Pretzel Logic – Social and Collaborative Business

TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and CoTweet -  three of the leading social media dashboards that are in fierce competition to be our chosen gateway into social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. These, amongst other worthy competitors, have been analyzed with a jewelers loupe on criteria such as breadth of service, social network integration, stability, usability, and more (see Techmeme).

What these apps are really good at is facilitating stronger explicit relationships and conversations: View and engage with friends, group followers, monitor topics. And being rescued from Twitters terrible UI. And these are huge benefits.

But does this really helping me leverage the social capital that’s created every second, across my network? No. These apps are really duking it out on convenience as the primary value proposition. Via any of these services, I get to interact more efficiently with those I know or happen to stumble upon, IF I’m online at the right time. And I get to do hail mary keyword searches, across the wild west, that is unstructured social media content.

The Neglected Smarts

The metadata that exposes my current interests is sitting in a number of Twitter services as well as in my Twitter client today. And it’s mostly freely available. Associating that data with the metadata of millions of Twitter users is also available for the taking (more on that below). Simply put, connecting those two constructs is what makes a Twitter client (and me) smart.

Here’s a couple of ways that these social media dashboards can move from being a better gateway to social networks, towards making me smarter via social leverage.

• Groups Sharing: Let me share groups with experts on a topic. For instance, Susan Scrupski, an Enterprise 2.0 thought-leader I respect, most likely has a group of Enterprise 2.0 related folks in her Twitter app of choice. So do I. With her permission, I’d like to us to share access to our groups, so we both make sure we are following the smartest minds in this space. That’s 2 individuals who by sharing will each create a better grouping of people, around the topic of E2.0. We in turn share these with other users of said Twitter client. Lots of value to us users and sticky for the client, on many levels.
• Hottest links in my groups and networks: Persistent search is a hopeless way to find important, relevant links. Todays solutions at best represent a flash back to pre Alta Vista days, let alone pre Google. There’s too much noise with no social search considerations, built in. For starters, Twitter clients should flip the persistent search feature on its head and show me hottest links by topic. Across my network and across Twitter. Consider how the incredible Microplaza facilitates this:

An example of the  hottest stories on Microplaza for “Enterprise 2.0”, right now:

• Smart Follower Sorting: Finding relevant people on Twitter, sucks.  For instance, Innovation is becoming increasingly important to me in my Enterprise 2.0 work. But the idea of being subjected to the noise via a persistent search on ‘Innovation’ is heart-burn inducing. Here’s another way to do it: Hutch Carpenter is someone I follow and trust on the topic of innovation. When I search for Innovation, let me know who Hutch is influenced by (as Klout does) and who he interacts with on the topic of innovation. Show me people (both in my network and outside) who tag them selves as Innovation (as provided by WeFollow). Let me find people based on what you the client, and the Twitter marketplace already knows about me.

Plenty of other concepts come to mind but these should get the juices flowing.

As these Twitter clients move from primarily capitalizing on the network effect created by Twitter, to creating their own network effects and facilitating social search, they become indispensable. And we become smarter.

This post reflects what I’ve learnt from a few Twitter tools I use. So how do you use Twitter and how can social media dashboards make YOU smarter?

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This is the second of a series of posts on my take aways from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

My customers and I debate the applicability of SaaS to their operation on a regular basis, using garden variety criteria such as process alignment, cost, ease, integration, security and the like.

A new dynamic hit me after chatting with multiple SaaS providers at the E2.0 conference:

A good number of E2.0 SaaS solutions unfortunately had little to do with the customer. The decision to go SaaS was largely an inward convenience.

The SaaS Foundation

During 2007-2008, many Venture Capitalists bet on the model that Salesforce has proven out, hoping to emulate it in the E2.0 category. Compared to traditional on premise software, SaaS organizations proposed a reduced operational capital outlay thanks to write once, publish everywhere code, low or no-touch sales via online purchase & provisioning, and flattened marketing costs via free-mium models & platform ecosystem distribution (e.g. AppExchange). And so we see this foundation in many E2.0 providers today.

