Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Year in Review

Just the other day, I was in a meeting with eTouch CEO Ani Gadre and some other teammates. We were talking about what a challenging year it's been in many ways, but how much the wiki and enterprise 2.0 industries have grown - new companies, products and game-changing ideas. Even amidst the global crises, incredible things and innovation have happened.

Ani gave me some of his thoughts. You can read the rest on his eTouch blog.

"The term 'enterprise 2.0' has become more widely used and accepted as a valuable business tool. Today, enterprise 2.0 is about companies truly encouraging and foster collaborative environments, whether through integrative wikis or Twitter-like tools for the workplace or even giving remote workers better access to corporate intranets."

"I remain quite optimistic about the business outlook for 2010," he added. "There are companies in a variety of industries starting out with enterprise 2.0 projects or deployments. We will continue to offer them services that meet their needs and product features that help them stay ahead of the game."

"We're excited about the potential for SamePage in the new year."

I will certainly raise a glass and make a New Year's toast to that.

Wishing everyone a joyous holiday season and a new year full of happiness, good health and success.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Musings

My company, eTouch SamePage, opted out of exhibiting this year at Enterprise 2.0 Conference San Francisco. I did, however, take to the Moscone Center and check out the event. After a day there attending only the keynotes and walking around the expo hall -- no, I didn't spring for a full conference pass, so I missed the smaller, more targeted discussions -- I can honestly say that I don't regret not exhibiting this year.

That's not to say the event was bad. It wasn't. Good things will always come out of getting industry thought leaders in one place at one time. There were interesting discussions scheduled as breakout sessions and some of the keynotes and panels, particularly the Andrew McAfee-led Booz Allen Hamilton case study, was in-depth for a general panel and offered good insight into corporate thinking.

But in walking the expo floor and milling about in the hall, I didn't feel any great energy or excitement. The expo floor, even combined with VoiceCon, was small without any tremendous standouts. Clearly, that's dictated primarily by the current economic climate - vendors just don't have the extra cash these days to exhibit. Or, if they do exhibit, it's pretty barebones. What I'm talking about is just excitement, a buzz in the air that you often feel at events like this. It comes from entrepreneurs with great ideas and potential clients itching to learn more with journalists and analysts trying to get as many details as possible. Walking around the conference, I didn't feel it.

I've been reading tons of post-even wrap-ups by journalists, bloggers, etc. I'm not the only one with this opinion; although some say there's a rationale for it. Tony Byrne of CMS Watch writes:
"My first observation is that the conference vibe was much more practical, and much less like a religious revival meeting than previous Enterprise 2.0 events. Some gurus complained about a lack of passion and energy, but I think Andrew McAfee set a great tone in his keynote when he exhorted the audience to replace liberation theology with more realistic goals."

Oliver Marks wrote about his post-conference thoughts and posted a video of a discussion between him and McAfee.

I know there's a lot more coverage out there, and I look forward to reading more. Perhaps that's where the excitement will come....after everyone's thoughts have had a chance to simmer, and conversation follow-up moves into high gear as new relationships flourish. There was a lot of brainpower and entrepreneurship in the Moscone Center for those few days, obviously. And I am very excited to see what happens as the discussions continue.

What did you think of Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco?



Follow our discussion on Twitter at @samepagewiki.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What's Fun Got To Do With It?

If someone told me piano stairs or flooring of any kind could be funny outside of the 1988 movie "Big" starring Tom Hanks, I'd be surprised. But Volkswagon caught people's attention with its piano stairs viral campaign.



I only relate this to enterprise 2.0 because the video was mentioned in a recent blog post, "Maximizing Business Value from Enterprise 2.0 through Fun & Motivation" by Rex Lee. He highlights:
"Fun, as a design principle shouldn't be overlooked as it impacts the application design from look and feel, through context, content and process. It also should be addressed when designing events leveraging social computing technologies."

Clearly, Volkswagon is taking a fun approach to impact people and communicate its message. I wonder how many other companies actually practice that kind of approach?

It seems that fun is more often reserved for business-to-consumer type businesses - and then, often only those with big budgets AND you're not really sure how much fun they're having. But I don't notice as many FUN approaches in B2B environments. Perhaps fun doesn't equal serious in many minds and serious is key.

