The tipping point for social and push technologies in the enterprise

"I don't have time for social media at work!" A colleague made that comment to me recently.

My response was: "You have to replace something you already do. It isn't about squeezing yet more time out of an already busy work day, but of finding when a social media tool better suits some task you are already performing."

Some people have suggested that one or more social media tools will replace email in the workplace. Unfortunately a direct one-for-one technology exchange is not always possible. This becomes clear when you consider the range of use cases for which an existing technology is used.

Here's a common business use case:

• You want to share an interesting webpage or video that you have found with colleagues. It may be about a competitor, a market trend, a new technology, a new regulation, etc. and you expect that it may be useful to the recipients.

In recent years a typical approach would have been to email a link (or even an attachment) to the six people you think might be interested. Likely you will forget three others who would have been interested, and maybe there are a couple of others you didn't know would be interested. So the approach would always have been flawed since you could not or did not completely predict who would value the information.

In addition, another problem has grown in recent years: namely email overload and developing user resistance. In the above example, of the six actual recipients, maybe two will resent the intrusion and consider your email spam. The issue here with email is that it is a Push technology - recipients get it whether they want to or not - and it also has a narrow reach, going initially only to those people you define.

So if the original solution always had a limitation, and over time is becoming less effective, is there a better alternative? Currently the best technological alternative for this example use is a Pull technology. You post the information and users decide whether they want to follow you and/or a specific topic.

• A good example of a Pull approach is social bookmarking. To share an interesting website, you could instead have used a bookmarklet installed in your browser to automatically post the link and your comments to an internal collaboration site.

While this approach is effective in reducing the perception of span, it is limited because others might not be aware that you are someone they should follow, or may not yet have learned and adopted the technology.

Pull technologies have an inherent entry barrier that limits their usefulness and can be hard to overcome. Most social media are pull technologies. This is a critical problem for organizations looking to use social media tools effectively.

In the above use case there is an expectation of benefit if the information is shared widely, but it is seldom critical. What if the aim is circulate 'critical' information to the widest possible audience?

In most current enterprises, if the organization wants everyone to be informed about something they will send an email to 'all staff' on the assumption that it will reach everyone and be read. In reality this assumption is increasingly false for a growing proportion of staff - they don't bother to read, don't have time or have even set email filters so they don't see such emails! An alternative is to post the same information to a stream that users can watch, but in most organizations usage has not yet achieved a level that the post will reach most staff.

So email pushes are increasingly ineffective, while social pulls have yet to achieve sufficient adoption to take their place as workplace tools. It seems there is a growing communications chasm which will create a tipping point to drive adoption of social media in enterprises at some time in the future.

Where is the concept of Employee-to-Employee (E2E)?

Organizations are struggling to understand the relevance of social networking tools internally. You can see the lack of maturity in this field by looking up E2E on Wikipedia; of the several interpretations of E2E, none refer to Employee-to-Employee.

Other X2X concepts are better documented:

1. B2B - Business-to-Business
2. B2C - Business-to-Consumer
3. B2G - Business-to-Government

These three all have aspects of commerce for the provision of products or services between different parties.

A more recent, fourth X2X entry is B2E - Business-to-Employee, recognizing what goes on within a given organization rather than its external interactions. As the Wikipedia entry notes (2011-04-20):

"Business-to-employee (B2E) electronic commerce uses an intrabusiness network which allows companies to provide products and/or services to their employees. Typically, companies use B2E networks to automate employee-related corporate processes.

Examples of B2E applications include:

• Online insurance policy management
• Corporate announcement dissemination
• Online supply requests
• Special employee offers
• Employee benefits reporting
• 401(k) Management"

The traditional 1.0-style of Intranet is one of the tools used by businesses to provide information to their employees, so it can be regarded as a B2E platform. Typically the provision of information is controlled in a top-down manner.

With the newer 2.0-style of Intranets, employees are able to contribute, either by adding documents and other forms of content, or by participating socially. But B2E tools are ineffective at supporting social interactions. It isn't about what a business tells its employees, but rather what the employees tell each other.

Social interactions within an organization typically enable the execution of a wide range of critical business processes that aid commerce. Workers requesting input on a task, or notifying the next performer that they are finished, engage in social interactions that increasingly use mediating technologies such as email, instant messaging, telephone, fax, workflow, online discussion, videoconferencing, online web meeting, etc. Seen in that light the more recently available social tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, communities, ideation sites, expertise location, etc. just provide more choices to increase the effectiveness and timeliness of those critical, internal social interactions in support of commerce. 

E2E seems overdue for recognition.

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The Implicit Value of Content is Realized Through Business Process

As I have noted before, much of the historic discussion in the document management field has concerned the cost of producing content, or the cost of finding existing content.

But the value of a document, or any other piece of content, is seldom the same as its cost of production.

I was chatting about this the other day with my colleague James Latham. He used an invoice as an example of a piece of content that may be managed by an enterprise content management (ECM) system. James noted that, 'There is inherent or explicit value in an invoice'. In fact the value of an invoice is fairly tightly linked to the cash it represents.