Enterprise 2.0 Market Reality

Now, superimpose this SaaS operational design on some of the current realities in the Enterprise 2.0 space. Note: I’m talking about larger customers.

• Not one vendor with whom I spoke, on-premise or SaaS, was ready to declare wide scale adoption. It’s tough stuff. And it’s clear that it requires expensive headcount to effectively drive awareness and usage, post deployment.
• Annuity pricing seems to be most palatable for the buyer whether its SaaS or On Premise. So if adoption/applicability starts to wane, don’t expect a check next year.
• Integration is not optional. Whether light weight directory integration or deep application level integration, it’s become the price of entry.
• Integration is not enough. You’re still risking contributing to a silo’d organization and that runs counter to the principles of collaborative environments that E2.0 promises. Unless greenfield, what’s needed is deep association with incumbent ERP /ECM driven activity.
• The most striking lesson from last week’s shocking demise of on-demand BI vendor LucidEra (Hat Tip: Dave Rosenberg | cnet) is this: Customers do not necessarily want simple solutions – in fact, they often need ridiculously complex, often personalized systems to effectively drive business acceleration. What they’re really asking for is simplified experiences that mask them from behind-the-scenes voodoo. Many SaaS vendors seemed to confuse these two distinct requirements.

Salesforce had 2 significantly distinct characteristics going for it that led to critical mass. An individual could drop a credit card and start using the service. Enterprise 2.0 on the other hand is predicated on network effects. Second, Salesforce is used as a standalone application in many use cases. But true Enterprise 2.0 enabled transformation without cognizance of other applications? Not very effective for many organizations.

Now, is all of this pertinent only to E2.0 SaaS providers? Nope. On premise providers need to deal with the realities stated above as well. However, from a organizational design perspective, SaaS only offerings are financed and built to do business with very few marketing, consulting and sales resources and with a one size fits all offering.

On-premise solutions on the other hand are funded like old school enterprise software companies and their financials account for head count to be successful. And so, whist they are also facing tight budgets in this economic climate, they may still be better suited to offer internal integration and adoption services. Or a financially attractive VAR/SI offering.

Product Development Motivators

I couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling that many newer SaaS vendors were more excited about the ease of SaaS being a way to reduce their own acid reflux problems. Sure, agile, iterative development is good for the customer as well. But these benefits need to be weighed against the goal of creating silo busting, well adopted, real time enterprises for customers. And that requires labor intensive adoption and clever integration assistance.

Many SaaS vendors (focused on all market segments) also seemed to be clearly seduced by the ease of integration with other cloud solutions, void of relevance to the target customers incumbent technology footprint. Google Apps before SharePoint. Wikis over ECM. More Salesforce, little to no SAP/Oracle. Again, convenient for the provider, not always relevant to a lot of customers.

Closing Thoughts

I’m in no way asserting that SaaS is a bad idea across the board. I absolutely believe that there is a model somewhere out there for cloud and SaaS offerings for large customers, despite recent high profile hiccups from Amazon and Google.

However, SaaS is not an optimal solution for every business problem and every customer. Providers need to look in the mirror and be brutally honest with themselves about the motivations around their SaaS strategy and its relevancy to the customer. I’ve already heard of instances of business changing hands between E2.0 vendors at this early stage in the game, for these very reasons.

Having had led over scores of sizable strategy and technology sourcing engagements, there’s no debate in my mind about one thing: In a bake off, a vendors true motivations become very transparent to smart executives involved in the selection process. Once you get past emergent Enterprise 2.0 embracing and it’s time for the big leagues, this stuff matters.

Bernard Lunn at ReadWriteWeb writes an excellent post (link below), asking “Why Enterprises Don’t like SaaS”. I think it’s because subconsciously Enterprises sense that SaaS purveyors are saving all the fun for themselves.  -)

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• Who uses cloud computing? Startups do, VCs don’t (venturebeat.com)

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The Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston ended earlier this week. This post covers my overall impressions about the conference material. Apologies in advance for a longish post.

