Filed under: IBMSocialBiz

[EN] A Day in the Life of an IBM Marketer: Manage Events and Projects with Suppliers in IBM Smart Cloud

 On May 23 I had the pleasure to open up the Dachis Social Business Summit in Berlin. Due to the fact that Matt Collins would be presenting later the IBM Social Business vision with a lot of customer examples, I decided to go down a different path and tell the audience how I am personally living social as a Marketer within IBM. Obviously there is the external Social Media-Stefan DigitalNaiv – the name of my blog and Twitter account – out there listening, communicating and engaging through the public social media channels. But this is only the so to say public face of the coin. Social Media does not equal Social Business. It is part of it. As important is how I leverage social in my daily work.

I used Dion Hinchcliffe's graphic, where communities are used in the Next Generation  Enterprise and mapped my personal use cases to it.

Owly Images

One of the most appealing use cases for me is working with my supply chain and my partners. As a marketer I am obviously organizing campaigns and events. External suppliers are always involved in these projects, e.g. our PR Agency Text100, our event agency, my partner in crime CPP, Freelancers, Speakers etc. What are you doing in these projects? You define Milestones, you are assigning and hopefully tracking tasks, you are sharing and collaborating on files, you write meeting minutes and much more. Of course you need to share and track all this information. So typically files and info's are send by Email, tasks are managed in extensive spreadsheets, which are again being distributed by Email.

And we all experience the disadvantages of Email for sharing and tracking projects, information and files. Big files are filling up your inbox. Even more important: You never know, if you do have the most recent version of a file. Email is for sure not the tool for managing deadlines and tasks. And spreadsheets? Are spreadsheets with numerous columns and rows really the ultimate answer to manage a project? I know, we are living very much out of spreadsheets but I doubt that spreadsheets are the best solution for managing and collaborating on a project. OK, some people might be using professional „big“ Project Management software to manage a campaign. I am not a friend of this. For me it seems to be a real overkill.

A few years ago I changed the way how I manage projects and in particular events away from the Email centric approach to I would call the the „Social Business“ way. I am using with my suppliers IBM's Smart Cloud for Social Business. I am setting up a project community and activity in the cloud, invite the internal IBMers to the project, include my external suppliers and manage the whole project collaboratively in this community This starts with the brainstorming and ideation on the project (Who should be speaking? Who is contacting the potential speaker? What is the best location? …) up to managing and closing the project and event. Obviously files are shared and versioned through the community, activities and tasks are tracked with clear responsibility and deadlines.

Usually a project starts with a small team collaborating. More and more people become members during the launch and in particular for these new members it is easy to get up to speed extremely fast and have all the necessary information on the project and its status through the community. As important as bringing new team members into the project team is the whole ideation, discussion and collaboration process. The development of the event or campaign happens in a transparent and open way, ideas are being added, discussed, declined. Not sure if this is already wisdom of the crowd, but for sure it is in comparison to Email inspiring, more productive and the more social way of managing projects. When describing how I work in a IBM Smart Cloud community with my suppliers I should not forget to mention the aspect of Social Communications. Of course Online Meetings and Instant Messaging are integrated part of managing projects with my partners in the cloud. The external partners can easily participate in Online Meetings and without local software they are able to chat with me. So real-time communication and Online Meetings are important part of the whole Social setup and add enormous value.

Of course I am using the same social way of managing Marketing projects IBM-internally behind the firewall. What I want to re-emphasize is the external aspect I am describing. There is a huge potential within the Enterprise. But there maybe as much potential in collaborating the social way with suppliers. For sure it is improving my daily work. For sure it is improving quality and transparency of the project. And for sure it makes life for our suppliers much easier to work in an extended social enterprise. Of course it still needs a lot of evangelizing, discussing, educating to convince people to move away from their traditional Email centric way of working to the social way. But I will continue preaching and convincing to move all our projects with external suppliers into the IBM Smart Cloud and create an extensive extended IBM Marketing community for smarter, better Marketing events and campaigns. Think about your daily work and your use cases and benefits. Where does it make sense for you to work in an extended Next Generation Social Enterprise?

