First posted on CloudAve

Oliver Marks and Sameer Patel – two of the leading lights in Enterprise 2.0 (that is experience in actually doing it rather than merely talking about it) presented this session. Their aim with the session was to move from “pontification to real world discussions” – a noble objective.

In discussing “the Big Idea” around Enterprise 2.0,the presenters pointed out that the ultimate sell comes from articulating the realistic business value propositions – Enterprise 2.0 technologies are just that, technologies. They’re not a holy grail of themselves and their needs to be a valid business case to sell the change. They cautioned attendees from comparing the business case for Enterprise 2.0 with the general Web 2.0 trends – web 2.0 is fundamentally a desire driven activity, whereas in a work setting people generally want to do their 9-5 and do what they have to do – no more.

People’s fundamental driver is “What’s in it for me?” – those trying to ease adoption of Enterprise 2.0 need to realize this and provide some sort of value to those making the decisions and end users. Understand the incentive structure in place, the politics and culture of the organization and the people within it.

In terms of the governance, risk management and compliance discussion, Oliver and Sameer recommended that this discussion happens early and happens openly. Discuss the issues and the plans at an early stage in order to (hopefully) get them onside. Explore the real reasons for negativity – is it really because of risk or is there a hidden agenda at work?

Oliver gave some examples of the ad-hoc shadow IT department that exists within many enterprises – where people faced with rigid and difficult enterprise grade software use cloud services like Zoho and Google docs in order to simply get their job done. It’s important to frame the context of the solution for management – help them understand the landscape within which the solution exists.

Joining the presenters before the break were a panel made up of Chris Mcgrath from ThoughtFarmer, Scott Schnaars from Socialtext and Tom Kuegler from PBWorks. Some points from their panel;

• Scott advised looking at the other priorities the CFO may have to balance against the enterprise 2.0 proposal.
• Chris brought up the reality that most collaborative solutions will come up against SharePoint and corporate IT will often take the perspective that collaboration happens only through SharePoint.
• Tom suggested that the only approach that was really viable was to kneecap IT in order to get solutions moving within an organization – using a bottom up approach to prove the initial concept to the business.
• Chris raised the point that you can build a fantastic collaborative platform within Sharepoint – but that you have to physically build it. Third party products enable those collaborative gains to be made more quickly then a complete design and build process.He also suggested that gains through social software tend to be serendipitous – as such it’s very hard to show a ROI pre deployment – how do you put metrics on serendipitous gains?
• Tom said that the approach really needs to be one of replacement – it’s no use going into an enterprise trying to pitch a tool which is completely different to what they currently do. Enterprises prefer like-for-like comparisons and replacements.
• Chris suggested that internal salespeople trying to pitch an idea to internal management utilize the assets of the vendors who are pitching everyday – tell them the requirements and let them help create collateral.

With getting executives on board it is critical that the requirements gathering is robust. Sameer discussed the “switching costs” involved in adopting new technology. It’s not simply the CAPEX involved in deploying a solution; there’s the business risk, the training, the deployment time etc. Ensure your proposal utilizes case studies from organizations in a similar space – make the pitch attuned to the company itself.

In terms of execution planning always be looking to mitigate the risk of the project and ensure you develop the right metrics to track expectations and actuality.

Oliver and Sameer invited Bevin Hernandez from Penn State University Outreach to tell their tale of developing sand deploying a social software offering. Their project planning document is interesting (image below and, yes, it’s the back of a napkin). For a more in-depth view – check out this post on the ThoughtFarmer site.

All in all it was an interesting session. I’ve posted before about Enterprise 2.0 and specifically the problems needing to be overcome to ensure its adoption and success – it’s nice to spend a few hours discussing more than just the shiny gadgets but an in-depth look at what can make this stuff actually happen.

All too often, Enterprise 2.0 advocacy gets bogged down in a futile side issue: change.

To those that feel out of step with a large organization, change may seem appealing, like aloe vera for the sunburned. But for the great majority of people caught up in the everyday frenzy of day-to-day operations, change may be as welcome as a skunk at a picnic.

Euan Semple recently made the argument that change for change’s sake may alienate those whose support is most needed: senior management and those in change of the most central business processes.

[The secret to success with Enterprise 2.0 ...]

Don’t try to get your powerful people to behave differently - they have everything to lose. Don’t try to improve your existing processes - you will be seen to be breaking something.

Focus instead on the things that are desperately trying to happen but aren’t and the people who are desperately trying to connect but can’t. Do things that make the impossible possible and your success rate will soar.

So there is a very pragmatic allure to propose the use of Web 2.0 technologies to rapidly start making inroads on things that haven’t been done at all, or in areas where a tiny bit of push could have big impacts.

I interviewed Lee Bryant of Headshift (now Dachis) last spring and he made a similar point, although specifically he said the conventional wisdom that people resist change is simply wrong:

[Open Enterprise 2009: Lee Bryant Interview]

Lee makes the case that the meme about people being resisting change is a bit off the mark. People are open to adopting new things if they actually help, and will resist various vacuous arguments about ‘you need to change or die’ or psuedo-mystical mumbo-jumbo about emergent values and so on. He has found it best to position these tools in the simplest most straightforward and business-oriented way.

