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.

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.

Content is King

Alex Jefferies, senior research associate at Aberdeen Group, explains the ‘why’ behind wikis:

“The guiding philosophy behind a wiki is really quite simple: content is king. In other words, the benefit derived from an enterprise wiki depends greatly on the amount of information contributed by users."

The most successful organizations are the ones who are able to spark a high degree of employee adoption. The result of such adoption ranges from a dynamic glossary of company-specific terminology to a forum for new employee ideas. In fact, many organizations are using wikis as a training platform, one where they can centralize FAQs and best practices for use in the onboarding process. The multitude of uses has led the majority (59%) of best-in-class companies to either leverage, or plan to leverage, internal wikis.”

The key findings of Alex’s recent Sales 2.0 report show a correlation between companies that utilize wikis as part of a sales program and improving sales. But what we also know is that a wiki is only as valuable as the content employees put in there.

Not sure what to put on your corporate wiki? According to Stewart Mader, wiki consultant and blogger, “A wiki can be especially useful for commonly needed information, like FAQ, guidelines, HR or purchasing policies.” He gives more details in a recent article.

So go forth and populate your company’s wiki!

SamePage 4.0

Last week, our team was busy with finalizing and announcing SamePage version 4.0. The focus of this release is technology enhancements and product improvements that better meet the needs of large enterprises. Scalability is a key challenge of software implementation in large enterprises. Software can become cost prohibitive, when scaling it up costs an arm and a leg.

That's a key reason SamePage is one of the few wikis that can scale in a cost-effective way.

Some highlights of the new release include:

- Increases scalability for large enterprises.
- Improved performance of wiki based on new Java technologies
- REST-based Web services integrate with other enterprise applications
- Enables direct content creation between the wiki and web portals
- Users can now create and collaborate around charts and tables with new database and chart plug ins
- New baseline version of the software

Alex Jefferies, a senior research analyst with Aberdeen who has just completed a report entitled, Sales 2.0, said:

"Large companies are furiously searching for effective ways to collaborate outside of traditional and laborious methods, such as email. The benefit of an enterprise wiki is that it allows for efficient project or procedure collaboration, without burdening employees with a never-ending flurry of emails. Organizations who are currently using internal wikis have found applicable uses in everything from project collaboration to creating a dynamic glossary of company-specific terms and practices to help onboard new hires."

I fully agree with Alex’s assertion – indeed this has been one of our key messages.

If you prefer, the complete list of features and release notes are available at: http://support.etouch.net/cm/wiki/?id=57940

Don't take my word for it though, try it yourself. Anyone can sign up for a free trial; no matter what size your business, or even for personal use.

Aberdeen on Sales 2.0

Aberdeen Group just released a Sales 2.0 report: Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration.

The crux of the study is examining how companies are and have the potential to shorten sales cycles and increase productivity by utilizing Web 2.0 tools.

The timing for data like this is impeccable. The US economy is going through tough times, and companies need to proactively sell more to survive and compete in these trying times. Cost-effective tools and technological advancements become that much more valuable during difficult economic periods.

According to the report, 45% of 210 companies surveyed that use social media within both the sales and marketing departments experience year-over-year improvement in lead qualification rates.

“The pressure to increase top-line revenue growth (63%) and improve overall sales productivity (60%) were identified by survey respondents as the top two pressures causing organizations to focus resources on the organizational capabilities and technology enablers use to improve sales performance,” it says in the executive summary.

It’s a good sign for enterprise wikis. Wikis are a cost-effective technology solution to collaboration and knowledge management challenges.

“As sales managers search for effective ways to manage their teams outside the traditional avenues of meetings and emails, wikis allow for project and team collaboration around a certain account or opportunity.”

There are a lot of interesting numbers and concepts expressed in this Aberdeen report that I plan to revisit. For example, Aberdeen’s report stresses how crucial it to the success of an enterprise social media / Sales 2.0 initiative to have the support of senior management. Download the report today.