Overall Thoughts

Given my insane meeting schedule and my objectives for the conference, I used 3 criteria to pick sessions. Here’s what I was looking for:

a) Practitioners before cheerleaders, skeptics and early adopters. Were there enough practitioners in attendance?

b) Did the event generate adequate tangible advice to show practitioners what works and what doesn’t, how to sell this internally, and finally, how to drive adoption?

c) Did the environment encourage their participation?

Two Thumbs Up to the first 2 questions. As to C, so, so. There were a good number of practitioners from companies such as BoA, Raytheon, Alcatel-Lucent, Allstate, Humana, M&M Mars & Eli Lilly. And a good number of tactical sessions. So in my book, all up, I think the conference was a success for those who wanted to be able to put learning to work.

On the other hand, the conference was a bit too Vendor centric – not in terms of attendance necessarily but in terms of who had a louder voice. There were in fact a lot of practitioners in the audience. I just wish their stories could have been heard.

A quick disclaimer: This re-cap reflects my favorites from sessions I attended; not across all available sessions. I missed some superb stuff but I’m sure others will speak to those.

The Good Stuff

Looking at it from a practitioners standpoint, what impressed me most was heavy weighting towards content on tactical insights that practitioners can use when they get to work, tomorrow. Sessions covered some long range thinking but plenty of actionable tricks and how tos that can let implementers and program managers sleep well at night.

Mike Gotta moderated Community & Social Network Sites: Think Adoption, Not Deployment. Dan McCall, Kishan Mallur and Erik Johnson cited specific examples how they generated buzz on the cheap, got influencers to become evangelists, and created a sense of ownership. The session was peppered with clever, even quirky tips such as a button called “shady” for questionable content that needed moderation, to creating stickers as invite codes that a user can distribute at their discretion. Genentech for instance, calls their social network GenePool and they tell their users “don’t pee in the pool”, as a way to encourage clean, relevant interaction. Again, not brain surgery but tactical marketing ideas that generate buzz. Ben Kepes of Cloud Ave was nice enough to live blog the session, here.

Another favorite session was Lee Bryant’s Transition Strategies for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption, that showcased specific details on how to manage separation anxiety when transitioning from 1.0 to social computing environments.  For instance, Lee described methods to illustrate the similarities between an RSS Reader and Email on a Blackberry. How to highlight the customizable nature of a social network over a static phone book. Or how to gently transition from a stogy old one way Intranet to a by-directional collaboration platform. All in all, tricks that a practitioner can act on soon after returning from the conference. For a more detailed analysis, Sandy Kemsley has a great write up, here.

I’m a little biased here because I read or listen to pretty much anything Marc Smith and Kate Niederhoffer say or write and because I believe that Analytics/Intelligence is going to be a huge differentiator in this space. So it was a treat to attend Metrics in the Hands of Users. Marc, Kate and Daniel Debow kindled a great discussion on how to drive, visualize and measure performance via less geeky constructs. I’m convinced that articulating the sociological and psychological (respectively) considerations as a catalyst for Enterprise 2.0 transformation can play a big role towards both executive buy in and successful execution. Moreover, my sense is that correlating the use of social computing as a way to respond to (not change) basic human nature can make it all seem achievable and less daunting. Contrast that with sermons on the glories of wiki based collaboration or the promise of orgasmic levels of workforce liberation via the use of a Twitter-like public status update. I wish this session was not at the tail end of the conference. We need more of this, up front.

Reality 2.0: Getting Started with Enterprise Social Networking by Mike Gotta was possibly one of the best research efforts I’ve seen on the topic of Enterprise Social Networking. Mike does a superb job of objectively “telling it like it is” whether its vendor capabilities/holes or inherent execution considerations such as the focus on deployment when it should be on adoption, or the threat to middle management and the curse of social caste systems. Lots of lessons not only for adoption but also excellent material to set expectations with LOB executives on risks that need to be mitigated, upfront. Bill Ives has an excellent post on this session, here.

Again, there were others that also had good insights. And I think the baseline research done for Open Enterprise is a treasure chest.

On to the sub optimal stuff.