Consultant and writer Bill Ives chimed in with his own post and reports that he's had success integrating this (gasp!) fun concept:
"I have often been involved in knowledge management implementations where we introduced fun as part of the awareness campaign. This approach succeeds even more if it makes the work more fun, such as meeting new interesting people to collaborate with and finding out more about your colleagues."

Wikis and some other other enterprise 2.0 solutions are easy to make fun because they involve collaboration and focus on fostering creativity. So fun can be brought in at the employee-relations level or with external audiences.

"The power of fun is often forgotten," opines Rex. Hear, hear!

Have you ever focused on making sure that fun is part of a KM or other type of campaign? Tell me about it.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Death Sounds So Final

There are regular blog posts, tweets and discussions about the purported 'death of email.' Talk of 'death' is a lot more morbid and frightening than saying 'decrease' or 'dwindle' or some other much less dramatic word. Ooooh, beware the decrease of emails. Nope, doesn't do a thing. You?

In a recent post on the Enterprise 2.0 blog, Stowe Boyd wonders what dead means, exactly, when we talk about the death of email?

According to Boyd, he first talked about the death of email in 2004-2005 and was nearly 'tarred and feathered.' Still, today he sticks with his original hypothesis that email will slowly, but surely disappear. He writes:

"In time, it will fall off the edge, like fax is now that we can scan and send attachments more easily than using dedicated fax machines. We will find that email will be left with a short list of uses, like monthly mailing from the bank, or travel intineraries from Expedia. These relative impersonal communications with companies will be the final resting ground for email, and then, even that will wink out when a better metaphor for social interaction with companies becomes dominant. And I doubt that we will miss it when it’s gone, either."

Boyd refers to a recent article by Jessica Vascellaro article in The Wall Street Journal that begins, "Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.. "

As new tools develop for the enterprise, perhaps it will become more easy for the average, non-social-media saavy user to find ways to communicate electronically that aren't email. Then it will become more accepted -- as the fax machine did. Most of these 'replacement' tools are so new, it will be a while before we see what sticks. And there are so many new tools, it can be overwhelming for people.

When our team here at SamePage is thinking about wiki enhancements, we take into consideration the needs of all types of workers - those email-reliant included. We look for ways to better connect the dots for email users to newer technologies, like a wiki. We strive to keep it simple with features that more easily integrate email and the wiki so the central repository can be built up and real conversations can happen.

Jessica inserts a bit of editorial at the tail end of her article. She writes:

"But there's another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person."

But in-person vs. electronic communications? Well, that's just a whole 'nother bag of worms.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Laughing at Misconceptions

Misconceptions abound in every industry, but we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, right? I saw this cartoon on Content Management Connection. In the blogger circle, the cartoon is actually courtesy of Geek and Poke and was inspired by Dion Hinchcliffe's article "14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail."

Do some people position enterprise 2.0 as the panacea for all enterprise ills? Well, not really. But certainly that's how some evangelism is perceived. And yes, there are enterprise 2.0 failures alongside of tremendous success stories. We have to try to understand perceptions and be realistic in our evangelism to help create realistic expectations about what enterprise 2.0 applications and software can help companies to accomplish. Because they are just tools; tools that are only as strong as the people who use them. As Dion Hinchiffe writes: "....this seems to mean Enterprise 2.0 projects are more likely to fail due to seeming larger than usual lack of alignment and organizational backing."

If companies expect to launch an application or software that will magically cure all their collaboration and knowledge management challenges, well then...Abracadabra!

Monday, September 21, 2009

"A Wiki Wonderland"

"A Wiki Wonderland." That was the headline to the KMWorld article about the launch of SamePage version 4.2. You gotta love that....at least I did.

What makes it a wonderland? Several valuable features and enhancements to the product that will truly benefit enterprises of all sizes. Interested? Let me tell you more.

The features we've added will better meet the needs of a remote and social-media friendly knowledge management workforce, including business travelers and wiki administrators.

Changes to this version include:

- Dynamic portal-like dashboard with drag and drop widgets that can be personalized at company and individual levels, eliminating the need for a separate intranet portal product.
- Advanced email integration that enables remote workers to more easily 'wikify' content from any smartphone.
- A wide selection of new and enhanced plug-ins that can be customized for each enterprise, including tag cloud and project member plug-ins, among others.
- More detailed analytics, usage and content reports for administrators.
- Ratings on Blog posts and more blog analytics.
- Support for Microsoft Office 2007
- WYSIWYG enhancements to further simplify the user interface.
- Increased privileges for the system user or administrator to manage pages and projects.



