The Dawn of Enterprise 2.0

Last year saw an unprecedented hunger for social networking web sites, with YouTube being snapped up by Google, Flickr acquired by Yahoo! and MySpace forging links with NewsCorp. This trend looks likely to grow in 2007, as more and more of the big media giants look to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

But amongst all the brouhaha, a number of companies were quietly going about their business and having their own internet revolution. General Motors, investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort and international photographic company Eastman Kodak are all examples of firms that have embraced the tools developed by the new kids on the block to drive their companies forward into the new millennium.

The reason? In a nutshell, better collaboration, more interaction and a greater focus on building lasting relationships with all stakeholders – whether they be internal or external to the company. “Most large organizations are thought of as being pretty faceless,” jokes GM’s Communications Manager Bill Betts. “We wanted to change people’s perception of GM from one where we were viewed as a large, unfeeling, unthinking entity into a corporation that was interested in connecting with people – with our employees, our customers and our potential customers.”

These forward-thinking companies are using everything at their disposal – from blogs, wikis and RSS feeds to social networks and mashups – to gain a competitive advantage, and each has their own unique appeal. GM, for instance, has used its corporate blog as a key part of its communication strategy, as Betts explains: “We know that we’re competitive with any truck or car company in the world in terms of quality and durability and design, but we felt that message wasn’t really being communicated very well to people outside of GM. As we looked at how we could help change that perception, we felt that blogs were the right way to develop better interactivity with the customers and really communicate our message better.”

But blogs aren’t the only way in which companies can help improve their organizational efficiencies and drive the bottom line. Business Management hears from a number of the leading companies involved in using Web 2.0 technologies to discover how it has impacted upon their business.

MyPlace

Fred Killeen, CTO at General Motors, explains how his company is benefiting from its embrace of Web 2.0 technologies.

Fred Killeen currently serves as General Motors’ Chief Systems and Technology Officer for GM’s Information Systems and Services, and is responsible for the evaluation of emerging information technologies and the insertion of those technologies into the mainstream of GM’s systems and infrastructure. Killeen is also responsible for the systems development process and application architecture for the Information Systems and Services organization. Here, he talks to Business Management’s Ben Thompson about why better collaboration is important for GM – and how Web 2.0 is helping the company get there.

BM. Web 2.0 technologies and ideas – blogs, wikis, RSS, social networking sites, etc. – have proven something of a cultural phenomenon over the past few years, and they now look set to change the face of the modern business. How are you embracing Web 2.0 over at GM?

FK. As you mentioned, a lot of the Web 2.0 technologies to date have been consumer-facing –sites like Flickr and del.icio.us, along with some of the better-known wikis and blogs out there have really taken the internet by storm and transformed the way people think about and interact with the web. So one of the things we’re really taking a hard look at is how to exploit those capabilities to add value to our operations, and there are two areas here. The first is that we can use them to help us improve from an external-facing sales and marketing standpoint, which goes out to our customers and the wider world; the other is to figure out how to leverage those technologies internally.

In terms of blogging, whilst we do run a number of blogs here at GM, we haven’t really realized their potential yet in terms of improving our internal operations. Where we do see definite opportunities, however, is in the area of wikis. A lot of the collaborative work that goes on amongst project teams has really benefited from the use of wikis and discussion forums; the ability to have people interact much more quickly, much more immediately on the web has been very powerful for us. We’ve seen benefits both within the IT team itself and also out in other areas of the company.

BM. You’re something of an early adopter of Web 2.0 capabilities. When did you first identify the potential for these emerging technologies?

FK. Some of these technologies have been around for quite some time now, and I guess from an emerging technology perspective we’ve been watching them now for around 18 months –even longer in the case of wikis and RSS. However, it’s only recently that they’ve started to come into the mainstream from an enterprise pint-of-view. The key thing for us was ensuring we had commercially supported software to use as a foundation.

BM. What kind of feedback are you getting ¬– from employees, customers and other interested parties? How useful is this feedback?

FK. We’ve experienced a lot of enthusiasm about how these technologies can change the way people work, and certainly our employees are very excited by this. I’ll be honest though: we’re still very early in our implementation. There’s a cultural change aspect and a change management aspect around this that involves evolving the way people do their work and interact with each other, and that’s still ahead of us.

The whole mantra of Web 2.0 is that it’s turning the internet from a brochure into an interactive web. People enjoy the fact that they don’t have to e-mail Powerpoint presentations or Word documents to each other in order to share ideas; instead, they can just start a wiki and have people interact with it. It’s simple to do – you don’t need to be a technical expert to post the content, it’s something that anyone can do.

The other thing for us is that we’re a global company with employees spread all over the world working together. If they were all sitting in the same room it might not have quite the same impact, but because our people in different countries need to connect, Web 2.0 is invaluable. For example, we might have someone in Korea collaborating with someone in China who’s working with somebody in Brazil, who are all part of the same design team. To have that ability to support those people in three different geographic locations, and for them to be able to collaborate across time zones, is very powerful for us.

BM. What’s next for you at GM in terms of Web 2.0? How are you going to be approaching that change management aspect you mentioned earlier?