Conference Format – Get Micro: Some of the most repeatable ideas and common problem sets I heard surfaced in conversations over dinner and in the reception area. Many from senior program managers, architects, and even executives who were ridiculously smart but not necessarily the kind that want to walk up to a microphone in a 300 seat auditorium.  Early lifecycle categories such as E2.0 need more casual break out sessions to foster discussions where repeatable problems, ideas and insights emerge. These off hand discussions I had included insight such as the limitations and possibilities of leveraging social computing tools on the BlackBerry. Which vendor apps really afford a customer centric mobile interaction model vs. those that are simply riding the polish and hype that comes with the iPhone developer platform. What’s particularly working for sales reps in their orgs? And on and on. My sense is that a lot of good insight was left of the table and we need a format that brings these topics to the surface.

Objectivity: This certainly wasn’t germane to most sessions but in some cases, there needed to be a clear distinction between research findings and objectivity on behalf of the speaker. When it’s research, it needs to be presented as findings, not tilted towards the preferences or enthusiasm of the speaker. And when an expert, who happens to be a vendor, is invited to a topical panel, little less product highlighting and more industry based knowledge sharing needs to be enforced. If I feel like I need to hire you (as a consultant) or buy your product (as a vendor) to really get the benefit of your opinion, then something’s lost.

Closing

So, as a practitioner, I think the conference brought a lot of actionable learning to the table and that’s a big win.

Personally, I can’t put a price on what I got out of these 4 days. I got to meet and thank a ton of folks who comment here on Pretzel Logic. I met folks whose stuff I read and learn from, every day. We exchanged a lot of ideas, opined on what’s hot and what doesn’t have legs in the space. We closed down bars.

This is the first of a series of posts on the conference. Next up are take aways on the space, distribution models and what customers should be asking of service providers.

Finally, a big thanks to Susan Scrupski – I might not have made the trip out but I did, and for that I’m grateful to her.

Other posts on the Conference:

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My pal Gil Yehuda wrote a post yesterday about meeting logistics at Enterprise 2.0. I encourage you to read it and see if you can gain from his suggestions.

Gil’s post got me to write about how I expect the conference to play out for me.

• I’m part of the press corps so first and foremost, I plan to look for stuff that interests me so I can write about it. Pretzel Logic (this blog) is about Enterprise 2.0 execution and the social software landscape. To that end, I’m going to be looking for customer case studies that moved the needle in terms of business acceleration. As important, solution providers that really make it happen. No spray and pray, “the enterprise just needs to get social” stuff. I hope to debate, contest and cheer meaningful success stories.
• As my close E2.0 pals know, my plan was to be as fluid as possible for the next few months, on the career/work front. And I’m up to my eyeballs in consulting work at the moment, per plan.  A big component of my work goes beyond the “what” and into the “how” and “why”. So knowing vendor capabilities is important to successfully tie the right solution to business problems at hand. Lots of new announcements too.
• Beyond this, I’ve got partner meetings that I’ve scheduled since I’m out east.

Nothing on the list above is what I consider tedious work. The social calendar looks tremendous. And I’ve left plenty of time for serendipitous encounters. So I’m stoked.

Looking forward to going back to my old hometown.

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That’s a comment that one of the leading Enterprise 2.0 vendors made to me recently.

This morning, Socialcast, provider of a micro-messaging platform announced that it’s moving to a ‘free-mium’ model. Meaning, get all the user and administrative features for free, regardless of company size or usage needs. For those of you not familiar with Socialcast, it a micro messaging platform that enables collaboration and sharing by unlocking discussions from closed email into an open environment. What started off as Twitter for the enterprise now looks more like Friendfeed for the enterprise – a model that I think has significant promise for the enterprise. The product used to be about $1 per user per month and is now completely free to use and administer. Socialcast plans to make money by enterprise deployments and charging for premium services such as directory integration, analytics and consulting.

TechCrunch thinks that there won’t be a need for paid services. I can’t disagree more but that’s another post. ReadWriteWeb believes “there will certainly be large government and enterprise customers who require self-hosting and consulting services.”

