Enterprise Social Networking

Transcription

1 Enterprise Social Networking by Geoff Holle, Principal Education Consultant, and Tammy Scandalis, Senior Education Consultant, CA Technologies A social business is one that is optimized to benefit its entire ecosystem (customers, employees, owners, and partners) by embedding collaboration, information sharing, and active engagement into its operations and culture. This definition includes social software or technologies, as one means for business to become social, and has emerged as one of the most important technological developments within recent years. The importance of social business to organizations is expected to grow continuously over time. While just 18% of all survey respondents in the Social Business Global Executive Study conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte 1 believe social business is important to their organization today, 63% say it will be important in three years. That s a jump of 250%. The study further concludes that the need to connect with others is one of three basic psychological needs of human beings. The other two the need to feel competent and the need to feel autonomous in one s actions may also play a vital role in social business activities. Motivations to participate in social business activities are not superficial and go beyond our social nature; they can help fulfill basic psychological needs. Additionally, a new generation of workers is building momentum for new ways of collaborating and communicating that are enabled by social business. The real promise of social business involves breaking down barriers that limit human potential and business performance. However, fulfilling this promise requires fundamentally rethinking how work gets done and how value is created. Like many large enterprise organizations, CA Technologies has been somewhat slower on social business adoption, but now appears to be catching up. Approximately 79% of companies surveyed use or are planning to use social networking tools and processes. Nearly half of the companies who were rated as 'effective' in social business said it was central to their organization s strategy (Harvard Business Review Analytics Services). 2 However, adoption doesn t come without significant challenges and uncertainty as to how to get there. Consider that 46% of companies globally planned to increase their investment in social networking tools and processes this year. However, only 22% of middle managers felt prepared to properly incorporate social business principles into their work (IBM 2012 Social Business Study). 3 Further, there has been a rapid evolution of social tools, but large enterprises may be slow to adopt them due to an entrenched culture, infrastructure needs, security concerns, and budget limitations. The purpose of this article is to tell the story of how CA Education leveraged About the authors Geoff Holle is an Art Director and Principal Education Consultant at CA Technologies responsible for visual media content design and development. Geoff leads the education visual media team while working across CA to establish standards and process for all CA education training and performance support. Geoff directed design, technology, and media development for CA Education s first virtual learning conference described in this article. Geoff joined CA Technologies in 2006 and has held creative, technical and management roles throughout his career. Tammy Scandalis is a member of the Global Education team at CA Technologies and is responsible for

2 existing tools and technology to conduct a virtual Education conference that successfully implemented social networking tools and practices, thus enabling a sense of community, heightening engagement, and connecting a global team of people in a shared and positive experience. Our Story In October 2012, the CA Education organization had the opportunity to explore social enterprise and collaboration through virtual conferencing. For the previous two years, the Education organization met in person as a team for onsite training, collaboration, and team building, but they were unable to do so in FY13 due to budget restrictions. A decision needed to be made to either cancel the event or proceed with a lower budget and prepare a full team virtual conference. With only 4 months to prepare, time was tight and the process was unfamiliar. The decision to proceed largely centered on the ability to effectively achieve the goals of the conference in a virtual setting. The following is a look at the conference goals aligned with potential solutions in a virtual setting. Conference Goals Virtual Solution Professional development/informal learning Virtual speakers and training Shared whiteboard, presentations Collaboration within and across teams with open discussion Virtual environment, discussions, Building a community with colleagues shared learning and collaboration Socializing/deepening relationships Trivia games, sharing personal information, sharing photos and videos Brainstorming Dedicated virtual discussions, collaboration Physical events and virtual events have similar traits and may accomplish some of the same goals: presenting a prepared message and training to a targeted audience, while establishing opportunities for participants to socialize and collaborate. Both physical and virtual events use speakers and presentations to deliver a message, while attendees get to learn and talk or interact with speakers. For both, there is an opportunity to meet and collaborate with colleagues. The advantages of virtual events over on-site events include savings, both in cost and time, and the possibility of enhanced engagement through technology. In addition, the quality of the content can be better with a virtual event, since expert speakers can address a virtual audience from anywhere, without geographic limitations. Essentially, there are more options when identifying speakers. Education decided to proceed with the virtual conference as planned, with the next step being to identify a platform that would meet conference goals and work for schedule and budget. The choice was narrowed to two options. Option 1: On24 On24 is a virtual event platform that provides interactive locations, webcasts, social networking, scheduled chats, idea storming, and blogs. The On24 system provides users an opportunity to pull reports that measure user behavior, content popularity, and social networking interactions. On24 was successfully the design and development of education resources, as well as for direction on user experience, attempting to integrate and unify learning resources across a variety of platforms. Tammy is also a member of the Education core team for social business technologies, and has served as a member on a number of collaborative teams across the organization, including CA Education s first virtual learning conference. For nearly a decade, Tammy has worked in the IT field in varying capacities, with an emphasis on instructional design and technical training, She has an M.S. in Instructional Technology, and her interests include innovations in technology, social business and education. The advantages of virtual events over on-site events include savings, both in cost and time, and the possibility of enhanced engagement through technology.

