According to ABI Research analyst Zippy Aima, the enterprise is a unique creature with a need for its own form of social networking, separate from the consumer sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Aima, the analyst behind the report “Grown Up? White Label Social Networking Targeting the Enterprise,” says that although the “white-label market” — in which vendors create unbranded applications for use by a wide range of corporate users — is in its early stages when it comes to social networking, the potential demand is high: ABI forecasts that the market will be worth nearly $1.3 billion in 2013.

Educating executives and employees about how enterprise social networking can provide value and enhance their jobs is a chore that many enterprises are beginning to face. Aima points out that white-label social networking for the enterprise not only helps enterprise employees to connect with one another, but also aids in dealings with customers, partners, and suppliers.

Aima says that the primary challenge for white-label networking vendors and for enterprises will be revving up adoption. Sure, users may be familiar with platforms such as Facebook, but applying social networking to business processes may be a new concept for some. The novelty may soon be wearing off: Many social-networking platform providers — and CRM vendors, for that matter — are beginning to embed social-networking features into business applications, continually blurring the line between personal and professional social networking.

It’s hard to say just how social networking will play out over the next couple of years, but one thing is for certain: The momentum is not slowing. Aima agrees that white-label social networking for the enterprise market is very new. However, she maintains that the demand will only increase over the next five years.

With the white-label social-networking providers popping up only within the past year or two, how should an enterprise go about choosing one provider over another? Aima recommends thinking, first and foremost, about which business solutions the social-networking features would be used for.

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Here are several excerpts from a thoughtful article by Roger Trapp, Knowledge is Power for SMEs:

Some businesses are content to stay small. Many are so-called lifestyle enterprises, where the proprietors have made a conscious decision to stay small in the interests of work/life balance, but most – aware that in the current business climate it is impossible to stand still – are intent on becoming bigger. The obstacle they face is to retain that entrepreneurial spirit while becoming large enough to take on the bigger beasts. Here are a few tips to help them succeed.

1. Stay entrepreneurial but get some discipline - Identify the entrepreneurs – typically they account for only a tenth of any management group – and help them to do what they do best.

2. Promote communication - It’s all very well an entrepreneur being creative and flexible, but if he or she cannot communicate this to the staff, the business will suffer.

3. Make proper use of technology - The internet has made it much easier for start-up businesses to reach their market. On the internet, everybody is the same size.

4. Make sure that technology grows with the business - The sort of computing power that was once only affordable to the largest companies is now available to smaller businesses. Until recently, smaller companies were largely served in this area by other small businesses that took the technology offered by the largest providers and scaled it down. Now, the largest providers are targeting the growing business market.

5. Manage customers and systems - One of the clearest examples of needing to take a more holistic approach to technology is customer relationship management (CRM). Recently, many businesses have invested in CRM systems without getting any real benefit.

6. Get proper protection - Businesses need to realise that, in an increasingly sophisticated world, just having firewalls and anti-virus software is not enough.

7. Be smart about money - Another factor that has levelled the playing field between small businesses and larger ones is access to capital.

8. Focus on strengths and outsource the rest - One of the great benefits of being a small business is that the proprietor can concentrate on a small niche in the market and seek to gain an advantage over larger rivals by offering superior customer service or a very specialist product or service.

9. Keep up to date on regulation - Small businesses habitually complain about the amount of regulation with which they have to deal, particularly in relation to health and safety, and employment. Again, thanks to the internet, much of the worry can be eliminated by handing over responsibility to specialist providers.

10. Have a “tolerance for ambiguity” - In the end, entrepreneurs thrive by living on their wits. “A tolerance for ambiguity” is a phrase that Doug Richard, the serial entrepreneur behind the investment research company Library House, uses to describe a readiness to live in a chaotic world. It involves having a general plan about where the business wants to go but being prepared to seize opportunities as they arise. This attitude, allied with an ability to act quickly and a readiness to work harder than the competition, is probably what distinguishes the successful entrepreneur from the person with a good idea.

For more, be sure to check out the complete source article.

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According to a recent report from consultancy Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., companies are spending more on Business Intelligence (BI) and using it for more things, from complying with regulatory reporting requirements to measuring system performance. Use of the technology has spread from the confines of upper management to operations people, managers and even customers, pushing what Gartner predicts is a solid 9.5% annual growth through 2010.

It’s very much a growing market for SMBs,” said Michael Speyer, who covers the SMB market for Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The push is coming from both mall and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and vendors eager to exploit a promising software niche.

