Pierre Fevrier-Vincent has created a set of infographics around our recently launched Version 4 of IBM Connections to highlight some aspects of the new product.Here is #1: An Overview of the most relevant components of IBM Connections 4: Profiles, Microblogging, Wikis, Blogs, Flies and Search, Ideation, Forums, Bookmarks and Activities. The infographics can also be downloaded and used through our Social Business Flickr account under Creative Common License.
According to the following IBM CMO study infographic, the biggest problem CMOs have is adapting to the customer-centric social landscape. It’s not about market trends — it’s about the customer. Additionally, it’s not about the data, it’s about how data can help build relationships.
via cmswire.com
According to the following IBM CMO study infographic, the biggest problem CMOs have is adapting to the customer-centric social landscape. It’s not about market trends — it’s about the customer. Additionally, it’s not about the data, it’s about how data can help build relationships.
I like this infographic verymuch. What I like even more is the message to (finally) focus on the customer. In the social age it is about dialogue and communication, not about spamming people with Marketing Messages and for sure not about endless slideware and spreadsheets. Go out there and communicate with your customers. And take them serious.
Hinzu kommt der Strom von maximal 140 Zeichen langen Meldungen auf Twitter, die Facebook-Wall, auf der stetig neue Infos geteilt werden, der Xing-Nachrichtenstrom und so weiter. Dann noch Blogs, Wikis und Communities, in denen auch latent neue Informationen hinzukommen. Die Vorstände waren beeindruckt, ja vielleicht sogar abgeschreckt durch diese neue Welt der Informations- und Kanalüberflutung. “Wer liest denn das alles” oder “Können Sie das denn alles lesen” war die logische Frage. Ich habe dann gezeigt, wie ich die externen sozialen Kanäle mit Hilfe von Hootsuite verfolge, bestimmte “Hashtags” monitore und auch den Versand von Nachrichten in diesen Medien steuere. “Ja, aber das macht der normale Jugendliche nicht so. Sie machen das ja professionell.”, war die Reaktion. Das mag sein, aber ich habe den Vorständen mit auf den Weg gegeben, dass die Welt der sozialen Kanäle mit ihrer Informationsflut und -vielfalt nicht aufzuhalten ist. Diese Flut zu bewältigen, in der Lage zu sein, die wichtigen Informationen herauszufiltern, ist eine wichtige Fähigkeit und Kompetenz, die man heutzutage erlernen muss, privat, aber auch gerade am Arbeitsplatz.
Mein Kollege und ich haben den Vorständen dann auch die IBM-interne Arbeitsweise gezeigt, demonstriert, wie wir in Echtzeit mit IBM Sametime chatten oder im internen sozialen Netzwerk IBM Connections Informationen teilen und Projekte steuern. Dabei zeigten wir einige IBM-interne Communities. Der Kollege ist Mitglied in rund 20 Communities. Ich habe es eben einmal geprüft und festgestellt, dass ich in 88 Communities eingetragen bin. [Kleine Randbemerkung: Déja vu? Sicherlich, in den Glanzzeiten von Lotus Notes haben wir erlebt, wie für jedes Thema eine Notes-Datenbank erstellt wurde. Und den Kollegen von Microsoft geht es mit Sharepoint auch nicht anders. Natürlich stellt sich wieder die Frage, ob all diese Communities, Aktivitäten und Foren wirklich notwendig sind, oder ob man nicht besser einige Informationstöpfe zusammenfassen sollte. Doch genau das ist keine Frage des zugrunde liegenden Systems, sondern eine organisatorische Entscheidung, die die Software nur möglichst optimal unterstützen sollte. Nicht umsonst haben wir in IBM Connections beispielsweise Sub-Communities eingeführt.]
