Requirements for Business Networks

Xeequa is a social media software provider, helping organisations to create a better business experience for their customers, prospects and partners. They published a white paper in 2008 describing the differences between private and business social networks.

The whole paper can be downloaded here: Business versus private social networks

While private networks connect individuals to share videos or resumes, networking in business is more than just making friends. Teams may collaborate across the world, team mates may leave, but the relationship to a company may still be intact, enabling the individual to conduct further business with former team members. Business networks are formed for more or better business, increased market share, a positive increase in the company’s reputation in the market and many other reasons. Xeequa differentiates between personal social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing and business social networks like Xeequa as follows:

The following five major differences are described more in depth:

1) Purpose of networking
Professional business networking needs a specific purpose, goal or strategy. The purpose may be to build improved partner and/or customer relationship or to increase the reputation a company has in the market.

2) Organization relationships
Business Networks require including companies or organizations as entities into those networks. People have connections with other people and they are related to companies. Companies have relationships with other companies. Large partner networks with thousands of other worldwide partners are important networks.

3) Network processes
Some key activities in social networks for businesses include business introductions, conducting joint sales calls with partners, collaborating over joint projects with alliances (the equivalent of video sharing in personal social networks). Business networks reflect those processes, which results in a very different tool set.
Corresponding security requirements must be considered as well.

4) Alliance Building
Networks of people AND networks of companies are needed. Teams, as both a whole group of people and as part of a company, play a very strategic role in social business networking. If a company’s team works with another company’s team, hundreds of people will suddenly have access to each other.

5) Network Value
While the quality of a private network may be measured in the number of connections, this is no interestion quality measurement. So the quality of a network must be defined different, eg. by the depth of connections.

The following benefits are provided by social business networks:

Network of Networks
A network allows many sub-networks (the supplier network, the partner network, the strategic alliance network, customer networks, etc.) to be built and managed separately, while simultaneously support overlap.

Virtual Introductions
Virtual introductions have become a common practice in the corporate business world. People are introduced by email with great ease.

Opportunity Sharing
A network is not only an ideal mechanism to better manage those shared opportunities, but provides critical support such as control, visibility, accountability, and reporting capabilities.

Project Collaboration
Engineering teams, which are often spread around the globe, need complicated project management tools and rely often on email to communicate. With actionable network architecture, project collaboration can be done easily over the business social network, and does not require the parties to install a specific system. Project updates, project progress level, estimated completion, and other basic features can be provided in a user-friendly, simple program.

Community Features
Some current social community functions, such as building groups or setting up events, are helpful in business as well. But the business community has additional requirements, such as inviting members to groups and supporting the structures of the organizations and companies.

Organization Structure
Social business networks need to support organizational structures, from small local companies to global enterprises. Social
business network applications must be scalable from a single team to a multinational department structure, yet be easily expanded with low administration overhead.

Reporting
Social business networks will require a high degree of reporting capabilities.

Xeequa provides such a business social network system, further information are available at the Xeequa homepage.

Evaluation of Project Collaboration Tools

The second assignment of the Enterprise 2.0 unit is an assessment of web 2.0 requirements for a company or organisation and a business proposal. It is a group assignment, that means we are working in a group of four on our business proposal. Most of our team members are working during the day, so we decided to use web 2.0 technologies to share our ideas and to collaborate. In the following I give examples of the collaboration tools we are using and how our experiences are:

1. Mindmap
We created a mindmap for collaborative brainstorming and used it for sharing our ideas for the business proposal . A good tool for collaboration in a mindmap is mindmeister. It is free and accessible online and by iPhone. Each team member created an online account so we were able to share our ideas in one mind map.
Assessment of Mindmeister as a collabortation tool: It is quite easy to use mindmeister and to create a mindmap for a collaborative brainstorming. Mindmeister provides a good description about the functionalities available in a blog (really web2.0 like). The free version has some limitations (e.g. only two mind maps) but it was a good tool for our contribution.