Intrigued or interested about being a part of our "wiki wonderland?" You can start by signing up for a free 30-day trial from etouch.net, direct message (DM) us on Twitter @samepagewiki or email us at sales@etouch.net.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Lucky Number 8

I’m a big fan of Stewart Mader’s blog. He offers strong insights and keeps a steady flow of dialogue and new information coming to his readers. Recently, he wrote ‘8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki,’ and I see it was picked up by other bloggers, tweeted and so on. Actually, he wrote it for Digital Landfill, and it was initially published there.

Clearly, there are a lot of things a company can use a wiki for. It varies widely, depending on what kind of work the company does and what it’s goals are for instituting a wiki. But Stewart takes a general approach that can apply to ANY company in ANY industry. I think that’s why this post has had such wide appeal.

Stewart’s 8 ways:
1- Meeting agendas
2- Meeting minutes and action items
3- Project management
4- Gather input
5- Build documentation
6- Assemble and reuse information
7- Employee handbook
8- Knowledge base (the one key external wiki benefit mentioned)

“Let’s look at eight ways a wiki can help you readjust your valuable time to get more of your essential work done, spend less time on meetings and redundant activities, and more efficiently assemble, refine and reuse valuable information,” he writes. That pretty well sums up the overarching theme here – that enterprise wikis save time, reduce redundancies and create more effective way to funnel information through team members or the company as a whole.

You know you hate it when you email a draft presentation or document to multiple people and then have to marry all the edits that come in at various times on different versions, don’t you? With wikis, that becomes a thing of the past. And no one likes it when they have to search their hard drives for all the relevant files for a new employee because there’s no central repository.

“As the wiki is used to build and maintain project proposals, documents, and other reusable pieces of information, the process of creating future versions becomes easier,” writes Stewart. “An organization’s wiki is an ideal place to provide general-use information to an internal audience.”

He doesn’t get much into the creative and collaborative benefits of enterprise wikis, but for someone who’s becoming educated about enterprise 2.0, this is a great and quick read. It helps put things into perspective.

Don't forget to follow @samepagewiki on Twitter.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Don't Ignore Email Vulnerabilites; There's a Better Way

42% of Best-in-Class companies reduced lost productivity attibutable to email by more than 20%

42% of Best-in-Class companies reduced help-desk time and the cost to remediate email related infections by more than 20%

65% of Best-in-Class companies reduced the volume of spam reaching user inboxes by more than 20%

These stats are courtesy of a June 2009 Aberdeen Group report on safe email. The focus of the report was to highlight the strategies best-in-class companies put in place in order to create an effective email security strategy, but I think there’s a lot more here if we just look a little deeper.

The report supports many of the ideas put forward by enterprise 2.0 companies about the many ways in which email is failing companies. That’s not to say email doesn’t have it’s valuable place in business. It does. But it can no longer be the end all, be all for business communications.

In the report, Analyst Carol Baroudi writes: “Well-financed email threat creators persist in propagating ever more sophisticated and potentially lethal attacks through the estimated 62 trillion spam messages sent last year……Add the rising value of sensitive data in a desperate market, and we have a set of trends that all point to critical reasons organizations cannot ignore their email vulnerabilities.”

Enterprise wikis are a valuable tool for businesses collaboration and knowledge management needs. A deployed wiki should have enterprise-grade security features that protect all of its information. When choosing a wiki to deploy, this is a tremendous benefit of deployed or SaaS products versus open source. Certainly, enterprise wikis can offer a safer environment for internal collaboration and sharing.

Follow us on Twitter @samepagewiki.

Monday, August 10, 2009

A Success Story at Cal Poly Pomona

“With Word, the documents were not very searchable, and we had limited ability to share these documents at the same time. We tried to use a CMS system to create internal web pages, but it wasn’t set up to manage dynamic pages with multiple contributors at multiple times. It was unwieldy and simply not friendly for collaboration.”

This is a direct quote from a wiki user and probably has more weight than when I toot my company's horn about strengths of wikis over word and CMS systems.

