Social Business Advisor: Social CRM & Enterprise 2.0 - Latest Comments

Re: Collaboration Delivers on Value But Where’s the Money?

Adi — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:13:12 -0000

Your business has a ROI, and it's fairly certain that its shareholders will be holding it to account over it.

So if we take collaboration to mean people working together to get things done, then those things make an excellent item to measure.

If those things are then a key component to how the company makes money then you should be able to assign financial value to it.

It's essential that what we do at work has some kind of purpose. If you just tell people to collaborate aimlessly, what does it mean?

Crowdsourcing is a great example of collaboration, because most crowdsourcing projects have a very clear output. You go on to Innocentive (for example), lay out your problem, and then open it up for people to solve. Your ROI is the solution you get. Simple.

If the only players in the collaboration are internal ones, the focus should remain as laser tight.

Re: How Much Does it Cost to Live in San Francisco?

Guestavo — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 22:39:56 -0000

You can actually leave out the gym because walking up and down all the hills in SF is good exercise and you can buy used weights pretty cheaply.

Re: The Feature Adoption Framework for Social Collaboration

Sanjay Abraham — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 05:40:19 -0000

Nice approach. While all stages have their own importance, stage 3 plays critical role in #ESN's adoption. Once the social intranet is rolled out employees could communicate, share & collaborate. However if the #ESN is not integrated with the core systems & business applications, it doesn't add any value to the employees works and they would soon lose interest. This is the reason many of #ESN fail...instead of being an integral part of the business, it becomes another piece of software in the crowded IT ecosystem. No wonder often #ESNs end up becoming virtual ghost towns.

Re: Scarcity, Good or Bad?

Anthony — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 23:46:03 -0000

how would i cite this for an essay?

Re: The Problem with Many Task Management Solutions like Asana

Scott DeFusco — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 16:48:34 -0000

Love your post! We built kona.com to solve the exact problem you describe. Communication is the key, whether it's communicating the status of a task or general communication with the team working on the project or initiative. And at the core is our @mention feature, which cuts through the noise with a virtual tap on the shoulder so you know when something or someone needs your attention. Kona has a very liberal free use version that includes some slick group task functionality, including "everyone must complete" tasks. Thanks again for the post and feel free to give kona.com a shot. I think you will really like what you see and experience.

Re: Every Employee is Now a Buyer of Collaboration Software

jacobmorgan — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 12:49:02 -0000

Hi Chema,

I completely agree, company-wide solutions can't really be deployed by employees themselves. That's when you need IT and executive support. However, many employees are getting frustrated waiting for corp to move forward with these efforts so they take matters into their own hands and deploy something for their team instead.

Re: Every Employee is Now a Buyer of Collaboration Software

jacobmorgan — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 12:47:33 -0000

Hi Mike,

Sure, vendors such as Moxie Software, Yammer, Co-Op, and several others all offer a free version of their product. Check out this article: http://www.pcworld.com/arti...

I'm sure if you do a search for "free collaboration tools" you will also find several others.

Hope that helps!

Re: Every Employee is Now a Buyer of Collaboration Software

PastorMikie — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 01:56:42 -0000

Hi Jacob!

Would you care to elaborate on "Some companies even allow you to get access to their full-featured products at no cost at all". I found only one (Bitrix24) and while it's good, it's business oriented and I need mine for a church. Would you be kind enough to write a post that would list all free tools or at least those vendors to give free licenses to nonprofits?

Re: Whitepaper: The Business Value of Social CRM and Common Use Cases Pt2

HyderAliZaman — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:00:29 -0000

I'd like to add Banckle CRM here http://banckle.com/apps/crm...

You can sign up for free https://apps.banckle.com/ac...

Re: Every Employee is Now a Buyer of Collaboration Software

Chema Ballarin — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 03:35:26 -0000

While consumerization of IT is a trend that affects collaboration solutions the most, I wouldn't go as far as saying every employee is a potential buyer. Maybe that holds true for small-medium companies but there are a number of areas where a more structured approach is needed when deciding for a collaboration product or solution. Things like security of communications, privacy of content shared, access to the platform, resiliency and scalability come to mind when thinking of a company-wide solution. And there is where is see the danger of letting employees choosing tools by themselves. You can end up (in big enterprises) in an amalgam of silos or ships-in-the-night, where each group or business division is truly collaboration, but only with themselves.

Having said that, I do agree that we sometimes forget to sell collaboration to end-users and that showing the value to them could have a great impact. We sometimes expect companies to do that evangelism work but it's true we should help and do as much as possible from our (the vendor) side.

Re: Four Things Employees Can Do to Align Their Teams and Satisfy Their Boss

pankaj — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 17:39:35 -0000

I did in fact end up writing the post! Didn't end up being as grand as it was in my head, but these are my thoughts on the subject - http://www.officeatwar.com/...

But again, your post is the kind of thing the market needs - not to harp on a bunch of social features, OR get super abstract, but actually show them being used to solve day to day issues.

