A sign that social business is growing up

Michael Fauscette made some wise comments about a new company, Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0, that announced itself recently:

without a methodology, a risk mitigation approach, the correct skills and change management a project is doomed. Businesses need enterprise class, scaleable social tools, social processes and knowledgeable assistance to pull off this level of business transformation.

Earlier this week some colleagues announced a partnership that is both good news for businesses that want to do social transformation projects but also an indication that social business is growing up.

I think Michael is right.

I also had a discussion with one of the founders, Michael Krigsman, on Twitter that their product diagram looked like it was designed by a committee and was difficult to understand. I am looking forward to how things develop on that front.

Twitter and CompuServe

There are not many things new in life, or in IT. I was reminded recently that there have been predecessors to Twitter, as in Before There Was Twitter, There Was Dave Winer’s Instant Outliner. 

I can add another one: CompuServe. In the late 1980s, I got onto CompuServe because I reckoned that I had to build some experience on communicating electronically; South Africa in those days didn’t yet have the Internet. I became a member of an interest group for data warehousing, the IT field I was in. 

It took a while before I became part of what we would now call a social network, but once my connections had got to a certain level I got invited on international conference calls, and made contact with a data warehouse consultant who I eventually worked with at data warehouse DBMS vendor Redbrick.

So while we look at technologies like Twitter as revolutionary, it’s worthwhile remembering that other technologies paved the way; and in twenty years time we may be remembering Twitter like I did CompuServe

How to set up a post-grad research social community?

I go through periods of blogging drought. I get ideas of things to write about but there is either a heavy workload or a stimulus missing, which means I sometimes don’t blog for a few weeks. But then I see something, often another blog, which provides the stimulus.

In this case, it was a combination - Dennis’ post about the communities for American accountants and Microsoft Dynamics, and me being on holiday for a week with time to think.

The accountant’s site is described as a place where

Members can share resources, establish personalized research and teaching spaces, keep up with news, trends, and regulations, and take advantage of rich profile information to find colleagues and experts.

The story about professional social networks has personal relevance to me. My wife, a medical doctor and lecturer at the Witwatersrand University Medical School, is starting a new job in January as Graduate Research Facilitator for the medical faculty; the job is to assist and guide doctors doing post-grad research.

One of the issues she discussed with me was that she will be supporting over 100 doctors who are doing post-grad studies while working in about six different teaching hospitals that are located all over Johannesburg. The travel time between hospitals make it very difficult to get to each hospital enough times each week to spend time with the doctors.

Using the Internet is obviously one answer to the problem of distance communication; setting up a social network or wiki would be a way for doctors to raise and discuss issues, and provide some kind of library functionality. Given that this is a university, however, will mean that motivating for the technology, and then getting it set up, is going to take quite some time.

While I cannot help with moving the university’s IT organisation along, I started to wonder if there was a way I could set up a test social network site – as a feasibility study – and as a personal learning experience. The challenge is to find some appropriate open source software, and a really cheap means of hosting it.

Fortunately, the Gartner report on the hype cycle for social software provided me with a list of software to evaluate.

MediaWiki, Socialtext, Twiki and Mindtouch

A major factor in the software evaluation will be what level of programming skill is needed to develop and support a site. I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend too many hours learning some complex technology. (Am I being naive?)

Where to host the software is still unsolved, and given that the cloud services from Amazon, Google & Co aren’t available in SA, I’m stumped at the moment.

If nothing else, it could be an interesing academic exercise.

Gartner’s prediction accuracy

Care of a Twitter note from Hutch Carpenter, I have been reading a Gartner report on the state of the hype cycle for social software.

It was interesting reading, but I am going to save it (or social bookmark it) for reading in a few years time. The reason: back in about 2001/2002, I remember Gartner doing a report on the state of ERP II – being inter-company (between company) transacting, as opposed to intra-company (within company) which is where ERP’s strength was supposed to be.

At the time, I recall Gartner making major predictions about how ERP II would be a new revolutionising tool for business. 6-7 years later I am still waiting to see that.

I wonder if the Gartner analysts ever review old predictions and see how accurate they were? It would be interesting to see the analysis.

Enterprise 2.0 early adopter feedback

Back in the dot-com era, you often saw articles about new Internet technologies that would revolutionise business. The Enterprise 2.0 phenomenon has not reached the hype levels of the dot-com period, but sometimes I am a bit sceptical of some claims made about social networking for the enterprise – and I mentioned that in a blog last week.

Now AMR has brought some reality into the debate with a report about results from Enterprise 2.0 early adopters. The early adopters failed to find benefits in the areas of customer and partner relationshipships, but get results in terms of internal collaboration. That doesn’t surprise me because, by their very nature, early adopters look for the value in new technology, while everyone else considers it ‘pie in the sky’.