I promise I didn’t make it up. Kevin Morningstar, executive director of Student Affairs Information & Technology Services (SAITS) within the Division of Student Affairs at California State Polytechnic University Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), said it.

There’s a new case study on the SAITS experiences and successes to-date with SamePage. In it, Kevin explains how, for the first few years of its operation, SAITS was charged with (and employees struggled with) finding ways to create and share effective user and technical documentation. They tried and discarded other solutions before determining a wiki was the best fit.

Kevin explains that when his team found SamePage: “We jumped on it. SamePage came pre-packaged; it was already executable to be immediately up and running,” he noted. “And we had it up and running in 24 hours with one staff member taking care of the set up.”

“I can’t imagine we could have made a better choice,” he said. Read the rest of the case study.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A Wiki for SMBs

Back in March, James Gaskin published an article in Network World in which he profiled a small business' successful use of SamePage enterprise wiki.

In the article, Gaskin quotes Armen Grigorian, a manager at Defoe Fournier and Company, and writes:

“We needed a way for people to collaborate on projects. All our projects have at least six people involved." In a company of a dozen people, half the employees work together on each project. The problem is, those employees are scattered around, between headquarters in New York City, Atlanta, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and even Armenia. Grigorian continues with a description that sounds like most small businesses. “There's no real IT department or money to develop a custom application. We rely on typical tools for small businesses, like Excel and Word from Microsoft. We're all finance and accounting people who can just barely use a computer.”

Now, it's even easier for small and mid-sized businesses to get started with SamePage. Last week, we announced that SamePage is now available on MYSMBStore.com, which is a one-stop shop, or marketplace of name brand, on-demand SaaS applications for everything an SMB needs to start or manage their business. It's a Renovatix Solutions' site.

“Online social and professional collaboration of open source content has quickly become the de-facto method for idea exchange,” said J. Scott Robinson, general manager, Renovatix Solutions. “We’re very pleased to work with eTouch to add SamePage to our suite of applications to provide SMBs everywhere a very efficient tool to collaborate with their teams and customers.”

Visitors to MYSMBStore.com can register for a free trial of SamePage. Purchasing options start at $100 per month for up to 20 users. Know someone who runs, owns or does IT for an SMB? Send them to mySMBstore.com!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Enterprise 2.0 turns 3

Did you know the term Enterprise 2.0 was first coined in 2006 by Andrew McAfee, associate professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School? He published an article in MIT's Sloan Management Review on April 1, but it was no joke. And it helped to formulate a movement behind the technologies driving the market.

Andrew is prolific on the topic of enterprise 2.0. He's active on Twitter, his blog and speaks at many events. C.G. Lynch with IDG News Service published an interview with Andrew in which Lynch asked questions about what's next for the market.

Andrew said he sees all types of engagements of enterprise 2.0 technologies.

"I definitely get the strong impression that the use of these Enterprise 2.0 tools within companies for business purposes is accelerating instead of decelerating. One of the really heartening things is that this isn't just a phenomenon for high-tech companies, or companies that employ tons of Gen Y workers. It's happening at different kinds of companies, industries and sectors of the economy."


Read the rest of the article. Also, Andrew has a new book coming out soon, entitled: Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization's Toughest Challenges.

What do you think is next for enterprise 2.0?

Follow us on Twitter: @samepagewiki

Friday, June 12, 2009

Gil Yehuda's Got it Right

Why wikis should be a standard workplace tool, writes Gil Yehuda in a recent blog post. No question mark; this is a statement of fact. Right on, Gil!

A former Forrester analyst who covered the Enterprise 2.0 space, Gil discovered intranet wikis in late 2002. In this blog post, he writes a strong, detailed argument about the value of wikis to companies. He cites a study he participated in while at Forrester and explains that, in the Enterprise 2.0 sphere, wikis "were the lead dog in the race." He writes:

"My conclusions from years of managing and implementing wikis, as well as peer-reviewed published research that I conducted, tells me that wikis are the strong play of Enterprise 2.0. Put it together with a profile capability (the foundation of social networking tools), and you are armed to start reshaping the intranet. Of course, it’s never the weapon that wins the war, but you want to make sure you have the right gear."

