her own saw me tweet this and returned a nicer image -”Prefer to think of it as we drink our own wine, and we’re creating/mentoring our own vintners and wine lovers.” You’re all welcome to invent your own imagery here. Heh. Heh.). Their level of commitment is astounding and potentially game changing.

  Why?

  Because a $100 billion company is driving all their resources into transforming their company into a social business. They aren’t just selling it, they’re doing it and evangelizing it and marshalling whatever they have to so that it will be globally hugged.

  « 

  tags: IBM enterprise2.0 socialbusiness enterprisesocialsoftware software vendors socialcrm humanresources operations ls11 lotusphere2011 jam innovation innovationjam sales marketing communication

  • What were the results? They had nearly 160,000 people from 104 countries and 67 companies generate an initial idea pool of 46,000 ideas.  They narrowed it down, had a smaller jam to discuss the ideas that they came up with and then chose 10 of them which IBM invested that $100 million in. But, then again, that’s not nearly as monumental as their complete embrace of social business as a company.
  • He said, “consumers have unprecedented power over your brand. Social businesses embrace this.”
  • hey have to cede control of the business ecosystem to the customer.
  • .  For example, its not just having the wikis up and running for collaboration around a project, but also having the activity streams that can be responded to in real time or nearly so; having the intellectual property exposed so that project success can be enhanced – rather than having it the property of a virtual lockbox; having the social and HR profiles interconnected so that not only can you find the right resources at the right time, but will also know who in the chain of command that likely still exists – social business or not, an SVP will still be an SVP – can free up that resource for the project; getting the legal department’s acquiescence to the collaboration within and potentially, outside, the company
  • What it really can be is an ecosystem in motion with an enormous range of possible results related to innovation and ideation among many others. In this case, however, IBM prefers to see it as an improvement in operational efficiencies.  Which, among other things, it is.
  • Social business has a cultural impact, and impact on morale; an effect not as much on how people generally interact, but more specifically, on how they work.  It also brings the outside world into the space behind the firewall to the extent that the company becoming a social business empowers its employees to be part of their corporate business efforts
  • The way that IBM is handling its transformation internally is through a program that they call Social Business – one that is designed to bring every one of IBM’s 400,000 employees up to speed on the use of social tools and with some form of empowerment depending on what they do. They expect that in 2011, about 50,000 of those will be where they need to be for IBM to truly continue its transformation.
  • Finally, how IBM was able to provide a semi-accurate depiction (not definition) of Social CRM and still remain in the dark about Social CRM – despite their recognition of the market, the idea and the customers responsible for creating the need for social business.
  • But there is also a major difference between a sales driven culture and a customer centric one – one which goes to the core of why sales has been the bastard child of Social CRM, even though it drove traditional CRM
  • So sales efforts are based on the most effective way to close that deal.  What THAT means is that the optimal “social” activity for a sales person is to draw on the collective intelligence of his fellow employees to help him figure out what needs to be done to close the deal.
  • I have to presume that this is why sales isn’t listed as a part of the entry point that marketing and customer service are – because IBM is defining them as the customer-facing components of Social Business – though I have to say, since IBM is so focused on collaboration as the core of Social Business, its actually somewhat inconsistent that it doesn’t appear as one of the entry point pillars anywhere.
  • Mike Rhodin identified customer service and marketing as one of the 3 most important “entry points” for social business. What that means is that these customer-facing activities are where the impact of social business can be the greatest because of how they are structured.
  • IBM emphasized its focus on this core concept – trust is foundation for the types of relationships that you build with customers and social business is the means you have to engage those customers and build that trusted relationship through the new forms of communication available for their and your use
  • The problem that consistently cropped up in their vision, their messaging and their offerings is that despite putting this what was apparently an accidental SCRM message out there as one of the social business entry points, the IBM powers-that-be really don’t have much of a sense of what Social CRM is or how it integrates with social business or what tools comprise the technology or solution to enable or implement i
  • The likely reason for that is not only are they trying to sculpt a new 1IBM corporate culture, but also a way of selling social business as an enterprise vendor, so they are trying to define a “Social CRM solution” on the sales side. That’s pretty much the way that everyone who spoke with me about it talked about it – what social CRM solution will they provide to the public was the way that I heard it from nearly everyone.
  • However, the game changes for IBM with their SugarCRM partnership, which is, beyond their late 90s early 2000s Siebel practice, the first “pure” CRM play that IBM is making.  IBM senior management is well aware that a crucial component of social business – whether transforming the company or selling it, is Social CRM – an unavoidable component of a social business strategy and certainly a must have to a social business offering.
  • The reasons?  From the standpoint of IBM (since, to be fair, this is about IBM primarily), they are not incorporating a CRM application but a flexible CRM platform. They are partnering with a company that does understand Social CRM and has, in its recent releases (particularly 6.1) incorporated social elements that allow developers to create social functions and users to use social channels. They are also partnering with a company that has a hankering to go upstream and is starting to see more and more enterprise level business in their pipeline – something not the case in the past.
  • One BIG cautionary note though. When presented on the stage at Lotusphere, the calendaring and scheduling aspects related to SugarCRM were presented as if this was the package that SugarCRM was providing. That is a SEVERELY limiting message and the wrong one to send to the public and even to the rather techno-focused Lotus Notes crowd.  Don’t start by making SugarCRM out to be an addin to create a more robust Lotus Organizer-like PIM application – which is exactly how it came across.
  • In order to truly understand what is most important here, its not that IBM is turning Lotus from a development platform to a collaboration development platform to a social business vendor.  You HAVE to get out of that head. This is IBM as a Fortune 500 company making a transformation from a traditional business to a social business – and with that goes all the difficulties of a company that made roughly $100 billion in revenue on its 100th birthday (hope I can do that on my 100th) attempting to make this change will engender.

  • IBM’s messaging justifies their move in technological terms with three Is:

    • Instrumented: Smartphone shipments will outpace PCs by 2012.
    • Interconnected: Social networking now accounts for 22% of all online time.
    • Intelligent: The age of the zettabyte is upon us.
• That’s why IBM is reorganizing their business units, changing their corporate culture, empowering all their employees through the internal Social Business program, reorganizing some of their compensation schemas so that they fit the metrics, benchmarks, KPIs that meet the grade for a social business and evangelizing this approach at every opportunity to their employees, partners, suppliers, vendors, customers and the general public. Its why they are changing their messaging and verbal/physical cues to something more closely aligned to their Smarter Planet initiatives
• They need to make sure that the technology offerings – solution offerings for Social Business including Social CRM appear before 2011 is over
• Regardless of the holes, the raw spots, and the occasional skewed message, this is not only a commendable undertaking but an earth-shaking, ceiling-shattering one.  IBM is doing something unprecedented for a business here.
• While their competitors are not making the cultural transformation that IBM is nor do they think as long term, they still are building competitive products, services and tools. They too, understand that the world is dramatically changed.  They’re moving fast so IBM is in the position of a company that sees long, and has to move fast while its in the midst of a massive, dramatic and important transformation.

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