Having been involved in some technology-driven initiatives several years ago that didn’t go anywhere in the business - artificial intelligence, executive information systems – I have a mental checklist of issues to evaluate. AMR repeats the decision agenda that a business should follow for any new technology project:

What is the urgent business objective that the technology can address?
What project will be easiest to implement?
Where can you get the most business value for the least complex implementation?
What departments will be able to best exploit the new opportunities?

There is also the recognition that social networking is a technology that will require engaging with customers, partners and employees, for quite a period of time, just to get them to start understanding the implications of such an initiative.

Meanwhile, one innovation from social software that I can appreciate is a disaster watch for Hurrican Ike on Twitter.

My take on latest analyst views

My favourite analyst site, AMR Research, often has raises some issues on its ‘First Thing Monday‘ page that provide me with blogging ideas:

A Google chrome comment – summarises the prospects of Chrome from an enterprise perspective as a

browser, a platform for Google Apps, omni-client platform strategy and a replacement for the Windows environment for desktop and mobile applications

The state of enterprise software skills in the US – AMR now believes only 2 ERP vendors, SAP and Oracle, are the main players in the US. I wonder what Microsoft thinks of that?

I find the Gartner site to be pretty poor in terms of getting quick news analysis, but one of their analysts was on ClassicFM last night (again) discussing some discontinuities that are coming from the Internet. At least he was aware of SA’s local issues around the Internet, e.g., why Software as a Service (SaaS) is not taking off here due to our Internet bandwidth problems. Also discussed was the future impact of social software – very much aimed at the big corporates rather than SMB market – which makes it sound unimportant to the majority of SA companies.

South African social network

An interesting story about MXit, the SA social network that operates on the SA cell-phone network and has become the medium of choice for most young South Africans.

Now the big local mobile operators are trying to get in on the act with their own offerings.

Africa not open for social media

Shel Israel has published the findings from his SAP Global Survey. In Part 3, he reviews the world of social media by continents. Africa is the last one to be mentioned and has the smallest amount of comment. I was one of the Africa respondents of the survey.

I find it sad that my continent is still seen as the laggard in many areas of the technology and Internet space, despite the efforts of SA’s social media gurus, like Mike Stopforth.

Facebook issues

A report from the BBC some days ago called Facebook ‘costs businesses dear’ refers to employees “wasting time” on social networking.

Mike Huss, director of employment law at Peninsula called on all firms to block access to sites such as Facebook. He asked: “Why should employers allow their workers to waste two hours a day on Facebook when they are being paid to do a job?”

What about time wasted getting tea or coffee, by those taking smoke breaks, or using their cellphones for private use while at work, or reading non-work-related emails? 

The kind of Ludite attitude exhibited by Peninsula seems to surface each time a new technology enters the work environment. 

The two reasons I have heard recently for blocking FB that I accept are from a school that found over 50% of its limited bandwidth was being used for FB; and my daughter’s university, Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, banning FB during working hours so students don’t hog time on communal PCs which are there for work purposes.

Mobile apps adoption

Adopting some of the new social network apps – Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader – has exposed me to the mobile solutions that those apps provide (for use on my cell phone). I am now quite used to spending some time viewing my RSS feeds on Google Reader mobile, updating Twitter on Twitter mobile, and checking things out on Facebook mobile - while I am waiting, usually in the car for a family member.

The way these mobile versions have been skillfully adapted, made user-friendly, and provide information in a concise manner, makes me wonder whether the next wave of ERP apps should focus rather on mobile solutions rather than Software as a Service (SaaS). The young generation, like my kids, are very familiar with using a cellphone as an Internet platform and for social networking (in SA they use Mxit), and it is getting common to see business people checking emails on their phones.

SaaS and Web 2.0 may be a sexy new wave for the IT people in the developed countries, but in developing countries the lack of good telcoms infrastructure makes it a luxury. However, many developing countries have good mobile communications, so applications that could be used on a cell phone might have a lot more traction.

So why have ERP vendors not started adapting their user interfaces for mobile use? There are obviously some ERP functions for which a small screen on a phone won’t work, but activities like approving a purchase order or leave/vacation application, or completing a timesheet, could be provided as a mobile application, and I am sure there are many others.

The technology is obviously available, as my mobile usage can attest, but it is the foresight, and creative insight and ability to re-design information layouts on a cellphone screen that seem to be lacking at the moment in enterprise vendors. An example of this creativity is the Opera Mini browser on my phone which allows me to view normal websites (I see they are adding more functionality as well).