Sunday, December 21, 2008
2009 Prediction: Enterprises will figure out how to use social networks in the right way
Prediction #9 in our series of 2009 predictions...covered out of order due to New York Times Blog coverage.
2009 prediction:
In 2009, we predict that companies will finally figure out how to use social networks in the right way: by building up (NOT undercutting) the trust between employees and their friends. Your employees already use social networks to connect and exchange information with others in their personal life... there's no reason that this trend would stop at the office door. In 2009, you'll see HR, marketing, and sales organizations at leading companies capture real business benefits from effective, trust-based use of the social networks of their employees:
- Find and attract great talent for your company by encouraging viral employee referrals
- Create a "virtual account team" of friends inside and outside your company as you approach strategic accounts
- Virally promote activities your employees, customers, and partners are excited about
The underlying reason that social networks are valuable in the enterprise is simple: people trust their friends. Messages that come through personal connections will always have a higher impact than corporate messages conveyed through traditional advertising. This is what gives social networks such potential for viral sales, marketing, and recruiting.... and why maintaining the integrity and trust of the social network is so important. Companies who want to use the social graph effectively need to understand 3 core principles of social networking in the enterprise:
- The world doesn't need "yet another" social network: Social networks benefit from increasing returns to scale. The larger the network, the richer and more valuable the connections between its members. That's why efforts to create "behind the firewall" social networks have failed. Even the largest companies are too small to sustain the diversity of social connections required to rival the level of interactivity of a public service like Facebook. Companies need to acknowledge that the most valuable social networks live outside their firewall, and that making the most of the social graph requires reaching out, not
replicating within. - Lines are blurring between work and play: Many of us would like a clear line between our work life and our personal life....including a separation in these two social networks. But this separation isn't sustainable, and is already starting to break down. One example: our grad school classmates initially connected on Facebook--- even though we are all now doing business together, we still use Facebook to stay in touch. Functionality wise, there's no reason not to (Facebook's interaction is just as effective with work friends). And in any case, services like FriendFeed and Ping.fm make the notion of a separate, disconnected personal social network quaint. What does this mean? Companies need to get used to doing business on Facebook, and seeing personal information on LinkedIn. Employees need to get better using the capabilities these services offer to show different things to different friends. But at the end of the day, people are people, whether at work or at play-- there's no such thing as a purely social network.
- Employees own their social network, not their employers: Every marketing organization salivates over the prospect of privileged access to Facebook's 120 M users. But effective use of social networks requires an understanding that employees own their social networks, and will only allow their employer access if there's a clear value proposition to them AND their friends. The New York Times wrote up Appirio's Jobs4myFriends Facebook application, calling out the risks of inappropriately using an employee's social network. We couldn't agree more: that's why recruiting is such a great use case for an enterprise Facebook app--- our application puts control in the hands of employees, allowing them to refer friends they’d love to work with. YOU choose whether or not to refer a friend for a job, and your company will never see anything about your friends that isn’t public. Establishing this trust is critical to bringing social networks into the enterprise.
Which of our predictions do you agree or disagree with? Please let us know by voting in our poll or commenting below.
Labels: 2009-Predictions, enterprise 2.0, facebook, remove, social networking
Friday, August 15, 2008
3 Reasons We're Excited About Office 2.0
Ryan Nichols
Why are we so excited about this year's Office 2.0 conference ?
First is the theme: Enterprise Adoption. Using online tools to "get things done" is a topic that all of us at Appirio have always been passionate about personally-- we run our day-to-day lives on Salesforce and Google Apps, and most of cringe every time we have to install any piece of on-premise software on our laptops. But while the personal value proposition of Office 2.0 solutions is clear, we're still at the early stages of seeing enterprise adoption of these tools. And that is a topic that interests us professionally: there is massive opportunity in accelerating the adoption of these tools in sizeable organizations-- that's the premise on which Appirio was founded.
Second are the sponsors: In addition to the usual suspects (e.g., salesforce.com, Google), you'll see some new faces at this year's conference. Consider Salesforce and Intacct-- two companies not traditionally associated with personal productivity solutions. The fact that they are interested in Office 2.0 is a clue to why this year's theme is enterprise adoption. We've blogged before about the power of bring together solutions for businesses with solutions for business people, and talked about why this is so difficult using on-premise software. Office 2.0 solutions are increasingly being used to achieve the holy grail of enterprise computing-- getting the right information to the right people at the right time to drive the right actions. When the tools that people love to use to get their work done can display business information relevant to the task at hand, the business value proposition of Office 2.0 will be clear. Appirio is excited to help make this happen-- this is why we are proud to be a Silver Sponsor of this year's event.
The final reason we're so excited about this year's Office 2.0 event is the tone with which Ismael throws the entire production together. No paper. No desktop software. Non-traditional pricing. Centered on demos instead of slides. Rapid cycle between idea and execution. Ismael practices what we are all preaching, and the impact is clear-- a fresh, innovative conference.
So meet us there: the people will be fantastic, the content will be compelling, and Appirio will have some exciting news to share. The conference is September 3-5, at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. Sign up here as a guest of Appirio and get $300 off the registration cost.
Labels: appirio, enterprise 2.0, office 2.0, SaaS, Salesforce for Google Apps