The presentation I gave at the Dachis Summit is available here on Slideshare. I will continue mapping out my use cases in upcoming blog entries hoping to inspire you to work social in your daily work, not only as a marketer.

[EN] How social technologies and behaviour are changing the Enterprise and the relationship to customers

This is the presentation I gave at the GUIDE Executive Club in Munich on March, 27, 2012 on Social Business.

And here are my Top 10 predictions for Social Business in 2012 - of course with my perspective as IBM Marketer for Social Business in Europe:

  1. It is more than a Facebook for the Enterprise Unternehmen (but it helps explaining the value).
  2. E-Mail gets social. And Social Software integrates Social Mail and Calendaring.
  3. Of course Text messaging, but more and more Video and Audio become important in Realtime Communication.
  4. We are in the Age of the Shareaholics: From Sending to Sharing.
  5. We enter the Age of Co-Editing. From the Office-package to the Social Editor. Content Management (ECM) gets integrated with Social Software, one reason is Governance, Risk Management & Compliance (GRC).
  6. Activity Streams are not only a flow of information and a news feed, but become important for embedded editing of Business events. Standards like OpenSocial allow easier integration.
  7. A Social Business is always Mobile Business. Mobile devices, Tablets and Smart Phones drive eas of use of Business Software.
  8. Facing the enormous amount of information setting this information into context becomes more and more important. Social Analytics helps managing the news ffed and puts information into context.
  9. Socialize your Web Sites: The web sites of an enterprise need to be uptodate, attractive, mobile, interaktive und dialogue driven.
  10. In the Age of Social Business people are in the centre and create value, not documented. Therefore more and more companies decide for Social Software from IBM to „socialize“ their Microsoft environment, even or in particular Sharepoint.

[EN] Key Lesson learned: Embed Social in the heart of your processes

1. Germany leads the pack. Germany stes the bar in social software adoption, with major deployments at companies like BASF, Bayer, GAD, Sennheiser and more. The pattern of success is that they began with a business process and inserted social to make the process more competitive.

For example, Bayer added social to their patent process, enabling the exchange of ideas to accelerate patent development. They added social to their collaboration processes allowing them to solve problems faster across national borders. Lastly, by adding social to their client insight process, feedback from customers circulates throughout the company with open communication.

Lesson Learned: Don't keep social over to the side, embed it into the heart of your processes, so that it impacts your workflow.

Nice posting by Sandy Carter. The key message for me: Embed social in the heart of your processes!

[DE] Meine 10 Thesen zu Social Business (nach der Lotusphere, vor der CeBIT 2012)

Das sind meine 10 Abschlussthesen, die ich auf der Business Gets Social-Roadshows von Softwerk und holistic.net als Zusammenfassung meiner Keynote und Lotusphere-Nachbetrachtung aufgestellt habe:

  1. Es geht um mehr als Facebook fürs Unternehmen (auch wenn die Begrifflichkeit beim Erklären hilft).
  2. E-Mail wird social. Und Social Software integriert Social Mail und Kalender.
  3. Natürlich chatten, aber auch Video und Audio werden immer wichtiger in der Echtzeitkommunikation.
  4. Wir befinden uns im Zeitalter der Shareaholics: Vom Senden zum Teilen.
  5. Wir befinden uns im Zeitalter des Co-Editings. Vom Office-Paket zum Social Editor. Dokumentenmanagement (ECM) wird mit Social Software verbunden, auch wegen Governance, Risk Management & Compliance (GRC).
  6. Activity Streams erhalten nicht nur als Informationsstrom sondern zur integrierten Bearbeitung von Geschäftsvorgängen Bedeutung. Standards wie OpenSocial ermöglichen und erleichtern die Integration.
  7. Ein Social Business ist immer auch ein Mobile Business. Mobile Endgeräte, Tablets und Smart Phones tragen dazu bei, dass Software wieder einfacher zu bedienen wird.
  8. Angesichts der Informationsströme ist es immer wichtiger, Kontext herzustellen. Social Analytics helfen bei Bewertung und Bewältigung der Informationsflut.
  9. Socialize your Web Sites: Die Webseiten von Unternehmen müssen aktuell, attraktiv, mobil, interaktiv und dialogorieniert sein.
  10. Im Zeitalter des Social Business geht es um Menschen, nicht um Dokumente. Deshalb setzen immer mehr Kunden auf Social Software von IBM, um Sharepoint und andere Microsoft-Module zu social'izen.

