A very different experience here in South Australia (at least, in the department where I’m based). Rather than just an element of social networking, we went with Socialtext, an ESN platform that offers blogging, micro-blogging, wikis, groups, collaborative workspaces and a range of other features. I think the big difference is that we didn’t just install and configure the software, we took on the cultural change that is necessary to get the best out of it. Today, you’ll see the platform used for policy development, collaborative project management, social intranet, content management and a huge raft of other business activities. Growth continues and new applications for this way of working are being found on a regular basis.
Takeaway message? Enterprise Social Networking works, but it needs more than just technology and it needs the whole package to be embraced, not just tweets.

Writing in local Aussie IT news site, Delimiter, Renai LeMay reports on an article in The Register about Yammer trials by local government in Australia being abandoned. I really liked the comment above on Renai's piece that highlights how it can work, if the technology is supported and implemented in the right way. (I've blogged about that example before)

This is my comment:

I think its a little unfair to only call out Yammer on this issue, although I accept that they are fair game due to the hype that has been generated around it as a brand by both themselves and Deloitte etc. Yammer is not the only platform in this market and all the vendors (to varying degrees) recognise the need for the deployment of their tools to be supported in the way that Perry Wheeler describes. I’m currently working with a number of Australian organisations that aren’t convinced that a hands off, viral approach is the right way to do this.
Also many of the other US-based vendors in this space (tibbr, Newsgator, Jive, etc) are now investing resources into our region and I think we are only at the beginning of the mature adoption of these enterprise social computing tools. If you look carefully at Yammer, you will also see that the emphasis is now on supporting their premium paying customers to make the use of their tools more successful. Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. We’ve known that adoption of new collaboration and communication tools inside organisations can be hit and miss for decades.

Rather large infoposter with lots of social intranet benefit stats and anecdotes about the failure of traditional intranets that should resonate with many people.

Worth watching, video recordings of the panel sessions from Yammer On Tour events in Melbourne and Sydney. There are lots of themes discussed across both panels, but watch these videos and then see if you agree with my commentary here.

Look past the funky names of today’s social networking tools, however, and chances are there will be enough nifty features to justify the investment. For social business is becoming serious business: A way for organisations to collaborate, build brands, manage reputations, influence thinking, service customers and sell products.

Good to see some sensible coverage of the social business software space popping up in Australia that also includes local case studies. This article talks about well known local companies like Aristocrat, Australia Post, Commonwealth Bank, The Good Guys, National Australia Bank, Optus, Suncorp, Telstra, and Vodafone as all making use of social business software tools like Socialtext, tibbr and Yammer.

BTW I have just one correction for the article, NSW DET are now using Socialtext (they call it 'Maang').

The marketplace for enterprise activity stream is a crowded one these days, with vendors all types offering solutions. This includes enterprise software company SAP, who launched their own solution back in 2009 originally in beta as 12sprints and then rebranded as StreamWork.

While there are many similarities, StreamWork is slightly different from other activity stream tools. Not surprisingly it has a strong task orientation - StreamWork primarily support two views - a main status feed and activities. Hashtags are supported, but other than activities there are no groups. It also provides an instant messaging tool.

Activities are mini-project workspaces (similar to the activities concept in IBM Connections) and you can add from a selection of StreamWork and a small selection of 3rd party widgets. These widgets help you with basic tasks and information management but there are tools to help with coordinating, deciding and analysing. For example:

• Agendas and timelines. 
• Ranking, pro-con, and cost-benefit tables. 
• Consensus votes and quick polls. 
• SWOT and responsibility matrices.

SAP appear to be positioning StreamWork as being a tool for action and one of the obvious gaps is the lack of features that support workforce engagement, informal collaboration and knowledge management.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that StreamWork provides an API and also supports OpenSocial (incidentally, Atlassian Confluence is one example of the kind of integration that is possible). There are mobile apps for the BlackBerry (of course, this is SAP) and the iPhone. Personally, I think the Web interface is better than the iPhone, which is usable but could be better.

There are a couple of case studies out there about the people who are using StreamWork:

• a 50 person humanitarian aid organisation; and 
• a Swiss furniture manufacturer.

You can take StreamWork for spin yourself by signing up for an account on the free edition.

There are strong risks related to delaying or not implementing efforts to embed the use of collaborative technologies within normal flows of work. Competitors moving more quickly towards adopting Social Business ways of working (through the use of collaborative technologies and the accomplishments they generate) will soon have a distinct competitive advantage. Because the benefits of Social Business require a fundamental change in the way employees work, simply installing software will not be enough to realize its value. Unlike the .com boom of the 1990s, companies falling behind or waiting to begin Social Business efforts will not be able to buy their way back in.

Installing collaborative technologies and using them as a "water cooler" application to promote awareness of corporate events doesn't make your company a social business in 2011. The novelty of wikis in the workplace is over. It's now the degree to which your company can move its "work in progress" to transparent, enterprise, participatory, searchable platforms which ultimately reflects the degree to which your company is "social" in the way it executes its business and serves its customers. 