FK. There are a couple of things we’re doing. We’re seeding the company with Web 2.0 pilots to help us understand how such technologies get used within the company and to allow us to see what challenges we have from a change management standpoint – we recognize that there’s a significant amount of communication needed in order to educate users on how to use these technologies and how to engage with them. However, we also see that there’s great potential for changing the way we do a lot of things, from how we engage our users, to how we develop systems, to how we interact with our customers, right through to how we collaborate together in order to design and develop better cars and trucks.

If you look at the portfolio of Web 2.0 technologies, there’re a number of areas we could explore further. One that interests us greatly is the whole idea of how to exploit ‘mashups’ – I think there’s a great opportunity for us to start integrating the services we can offer internally with other services that exist outside of GM, blurring the line between what’s ‘GM’ and ‘not GM’. How do you take advantage of the full universe of the web and your internal systems and the internal systems of others and create that integration? That’s a huge area of interest for us.

I think Ajax will also play a big role for us in terms of helping us to get more interactivity into our applications and make more usable interfaces for our end-users.

One of the other areas that we’re looking at is the self-organizing aspects of data –metadata and self-tagging, for instance. How do you take a Flickr model or a Del.icio.us model and apply it within an enterprise? I think part of it is to strip away the very rigid, structured taxonomy of how people store information and let the users have input on how they think they should be able to find that information, and what information could help them in that process.

BM. Based on your own experiences at GM, what advice would you give to any companies just starting to think about getting involved in these types of projects?

FK. My input would be to do some pilots, and through those pilots understand how it changes the work and how it impacts the users and what you need to do from a change management standpoint. The thing that makes this technology great is that it’s reasonably simple yet allows you to exploit a whole host of capabilities. It’s less about being technology complex than it is about changing the way that

The rise of social networks

Ecademy.com, mooted as the MySpace for business people and entrepreneurs, was set up nine years ago, braved the dotcom crash of 2000 and now attracts more than 6000 new members a month to its social network. It’s been built privately, with its owners having hands-on experience in developing its legacy.

One of Ecademy’s founders, Penny Power, believes the key to building a successful social network is building emotional connections and a real sense of community. A website that just wows you with flashy tools will lose its appeal fast. “Tools are just fads, communities and friendships evolve. Social networks have to become communities, and in order to do that they require a culture and values. What people want is intimacy and friendship, not just contacts. Being a name on a contact list is no different from being a business card in a rollodex,” comments Power. “Knowing who you can learn from is what matters and what social networks should be about,” she adds. The comment backs reports in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, which urge companies to exploit the web in order to make customers feel involved.

Ecademy.com even extends this policy to its banner advertising, so there are rewards for members. One such example is its link with Zubka, a recruitment agency. Members can earn commission from placing friends in jobs. Another company, MWB Business Exchange, offers discounted office space. This reflects the growing importance to brands of social networks and their awareness that they can’t purely use them as advertising space but must engage with the community.

Ecademy’s founders Penny and Thomas Power have put together the following predictions for the Social Networking Boom in 2007.

• Jumping in: Tool-based sites such as LinkedIn and Xing are moving towards building online communities with the introduction of facilities such as blogging.
• In on the act: The appeal of social networks will become so irresistible that most major business will try and buy into it in some way. Brands from all sectors will want to integrate into a pool of primed customers. Television companies are already encouraging viewers to post comments on plotlines in soap operas and top TV shows, and Kleenex has just launched a campaign with TV adverts encouraging online interaction from customers.
• Choose a platform: Social networks will become a sought-after method of tapping into niche markets. Companies will want to buy into them either for selling to, or recruiting its users. Facebook already has channels seeking staff for Microsoft and Ernst and Young. Ecademy has just made links with Zubka.
• Stamping out anti social networks: The role of the social network is to act as facilitators of relationships, with the responsibility of ensuring that message boards, blogs and postings are courteous and professional. Unmonitored social networks can sadly be used for anti-social behavior. Penny predicts that as brands race to launch social networks, online libel cases will surge this year with message boards, blogs and postings providing web users the opportunity to degrade the reputation of people and companies. Ecademy advises websites to not overlook this and urges tight safeguards, such as a clear code of practice. Social Responsibility is key in this marketplace as the repercussions of ignoring this are enormous for the individual taking part and the network owners. In the interest of keeping members on Ecademy safe from antisocial behavior of any kind Ecademy has a clear set of rules that all members are asked to adhere too called the Best Practice Guide.
• Small groups mean big business: Small groups and ‘clubs’ will be the web buzzwords of 2007. A chance to be part of a big network, but within the intimacy of a club or chat room, will drive web users to return to the same site more often by building an emotional connection. Users will form strong allegiances to these clubs, just as they do with football clubs. More websites will offer users a chance to form clubs as a way of building intimacy. Ecademy has operated a free club-building function for four years.
• Grown up networking: The social networking Web 2.0 revolution has been led so far by the kids but 2007 will see the over 35s getting on board. An indication of the growing importance of social networks to adults is Ecademy’s membership profile. Ecademists (Ecademy members) tend to be 35+, self-employed with a family. Through this profile members support each other with their home, social and business life, confirming Ecademy’s purpose to increase members’ emotional and financial wealth.