So the real question for me is: Are we on the path to super sonic commoditazion in the Enterprise 2.0 market before even a single vendor has truly broken out & dominated the space?

Some History

In the early days of Enterprise 2.0, the market was crowded with Wiki providers, many of whom painfully realized that the commercial market was too crowded and that the likes of Media Wiki (the free software that is used to power Wikipedia) made it increasingly difficult to charge for Wiki based products. Moreover, making a scalable business case from using a pure play wiki product was an increasingly difficult way to get the kinds of market valuations that a venture capitalist expected.

Enterprise Wiki, tagging, RSS and bookmarking providers quickly re-cast their solutions from Wikipedia and Delicious for the enterprise to Facebook for the enterprise providing rich social networking features, user profiles, blogging capabilities and the like. That market saw changes in dynamics as well, thanks to a very crowded and increasingly indistinguishable offering set, coupled with constant pressure from open source/ free forum offerings. See what BestBuy achieved with Drupal for instance.

Today

The next wave of differentiation amongst Enterprise 2.0 providers was going to be based on content creation as well as smart aggregation, fueled by micro-messaging, integration, aggregation, activity streams and the concept of the real time enterprise. Whilst this phase of evolution shows great promise, its also an area that’s going to require serious data integration to ensure that you can truly fold in data and content or surface intelligence from anywhere. Not just from the base social computing applications in your suite (user profiles, workspaces and wikis, etc) but also from third party internal and external systems in the enterprise such as LinkedIn and Salesforce.

Where this notion of commoditization before monetization further crystallized in my mind was when I read the announcement of Google Wave – “a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year”.

With Wave, Google is offering a real time messaging and activity stream platform that developers can use to create applications or amp up existing offerings. Its still early and unproven and will probably only work for SaaS offerings. But if it delivers on its promise, its a ridiculously more sophisticated incarnation of what Enterprise 2.0 vendors have spent a huge portion of their development budget on, for the last 12 months. Thanks to Google, it’s now available as a platform technology, for anyone to leverage. Ouch.

Going Forward

So assuming that the software stack continues down this path to commoditization, what’s left to make money on? Directory Integration? Application Integration? Change Management Consulting?

That might work for Socialcast given that its backed by True Ventures, the experts in realizing ungodly valuations from open source / free services (True Ventures is the backer of Automattic, the makers of WordPress. ‘nuff said). But how is that going to play out for other venture backed firms that have no interest in valuations that a services business generally commands.

I see 3 areas:

• Maybe we will see more business models similar to what Alfresco or Acquia have, where there’s a commercial alternative to a base open source platform.
• Or we will in fact start to see competition based on which software vendor can help organizations move into an Enterprise 2.0 design by focusing on specific business processes. That’s something that goes far far beyond selecting and deploying a social computing tool set. I know personally that SocialText, Jive Software, Newsgator and Traction Software are taking this seriously. I’m sure there are others.
• Analytics based monetization. There’s tremendous value in knowing what programs and efforts generate content and knowledge that helps the organization accelerate performance. Social computing breaks this information down in ways that were not possible before. There’s tangible value in business intelligence as a way to improve operational efficiency.

BTW, there is another lesson to be learned from all of this. Guess which class of Enterprise 2.0 vendors will read this post and simply shrug off my assertion? Those that are fixing known functional business problems such as customer service, sales acceleration, marketing intelligence and the like. They have a defined customer and a defined set of business problems that they fix (and as important, don’t fix), a known integration road map and a defined competitive landscape to navigate.

I can’t think of another time in the history of software or another area of enterprise software that has seen commoditization emerge so quickly in its evolution.

How do you think the Enterprise 2.0 market will shake out?

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Just heard about the passing of Professor Rajeev Motwani. Professor Motwani was a   household name in Silicon Valley, most notably for giving early guidance to Larry and Sergey and investing in Google. I had the pleasure of meeting him a few years back and I distinctly remember how gracious he was with his time and perspectives. Om puts it best in his post on GigaOM “There wasn’t a startup he didn’t love”.