An important takeaway here is that wikis and blogs and other Enterprise 2.0 tools won't instantaneously transform your business (though you will accrue gains faster than most, if not all other, software tools). These tools equip you to better handle the flow of information and develop an environment that fosters collaboration and creativity in a secure location. A wiki is only as good as the people who use it and the information that goes into it. But when someone who researches and studies these kinds of things declares: Wikis should be a standard workplace tool, I'd sure as heck listen.


Are you following SamePage on Twitter yet? @samepagewiki

Friday, May 29, 2009

A World of Wikis

Late last week, I was putting the finishing touches on speaking proposals for the Web 2.0 Expo NYC and was brainstorming ideas around 'the world is a wiki.' And then I read about Frost & Sullivan's new report, and I realized 'the world wants a wiki!'


Frost & Sullivan recently published Web 2.0 Technologies in the Recession-hit Europe as a Solution for Small and Medium Businesses.

Research Analyst Iwona Petruczynik said: "In Europe, there is a common misconception that a true deliverable is measured in how many kilograms of paper one produces and hands over to a client. This belief is hindering the adoption of Web 2.0 solutions, as more end products are being delivered in the form of a wiki or a blog."

However, businesses are seeking new ways to stay productive while significantly cutting costs with the help of Web 2.0 solutions, according to the press release. "From lower-cost versions of enterprise applications, to utilising cloud computing, 'crowd sourcing' business owners are taking advantage of what Web 2.0 has to offer."

As they well should.

It's a cry being heard 'round the world: we're cutting back, but be more productive. Yikes! A scary proposition. But that's the magic of innovative technological solutions. They remedy the problem.

Petruczynik explains: "Web 2.0 solutions may be part of the cure for the recessionary headache that many European businesses are now experiencing; social networking sites, wikis, and blogs are just some of the more well-known examples of Web 2.0 technologies that can play an important role here. These solutions are becoming more prevalent in the European small and medium businesses (SMBs) arena, especially at a time like this, when workers are being forced to do more with less."

I echo that thought without reservation.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Built for Collaboration; Ready to Work

Armen Grigorian, a manager at Defoe Fournier and Company, merchant bankers since 1824, have used a wiki for more than two years, and Grigorian loves it.

“We needed a way for people to collaborate on projects. All our projects have at least six people involved,” said Grigorian. In a company of a dozen people, half the employees work together on each project. The problem is, those employees are scattered around, between headquarters in New York City, Atlanta, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and even Armenia.

Grigorian continues with a description that sounds like most small businesses. “There's no real IT department or money to develop a custom application. We rely on typical tools for small businesses, like Excel and Word from Microsoft. We're all finance and accounting people who can just barely use a computer.”

Defoe Fournier needs to keep all their working documents per project in a central place where everyone can get to them from anywhere, securely. SamePage makes it easy for Grigorian and his coworkers to organize their documents per project, keep track of documents as they change, and store files for finished projects so they're out of the way yet still easily accessible.

“When we start a new project, I assign someone to start it, and I allocate the jobs and access to the project files,” said Grigorian. “We have pages for each project with discussions and notes. Sometimes we have live discussions by invitation, or people can comment later.”

______________________________________________________
Excerpted from a Network World article written by James Gaskin. Read the rest at: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2009/030909gaskin.html

Monday, May 4, 2009

Don't fear the wiki

Wiki consultant Stewart Mader posted on his blog last week about an issue that seems so simple, yet one that becomes a major hindrance to wikis not taking off within a corproate environment: FEAR.

Fear can motivate or disable you. However, Stewart suggests ways to turn around someone's fear of contributing to a wiki. In fact, he says, contributing to a wiki can solidfy your value to an organization.

Once again, Stewart takes a very real issue and provides a simple answer.

"The more a person shares on the wiki, the more their value is known to the company," Stewart says. He adds that, of course, it's natural to be afraid of sharing your knowledge. But he explains that when people start to 'give away' or share what they know, their value to the company will be greater, and they will create more time to work on even more things, thereby expanding their knowledge base even further. So simple, yet so true.