“Companies now realize they can get more out of the data assets they have collected. The growth is also a reflection of the fact that IT systems in the midmarket are uite mature,” Speyer said. “BI is relatively less well adopted, compared to other types of applications.”

No question the big guys have taken notice. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP AG have set their sights on the BI platform market, muscling in on pure-play BI vendors. Indeed, the variety of choices can overwhelm, said Michael Schiff, principal of MAS Strategies, a BI and data warehousing consulting firm in Reston, Va.

The first step is an IT assessment, Schiff and others said. BI buyers need to identify the various data sources their organizations draw on to do business. And, if the company uses a bunch of technologies from different vendors, a vendor-agnostic specialist, such as Business Objects, may well be the way to go, Schiff said.

Business Objects’ marketing vice president, Todd Rowe, pegs the growth of BI in the midmarket as five times faster than at large companies. “Smaller companies are producing massive amounts of information, but what they don’t have is line of sight into their business, so they can make real-time decisions,” Rowe said.

Check out the complete source article for more.

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“One of my areas of passion in recent years has been looking for tools that enable me to capture my ideas, any time, anywhere. Thanks to the Black Belt Productivity blog, I’ve just learned about a new tool called Jott, which looks really promising.”

Here’s how Jott works…

“It provides you with a toll-free (877) phone number, which you can program into your cell phone’s contacts. When your muse strikes, simply dial the number and dictate your idea. The Jott service transcribes your voice into text, and e-mails you the results (along with the audio file, in case there are any problems with recognizing your voice input). When you return to your office or home, your idea is waiting for you in digital form in your in-box, awaiting further development.”

But, as the Black belt Productivity post notes, that’s not all:

“On the website, you can add or import contacts. You can also organize the contacts into groups. Lets say you are running late for a meeting…stuck in traffic. You can dial Jott and when prompted, indicate that you want to contact your work group or another specific individual. Leave them a message, and Jott will send the memo to them. How cool is that!?!”

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Crowdsourcing is a technique that sophisticated companies use to translate the enthusiasm of their most highly-engaged customers into valuable marketing, branding, or product-development insight. You can do it, too. Use these techniques to harness the intelligence of customers that love your business, talk about your business, and better yet, will do free work for your business in today’s increasingly democratic, user-generated, social-networked, marketplace.

Step 1 - Decide If You Really Care What Your Customers Think

Crowdsourcing isn’t for everyone, so make sure you have the fortitude required to make the effort pay off. Humility, a thick skin, and a receptive management culture are key prerequisites. “Be prepared to see and hear some things you might not want to. The people who participate may really like your business or your product, but the way they articulate it may be very different than what you’d do yourself,” says Chris Arnold of Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Step 2 - Learn Who Loves You (and Who Hates You)

Your customers can do a lot for you, if you first take the time to listen to what they have to say. Cull your call center and feedback databases to identify outspoken consumers who have a history of repeated interaction with your firm—be it positive or negative. You can also introduce yourself on forums dedicated to your company, your industry, your product category, or your customer segment. Be humble and be transparent. If you work for Acme Widget, then register as “AcmeWidgetRep,” explain your role within the company, and make it very clear that your goal is to solicit input from people who use your product.

Step 3 - Make Engaged Customers Feel Special

People will do many things for a business for free, simply because they think it’s fun. Products and companies can become hobbies unto themselves, and many consumers will derive satisfaction from feeling like an insider at a company they’re passionate about. In return, you should give them recognition, exclusive perks, the opportunity to interact with senior company managers, or free products.

Step 4 - Bring Customers Inside the Tent

The world is full of smart people, and if you plan it right, your customers can become a valuable talent resource, much like consultants, contractors, and outsourced partners. In return, however, you must take their suggestions seriously, which may mean sharing information about product or marketing plans that you normally keep locked away.

Don’t expect to control them; just let them be creative and be themselves. It’s fine to lay out ground rules about how much control you’re willing to cede, how much information you’re willing to share, and what will happen to the work participants create. When soliciting creative input, for example, it’s reasonable to maintain exclusive rights to video distribution or advertising submissions—just in case a customer generates an offensive ad on your behalf. For trade secrets, invite a small number of VIP customers to work more closely with you, and be sure they all sign non-disclosure agreements with their real names and addresses. The important thing, however, is to think differently about the way you structure and manage your operations to ensure that your crowdsourcing initiative can realize its full potential.

