Salesforce Chatter: Enterprise 2.0 or Enterprise 2″0?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by thierry

Twitter was bruising yesterday about Salesforce announcement of its new application, Chatter. With a product introduced as a “Facebook for the Enterprise” by a representative of the company, Salesforce just confirmed what is becoming an important trend in Enterprise platforms:  real-time collaboration.

For a long time, the only asynchronous tool used by companies was email, and one of the challenges of Enterprise 2.0 adoption was in helping people getting used of new asynchronous tools like wikis, blogs, bookmarking or tagging platforms, placing them in conditions to deal with knowledge exchange and serendipity values. In parallel, generalization of the Blackberry is putting email back into pseudo-synchronous mode, instant messaging applications penetration rate in companies is about 40%, according to Gartner, and Google Wave is pointing another real-time head into the game. The point, of course, is no more about discussing whether synchronous tools will be part or not of our new toolboxes. They will, for sure, but are they worth the hype?

The Facebook analogy used by Salesforce is indeed indicative of the direction main platform vendors are today heading to; something like “hey, Facebook works as hell, wouldn’t you like to be able to have your employees sharing, interacting, poking each other on business matters? 230 milliions users cannot be wrong”. But is really the Social Web a similar playground as Enterprise? Definitely not. Bertrand Duperrin recently insightfully sketched the differences between managing communities and managing business. While both worlds aim to drive flawlessly working communities, companies need a lot more.

Furthermore, these new tools will put emphasis on time as a critical material, weighting in most process-based tasks. While searching increased productivity along these processes, with the help of real-time facilitators, executives will put further pressure on actual organizations, avoiding to face the necessary cultural shift which has yet to happen. Platform vendors’ “real-time” pitch is with no doubt good for (their) business, as executives will certainly jump in the bandwagon, not for Enterprise 2.0.

This new trend will oblige us to be even more cautious when implementing social tools, as we now must deploy two different layers of interaction, and that, along with leadership, decision-making, knowledge and information, time is the new dimension we have to deal with.

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Salesforce Chatter: Entreprise 2.0 ou Entreprise 2″0 ?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by thierry

English version here.

Twitter bruissait hier au sujet de l’annonce faite par Salesforce de sa nouvelle application, Chatter. Avec un produit présenté comme “un Facebook pour l’entreprise” par un représentant de la société, Salesforce n’a fait que confirmer une tendance de plus en plus importante pour les plateformes d’entreprise: la collaboration en temps réel.

Pendant longtemps, le seul outil asynchrone utilisé en entreprise a été l’email, et l’un des challenges posé par ladoption de l’Enterprise 2.0 était d’aider les employés à utilsier des outils asynchrones tels wikis, blogs, plateformes de bookmarking ou de taggage, les mettant en condition d’expérimenter l’échange de savoir et les valeurs de la sérendipité. En parallèle, la généralisation de l’utilisation du Blackberry remet l’email dans un mode d’utilisation pseudo-synchrone, le taux de pénétration de la messagerie instantannée en entreprise atteint 40% selon Gartner, et Google Wave pointe le bout de son nez dans le jeu du temps réel. Il ne s’agit plus, bien sûr, de se demander si les outils synchrones feront ou non partie de notre nouvelle boîte à outils. Ils seront là, bien sûr, mais le jeu en vaut-il la chandelle ?

L’analogie avec Facebook utilisée par Salesforce indique la direction suivie aujourd’hui par les principaux éditeurs de plateformes, quelque chose comme “hé, Facebook marche du tonnerre, n’aimeriez-vous pas voir vos employés partager, interacgir, se poker l’un l’autre sur des sujets relatifs au business ? 230 millions d’utilisateurs ne peuvent pas se tromper”. Mais le Web Social ressemble-t-il vraiment à l’Entreprise ? Définitivement pas. Bertrand Duperrin a récemment très bien décrit les différences entre le management de communautés et le managgement proprement dit. Alors que les deux univers cherchent à animer des communautés florissantes, les entreprises ont besoin de bien plus.

De plus, ces outils vont mettre l’accent sur le temps en tant que ressource critique, mettant d’avantage de poids sur les tâches basées sur des processus. En cherchant à accroître la productivité dans le déroulement de ces processus, avec des outils de facilitation, la direction mettra plus encore de pression sur l’organisation en place, évitant d’entreprendre les changements culturels nécessaires, changements qui n’ont pas encore eu lieu. Le pitch des vendeurs de plateformes “en temps réel” sera sans aucun doute bon pour (leurs) affaires, la direction générale étant certainement séduite, mais pas pour l’Entreprise 2.0.

Cette nouvelle tendance va nous obliger à être plus encore vigilants dans l’impplémentation d’outils sociaux; nous devons désormais déployer deux couches d’interaction différentes, et considérer qu’à côté du leadersip, de la prise de décision, de la connaissance et de l’information, le temps est la nouvelle dimension que nous avons à prendre en compte.

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The New Laws of Attraction: Brands Dematerialization

Posted on November 18, 2009 by thierry

Considering that brands are in fact shaped by their customers is anything but new. In 1954, Peter Drucker already wrote:

[Marketing] is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.