2. Wiki
Brian Perkin, one of our group members has created a wikidot account. Firstly we uploaded the index for our business proposal and started by writing our ideas from the mind map to each index part. After two weeks of contribution we had a good draft of our business proposal and could start with the final description of the proposal
Assessment of wikidot: Wikidot provides a restricted number of wiki pages for free. It is a fantastic tool to share ideas online and all team members can see the proceeding of the current process in time. When the wiki was edited by one team member, the other project stakeholders are informed by email.
As we have to submit our assignment in a word document, we realised some limitations of wikidot. It is quite complicated to upload pictures and tables to show them online. We soon started to upload the finalised word documents with its tables and graphics instead of uploading them in the wiki.
For displaying a picture, it has to be uploaded first, before it can be added to the wiki. It can take hours to figure out how that works. There is really place for improvements!
See here for a full list of features available in wikidot.

3. Project management tool:
Go plan provides a project management tool for online collaboration. We used this tool to demonstrate scheduled milestones and depending tasks. According to the number of users a monthly fee is charged. The tool is free for two users, but that is actually not more than a test version.
Assessment: We tried the free version for two users, but that didn’t allow us to test collaboration. Go plan has all basic functionalities that are necessary in a project management tool. It is possible to create milestones, assign tasks and ticket and to control the current state. But project management statistics or burn down diagrams are not available (or maybe only in a charged version).

4. Social Networking
Ning allows the creation of own Social Networks. We used it for our project to demonstrate an example of a social network tool and we are really excited about it. Members can connect with other members, blogs and chat functionality are available and the application is easy to use. The configuration is similar to facebook so that user can easily handle it.
Assessment: A great tool for organisations that want to create closed networks, eg within a company. An own URL can be created (containing .ning.com)

During the research for our business proposal we identified many social media tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing. Most of the tools are available for free or a small monthly fee. It is definitely worth for companies to determine the web for suitable tools if the implementation of an Enterprise 2.0 organisation is aimed.

Business Process Modelling using Social Networks

I am currently involved in a research how web 2.0 techniques in general and Social Networks in particular can be used for Business Process Modelling. What are the key drivers and which success factors are expected?

Organisations have different degrees of collaboration in respect to BPM:

- Non-collaborative BPM: Describes uncoordinated efforts by individuals to document and alter business processes
- Endocollaborative BPM: Term for collaborative BPM that involves only participants from within a defined entity – a company for example
- Omnicollaborative BPM: Internal and external players come together

A change may come from the non-collaborative BPM or the endcollaborative BPM to the omnicollaborative BPM. A recent Forrester research has figured out that “social and Web 2.0 technologies are breathing new life into BPMS to tackle the remaining process whitespace that still needs to be conquered in the enterprise.”

Recently some tool vendors have released solutions with Social Network components.

Lombardi Software developed Lombardi Blueprint which claims to be simple and collaborative process documentation. Stakeholders (eg. employees, partners or suppliers) can participate in communicating and improving organization’s business processes, ideas and initiatives. According to the software producer, Lombardi Blueprint combines the following web 2.0 benefits for business process modelling in organisations:

- Centralized and collaborative
Blueprint is a cloud-based application accessible from any browser. Because the application is centralized and networked, individuals are able to collaborate on a process from wherever they can access the internet. Chat is also integrated for realtime collaboration.

- Easy to use
Blueprint is designed to be simple enough so that people who have direct knowledge of a process, but may not be familiar with process mapping, can work on the same process simultaneously or at different times. Because Blueprint is a cloud-based application, it is accessible from any browser anywhere, no software to install or maintain.

- Up to date
After the log in changes or comments on a processes you’re working on are immediately available.

- Access control: Authors and Participants
As an author you are able to create and modify a process. Participants can view and comment on processes but aren’t able to modify or create them.

- Bring data in, take data out
Data output is possible as an automatically generated PowerPoint presentation as well as a Word document. Visio charts can be imported.

The slogan of the Align Space Beta is Business without Boundaries.
The idea of AlignSpace is that business process improvements requires collaboration and collective decision making from stakeholders across the organisation. By combining social networking tools with intuitive tools for process design and modeling, collaboration can be done effectively to create and improve processes.

The elements of AlignSpace are:

- Social Networking
Logon, Register and create a profile. Create a Social Network, identify new connections (within the organisation or beyond), invite them to collaborate on projects. Large groups can collaborate simulaneously and view group changes.