Natürlich wurde auch hier von den Vorständen die Frage gestellt, wie wir denn bei allen Communities, Blogs und Foren die Übersicht behalten. Eine nützliche Funktion ist hierfür die tägliche Zusammenfassung der Aktivitäten einer Community (oder eines Forum, eines Blogs, Wikis etc.), die man sich – sinnigerweise per E-Mail – zuschicken lassen kann. Natürlich lasse ich mir diese Zusammenfassung nicht für alle 88 Communities, Blogs etc. zuschicken. Ich bekomme sie nur für einen Bruchteil, nur von denen, die für meine Arbeit tagesaktuell wichtig sind. Alle anderen Communities und Informationsquellen recherchiere ich dann, wenn es nötig ist. Man muß und sollte sich nicht immer alle Informationen nach dem Push-Prinzip zusenden lassen. Oft ist das Pull-Prinzip wesentlich sinnvoller.
Hier sind wir immer noch beim möglichst intelligenten Umgang mit der Informationsflut, bei persönlichen Arbeits- und Filtertechniken, mit denen man diese Flut bewältigt und bei der Notwendigkeit, diese Techniken beigebracht zu bekommen. Aber in Zeiten von Watson können und sollten wir auch systemtechnische Hilfe an- und einfordern. Die IT-Systeme müssen uns nicht nur helfen, durch die Informationsfluten zu navigieren und Informationen leicht zu finden. Sie sollten auch Informationen in einen Kontext stellen. Was meine ich damit? Wenn ich mir in IBM Connections einen Blogbeitrag ansehe, schlägt mir die Software in der Seitenleiste automatisch ähnliche Beiträge vor. Ich finde dort auch Kollegen, die sich mit dem Thema beschäftigt haben, identifiziere als über das System Experten. IBM Connections stellt so über Social Analytics genau wie oben gefordert Kontext her.
Solche Funktionalitäten zeigen, wie sich Social Software und Analytics sinnvoll ergänzen können. Sie sind auch ein deutliches, funktionales Differenzierungsmerkmal des IBM Angebots zu den Marktbegleitern. Hat man dann Technologien wie Watson im Kopf, so lässt sich erahnen, wie viel an dieser Stelle noch zu erwarten ist. Analytische Funktionen werden in Zeiten, in denen man oft keine/n Sekretär/in mehr hat, der die Post vorsortiert, zum neuen Assistenten, der bei der Bewältigung der Arbeit hilft. Das entbindet nicht davon, selbst zu denken. Jedoch kann und sollte Software wie IBM Connections dabei untersützen, besser und schneller zu entscheiden.
Meet the C-Suite
In a study of more than 1,700 chief executive officers in 64 countries, IBM sought to understand how CEOs respond to the complexity of increasingly interconnected organizations, markets, societies and governments. In this new connected era, which has helped to fundamentally change how people engage, leaders are finally recognizing that they need change accordingly. As a result, IBM found that CEOs are creating more open and collaborative cultures, encouraging employees to connect, and learning from each other to thrive in a world of rapid change.
- Collaboration is the number-one trait CEOs are seeking in their employees, with 75% of CEOs calling it critical.
- More than 70 percent of CEOs are seeking a better understanding of individual customer needs and improved responsiveness.
- More than half of all CEOs are partnering extensively to drive innovation.
With the emergence of mobile, cloud and social technologies, today’s CEOs are leading through unchartered territories and can’t always refer to the predecessors for advice. To steer their organizations effectively, the IBM study revealed three leadership traits that CEOs feel are most critical: inspirational leadership, customer obsession and leadership teaming across the C-suite.
…
Clearly, the evolution of chief executives as leaders can directly impact their organizations’ behavior, culture and results. As such, it’s the CEO’s responsibility to be in touch with the reality their employees and customers face. For some, that means being on social media or roaming the halls to learn how people are working (or not working) or actively engaging with stores, products and services.via cmswire.com
I am speaking today at the CEO Academy in Zurich in Switzerland. Do I recommend the CEO’s attending to be on Twitter or another social network as a general guideline? Probably not. I had enough discussions the last years about “ghost blogging ” and “ghost tweeting”. I don’t believe in it, to be honest. Yes, a CEO (and any other C-level executive) should ask for help and should get help from his staff to become more social. But there needs to be some serious personal commitment and involvement by the CEO. Otherwise it becomes “Social Messaging Blabla”.