For much more on this topic, check out the complete source article.

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People Engage More With Small, Branded, Well-Lit Communities!

According to Communispace, in this new era of “conversational marketing”, the measure for engagement in a community isn’t the number of people logging on. Rather, it’s how actively people participate in the community.

New Communispace research, which analyzed participation behavior among 26,539 members of 66 private online communities, provides an initial look at member participation in communities.

The study evaluated communities along three participation metrics:

• Frequency - how often members contribute
• Volume - the number of contributions made by each member
• Bystander or “lurker” rate - what percentage of members are simply observing versus actively participating.

Key findings of the research are:

The more intimate the community, the more people participate -

• 86 percent of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities (average community size: 300-500 people) made contributions.
• Only 14 percent merely logged in and observed, or “lurked.”
• In contrast, on public social networking websites, blogs, and message boards, this ratio is typically reversed, i.e., the vast majority of site visitors do not contribute. In fact, in a typical online forum (e.g., wiki, community, message board or blog), one percent of site visitors contribute and the other 99 percent lurk.

People get more involved when they know whom they are talking to and why -

• Branded sites showed a higher volume of participation.
• When potential members were considering whether to participate in a community, they were 30 percent more likely to log on when the welcome notice disclosed the company sponsoring the community. Branded sites had an initial log in rate of 71 percent, compared with 55 percent for unbranded sites. This suggests that transparency - being upfront about who’s behind the community - is a key factor for companies that want to engage with customers in a community.

Why people participate: social glue, shared passion, having a voice -

• Communities of parents get the highest involvementDifferences between how men and women participate: based on analysis of single-sex communities, the research found that although members of women’s communities participated more frequently than men, men seemed to have more to say when they did participate: 4.8 weekly contributions for men compared to 4.1 for the women.
• Homogeneity triggers participation
• Education and household income were not related to community member participation
• Having a voice, productive leisure: One of the implications from the research is that people may get more involved in private, intimate communities because they feel like they can have a say.Another implication is that people may view the time spent as “productive leisure.”  They see participating as an interesting or fun outlet for communicating with other people who love what they love.

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It seems like a new day is starting to dawn for chief information officers.

In February, CIO Insight—which, like Baseline, is a Ziff Davis publication—reported that the 429 CIOs who responded to its annual budget survey expected that their information-technology spending would be up 7.6% this year—the largest year-over-year increase the magazine has ever recorded. The editors then went on to say, “But that shouldn’t be surprising, given what we’ve learned in our recent surveys: CIOs are focusing more on growth and improving service than on cost reduction.”

While forward-thinking CIOs have always designed and deployed information technologies they believed would give their companies a competitive advantage, the typical mission for CIOs over the past couple of years has been to use information systems to cut costs and improve corporate efficiencies.

“It a 180-degree turn,” says Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner’s Executive Programs.

But do CIOs know what’s really expected of them, and will they be able to seize the day?

McDonald says that chief information officers can’t rely on traditional moves, such as improving operational efficiency, reducing information-technology costs and automation, to meet their company’s mandate to raise corporate performance and build new capabilities with information technology. CIOs, he says, need to reprioritize their works. He adds that CIOs can create what he calls “enterprise leverage,” which can help them push their businesses forward by focusing on four key areas:

1. Technology, which can help improve operational scale and performance.
2. Agility, which, when mastered, can help manage the speed, scale, cost and risk of corporate transformation through applying change management disciplines.
3. Information, which gives managers the business insight and understanding that’s required to act in a changing environment.
4. Innovation, which calls for bringing new ideas to market by evolving current capabilities, implementing new capabilities and gaining market acceptance for change.

But to take advantage of this leverage, CIOs need to look around and make sure that they’re focusing their resources on projects that are worth doing—that will really make a difference to the corporate bottom line. And they need to set deadlines and make sure they deliver promised services on time.

What are the projects CIOs are looking at to improve their company’s performance?

Gartner came out with a list of top technology priorities for CIOs—business intelligence, enterprise systems such as customer relationship management software, legacy modernization, and security were all at or near the top of the list.

For more, check out the complete source article.

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The year 2006 will be remembered, among other things, for being a time when ’social networking’ fueled a second web mania.  Last year saw an unprecedented hunger for social networking websites, with YouTube being snapped up for £1bn, and MySpace forging links with Google.

This trend looks likely to grow in 2007, although success could be short-lived for businesses that think it’s as simple as mimicking the social network phenomenon, Ecademy.com warns.