Re: How to Avoid Losing Your Collaboration “Steam”

jacob Brown — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 08:43:29 -0000

I agree with Gene. It depends a lot on the collaboration softawre you are using. I was also facing the problem of collaboration but later on my friend suggested me to use proofhub. This tool has helped me a lot in collaboration. You can also try this tool here at www.proofhub.com

Re: The Problem with Many Task Management Solutions like Asana

Mark Twin — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 08:29:23 -0000

I'm a long-time asana user and I agree with many of your findings and essentially came to the same conclusion that it seems to be the best tool out there, but not perfect by any means. In particular, I've found asana's inability to provide a team overview really frustrating as well as the limited functionality of its Calendars. To overcome this, I've been using proofhub (www.proofhubcom) which I can say that it is the best alternative to asana. It has both free and paid packages. You can test drive the service free for 30 days, then pick a plan (starting @ $15/month) that best suits your needs.

Re: Do or Do Not, There is No Try

asteven1@frk.com — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 23:31:13 -0000

Where is the line between doing and not doing? And how does one define to business leaders what full commitment really means?

Re: The Problem with Many Task Management Solutions like Asana

Sam Vargas Balignasay-Blanquer — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 02:23:33 -0000

Great post! Adding to these list is workinspire.com. What makes it unique with other project management tool is that Email is integrated on the system, and you can just convert the email to a task, convert that task into a time sheet and generate a PDF Invoice. All in one, right?

Re: The Problem with Many Task Management Solutions like Asana

Phick Steven — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 02:35:46 -0000

Emails will all the time be a must in all task tracking tools. I have been using softwares for my company from a very long time and I have been getting email notifications and yes I think that is a good way altouhgh. But the alternative to that may be a mobile SMS or even more simpler if some one wants to go then they can opt for apps rather than using task tracking tools but that is not preferable all the time.

Re: Four Things Employees Can Do to Align Their Teams and Satisfy Their Boss

jacobmorgan — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:34:26 -0000

Thanks for the kind words Pankaj. It's interesting because I talk to a lot of employees who don't use collaboration platforms for these exact reasons. They just don't know how these tools can be used to solved the problems mentioned above. There's a big lack of education and training in this space. Let me know if you end up writing that post!

Re: Four Things Employees Can Do to Align Their Teams and Satisfy Their Boss

pankaj — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 13:50:16 -0000

Great post! I swear the exact same topic has been floating in my head, though from a different angle. Every employee/manager has to keep three constituents happy - the bosses, the peers and your team. This article is a great description of the things to do inside your collaboration environment to transparently serve these constituents. I was thinking of doing a blog post about what is needed in terms of organizational skills.

Re: My Keynote Presentation on The Future of Work at the Social Business Forum in Milan

jacobmorgan — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 11:38:55 -0000

Yep, they should have showed them, however, you can see them here: http://www.slideshare.net/J...

Re: My Keynote Presentation on The Future of Work at the Social Business Forum in Milan

Peter — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 10:32:56 -0000

Would love to see the slides...

Re: Friday Vendor Roundup: Jive, Yammer, and Tomfoolery

lksugarman — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:13:38 -0000

"trying to unite their separate apps into a coherent ESN" I'm going to assume that is Enterprise Social Network, but the Urban Dictionary defines it as a term used for the Educationally SubNormal.

I'm just always kind of astounded at the efforts, trials, tribulations, and expense of trying to integrate separate apps into a coherent platform. It's always a moving target.

There really *are* alternative, deeply integrated platforms out there. We deliver one of those - http://www.Venntive.com.

Re: Friday Vendor Roundup: Jive, Yammer, and Tomfoolery

KirkSorenda — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 05:21:14 -0000

I don't think that either Jive or Yammer has much future outside enterprise. If you look at how fast Bitrix24 and Mango Apps are growing or how Zoho is trying to unite their separate apps into a coherent ESN, I say the future belongs to these three, especially Bitrix24, which seems to add a new feature once a month. Podio seems to be growing nicely as well.

Re: Do We Really Want Data-Driven Organizations?

Michael Green — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 20:04:16 -0000

Hi Jacob, clearly starting with the end in mind (Covey) is key! Really "big-data" allows executives and employees to explore new opportunities, new perspectives, new markets, new customers, new ways to engage their community. It often results in change management process to make the "big-data" insights actionable within an organisation. However, "big-data" doesn't change the core business of an organisation. It does allow for a more effective organisation.

A colleague @adamson of mine recently summarised his view of the three big data's big questions that must be answered.

To summarize his three biggest big data questions are:
1) What do you want to know - what is the prediction?
2) What do you plan to do when you know the prediction, is it organisationally feasible?
3) How do you intend to influence people towards the prediction and not away from it?

Keep the contextual content coming Jacob!

Here is the link: http://www.kinshipdigital.c...

Re: Emergent Collaboration Vendor Review: Newsgator

social queen — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:53:51 -0000

Hi, how does it go with the Yammer roadmap ?

Re: Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: Features and Benefits List

Jeffer Demello — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:52:19 -0000

I would also suggest use bitly link which allows us to track the performance like how many impressions and clicks from which social networking websites very easily.

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