He listened intently and I still remember his amazing ability to process a lot of information in a few minutes and provide extremely pointed feedback. You knew he was engaged and interested. I’m sure he’s touched a lot of people in Silicon Valley more recently and he will be missed.

If you never had the opportunity to cross paths with him, take a look at the twitter stream right now and you’ll get a sense of how many people he touched.

My deepest condolences to his family and to those close to him. Wish you all the strength during this tough time.

Rest in peace. You will be missed.

Update: Since the writing of this post, Techmeme has some additional overage including 2 very touching posts by and Sergey Brin and David Hornik.

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Umberto Mellitti, CEO of on-demand sales intelligence provider InsideView, said on Twitter:

Umberto’s analogy is spot on. Also, if you’re worried about your Sales folks getting distracted by Social Media tools such as Twitter, sorry, but you have bigger problems. Either your compensation structure is just not juicy enough to keep them focused or I’m afraid, you got the B team. Or maybe marketing isn’t filling up the funnel effectively with qualified leads from Social Media channels.

My ex-colleague from marchFIRST Margaret Francis (now killing it at the awesome ScoutLabs) responded:

If your sales team is going to goof off, Social Media hardly presents the first opportunity to do so. There’s over 300 channels on cable TV, Golf Courses, Hulu and if all else fails, Vegas.

In the course of my work, I’ve conducted user needs assessments with well over 200 sales reps and sales managers at large organizations and it takes under 3 minutes to spot the ones that have “time is money” ingrained in their DNA. They have a nose for islands of opportunity and know how to use it effectively, always keeping the goal in sight.

I’d argue there’s ridiculous amounts of un tapped sales opportunity hidden in social media, and the good sales reps are figuring it out. And it’s time to fold in lead generation and revenue as outputs from Social Media, beyond awareness and engagement.

What a Good Sales Rep Would Never Do

I can’t imagine any good sales rep actively scouring Twitter for leads at the expense of traditional prospecting, especially in the B2B area. Sure, set up some persistent searches and if something juicy shows up, engage. But beyond that, carpet bombing Twitter or actively following (by following I mean reading) thousands of people to see if someone pops is obviously a waste of time. And the good ones know it.

Where Social Media Makes Sense for Sales

Social media for Selling pays huge dividends 1) as a lead qualifier and 2) as an engagement platform, after you have established a requisite qualification level.  Start with a qualified list from your existing funnel and using Social Media to connect, network, nurture and enrichen your prospect intelligence, as you begin the close.

Social Media rock god Chris Brogan has some good advice here.  After marketing has created awareness and surfaces leads, selling can commence:

So now you’ve put someone into your lead cycle. You’ve decided you are going to close them for a sale (and remember, let’s use “sale” loosely. Maybe you’re “selling them” on donating to your charity, or watching your video channel. The advent of services like Twitter allow you to mind read from afar. If I’m going to hit up Len Devanna from EMC to sponsor a conference of mine, I’m sure as hell going to read his Twitter stream from the last two days and make sure his dog hasn’t gone into the hospital or that he’s not dealing with a budget cut, etc.  It also allows you to gently touch (without selling) your clients so that they keep you top of mind.

Mark Hausman of the Strategic Communications Group also lays out a good approach, though focused more on how Marketing can use a Sales reps time more effectively:

• Step 1 Prioritize the Hot Ones. By working closely with your sales team, a set of prospects can be culled based on their standing in the sales pipeline, intimacy of existing relationship and potential size of the transaction.
• Step 2 Map and Monitor. Compile an overview of each prospect’s [Social Media] engagement
• Step 3 Engage in a Prospect’s Communities of Choice.
• Step 4 Evaluate. Get Sales reps to give you feedback on how social media has helped move these deals forward.

There’s some basic tenants of what defines the work model of a killer sales rep. These hold true for the use of both internal sales operational data as well as prospecting insight. The simple fact is that the availability of data or any other potential distraction such as Social Media will never, ever, come in the way of a good sales rep making his or her numbers.

Of course, there’s always another perspective on all of this, best characterized by Conan O’Brien:

“In the year 3000, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook will merge to form one super time-wasting site called YouTwitFace.”

Happy Friday

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