A $10 bill has an explicit value of $10. Likewise a delivered invoice for $10 has a value of about $10 to an organization. Arguably it is not quite as valuable as $10 cash given the delay and perhaps uncertainty of payment, but it is close enough in most cases and will be treated as such in an accounting system.

There is a case where a $10 bill is worth much more: if it is a rare, old $10 bill, it may have a lot of implicit value (e.g. to collectors it may be worth hundreds of dollars) above its explicit value of $10.

Tangible value (explicit plus implicit) is established by sale of the item itself or the recent valuations of comparable items. But it is hard to think of invoices, especially electronic invoices (i.e. digital content), as having any implicit value.

Are there other kinds of enterprise content besides invoices that clearly have implicit value? I think so. Here's a good example: documents that support a patent application for a product with large market potential may have huge implicit value that greatly exceeds their cost of production and their explicit value at a given moment. This implicit value may become more explicit over time with the issue of a patent, together with product and market advances. At some point an intellectual property sale could attribute very significant tangible value to the documentation.

In this patent documentation example, the application of process over time helps to create tangible value. In ECM discussions we often speak of the context of content as helping to give it meaning, but clearly we also need to consider how process can give it value.

Enterprise Content Architecture - my take on the Metastorm acquisition

I'm particularly excited by today's announcement acquisition of Metastorm by OpenText, but not perhaps for the same reasons as many others.

What excites me is the potential of Metastorm's strengths in Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Analysis (BPA). As noted in the release:

"Metastorm is a leader in both BPA and EA as recognized by Gartner in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools, published February 22, 2010 and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, published October 28, 2010."

These capabilities play to both the 'Enterprise' and 'Content' in Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

Organizations depend on a growing proportion of knowledge workers as I discussed in a previous post (Value for Knowledge Workers), but as noted in the McKinsey study I covered (Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers),  most organizations do not understand how to boost the productivity of knowledge workers or indeed the barriers to that productivity. As I noted:

"What struck me in reading the article is that while an increasing proportion of staff in companies are knowledge workers, it is not clear what knowledge work is and how to best enable it to drive productivity gains. Given that, it is hardly surprising that people struggle to define the value of those software tools best able to support knowledge management."

Content is the currency of knowledge work. It supports the exchange of knowledge during business processes, and is very often the work product of such processes (e.g. a market analysis report, an engineering drawing or a website page). Too often in the past discussion of the value of content has centered on either reducing the unit cost of producing, finding or using content, or mitigating compliance risks created by poor content management.

This is not a new theme for me, indeed last August I expressed my enthusiasm for why Content Matters. I noted:

"It's no surprise to people that you can understand a business by 'following the money' or 'following the customer' and that is the basis for ERP and CRM systems. On the other hand most people are only just coming to realize that 'following the content' is just as important, so while we've talked about content management for many years, that conversation is starting to be important to business."

The potential to apply Metastorm's ProVision tool set to elucidate and illustrate the critical role of Content to the achievement of Enterprise Goals is an exciting one which offers new value to our customers.

Content Managment Systems as Cities - I feel like a Mayor!

I recently realized that large enterprise content management (ECM) systems are like a city, but most ECM practices treat them as if they were a building. There’s a big difference in complexity that impacts the operation of an ECM system.

Architects can design a building to suit its intended purpose and building management can maintain it. In the same manner an ECM expert can design a system to manage digital content in support of particular business processes. Much of the ECM literature talks of the benefits of clear system architecture and good governance.

As an ECM system is deployed across an organization the breadth and number of applications grows rapidly – often into the hundreds – with many different business sponsors and champions! It becomes increasingly hard for any one person to understand all of the different ways that a system is being used, and to exert any effective control. The flexibility accorded users through collaborative, social tools further increases the heterogeneity of an ECM system.

Not all ECM application deployments meet with equal success or longevity. In many ways the applications in an ECM system resemble buildings in a city – different sizes, different ages, different investments and different degrees of success. Some buildings are abandoned and some never get off the drawing board!

No one designs cities – they are just too complex. Sure there are examples of attempts to do this – the initial design of Brasilia or the redesign of the center of Paris by Haussmann – but over time the efforts and activities of many other people determine how a city develops. In fact cities are very much an expression of human behaviour, culture and society.

Overall city management falls to the Mayor and City Council, and their most important tools are Building Regulations and Permits, Ordnances, etc. While you can’t and shouldn’t control everything in a city, you can nevertheless provide some direction and minimal standards. The architects of the many buildings need to get approval for their plans before a building is constructed, and the building operators need to comply with other standards.

When ECM was a new concept, the focus was on how to best design and operate a first application for the new system – a new ‘building’ standing in a ‘green field’ if you will. As ECM matures we need to think about how to operate large, multi-application systems. For me a better role analogy for the person with overall system responsibility is Mayor, not Architect. It’s not that we don’t need ECM Architects – in fact we need many of them – but we also need a Mayor and Council to provide a framework for oversight and long-term strategy. And we have to accept at least a degree of disorder that results from the activities of many different people that are only loosely coordinated – Mayors are necessarily politicians, unlike Architects!