3 used for past CA World and Mainframe Madness events and consequently seemed a possible fit for the experience envisioned for Education conference attendees. Using On24 required support from the On24 team to customize the interface and load content assets for access by conference attendees. Cost varied based on duration, number of events, and number of assets hosted. Live webcasts added to the cost. The On24 solution would be an engaging, immersive experience. There was still the need, however, to work quickly and independently. Option 2: Virtual Conference Mash-Up A second option was to develop a conference solution using tools that the Education team works with on a daily basis. To virtually collaborate and share information, Microsoft SharePoint could serve as the platform, combined with additional tools used such as Microsoft Yammer TM, WebEx TM, Microsoft Live Meeting TM, YouTube TM, Google+ TM, and the Guidebook TM mobile application. The combination of technology offered a rich, immersive experience for attendees, added no cost for the tools and technology beyond some enterprise licensing already in place and for the small cost of a mobile application, and enabled the Education team to develop the solution independently so there would be more control of schedule. Exploring technology solutions that may again be used in the future outside of this conference, in a relatively safe environment, provided an additional benefit. The decision, however, was based mainly on the ability to achieve conference goals through alignment with this identified combination of technology. It was decided that this mash-up approach would work. Preparing for the Conference Once the decision was made to go virtual, it was time for budget planning, identification of work assignments, and resource scheduling. Budget A benefit of a virtual event is the potential for significant savings over a live event. Consider that, in FY12, the cost for travel and food alone for the live event that was held in Islandia, New York, were considerable, and when speaker and event costs are factored in, it s not an insignificant amount. For a similarly sized group in FY13, the virtual conference budget was over ten times lower than the live conference cost. Time and Teams to Develop To develop the virtual conference center, forty-four Education/Operations volunteers were divided into four committees: Events, Training/Speakers, Communications, and Media (which included testing/documentation of technology). Program and Project Management coordinated and maintained status and deadlines. Duration to prepare was 119 days. A core Planning Team of six spent approximately four to six hours per week prepping for and participating in meetings. Each core team member led individual teams that met weekly, approximately four hours per member per week. Technology An array of technology was identified that would fill The combination of technology offered a rich, immersive experience for attendees, added no cost for the tools and technology beyond some enterprise licensing already in place and for the small cost of a mobile application, and enabled the Education team to develop the solution independently so there would be more control of schedule.

4 conference goals and integrate into the conference experience. To prepare, technology was tested, documentation was created as needed to guide users, and then the solution was deployed to provide an integrated user experience. Virtual Conference Center The main page of the SharePoint virtual site was a graphic representation of a conference center interior space that included photographs of CA Education team members and let attendees navigate to other rooms within the site. Each day, there was a new video welcome message, hosted on a YouTubeTM channel created for the conference and embedded directly into the SharePoint page. The following sections describe content for each interior room on the virtual site. Live Events The Live Events room enabled attendees to access the conference agenda and participate in live sessions scheduled before the conference. This room also supplied information on getting course credit in the CA Learning Management System, rating sessions, and accessing course presentations. As on all SharePoint site pages, Microsoft Yammer TM was integrated into the page for ongoing attendee dialog. House of EdCon Here, attendees could both list their own and listen to their colleagues favorite songs through a YouTube playlist. A slide show of Education team photos showed attendees in their home offices or near local landmarks. A selection of self-recorded videos answered questions about collaborating virtually, performance consulting, and transformation. This was meant to encourage socializing, getting to know the team, and having fun. Romper Room From this room, attendees could view Zumba exercise sessions that were held each day. A video related to CA Together in Action, embedded on YouTube TM with a drive for volunteers, games, and entertainment in the form of an old radio show, also incorporated a shared graffiti board using the whiteboarding tool Scribblar TM.