To be as an CEO in Social Media is one thing, which can be done. There are other tactics, which should be considered:
But I probably shouldn’t publish my whole story yet …
Yesterday, Uwe sent me a direct tweet asking me if I would give a talk at an event in November. The whole conversation took place via Twitter. A few weeks ago, Bianca wanted to arrange an interview with me. I first got the message on Xing (and in my private e-mail inbox, as Xing forwards my messages). She then asked me on Facebook and my work e-mail. Martin automatically sends all his e-mails to both my official IBM address and my private account.
I could continue. After all, I haven’t yet mentioned instant messaging – at IBM we use Sametime, privately I can be reached via Google Talk. You can also contact me via text message, WhatsApp and, more traditionally, by phone – on several different numbers. By the way, I’ve just realized that in my case actual letters brought by the mailman barely figure.
To cut a long story short, the number of available communication channels keeps growing. The days of opening the mail with a paper knife every morning are over (at least for me). At some stage, my work e-mail became the standard way I received my mail. But now, as I described above, there are so many channels that it’s all getting quite messy. And as if that weren’t enough, in the age of social networking, the boundaries between work and private communication are becoming increasingly blurred. I use Twitter, for example, for both. And the situation is similar on Facebook, Google+, Xing and LinkedIn.
But that’s not all! It’s not just that the number of channels of communication has exploded, the pace at which this all happens is accelerating dramatically, too. Remember how you used to wait a day or two before answering a letter and slipping your reply into the mailbox? Then fax machines came along, speeding things up a little. Then came e-mail and it all took off exponentially. The triumph of e-mail has led to a general, unspoken expectation that we should answer e-mails quickly, if not to say immediately. Woe betide anyone who leaves the sender waiting! And yet sometimes it is actually worth sleeping on things and sending a more considered response the next day rather than firing off an immediate, often emotional and over-the-top answer. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about…
So: there are more communication channels of many and various types; the back-and-forth of communicating is faster than ever; and people are expecting much more rapid responses. The situation is exacerbated by real-time communication tools like instant messaging. We are always “on”; we are always ready. In the meantime the flood of information is rising; the river is fit to burst its banks. The ability to filter information, to pick up the right information at the right time is becoming a vital skill in society today.
IBM Connections, currently launching in its Version 4.0, tackles these problems with a range of responses including its new Activity Streams. Activity Streams syndicate events, information, tasks and news from various systems into a single stream of activities. The information can come from a vast range of different sources such as e-mail, corporate e-mail, private cloud e-mail, SAP events, tweets, Facebook posts, SharePoint documents, and many more. The Activity Stream Standard serves as the interface for integrating the events from all the different systems. Activity Streams are particularly convenient, economical and efficient when users can directly process the various information and events without having to switch to the source application.
Could Activity Streams become the universal inbox of the future? Perhaps, but that’s not all! This isn’t just a new place to collect messages, it’s an entirely new approach to organizing our working lives – it’s a cultural change. The e-mail generation focuses on its inbox and on dealing with messages that users can sort into a hierarchy of folders. The social networking generation is much more network-oriented, working in real time, multi-tasking, more willing to share information with others within the “swarm”. It is this work paradigm that is reflected in the Activity Streams, a confluence of various cascading and trickling tributaries of information.
Both “generations” are part of today’s workforce and have to work together. This is why it’s important to link the ways they work. The traditional world of e-mail needs to become “more social”. In turn, social networks must integrate e-mail, as is already the case to a certain extent with private use. IBM Connections Mail, which integrates Exchange or Domino e-mail in the enterprise social network, IBM Connections, shows that the two worlds can be merged. It allows you to read, action and file e-mails within the social network. And obviously, it also makes it a lot easier and neater to “socialize” messages, to forward them to blogs or wikis, and to share them. It is also easier to classify activities and to use them in the new “social” way of working. This means moving away from gigantic inboxes and toward a way of sharing business information and processes openly, yet safely. We’re not talking about life outside the inbox here, but rather about “socializing” inboxes.