Value for Knowledge Workers

Demonstrable value goes a long way to supporting the deployment of new software tools.

For structured business processes, return on investment (r.o.i.) is comparatively easy to estimate. Where unstructured or semi-structured digital content items (e.g. documents, spreadsheets, faxes, etc.) enable a given structured process (e.g. accounts receivable) their contribution to the overall value created is also typically quantifiable.

Where the process itself is unstructured the measurement of value is much harder. Perhaps the largest class of unstructured processes in a company fall in the category of knowledge work. The difficulties organizations have in understanding knowledge work is highlighted in an article just published in the McKinsey Quarterly entitled: "Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers".

• Aside: Unfortunately a subscription is required to read the full article – hopefully you have one.
  

The article starts with the proposition that few senior executives can answer the question: "Are you doing all that you can to enhance the productivity of your knowledge workers?" This is unfortunate because, "Organizations around the world struggle to crack the code for improving the effectiveness of managers, salespeople, scientists, and others whose jobs consist primarily of interactions—with other employees, customers, and suppliers—and complex decision making based on knowledge and judgment."

The authors, Eric Matson and Laurence Prusak, describe five common barriers that hinder knowledge workers in more than half of the interactions in surveyed companies:

1. Physical
   
2. Technical
   
3. Social or Cultural
   
4. Contextual, and
   
5. Temporal
   

Physical barriers include geographic and time zone separation between workers, and are typically linked to Technical challenges – where workers lack the necessary tools to overcome the physical barriers that separate them. As the article notes, there are a many software tools available that can help – these would include the various collaborative and social media tools, as well as the more classic document management applications that are encompassed in the broadest definitions of Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

Of course the availability of software tools does not guarantee that users will use them effectively; indeed, Social (e.g. organizational restrictions, opposing incentives and motivations) and Contextual barriers (e.g. not knowing who to consult or to trust) play a large part in hindering adoption.

The fifth barrier is Temporal. Time, or rather the perceived lack of it, is also a critical factor. In my experience knowledge workers do not consider time spent using social media and collaborative tools as important as other activities. Under time pressure they will stop using these tools if they need to spend more time on other activities they perceive as "real work".

What struck me in reading the article is that while an increasing proportion of staff in companies are knowledge workers, it is clear that what knowledge work is and how to best enable it to drive productivity gains is not clear. Given that, it is hardly surprising that people struggle to define the value of those software tools best able to support knowledge management.

Content Matters

I was chatting with a colleague yesterday and he related how he interviews people to join our company. We quickly dropped into role playing – with me as the job candidate. He had a compelling proposition, but as I told him, he was missing the thing that excited me = Content Matters!

As I started to tell him why content matters I found myself getting excited. I realized I'm actually quite passionate about it! Not content itself, but what it enables and how it's used.

Content matters to companies in a way that changes how they work, how they create value and whether they succeed. It matters whether they recognize that fact or not.

If you want to understand what drives a company look at their value chain – how they create value – and how they are organized to execute each stage in the value chain. Within each stage there are typically many processes, each with many steps. At almost every step there is some content that is created, reviewed, followed or otherwise used; how well this is done makes a difference to effectiveness.

It's no surprise to people that you can understand a business by 'following the money' or 'following the customer' and that is the basis for ERP and CRM systems.

On the other hand most people are only just coming to realize that 'following the content' is just as important, so while we've talked about content management for many years, that conversation is starting to be important to business.

Calculating the Value of Content in ECM

It's only worth expending effort to manage something if it has value – usually positive, but sometimes negative. So the concept of content value is implicit in enterprise content management (ECM).

On the other hand, the value of a given content object (i.e. digital file) such as an email or document generally declines over time – or at least this is the common wisdom. I have seen graphs drawn mapping 'value' over 'time', with a smooth decline of value tending to zero. However, such a representation is clearly an average of value across many types of enterprise content.

If you look at individual pieces of content, then you'll find different profiles:

• In compliance, a piece of content may retain 100% of its value for a defined period of years and then abruptly drop to having no value, or even having negative value (liability) that should trigger its destruction
  
• In knowledge management, a piece of content may have declining value over time, but then because of some new event may suddenly have increased value
  

But this perspective is of the Inherent or Independent Value of a piece of content – the value is assessed entirely based on the information contained in the object. But it seems to me that there are at least two other factors that impact value:

• Context – when correctly combined with other prices of content a given piece of content may have greater value. For example a specifications document is more valuable together with the associated requirements document. Value can often be realized by the way in which context is presented between content items – how they are grouped, ordered or ranked.
  
• Impairment – Ironically, the value of a piece of content may be impaired by efforts to manage content. If you mix valuable pieces of content with large amounts of irrelevant materials, that should have been destroyed, you reduce the chances that the valuable content can be found and its value realized. Keeping everything is usually a bad idea. And often users impair value when they misclassify content.
  

So the available value of a piece of content to an organization may be expressed as follows:

Available Value = Inherent Value x Context / Impairment

What this says is that content management efforts can be beneficial, but if not done well can actually be destructive.