5 Technology Showroom The Technology Booths room took the form of interactive Adobe Acrobat PDF files, representing new and evolving technologies relevant to Education, with embedded YouTube TM content. Self-Learning Conference recordings and related Education content was provided in a variety of formats for visitors to access independently. Visiting this room was intended to mimic visiting a live conference showroom with vendors and product demos. Manager Lounge This room served as the training launch page for the manager-only first day of the conference, and linked to additional related resources. Running the Conference Conference communications to attendees began about three weeks prior to the event to prepare for session registration, confirm technology requirements, and ask for submission of photos and videos. During the conference, a help area was available for attendees to ask questions and receive immediate assistance with any issues. Each live session had a separate facilitator to help run the meeting and manage recordings. Overnight, select meetings were converted and loaded to the YouTube TM channel and embedded on the SharePoint site to be seen the following day. Participating in the Conference Doors opened to the conference site the day before official sessions began and attendees were encouraged to look around. Each day of the conference opened with a live session that everyone was encouraged to attend. These sessions had guest speakers address the audience, followed by highlights of the day. In addition to 132 Education attendees, the invitation was extended to the full HR team with no impact on delivery of content or increased cost. Summary Overall, the conference was a success with goals achieved, positive feedback from attendees, and many lessons learned. There were unforeseen, positive outcomes with the use of the employed tools, such as a WebEx TM chat during a keynote that greatly increased communication and engagement. Participants were quick to adopt and use the tools and platforms

6 in a social manner, and they reacted very positively to the experience it created a buzz. Additionally, the sense of connectedness contributed to an increased sense of community. The tools were most powerful when they were integrated into the environment and were used in the context of the activities that were going on (for example, an embedded Yammer TM feed). Upon reflection, it seemed as though the engagement level was higher and the participation was greater in the virtual conference than when we met in person for the FY12 live conference. Social technologies can be used to shape business and the way people naturally interact. As time, attention, and the engagement of employees and customers becomes a more valuable resource than computer power or standardized efficient processes, social platforms can help transform rather than serve traditional organizational limits. We re no longer building technologies to enable simple interaction social platforms and technologies can be built for specific business purposes: specialized content, enhanced with context, enriched by the power of communities. This calls for a thoughtful, intentional course of action to rethink how business activities are undertaken, incorporating social tools to improve processes, systems, and organization for the new economy. Social technologies can be used to shape business and the way people naturally interact. References 1 Social Reengineering by Design, Deloitte, accessed February, _cons_general_tt13_socreeng_ Social Media: What Most Companies Don t Know, Harvard Business Review, accessed February, Struggling With Social Media: Study Finds Middle Managers Bear the Brunt, Midsize Insider, accessed January, NOTICES Copyright 2013 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. The information in this publication could include typographical errors or technical inaccuracies, and CA, Inc. ( CA ) and the authors assume no responsibility for its accuracy or completeness. The statements and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of CA. Certain information in this publication may outline CA s general product direction. However, CA may make modifications to any CA product, software program, service, method or procedure described in this publication at any time without notice, and the development, release and timing of any features or functionality described in this publication remain at CA s sole discretion. CA will support only the referenced products in accordance with (i) the documentation and specifications provided with the referenced product, and (ii) CA s then-current maintenance and support policy for the referenced product. Notwithstanding anything in this publication to the contrary, this publication shall not: (i) constitute product documentation or specifications under any existing or future written license agreement or services agreement relating to any CA software product, or be subject to any warranty set forth in any such written agreement; (ii) serve to affect the rights and/or obligations of CA or its licensees under any existing or future written license agreement or services agreement relating to any CA software product; or (iii) serve to amend any product documentation or specifications for any CA software product. Any reference in this publication to third-party products and websites is provided for convenience only and shall not serve as the authors or CA s endorsement of such products or websites. Your use of such products, websites, any information regarding such products or any materials provided with such products or on such websites shall be at your own risk. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the content of this publication is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will the authors or CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, arising from or related to the use of this publication, including, without limitation, lost profits, lost investment, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages. Neither the content of this publication nor any software product or service referenced herein serves as a substitute for your compliance with any laws (including but not limited to any act, statute, regulation, rule, directive, standard, policy, administrative order, executive order, and so on (collectively, Laws ) referenced herein or otherwise or any contract obligations with any third parties. You should consult with competent legal counsel regarding any such Laws or contract obligations.