Collaboration in the enterprise

By Axel Thill, Head of eCommerce at Dresdner Kleinwort

Today the collaborative world at Dresdner Kleinwort is a different place from 18 months ago. We now have the largest internal corporate Wiki in existence, with over 5000 active individual pages created or accessed by over 2500 individual users from 10 different geographical locations. Our wiki is used by approximately 40 percent of the bank’s workforce, covering all divisions and asset classes, within the front, middle and back office. In addition, we have over 450 internal blog writers. Readers can be updated on changes to the blogs and wikis via RSS, or through a real time feed into our internal instant chat system, called Grapevine. As with all our collaborative tools, Grapevine Chat is used on a worldwide basis, offering IM functions which meet our enterprise and regulatory needs.

With the Wiki, the most interesting results can be observed in day-to-day changes to the way that people do business. These are incremental changes, but ones that have a direct effect on our productivity and innovation. Take for example a simple meeting agenda: once users started to publish meeting agendas on the wiki, the increase in transparency and collaborative editing meant that all participants began to see a direct benefit in terms of the productivity of the meeting itself. Not only was the agenda always up to date, but users started to make dynamic changes to it – adding or removing items, even initiating a pre-meeting discussion on overlooked issues.

Previously, such preparation phase happened via e-mail, but the difference with wikis was tangible to all. The key to the wiki success is collaboration, as on this platform an individual is much less intimidated by the prospect of adding viewpoints than they are doing the same thing via e-mail. It may sound like a minor change in perception, but the results are very encouraging. The wiki has the effect of countering what you might want to call the ‘conference room questions’ problem, where people have important ideas, viewpoints or questions to contribute, but do not want to be seen to raise them so directly at such a late stage.

With blogs the benefits are more obvious, as they are mainly used in one of three ways; firstly to ask for help; secondly to transfer information (“did you guys know…”) and to do so in a way that is not just a statement, but an invitation to comment; and thirdly to bounce ideas (“I was thinking of doing this”) – this invites other people to refine the idea, to inform if it has already been achieved or half achieved or to lend support. With blogs, coffee machine conversations become transparent to the whole community in a very efficient manner.

These three collaborative tools – Wiki, Blog and Chat – may all look like small changes to the way people work, but through better collaboration and communication, increases in transparency soon add up to make a real difference to productivity. One figure that always resonates with reference to the wiki is the reduction in e-mail traffic. When a wiki is set up to serve a certain project, e-mail volume relating to that project drops by up to 75 percent.

People want to co-operate, collaborate and communicate. Through the top-down recognition of the values of collaboration and the grass roots spread of usage by learning from early adopters through the business, the uptake of these technologies has been essentially viral.

Picture this

“A blog from Kodak?” These were the first words of the first post to Eastman Kodak Company’s corporate blog, www.1000words.kodak.com, launched on September 6, 2006. The question may have echoed those asked by our audience: Why a blog? And why would the world be interested in one from Kodak?

Over the past few years, Kodak has undergone a very significant business transformation – from a film manufacturing company to a leader in digital technology. For decades previously, employees and consumers knew Kodak and what we stood for – great pictures on the best film and paper available.

Today, film isn’t the foundation of all great image capture. Sensors, megapixels and memory cards have begun to replace speed and emulsions in our consumer vocabulary. So by mid-2006, with our business transformation well underway, we felt it was time to reintroduce ourselves to the world. There was no better way to do it than through the people who make us who we are: our employees.

In considering the best medium for this outreach, a blog seemed the obvious answer. We had watched the success of GM’s blog, and the way it connected with internal and external audiences in ways that standard marketing and public relations activities could not. In addition, the more we considered the idea, the more potential bloggers we found – employees with remarkable stories to tell, and who have documented these stories in images (as Kodak team members are inclined to do).

Today, our corporate blog team consists of more than 20 regular contributors from around the globe, and many guest bloggers. A small team, equivalent to two full-time coordinators and technical specialists, facilitate the daily weekday postings, each of which includes several photos, videos or sound effects.

The consistent flow of fresh and compelling content on “1000words” has been very well received. The site receives thousands of visits each day; and since our launch last September, we’ve had visitors from more than 130 countries.

In fact, we have been so successful in introducing the ‘soul’ of Kodak (personal stories by our employees) that we’ve decided to begin sharing the ‘science’ behind our success. By the end of January, Kodak engineers and researchers who have laid the groundwork for our accomplishments in digital imaging will begin contributing stories to a technology-focused blog.

In the end, these blogs distinguish Kodak in ways traditional marketing and communications methods would not. By relinquishing some of the control of our message – from the posts by our employees (which are not edited for content) to the responses by our readers (which also are not filtered or edited) – we are connecting with the digitally savvy audiences that will help us drive our future success.

Tom Hoehn is Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at kodak.com and
Denise Stinardo is Manager of New Media at Eastman Kodak Company.