- Collaborative process design
Easily interact and collaborate to discover, document and create process models that can be exportet and run with BPM engines.

- Import and export all popular BPM formats

- Knowledge sharing
Exchange expertise with individual process experts

- No Technical barriers
Nothing to install, only internet access required

Further software solutions are provided by IBM Lotus software and IBM’s second life. Our current research explores how Second Life can be used within organisations for Business Process Modelling. Updates on our research will be posted here.

Internal Networking within organisations

Social Networks can be regarded from two view points. Firstly the online community is creating their personal network with friends, friends of friends and other people users are sharing private interests with. On the other hands business networks provide opportunities to stay in contact with colleagues, find interesting contacts and maybe the job of dreams. In short words Facebook is the fun of networking, LinkedIn is for career opportunities.

But what are the advantages and the drawbacks of employees using Social networks? Are companies concerned about the time their staff is spending on Social Networks while working?

From my point of view Social networks provide a great opportunity to stay connected even when time is scarced to interact with people in real life. It takes only a few seconds to keep contacts up to date. This applies for private contacts as well as for business contacts.

Here is a list of benefits for companies which engage in Social Networking from an internal point of view (no advertising)

- Find possible job candidates

- Better networking of employees

- Share knowledge and interesting knowledge sources

- More innovation

Even if most social networkers are enthusiastic users some pitfalls are fact and have to be considered:

- All information published by users are open for the whole bunch of the internet with all the positive and negative aspects

- Possible job candidates are scanned by new employers

- Employees might spend too much time on Social Networks

- Do you really want to let your superior know what you did last weekend?

- Phishing

- Spam

Most concerns regarding Social Networks are due to the data openess and the internet criminality. But if users publish their data carefully (most Social Networks provide the possibility to share certain data only with connections), users can profit from the benefits of Social networks, have fun and build up a professional network.

Other opportunities are available for companies that do not want to create open networks. Ning is one example tocreate own “closed” networks within organisations.

The following issues have to be considered with Social Computing in business:

- Lack of social media literacy amongst workers.

- Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities.

- Need to prove ROI before there will be support for social software.

- The needs of community management.

Classification of Social Network users

Social networks are one of the web 2.0 hypes and the number of participants is still increasing. By the end of 2008, social networking had overtaken emails (according to a study of Nielsen online). Some of the key points figured out by the study:

- 66.8% of Internet users across the globe accessed “member communities” in 2008, compared to 65.1% for email.
- In 2008, users spent 63% more time on member communities than they did in the previous year.
- Facebook saw growth of 566% in time spent on it by users worldwide.
- Facebook’s fastest growth demographic is older users – 12.4 million people between ages 35-49 in 2008
- Globally, Facebook reaches 29.9% of global Internet users, versus 22.4% for MySpace
- MySpace remains the most profitable social network, generating an estimated $1 billion in revenue versus $300 million for Facebook in 2008.

Due to these impressive figures, social network platforms are becoming more and more interesting for marketers. Not only that the interactivity of social networks allows a targeted communication with the users. Even if a company is not inter-active, their customers may publish a lot, entirely out of marketers’ control. But how can an organisation communicate with somebody they don’t know? Forrester Research identified 6 user groups in the internet (based on a study in the US) and classified them according to their main attributes.

The following graphic shows how the number of participants of the identified groups have changed during the last three years.

Even if the Forrester study is a general classification of web users, it may give an interesting aspect of how important it is to know the “online community” of a company. Not only because they are potential customers, they may report positive about an organisation with a positive “social network” image.

Social Media for Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategers and advertisers have to consider web 2.0 for their marketing strategy as they provide interesting potential for the main marketing view points. Web 2.0 is known under the term Social Media as well and have learned a great success story in recent years and most of the internet users are taking part in Social Media networks.

Social Media are changing the marketing and advertising market extremly. While the old communication of companies used to be a one way communication and a monolog, it has now changed into a dialogue.

