Enterprise 2.0 (EW2) offers a large number of ways to collaborate and/or carry on a conversation. The technology is relatively simple. The culture that defines when and how to use the technology is evolving. Fortunately you can use the Internet to discover what works in the blogsphere and then select what will work for you and your specific communities of customers, team members, projects, etc.
Start at the shallow endLike learning to swim, start at the shallow end, learn the basics, test the water. This blog is designed to help you learn something about swimming so at this point we are at the shallow end.
In our post about Definitions we drew distinctions between three types of EW2 applications: Internet or customer conversations, extranet or systems for collaboration with vendors, suppliers, business customers, etc. using secure connections, and intranet or internal systems for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Each has a different starting point.
You could start all three tomorrow but there is enough overlap that a wiser course is to start them sequentially. Your corporation’s circumstances will dictate what to do first and how fast you should proceed. When you took swimming lessons you probably didn’t try to swim from the shallow end to the deep end in your first lesson.
InternetWhat’s happening in your market place? What are your direct competitors and others who may be competing for your customers’ dollars doing? You don’t have to be first but you do not want to be a follower who has to struggle to differentiate yourself from a pack.
Put together a team including IT, advertising, public relations, legal and any customer contact organizations like call centers or help desks. Find what they know about EW2, your competitors and customers. Have them look at Web 2.0 systems outside the corporate world and particularly at the ways corporations are using them, e.g., Facebook and MySpace. What are the opportunities to get useful feedback from our customers? Should we add simple feed back options to our Web site as a way to start exploring this. Task IT to explore the software systems you can acquire when you know what you want to do.
Extranet
What’s happening in your supply chain? Depending on which industry you are in it will range from not much to some rapidly developing solutions for orders, catalogs, payments, shipping, shipment management, returns, etc.
Have a meeting with IT, your buyers, your business-to-business sales people, your industrial advertising and PR group. Find out what is happening and their thoughts about what your corporation is doing and or should do. There may be things in place you don’t know about.
Look for ways to share knowledge between the Internet and the extranet group, particularly at the level of the technology and its care and feeding.
IntranetWhat’s happening in your corporation? How could you do a better job of collecting knowledge that your people have about markets, systems, competitors, etc.?
Talk with your CIO. Ask her/him what is already in place? Of course you want to hear about the formal projects but it is a pretty good bet that there are informal and pilot applications already in place. The corporation already has the technology to support pilot level applications of EW2. Your employees can download the software and get set up I a matter of hours and some of them probably have. There is anecdotal evidence of this type of activity showing up in the blogsphere.
You may already have some demonstration projects you can use to help you understand the benefits. If you do, exploit them. If not, have your CIO or another C-level executive that is responsible for big projects identify a project team that has expressed interest. If they have identified the software they want, and there is no good reason not to, get that. If they do not, get the CIO to work with them to make a selection. Do two or three. They are cheap and this is the best way to learn what will work in your corporation. But NOT what is shown in the cartoon.
Learn fast, learn cheap, stay in the shallow end of the pool until you know the conversations and/or collaborations you want to start and the actions you want them to produce.
+ Short YouTube videos that explain [topic minutes:seconds]: RSS 3:43 Social Networking 1:47 Wikis 3:52 and Social Bookmarking 3:25 in plain English.
+ For more Web 2.0 cartoons go to Geek & Poke
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