So, avoid arguments in favor of change as an innate good, and focus on practical and obvious areas where Web 2.0 technologies and business practices can quickly offer real and tangible benefits without disturbing mission-critical business processes or rocking the political boat.

A few weeks ago, during a busy two weeks in Europe, I interviewed J.B. Holston, the CEO of Newsgator. Despite the slight fuzziness of the video (I think J.B. needs to spring for a better webcam), his thinking was pretty sharp.

A few highlights:

• Newsgator has interated aggressively since last summer’s E 2.0 conference, where the SocialSites product was one of the finalists in the Launchpad.

• Newsgator has been focusing increasingly on integrated applications, making the company oriented more toward a platform strategy.
• The economy has had an impact on many segments that have been strong for the company, like financial services. However, even in that sector, there is a ‘harder times, so drive faster’ attitude that is leading to fast uptake in some companies.
• Large companies are finding it essential to integrate groups across the company, and also in the face of mergers and acquisitions they need low-cost, quick turn-on applications to achieve integration.
• As the world has come to see inherently more risky, companies seem to willing to accept more risk. J.B. sees less of the extended bake-offs testing and evaluating alternatives, perhaps because Web 2.0 deployments are so much smaller than SAP, for example.
• One client, with 150K seats worldwide, approximately 50% in each of two large organizations that have merged. One of the two sides had been deploying Newsgator’s SocialSites, but now they are accelerating that across both sides so that they will have a means to coordinate and collaborate right away. The ROI is obvious, immediate, and large.
• Newsgator seems to be more of a top-down adoption model, although the consumer products have established a brand awareness in the minds of users. Executive management is essential to the roll-out for large deployments like Newsgators, J.B. confirms.
• J.B. agrees that large deployments in multinational organization encounter all sorts of cultural and Cultural issues — meaning corporate and real-world cultural barriers to understanding. He goes into some detail about legal issues with privacy in various countries, as well as the importance of community managers within companies adopting these tools.

J.B.’s insights confirm many of our findings: management leadership is essential, community must be nutured, and hard times lead to strong incentives for adoption of high payoff solutions. He made a great comment, that “these are still early days, and there is no unified field theory that everyone agrees to about how to drive adoption.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, although Oliver and I hope to turn the corner on that problem, at least, as we jump into the case study side of our research this month.

The way to survive — and flourish — in a tough economy is to be smarter, faster and leaner than your competition. Now is the time to explore and expand Enterprise 2.0 adoption in your organization.

We presented a community survey to crowdsource answers on Enterprise 2.0 Adoption in your company. Here are some key findings from our preliminary results:

• 98% of those surveyed are using Enterprise 2.0 technologies for internal communication and collaboration within their company. The most popular technologies used are instant messaging (74%), wikis and team workspaces (67%), and blogs (51%).
• Despite, or perhaps because of, the economic downturn, the majority of respondents say their spending on Enterprise 2.0 will increase (58%) in 2009.
• Most respondents (64%) say that adoption of Enterprise 2.0 is company-wide. Although this trend is stronger at smaller companies, it seems large scale implementations are taking place
• The number one barrier to adopting Enterprise 2.0 is cultural: resistance to change (53%). Other challenges include difficulty in measuring ROI (43%), integrating with existing technologies (37%), and security concerns (31%).

Learn how to address these challenges at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference with keynotes and conference sessions on building collaborative business cultures, choosing the right technologies, and tackling security issues. Register with code CNACEB08 for 20% off a conference or workshop pass, or to receive your free Pavilion Pass.

* The survey was distributed via email to our industry lists. There were a total of 157 survey respondents as of this blog post. We will update our data as we get more results.

New survey on Enterprise 2.0 Adoption. 

http://bit.ly/E2confSurvey

Contribute your answers and see what stats the industry comes up with. 

Complete and enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

Jason Rothbart is one of the founders of Groupswim, a SAS enterprise collaboration solution that debuted at last year’s Enterprise 2.0 as a finalist in the conference Launch Pad. I caught up with him recently, and explored his perspective on Web 2.0 tools adoption in the world of business.

• Jason’s title is VP of Customer Success, which I think says something important about the orientation of the company.

• Jason affirms a bimodal sales model: some clients are buying really quickly, because their “heads are on fire”, where in other cases acquisition is very, very slow because you need to get the CFO to sign off on any purchase.
• His insights on how tools virally spread through a company or top-down in enterprise-wide deals confirm what we have seen in other conversation.
• Jason points out that the there is a stake difference between clearcut returns — like increased sales — but other benefits are more nebulous: “But anyone who tells you that they can tell you exactly what the ROI is is either lying or doesn’t know what they are talking about.”

The interaction with Jason is a lot closer to the deal side of Enterprise 2.0 adoption, but that aspect of what is going on is just as revealing as the more academic and theoretical issues that seem to become foremost with practitioners.