Will Activity Streams and solutions like IBM Connections solve my problem of multiple inboxes, being constantly inundated with information, always being connected, and latent multitasking? In a word, no. We had to learn how to deal with e-mail, and now we have to get used to and learn the new Web 2.0 style of communicating and working. Tools like IBM Connections that apply familiar patterns from private use of Web 2.0, thus integrating and combining IT applications that are crucial to the company, are useful “enablers” that support the new type of information stream and working style better than e-mail systems do. Step-by-step in this multi-channel information stream, we will have to get used to working and communicating in a swarm-oriented way, constantly under the pressure of the expectations of real-time communication. We live in the “social era” – always plugged into a stream of information and occasionally out of our depth.
ROI is important, so lets look at ROI first of all. With a customer support community it’s a pretty straightforward deal. Ok, let me rephrase that, it ‘should’ be a straightforward deal, because I’m assuming you know how much each problem resolution costs via your standard support channels. You do? Great, then lets move on. Once you have that simple bit of information, all you have to do is measure each successful problem resolution via your online community (that was solved by other members rather than yourself), and divide that by the cost of your community to get the cost per resolution. Compare that with your traditional method and Bob’s your Uncle.
… Cisco have had an online support community for years now, where millions of customers gather online to talk about Cisco products.
Cisco estimates that the online support community diverts around 1 million support requests away from official channels each year. The value of having problems solved by the community is estimated at over $120 million each year! Did you get that? $120 million each year. I reckon that kind of saving would be enough to prove to senior management that social media is worthwhile don’t you?
Great summary and the Cisco-numbers are blowing everybody away. I am always using an internal IBM example of a Self Service community. All the Mac and iOS users in IBM are organized in a Mac Community helping each other. No official support by IT, but a community with experts and not vwery technical users like me solving all questions themselve. (And of course IT provides the necessar entry points, like the VPN gateway for Mac, Traveler access for iOS etc.). Meeting the experts and help each other is a great success factor for communities.
This is why a Corporate Website should host communities, And this is why a Social Portal is so important as part of your Customer Experience. Any successful Customer Self Service Communities you know about and best pratcises to share?
ROI is important, so lets look at ROI first of all. With a customer support community it’s a pretty straightforward deal. Ok, let me rephrase that, it ‘should’ be a straightforward deal, because I’m assuming you know how much each problem resolution costs via your standard support channels. You do? Great, then lets move on. Once you have that simple bit of information, all you have to do is measure each successful problem resolution via your online community (that was solved by other members rather than yourself), and divide that by the cost of your community to get the cost per resolution. Compare that with your traditional method and Bob’s your Uncle.
... Cisco have had an online support community for years now, where millions of customers gather online to talk about Cisco products.
Cisco estimates that the online support community diverts around 1 million support requests away from official channels each year. The value of having problems solved by the community is estimated at over $120 million each year! Did you get that? $120 million each year. I reckon that kind of saving would be enough to prove to senior management that social media is worthwhile don’t you?
Great summary and the Cisco-numbers are blowing everybody away. I am always using an internal IBM example of a Self Service community. All the Mac and iOS users in IBM are organized in a Mac Community helping each other. No official support by IT, but a community with experts and not vwery technical users like me solving all questions themselve. (And of course IT provides the necessar entry points, like the VPN gateway for Mac, Traveler access for iOS etc.). Meeting the experts and help each other is a great success factor for communities.
This is why a Corporate Website should host communities, And this is why a Social Portal is so important as part of your Customer Experience. Any successful Customer Self Service Communities you know about and best pratcises to share?
