Pretty good advice in the article below. I would add a couple of prerequisites however before conducting any type of hands-on experiment with consumer sites:
- Check your existing policies and procedures concerning use of technology by employees. Many organizations have guidelines in place since the early days of bulletin board systems. In many cases, there's no problem with people becoming active in various online communities, social networking sites or publishing their own information via blogs, wikis and so. But, issues can arise when an employee represents themselves as an employee and includes any type of brand reference as part of their personal participation. For instance, I know one company that terminated an employee because they started a company network on Facebook.
- Be smart with any company-related information. There have been published accounts of information posted on consumer sites that could be considered an outright security breach or creates a situation that increases the risk of social impersonation. There have also been reports on use of consumer tools that has lead to embarrassing media coverage for some enterprises.
Use of consumer-centric tools can lead to an internal pilot. Even if it does not, hopefully, IT organizations are investing in some type of emerging technology group to help establish a baseline understanding of the different categories of social computing tools available and how best-of-breed vendors approach the market. Often I find that IT strategists are simply going with major vendors without any, or very little, effort to asses what specialized vendors have to offer. I understand the affinity for going with a larger vendor (reduce infrastructure complexity, avoid higher integration costs, change management, risk management, acquisition of smaller players, etc). But that does not excuse the lack of due diligence when it comes to examining the market and a assessing particular technology domain. The knowledge gained from understanding market dynamics and positioning multiple options (with pro/con angles) enables strategists to do a far better job at gap analysis against the larger vendors, assessing that vendor's ability to deliver over time, and eventually making an informed decision on that larger vendor.
Far too many people I talk to are making blanket assumptions and cannot even tell me what the exact discrepancies are between the larger and specialized vendor. If it is cost-related, what if the cost delta was not all that great and the implementation significantly superior to what the larger vendor supported? The reply often is that the larger vendor will fix it in the next release. OK, but what if that release is in 2 or 3 years out - will business needs be sufficiently satisfied? The answer here often is pretty vague since requirements for social applications are often not quantitative but qualitative. If the application is external, the use of specialized vendors is much more acceptable but employees are often treated like "cobbler's children" (ironic given the emphasis on human resources and employee engagement as part of strategic talent management, growth and innovation messages coming from C-level teams). So when the question as to whether the business can afford to wait 2-3 years or suffer through a sub-optimal solution that may turn people off (remember, social applications are often optional in terms of user participation) - the discussion gets circular (back to complexity, integration costs, change management, etc.).
In any case (1) IT organizations should familiarize themselves with consumer market trends and obtain hands-on experience with the various social applications (2) people should initially be very open-minded when looking at their social computing technology categories and specialized vendors within those categories. Closing down options upstream will bias the entire process.
This last item warrants having some type of emerging technology group that can "kick the tires" of these tools and create a "learning baseline" for other IT strategists to tap into as they make informed decisions regarding preferred and/or standard vendors. In some cases, what a larger vendor delivers in terms of social software will suffice. In other cases, the overall platform provded by the vendor will outweigh the functional deficiency it hase with a particular area. In other situations, a tactical decision might be made that favors an emerging player (an example here would be the recent partners Microsoft announced for XML feeds [NewsGator] and wikis [Atlassian]). A strategic decision on a specialized vendor could be justified if the preferred vendor does not have a solution in a particular category, or the implementation within that category is unacceptable given business needs.
To some extent, this leads to a discussion on decision criteria, IT principals and having a reference architecture against which you can set product direction. It also highlights the need for strategists to think in terms of transitions and flows rather than static architecture and product standards. If you don't have a life-cycle management framework for technology, then you tend to not develop the governance and change management practices that enable you to leverage specialized vendors when they are indeed appropriate.
Article picked up from Bill Ives over at Portals and KM:
I have a challenge for every CIO and IT manager reading this: Set yourself up on Facebook.
I challenge you because I'm convinced it's something you have to do if you ever expect to truly comprehend the power of social networking and the role it can play in the growth of your business. Until you "get it," you'll never be able to embrace what experts say is inevitable. This is the future of networking.
.....
So during a break, I talked with a number of IT managers and grilled them about their knowledge of social networking sites. Most of them viewed the sites as problematic in terms of security and work productivity but admitted they didn't know much about sites like MySpace and Facebook. A few said they did Facebook and MySpace searches when interviewing potential employees (the idea being that any secrets you have will be revealed on your profile page). None of them had ever navigated a site, but they were convinced they knew how their kids were using them. Surprisingly, none of them had corporate policies blocking social networking sites, nor were they considering doing so, even though in a recent survey, nearly 50% of businesses polled said they did block these sites.
The good news is that with a little prodding (and explaining), I convinced some of them to try it. If nothing else, they'll at least be more knowledgeable when the debate over social networking sites makes its way to the table.
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