You can't assume that your bosses know how much you know. And you can't keep all your knowledge (no matter how hard earned) to yourself, so that anyone in the company who wants to learn about 'your' topic needs to go to you. It's to YOUR ADVANTAGE to share. Your bosses will see for themselves when looking in the wiki how much you know, and your colleagues can search in your wiki pages for answers to their questions. this will put you in a better light with your bosses and free up your time to expand your base and grow within the organization. It's a win for the company and a win for you.

Don't fear the wiki. Take the leap.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Getting Started with Wikis?

I was recently interviewed for an Outlook Series, and I had the opportunity to discuss the background of wikis, as well as ways enterprise wikis can drive business productivity.

Take a listen. Then, let me know what you think.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Salesforce + Wiki = Better Salesforce

Have you ever noticed that there are no enterprise wikis on the Salesforce AppExchange?! That is, there weren't, until last week. But to me, it seems like a perfect match. And now, SamePage is part of the Force.com AppExchange on Salesforce.com.

Here are some things Salesforce CRM customers can do with a SamePage application:
- Collaborate and share knowledge and information online with customers, leads and prospects
- Easily import leads and contacts from Salesforce into the enterprise wiki
- Involve business associates in the collaboration process
- Use a ‘single sign on’ mechanism – users that log into Salesforce are seamlessly transported into their SamePage wiki
- Benefit from wiki, blog, forum, discussion board bundle by having a centralized destination for all Enterprise 2.0 collaborative activity












“The Force.com AppExchange offers an abundance of cloud computing applications that complement and expand the value of Salesforce CRM,” said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com. “Customers can use eTouch SamePage as a cost-effective and innovative enterprise wiki product that facilitates knowledge management and collaboration with both internal and external audiences.”

Monday, April 6, 2009

Social Media is Good for Business

People who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not, according to a recent University of Melbourne study that I read about on ReadWriteWeb.

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in Workplace Internet leisure browsing (WILB) a term coined by study author Dr. Brent Coker.

People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don't," said Dr. Coker. It helps to sharpen workers' concentration

Lest anyone think the study is suggesting a lot of internet surfing at work, the survey did report the obvious. Coker said those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.

Is this useless information? Or should companies take some of it to heart?

There are plenty of companies out there that block employees’ access to Facebook, MySpace and other social sites. Certainly, unblocking these sites is not going to solve productivity issues.

However, as more companies integrate enterprise 2.0 and social media solutions into the workplace, it may behoove them to bear these study results in mind. Certain tools, such as enterprise wikis for online collaboration and knowledge management, can allow employees to incorporate a bit of their personality and self-expression within the confines of a ‘corporate’ environment. So during their WILB time, employees can interact online with colleagues, share news and information, and give their brains a little rest before they start working again more productively.

More and more enterprise tools are incorporating social-media elements. Maybe these engineers have known this whole time!

Hear the full audio interview or watch an interview with Dr. Brent Coker.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A GOOD Kind of Socializing at Word

Web sites, tech magazines, even mainstream papers are all writing about social media xyz. To say it's a hot topic is a great understatement. For example, the landscape of blogging has expanded, and the discourse in the comments can often be as valuable as the original blog post. Also, Facebook, Twitter and similar sites are becoming more valuable to companies, as people realize how to maximize their use for business purposes.

All of these 'social' tools help create a more comfortable online discussion; they help to make things more friendly and personal. That makes people feel they have more at stake. And I think that's a key reason why social features are increasingly finding their place in enterprise tools.

Last week, we announced the release of SamePage version 4.1 that incorporates social elements and allows users to personalize their wiki experience and profiles. SamePage is an enterprise wiki, yes. Adding social elements can help to foster better, more comfortable relationships among colleagues.

Some of the social features of SamePage version 4.1 are:
  • An integrated social directory with rich user profiles and people search that facilitates people-centric collaboration.
  • User-created profiles to provide a well-rounded view to other users and become a source for a collaborative social directory.
  • People search functionality.
  • Page ratings
  • Twitter-like status updates, e.g. What are you doing now?
  • Display of the most recent wiki activities
  • On-premise customers can also customize the user-profile for their instance, hiding SamePage attributes that may not be relevant within their specific organization.

You can read more about it: http://www.etouch.net/products/collaboration/features_social_directory.html.
Or try it free for 30 days.

It's THE wave of the future.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Changing Traditional Deployment Models to Meet Customer Needs

When the business climate changes, customers (both current and potential) are looking for new and better options. Software providers need to be responsive; think outside of the box of typical client packages.

