Over the last couple of weeks I have been blogging a couple of times around the topic of figuring out the Return of Investment (a.k.a. ROI) of Social Software, with the latest instance over at "IBM Lotusphere 2009 Highlights – The Business Value of Collaboration Software". To continue further with some more thoughts on this subject, here I am again, putting together a short blog post sharing with you a follow up of that last blog entry with a lovely presentation that David Tebbutt recently held at CMA’s 50th conference in London and which continues our previous conversation on the topic.
You will be able to access the presentation from this direct link, or you can watch the embedded version below:
In it David is off to a solid start putting together some caveats that clearly outline what social software is doing at the moment within the corporate world: "Hierarchies get flattened; Silos get breached; Intermediaries get sidelined; Openness increases; Transparency increases; Trust is vital". Yes, I know what you are thinking! Some of those caveats are very tied in with what traditional Knowledge Management attempted to do from the very beginning but failed to deliver over the course of the years. Well, it gets better…
From there onwards David puts together a number of different key elements that help emphasize the impact of social software within the enterprise. To name: "Discover; Validate through; Dialogue; Reputation; Morale; Innovation; Harness; ". You would have to agree with me that all of these are very valuable intangibles, with a very clear business value, yet almost impossible to pull their ROI, don’t you think? Yet we all know we probably couldn’t survive without each and everyone of them. And probably we shouldn’t!
Which is just the perfect end of the slide deck itself with "So, what is the value of social networking?"… Well, how about these?:
Not bad, eh?
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Lotusphere, Lotusphere 2009, LS09, Lotusphere2009, Highlights, David Tebutt, Tebbo, Culture, Trust, ROI, Return on Investment, Business Value, Value Add, Openness, Transparency, CMA, Silos, Flattened Hierarchies, Intermediaries, Openness, Reputation, Harness, Discovery, Validation, Morale
That’s useful – currently involved in a conversation with IT to justify spending 10K on improving internal social software – not easy when they think in Six Sigma..!
Hi Richard! Thanks for the kind comments and for dropping by. Interesting feedback, looks like some folks still need to open up a bit in order to make things happen faster. I am not sure what the end-result of the covnersation would be like, but I surely know that sometimes you rather catch the train and get on board or you will miss it for good. Hope those folks are the ones wanting to catch it. Good luck and wish you luck!
Thanks again for the feedback!
Very nice post, indeed, and I also really enjoy to see that other companies are more open to creating social networks, even for communication with their customers, yeay!
I have two questiona: how do you encounter people with arguments that people
a) are spending their time thinking and reading “outside the box” if project timelines are being set tougher tighter with every new project and
b) that (project) management does not loose control?
Thanks for sharing your opinion and ideas!!