Patterns of enterprise 2.0 adoption, and measurement
JH: Companies are most successful when they realize that tech by itself will not achieve anything. Instead, companies have to change the way that they work.
1st pattern
JH: It is the same pattern that you have seen in the tech industry for a long time. Each wave of new technology comes into the enterprise under the radar. People start using it without permission. The broadest adoption of E2.0 within the enterprise is by teams with a 6 to 12 month timeline without permission of IT dept. They think “why not try this out” even though it is not officially sanctioned. It ends up being helpful to the team but it does not spread. When that team disbands you lose a lot of what they learned.
2nd pattern
Second form of adoptions is when an executive finds out about the new technology, and decides to deploy it. This is often good, but adoption process is a bit ad-hoc.
3rd pattern
A third pattern is becoming more prevalent: a check-the-box approach for cool things. Once it appears that all cool enterprises have to have a micro-blogging capability in the company, they get and deploy one. However these users are not always clear about why they are deploying it and what it is really useful for.
Strengthening the allies, and neutralizing the enemies
It is important to understand that it is about strengthening the allies, and neutralizing the enemies. The best way move forward is to show tangible improvement as quickly as possible.
We came up with the notion of “metrics that matter”.
Different metrics matter at different levels of the organization. Senior managers care and are motivated by financial measures. Mid-level managers are most focused on operating metrics. Customer churn rate, etc. Further down to the front line, there are performance metrics they are measured on a daily basis. To get the most impact, start with the overall financial pain points. If you focus on that, it may turn out the customer churn rate is identified as a problem that contributes to this.
Operating costs, not ROI
People talk about measuring the ROI. But the reality is that who ever controls the underlying assumptions can deliver whatever ROI they want. I have yet to see any enterprise that has gone back to look at the ROI to see if it materializes. It is better to focus on operating metrics. If your issue is lead time to get a bus on the road … you can track that on a daily basis. Then refine the approach. In many case studies on companies, very few had gone back and measured whether they actually achieved the projected success.
Focus on specific parts of the org, specific people. There is a general pattern where social software can make the most difference: exception handling. I call this the shadow economy of the enterprise. Ask an executive “where do people spend their time?” 60-70% of time is spent on exceptions, and this generally not very visible. These are cases that have been thrown out of the automated system — and you have to resolve them quickly. Must find the right people engaged, the right data, resolve the issue quickly. In general, this work is all manual, and very inefficient. What is social good for? Finding the right people, finding the right information, and getting them to work together.
Related
Enterprise 2.0 - Two anecdotes that focus on a pain points
Enterprise 2.0 practitioners realise this…
How to measure impact of enterprise 2.0
ROI on social computing is silly
(Source: social-biz.org)