Ecademy.com, mooted as the MySpace for business people and entrepreneurs, was set up nine years ago, braved the dot.com crash of 2000, and now attracts more than 6,000 new members a month to its social network.

One of Ecademy’s founders, Penny Power, believes the key to building a successful social network is building emotional connections and a real sense of community. A website that just wows you with flashy tools will lose its appeal fast.

“Tools are just fads; communities and friendships evolve. Social networks have to become communities, and in order to do that they require a culture and values,” Power says.

“What people want is intimacy and friendship, not just contacts. Being a name on a contact list is no different from being a business card in a rolodex.”Knowing who you can learn from is what matters and what social networks should be about.”

Penny Power’s comments are backed up by reports in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal that urge companies to exploit the web to make customers feel involved.

Ecademy founders Penny and Thomas Power have put together the following predictions for the Social Networking Boom in 2007:

Jumping in: Tool-based sites such as LinkedIN and Xing will move towards building online communities with the introduction of facilities such as blogging.

Getting in on the act: The appeal of social networks will become so irresistible that most major business will try and buy into it in some way. Brands from all sectors will want to integrate into a pool of primed customers. Television companies are already encouraging viewers to post comments on plotlines in soap opera (ITV’s Emmerdale) and Kleenex has just launched a campaign with TV adverts encouraging online interaction from customers.

Choosing a platform: Social networks will become a sought-after method of tapping into niche markets. Companies will want to buy into them either for selling to, or recruiting its users. Facebook already has channels seeking staff for Microsoft and Ernst and Young, while Ecademy has just made links with Zubka.

Stamping out antisocial networks: The role of the social network is to act as a facilitator of relationships, which includes ensuring that message boards, blogs and postings are courteous and professional. Unmonitored social networks can sadly be used for antisocial behaviour.

Penny predicts that as brands race to launch social networks, online libel cases will surge, with message boards, blogs, and postings providing web users with the opportunity to degrade the reputation of people and companies. Ecademy advises websites to not overlook this and urges tight safeguards such as a clear code of practice.

Social responsibility is key in this marketplace. The repercussions of ignoring this fact are enormous for the individual taking part and the network owners.

Small groups mean big business: ‘Small groups’ and ‘clubs’ will be the web buzzwords of 2007. A chance to be part of a big network, but within the intimacy of a club or chat room, will drive web users to return to the same site more often by building an emotional connection.

Users will form strong allegiances to these clubs, just as they do with football clubs. More websites will offer users a chance to form clubs, as a way of building intimacy. Ecademy has operated a free club-building function for four years.

Grown up networking: The social networking Web 2.0 revolution has been led so far by the kids, but 2007 will see the over 35s getting on board. The BBC is rumoured to be introducing social networking sites for its most popular brands, such as Top Gear, Radio Times and BBC Good Food.

An indication of the growing importance of social networks to adults is Ecademy’s membership profile. Ecademists (Ecademy members) tend to be 35+, self-employed and have a family. Through this profile members support each other with their home, social and business life, meaning Ecademy’s purpose – to increase members’ emotional and financial wealth – is being fulfilled.

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“They get remarkable results, from most of their workers, against the backdrop of shifting horizons.”

Here are highlights from Dr. Weber’s feature article, titled … “Keeping the Brain in Mind – Boosting Your Problem Solving Power,” which she posted in her Brain Based Business weblog:

“Could Your Workplace Benefit from More Talent? New spurts of human brainpower follow whenever you move worker’s multiple intelligences into increased productivity.

Diversity works here as your greatest asset. For the concert pianist, things will come together at work differently than for the top hockey player. Look around your organization and you’ll find both these experts - and many more.

If one worker is weak in a skill, organizational performance need not suffer. Not when you draw from multiple intelligences to bring the complex pieces of each project together. The key is to negotiate roles and reward quality results. To use multiple intelligences is to help workers put forward their unique strengths as tools for productivity, and to help companies increase their productivity as a result of hidden or unused talents that emerge.”

I challenged business leaders in Capital Magazine to drop the notion of training –for a brain based business that relies more on skill development, since it is important to reframe hard and soft skills to what I call smart skills that get more creative juices flowing:Here are 10 Smart Skills of the 66 smart skill sets that replace traditional hard and soft skills, for brain based problem solvers.