The thrust of this comment, from Susan's post about Lowe's pay off from investing in a social intranet, reminds me very much of what I wrote in my 2004 chapter for Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques. My chapter was titled, Online Collaboration Tools, Knowledge Managers, and a Cooperative Culture. I said then:

Online collaboration is perhaps the most demanding e-business strategy to attempt, but it is also the strategy that is most likely to provide your organisation with a competitive advantage. This is because the development of the capability to collaborate online takes more than just the right technology, and if you make the investment this is not something that can be easily replicated by your competitors.

It seemed that my keynote talk at KM Singapore helped to change some people’s thinking about intranets. Challenging the notion that they are old, dull sites containing policies, I generated new enthusiasm for what intranets can (and should) do. But the most controversy came during the question-and-answer session, where I found myself saying:

“Blogs and wikis are dead.”

I certainly understand James' sentiment here. I'm also sure some intranet managers will draw a sigh of relief when they read this, thinking they don't need to worry about this social stuff anymore. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, if we look at James' presentation it is full of refined examples of the software patterns that we call wikis and blogs... including REA Group (Jive), IDEO (ThoughtFarmer) and also Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (which integrates Atlassian Confluence along with a number of other platforms). I'm reminded that wiki is both a verb and a noun.

BTW I'm not aware of any leading enterprise 'wiki' that doesn't provide a rich text editor - even Atlassian are ditching wiki markup entirely in their upcoming version of Confluence.

“SharePoint forms the heart of our social networking capabilities within Accenture,” says Crawford, “We use it as a content management system, a publishing platform and for internal communications.”

Corporate Demographics	Social Demographics
230,000 employees	SharePoint 2010 platform with NewsGator add in for Social
Located in 120 countries	Yammer for microblogging
$25  billion in annual revenues	115,000 employees have filled out profiles
Headquarters in Ireland	5000 profile updates a month
CEO: Pierre Nanterme	1000 blog posts a month
List of Executives	12,000 video items posted to Accenture Media Exchange
	4200+ monthly microblog updates

Accenture’s social business initiative also includes a broad based video strategy. Starting with Cisco’s Telepresence at the high-end and desktop video at the low end.

Good timing with this post from Mark Fidelman, since I've been talking about Deloitte's experience with SharePoint, Newsgator and Yammer and enterprise microblogging in general. Its not entirely clear how the complete stack described above is working together at Accenture, however they clearly see value in both tools.

At last week’s E2.0 conference in Boston, I was surprised and pleased by the way my “in-the-flow” phrase has gained common currency.

I was also surprised, but less pleased, by some of the “best practices” I heard flying around. Whether in keynotes, sessions, or just hallway conversations, I heard a lot of claims of dubious merit, claims like:

• Start with a small pilot and let it grow virally
• Invest heavily in community management, because a community is only as successful as its managers
• Workers won’t use social software without personal incentives
• Workers who don’t belong to the Facebook Generation don’t “get” social software.
• Social software adoption requires a culture of collaboration
• You shouldn’t launch collaborative tools without a collaboration strategy

There’s a common theme behind all this advice: You should be scared of launching enterprise social software, because achieving adoption is really hard, really time-consuming, and really expensive.

Sorry friends, but I’m calling Bullshit.

I had to read Michael Idinopulos' post a couple of times to make sure I understood it.

Basically - in a round about way - he is describing two things:

• The complex nature of organisations. 
• That social business tools work, because they help people get work done 'in-the-flow'.

I agree entirely - and this makes the AHA case study a great example.

But lets address this issue of organisational complexity.

Sometimes a simple intervention - like introducing a new technology - can make an immediate impact. But we don't actually know why, although we can observe the benefits when it works. Do the same again in a different situation and you take a gamble on the outcome. For systems of engagement, this is the problem of copying macro level case studies when change actually happens at the micro level of individual groups and individuals. Sometimes it only takes an influential blocker, a critical system that doesn't integrate well, a policy that can't be side stepped or a group that has already picked their own solution - suddenly the dynamic changes.

I use those words deliberately, because the character of some organisations is to be conservative, others are prepared to to be more reckless. Smart organisations take a design-led middle ground. They don't follow knee jerk reactions to new technology, but they don't fall for shallow thinking either.

To help make that point, here are some different case studies (I'm focusing on enterprise microblogging, as there is a level of commonality between them - but this also follows on from some earlier posts):

• Yammer at Suncorp - the viral adoption pattern.
• tibbr at CIBER - tried a couple of solutions, before finding what worked for them.
• Yammer at a small medical practice - hit a technology challenge.
• Chatter at Den-Mat - ran into people and skills issues. 

Each of these examples had a different journey (Micro), but each had a positive story to tell (Macro).

Incidentally, the CIO behind the case study that Idinopulos described has written a detailed post describing the "15 Key Steps for Successful Implementation". This isn't simple, but the steps make it less complex; and its all about finding that fit so that users can get into the flow easily.