In this post I am going to show how marketing departments should use Social Media for two important marketing aspects. Firstly I discuss the advantages of web 2.0 advertisements and secondly I give some examples how Social Media can be integrated into Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Social Media and Advertisement
The most common problem for advertisers is that people are overloaded with information and it doesn’t matter whether they are relevant for them or not. The average person is exposed to 3,000 advertising messages a day and that is definitely too much to filter any relevant information. In addition advertisement on TV or radio is widespread, so adverisers can never be sure if they are communicating with the right tagret group, as well as they can’t avoid that people change the channel during advertising breaks.

It is time to change marketing communication from a monologue into a dialogue. A great presentation how this can be achieved can be found here:

Social Media and SEO/SEM
Each company that is doing online advertisement has normally a team which considers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing(SEM). SEO is mainly about the ranking in search engines, eg. the main goal is to be listed in top positions for certain keyword search. SEO supposed to be free (besides the money companies spend each year for expert knowledge). The most common form of SEM is Google ads. With SEM companies buy traffic from Google and appear in the special highlighted area on the top of the right side when a certain keyword was entered.
Good SEO/SEM strategies are based on comprehensive keyword researches. Here is the point where Social Media can give valuable support. The following Social Media platforms are a wounderful source to find out trendy keywords:

- Twitter: The best page to find out what folks are talking about. Twitter shows recent trends and the Twitter search helps to find out what exactly people are thinking about specific keywords. Tweedvolume shows the frequency of keywords.

- Facebook: The Facebook lexicon shows the most discussed topics over a certain timeline.

- Youtube: While typing a keyword into the Youtube search, various suggestions for the keyword cobination appears.

- StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon provides many up to date tags.

- Delicious: Explore most interesting tags in the tag cloud of delicious.

- WordPress: Most used buzzwords give a peek into what people on WordPress.com are talking about this very instant.

- Technorati: Popular tags on Technorati show the most famous topics for blogging.

Examples of excellent blogs

When I started blogging a couple of weeks ago I read some great blogs to get an idea how to create a good blog. Today I am going to give examples of these blogs and describe why these blogs are so good.

First of all good blogs have some attributes in common:

- High frequency of publishing

- Attractive layout

- High quality articles as brief as possible

- Adequate links to support arguments

- Media mix (e.g. Twitter, Images, Vides)

- Expertise knowledge demonstrated

- Strong online CI

- No advertisement

- Easy to find in search engines (mainly Google)

The following blogs are wonderful examples of great blogs as they provide their readers expert knowledge, are easy to read and are a great ressource to link. I tried to find a good mix of private blogs as well as company blogs. In the following is discussed what additional characteristics make these blogs so successful:

- Edgewater Technology
Edgewater Technology is a technology management consulting firm in North America, providing special Information Technology services. In their blog main technology trends including web 2.0 trends are described with an innovatione character. Due to the comprehensive knowledge Edgewater can give well-founded practical examples from different perspectives (eg. health environment, insurance market, project management, Web analytics). I haven’t found any advertisement for Edgewater Technologies in the blog so far but many practical tips (eg. the great post “6 ways to get your web presence and infrastructure in shape for 2010″), written for the target group of consultant solutions.

- Technology, Mobility, Usability and other Musings
The author of this blog works as a product manager in an Indian Telecommunication company. It is his own personal blog where he publishes interesting posts about trends in the telecommunication and online market. The posts are pregnant and brief and supported by links to further sources. One of my favourite posts is “Why we tweed” which I have linked in my prior post “How can Twitter be used by companies“. A good selection of reasons why poeple might tweed is given as well as a fundamental discussion whether Twitter makes sense or not.

- Inbound Marketig Solutions
This marketing consultation company provides support for small business to use the internet effectively for their marketing. The posts are quite interesting, especially for the Enterprise 2.0 discussion of our unit as the main expertises are SEM/SEO strategies as well as Social Networking tools. The post Twitter: How To Use It For Business…. Effectively! provided me some qualified input for my recent post “How can Twitter be used by companies?“. The other blog posts contain as well valuable input for the readers, but hardly any advertisement.

- GMBSG
This comprehensive blog about software development, the .NET framework and related programming languages looks back on more than two years of high quality blog entries. The blog is written in German as the author is one of the best developer (and problem solver) I have ever met, engaged by my recent employer in Germany. I mention this blog in my blog list as this was one of the firsts blogs I determined to get ideas for my own blog. On the other hand I would like to thank Ilker for some tips for my online presentation.
But there are further reason why it is worthful to go over GMBSG. First of all the high frequency of blog posts for more than two years in an absolute specific area as well as the comprehensive tag cloud. The about page gives the reader a good introduction about Ilker’s expertise.