1. Outcome Based – Do you take solid steps toward doing your ideas?
2. Make Abstracts Concrete – Do you see and work for specific results?
3. Approachability – Do others come to you for advice and for fun?
4. Boss Relationships – Does what you say to the boss show support?
5. Business Acumen – Would others describe you as skilled at work?
6. Career Ambition – Have you upgraded your position lately?
7. Caring About Direct Reports – Do you develop and grow from direct reports?
8. Comfort Around Management - Do you share ideas and learn from management?
9. Command Skills – Do you take and give productive commands?
10. Compassion – Would others at work describe you as compassionate when in need?

Could you see how integration of skills could transcend traditional hard and soft skills, for better problem solving tools where you work?

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In Making Knowledge Sharing Easy, Ardath Albee offers up an excellent approach for improving collaboration between marketing and sales organizations.  Here is her post in its entirety:

In March, a survey conducted by IBM found that 80% of CEOs see collaboration as being critical to growth. Yesterday, I wrote about how difficult it is to get salespeople to buy in and use a sales portal managed by Marketing. Yet, if the two departments continue the standoff, the ability of companies to meet their strategic sales objectives will stall.

I see part of the problem as “ownership.”  Salespeople “own” their knowledge and they are resistant to sharing because they see allowing their knowledge to become a company asset means (to them) they are expendable. Salespeople are competitive.  By their very natures, they are driven to be the best at what they do. For the sales portal to be effective, it has to give them tools that make a difference in elevating that perception.

Marketing is charged with providing the messaging, value propositions, information and presentations that sales is supposed to use to sell. But sales says it doesn’t work. Marketing says they ask Sales what they want, give it to them and still, Sales turns up their collective noses.

Salespeople probably don’t know what will help them be more effective in a way they can articulate. At least not when they’re asked directly and they aren’t in the midst of experiencing a frustration. This is why it’s critical to have the sales portal be a collaborative zone that connects the two departments.  But, in order for it to be a bridge, contributing to it has to be easy and it has to come from both sides.

Sales needs to be allowed to contribute without much effort. Their contributions will aggregate and provide marketing a better idea of what’s missing and how to deliver tools Sales can actually use to be more effective at selling.

Some ideas are:

• comment boxes that allow portal users to add notes and reactions to contentrating systems that allow them to quickly check a box that says “this content is worth a 1 - 5 in my sales arsenal


• a WYSWYG content editor for them to post sales success or loss stories that are tied to the materials they used (your system can be smart enough to know this)


• discussion threads with company experts around competitor objections


• suggestion boxes that post the suggestions to the portal and make marketing accountable for responding (not necessarily doing them, but acknowledging the suggestions and saying what they can do and by when)


• notifications to sales when something new is posted to the portal so they don’t have to search. And for heaven’s sake, put it out there prior to the free world getting knowledge of the latest campaign. Sales should always know what’s going on before they hear about it from outside.
  

It may sound like this is putting a lot on Sales, but Marketing doesn’t get a free ride here.  What they do get is feedback on what value their materials are providing to sales. They are able to see usage rates for content and know if something is falling flat or not being utilized.  If the CRM system is hooked in to track the materials salespeople access when planning for a phone call, email, meeting, demo, presentation, and proposal, then marketing can track which content is used and how often. 

Marketing can also produce metrics about how strong a roll they play in contributing to the company meeting it’s overall sales goals. The materials used by salespeople to close a sale will be tied to the lead.  Marketing can start to see trends by segmentation as to what’s effective and what’s not working.

Important to remember that collaboration is conversation between people, not something tossed over a wall. Response is important and it needs to be constructive.

The key is that Marketing has to modify and adjust content that doesn’t work and they need to do it quickly. They need to be responsive to whatever knowledge the salespeople share. If they are not, then this whole collaboration thing is for naught. There will be no bridge and marketing and sales will continue to work at cross purposes.

Sales will find out their knowledge becomes bigger and better when used collaboratively and their success will increase demonstrably through having better tools and messaging that works. They will spend less time researching for every meeting and sell more.

The company’s brand will become stronger through consistency.

This isn’t an easy process and it may not be particularly pretty at first, but as Marketing strengthens their relationship with Sales through collaborative work that provides better tools, the respect will grow.  Being able to produce metrics that tie it all together for the C-level will give Marketing the credibility it needs for that seat at the executive table.  And for bigger budgets that have demonstrable ROI.

Be sure to visit, Ardath’s weblog, Marketing Interactions; there’s lots of great content on this site, much of it being her own writings.

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