Take multi-tenancy, for instance. As many already know, a multi-tenant solution is utilized by multiple groups of people but is based on a single, shared infrastructure. An application is built to partition each group's data so that it is private, while operating on a shared system. It is a typical deployment model for software as a service (SaaS) customers. It means the software provider hosts the product, and customers access an external server to use it. The customer doesn’t need the infrastructure; IT support is provided by the software company.

To meet customer needs and to be responsive to financial concerns of potential customers, the SamePage team has developed a new and evolutionary deployment model. This week, we announced that SamePage will now offer multi-tenancy for on-premise enterprise customers. It will be most beneficial to large enterprises, umbrella organizations and educational institutions.

With a SamePage multi-tenancy, on-premise deployment, customers will be able to develop customized wikis for each of their clients and track usage and activity. They will have increased flexibility and efficiency with horizontal scaling of the wiki within their organization.

At the same time, we’ve minimized the needs of IT management by centralizing and streamlining everything into one wiki instance for a company.

The bottom line is that consolidation of wiki services into a single, centrally managed infrastructure can translate to significant cost savings. Hardware, network and IT overheads can be dramatically reduced.

It’s out of the ‘box’ of typical software delivery mechanisms, but unique times call for innovative measures.

Read more about the features: http://www.etouch.net/products/collaboration/features_multi_tenancy.html

Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Recession-Ready Wiki

Last week, I co-hosted a webinar with Aberdeen. The title of the presentation was: The Recession-Ready Wiki: Surviving the Economic Storm through Sales Collaboration and Knowledge Management. It is now available as a replay link on the eTouch site.

At its base form, it was a discussion about how Enterprise 2.0 collaboration and knowledge management tools can benefit sales organizations in selling more effectively in these challenging times. The statistics and findings presented by Alex Jefferies, senior research associate at Aberdeen Group, were pulled from two recent reports he published – Sales 2.0: Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration published September 2008, and Sales Intelligence: The Secret to Sales Nirvana, which he will publish at the end of January.

Alex says: “The recent challenges in the economic landscape have necessitated the urgent search for tools that immediately and effectively deliver a positive return on investments. Enterprise 2.0 tools present an evolutionary approach to improve the efficiency of processes and productivity of your workforce in these times.”

In his presentation, Alex pointed out that in these difficult economic times, there’s an increased need for better and more accessible sales intelligence and that companies can stay ahead by worker smarter, not necessarily harder. These are two driving forces behind the movement towards the use of wikis in the enterprise.

He also spent some time talking about what the best-in-class, or most successful companies in their fields, are doing and how they’re differentiating themselves in the market. More often than not, this includes embracing new technologies like enterprise wikis to push forward.

The webinar provides a lot of useful information, and I recommend you listen to it. You can also download the Sales 2.0 report. It’s worth the time. And if you have any questions about it, contact me.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Here's to 2009

The holiday season has quickly passed us by. It never seems to go on long enough, does it? The weather has been crazy, the economy is in flux; yet people took time out to appreciate family, friends and enjoy themselves. That's what I love about the holidays.

Now it's back to the grind. And there's much to be optimistic about -- a new year and new beginnings. But let me focus on business.

The Enterprise 2.0 marketplace is burgeoning. Early adopters are realizing returns on their investments, and more companies are catching on to the potential of wikis and other software solutions for collaboration and knowledge management challenges. Think these types of solutions aren't going mainstream? Charlie Rose of PBS aired an interview last week with Léo Apotheker, co-CEO and a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, and Andrew Mcafee of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School about enterprise software. I read about it first on Stewart Mader's blog.

The interview stressed about enterprise software solutions can help corporations manage fragmented technology systems, departments to better manage the company and lead the company to greater success. Oliver Marks of ZDnet also wrote about the interview. He wrote: "This TV appearance is a fascinating indication of how much more seriously Enterprise 2.0 is being taken in the current economic predicament." It's a really interesting interview and something we've been talking about recently as well. It's definitely worth a watch.

2009 has the potential to be a defining year for social software - a year in which wikis, blogs, and plugins, etc. will become part of mainstream technology conversations. And, it brings with it the promise of solving collaboration woes across industries.

I'll toast to that.