 

[EN] Social Employees: The Driving Force Behind Social Business Success

The successful social employee is a person who brings all their old skills to the table, but is conscientious about participating in internal collaboration and has courage enough to share his or her ideas. Instead of the ability to dominate meetings through force of personality, the social employee is adept at thinking about problems in new ways and finding answers, and then being able to articulate them through whatever collaboration framework the company uses.

Great headline: People drive the success. Software is important, needs to be people-centric, but is an enabler, not the driver.

[EN] IBM Lotusphere 2012: The Old Lotus Has Finally Wilted | Pretzel Logic

The disciplined approach to rationalizing its technology assets, providing a bridge between the old and new by folding in email and calendaring and a concerted effort to provide one dashboard where collaboration can happen with people around unstructured and structured events is really good. ... Whilst I think there are multiple pathways to infusing social software into the enterprise stack, ”IBM shops” out there will be pleased to see that they don’t have to endure more spaghetti integration between disparate systems as Connections offers a serious platform. ...

There’s no doubt that its game on from IBMs perspective and any older perceptions of Lotus is a thing of the past. Given my strand of collaboration and social business (as illustrated on this blog), I feel that this is one incarnation of social business that has a shot at making social, truly mean business.

Sameer Patel's posting on Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012. Don't agree on all statements, but great analysis.

[EN] IBM Focuses on the “Big Picture” at Lotusphere - Unified Communications Strategies

After looking at IBM’s line up, I determined that the only company that has a similar breadth of market coverage in mobility is Sybase – none of the other “UC” vendors even come close.

The key for IBM is to come up with a go-to-market strategy that allows them to profit from this vision. Despite widespread praise for their UC offerings, the UC conversation continues to be dominated by Microsoft and the IP PBX vendors. In a recent survey I helped develop for Information Week Analytics on the “State of Unified Communications,” when buyers were asked “Who are the top three providers of UC?” Cisco, Microsoft, and Avaya topped the list with 51%, 24% and 13% of the first-place votes; IBM got 5%.

To truly profit from what it has, IBM will have to come up with a better way to get its message through to buyers and develop either a direct or channel based strategy to get their solutions into the customers’ hands; given IBM’s legacy, attacking the SMB space will clearly call for a channel driven strategy. Product and vision IBM has in abundance, but it will be the go to market plan and its execution that tells the tale.

IBM has been successful in that environment in the past – maybe it should bring back the Charlie Chaplin character.

Fair judgement on IBM and the IBM Unified Communication and Collaboration-Strategy. Using it now for years including Unified Telephony it seems to be one of our best kept secrets. As one headset vendor said to me at Lotusphere: You have the superior solution than XXX, but neet to market it much better.

There is work to do. Having seen the great demo of integrating UCC including Video-communication into Connections Next during the OGS at Lotusphere, this is the way to go. Unified Communication is a crucial part of a Social Solution, necessar for direct communication via Instant Messaging and Video, available on the computer, the most relevant tablets and Smart Phone operating systems as shown at Lotusphere. It is needed to become a Social Business.

[EN] HorizonWatching 2012 Trend Report: IBMs Watson Technology

IBM’s Watson is an emerging technology at the intersection of Big Data, Analytics and Human / Computer Interaction trends.
The key enabling technology areas are:

  • Natural Language Processing
  • Semantic Analysis
  • Information Retrieval
  • Automated Reasoning
  • Machine Learning

Very useful overview on IBM Watson.