- Rock the job
Rock the job is one of my favourite blogs. The simple message is how to earn money and that is of course interesting for nearly everybody. They give tips and tricks how to find a good job, how to create a blog whichs brings money and so on. But what makes this blog so unique as there may be more blogs out there talking about jobs. It is the interactivity of the page as Rock the job uses vodcasts rather than writing long and boring blog posts. It is the informal way how they are transfering their messages and it is the fantastic opportunity to discuss with them on facebook .

There are much more good blogs out there and if you know some, please let me know and write a comment.

How can Twitter be used by companies?

In my prior post I have discussed the value of Twitter for private people. In this post I would like to discuss more in depth the business opportunities of Twitter. Why do organisations actually need Twitter?

Twitter works much like text messaging, you send 140 character messages but instead of it being strictly limited to your friends you send them to your followers and in the end the world wide web. As a member you have the ability to follow other users, every time they post a new message or Tweet you will be notified. Through Twitter search you can search all of the Tweets that have been posted.

The following fantastic vodcast shows some examples of Irish companies sharing their experiences using Twitter. All of these companies are unanimous exited of Twitter.

Many benefits of Twitter are mentioned, but there are much more:

- Brand awareness

- Attract products

- Building relationships

- Companies bolster their brands

- Drawing attention

- Share thoughts and experiences with people never met before

- Gathering feedback from the community

- Ask experts

- Increase hits on the own webside

- Increase customer enquires

- Closer relationship to customers

- Opportunity to come back to people all over the world

- Track in realtime what people are thinking

- Sharing ideas and ask for thoughts

- Brainstorming

- Discovering interesting networks

- Research

- Targeted communication platform

Some great articles were published in Businessweek how Twitter can be used by companies. Best practice example of Apple, Jet Blue, Dell, GeneralMotors and so on are given.

JetBlue for example scans microposts for the word JetBlue to find customers who might need information on flight delays or cancellations. Other organisations consider their brand on Twitter. The real control of the brand has moved into the customer’s hands, and technology has enabled that,” says Lane Becker, president of Get Satisfaction, a Web site that draws together customers and companies to answer each other’s questions and give feedback on products and services.

Twitterbackground.com helps companies to build up a personal brand on Twitter.

When an organisation uses Twitter for their brand, marketing department should include Twitter into their marketing strategies. Firstly a marketing plan is needed which considers the communication strategy – purpose of twittering, what to tweet and which followers to attract.

There are many reasons for companies to use Twitter:
Reasons for companies to use microblogging

And what about internal microblogging, like tweeds from the chief?
Updates can be spread out easily by using microblogging. How many emails are sent by companies daily about updates, ptoject processings, further information. Mostly one person is engaged at least half an hour to send well formulated emails to a selected distribution list. Why not send an update in less than 140 words? It saves time for the communicator as well as the readers.

Just try it out, the results may be interesting.

Is Twitter a waste of time?

When I first heard about Twitter I was woundering what’s the business value of Twitter. Twitter asks a simple question “what are you doing” but isn’t that the same question which is asked in Social networks such as Facebook? What is the difference of typing in what I am doing in Facebook or in Twitter? Is Twitter just another tool in the forest of Web 2.0 tools? And why is Twitter so successful?

Twitter has become one on the most famous tools for building up relationships. That is the actual value of Twitter. On the webside Twitter has just published a guide with best practices and case studies

But not only for companies and organisations Twitter offers added value. Even for building up online networks and relationships for private persons it is one of the fastest way to find interested people in what you are doing (followers).

Our lecturer Jason introduced us in microblogging and showed us in class how it is working and how people are following interesting Tweeds. First I was sceptical but I created a Twitter account and wrote some Tweeds. I integrated the Tweeds in my blog so I can share the Tweeds on Twitter and on my blog. Now I try to tweed as often as I can to attract followers in my blog. And I can see the first effects, I have much more visitors on my blog than I used to have before.