The recent frenzy of social media marketing doesn’t say anything but the same, enjoining companies to listen and engage with customers, providing us with a too often over-simplified view of business, where brands and customers seem to be the only players in town. While Enterprise 2.0 is a careful field of many approaches and thoughtful adoption and roll out frameworks, in a number of cases Marketing 2.0 doesn’t appear much more than Advertising 2.0, or Sales 2.0 at its best. Co-creation itself is often reduced at the mass customization level, mitigating customers’ creativity with small scaled processes.

But today’s brands trump any simplistic vision of marketing.  They are part of an ecosystem which encompasses both enterprise and customers; they have to deal with complex multi-channel creation and distribution systems where each actor has a capital influence on their perception. François Gossieaux recently wrote an interesting article about the difficulties inherent to brand positioning in our Connected Age.

The disappearing product

One of the most striking aspects of today’s brands is a complete change of an element which was, until recently, at the center of all attentions: the product. Not to tell that the finality of marketing is no more about selling products, and that offering your customers the best ever products is not of uttermost importance; but what we are experiencing today is a shift from products as personification of brands to products as symbol of value exchanged between brands and customers. As customers’ experience take more and more importance in today’s marketing, brands dematerialize themselves.

Kapferer's prism evolution

Typically, two facets of the classical Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism are now merging,  Physical (product based) aspect getting interweaved with the brand’s Personality, as the brand perception is focused, not on static aspects, but on dynamic exchanges between a brand and its customers.

Brands attractors

As brand perception evolves from positional (physical and “moral” aspects of the product) to transactional, the simplistic view of branding as a brand-to-customer relationship seems understandable, but hides in fact an increasing complexity. The “customer-centric” brand is in reality mostly the more or less conscious result of several traction points. Suppliers, partners, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, delivery, internal and external services, from design to customer support, are all part of the end user experience. Understanding where your brand’s main attractors are, fully preconditions your understanding of the brand perception. Neither it is a matter of controlling the whole chain, nor is it about simple interaction. Branding in a complex world requires a full awareness of positive and negative traction points, as a simple change in any of them might destroy a fragile equilibrium. Changing a supplier might have a tremendous impact on the final product, therefore on your customers experience; staff turnover in a retail point might turn them away…   Your brand relies on several traction points. Get to know them. You might not have any possible action on them, but you will at least be able to prevent any negative impact from a change of conditions.

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Les nouvelles lois de la gravitation: la dématérialisation des marques

Posted on November 18, 2009 by thierry

Considérer les marques comme façonnées par les consommateurs est tout sauf une idée neuve. Déjà, en 1954, Peter Drucker écrivait :

[Le marketing] est le business vu dans son ensemble à travers son résultat final, à savoir du point de vue du consommateur.

Le récent engouement pour le marketing des médias sociaux ne raconte rien d’autre, incitant les entreprises à écouter et interagir avec le consommateur, nous présentant trop souvent une vision sur-simplifiée de l’activité commerciale, dans laquelle marques et consommateurs semblent les seuls et uniques acteurs. Tandis que l’Entreprise 2.0 est l’objet de nombreuses approches, schémas d’adoption et cadres de déploiement inspirés, dans bon nombre de cas, le Marketing 2.0 ressemble fort à la Communication Publicitaire 2.0, ou, au mieux, à la Vente 2.0. La co-création elle-même est souvent réduite au niveau de customisation de masse, encadrant la créativité du consommateur par des processus prédéfini à petite échelle.

Mais les marques actuelles déjouent toute vision simpliste du marketing. Elles font partie d’un écosystème qui englobe l’entreprise et ses clients ; elles doivent tenir compte de schémas de création et de distribution multi-canaux complexes, dont chaque acteur a une influence capitale sur leur perception. François Gossieaux a récemment écrit  un très intéressant article (en anglais) sur les difficultés inhérentes au positionnement d’une marque dans notre époque hyper-connectée.

La disparition du produit

Un des aspects les plus frappants des marques actuelles est une transformation complète d’un élément qui était, récemment encore, au centre de toutes les attentions : le produit. Je ne dis pas que le marketing n’a plus pour objet de vendre des produits, et que mettre à disposition de vos consommateurs les meilleurs produits possibles n’est pas d’une importance capitale ; mais nous observons aujourd’hui un glissement depuis un produit personnifiant une marque vers un produit symbolisant la valeur échangée entre marques et consommateurs. Alors que l’expérience utilisateur revêt de plus en plus d’importance dans le marketing, les marques se dématérialisent.

Evolution du prisme de Kapferer

Typiquement, deux des facettes du classique Prisme d’Identité de Kapferer sont en train de se fondre entre eux. Le Physique de la marque (basé sur le produit) se mêle à la Personnalité de la marque, tandis que la perception de la marque se concentre, non plus sur des aspects statiques, mais sur des échanges dynamiques entre marque et consommateurs.

Les attracteurs de marque

La perception de la marque évoluant de positionnelle (les aspects physiques et « moraux » des produits) à transactionnelle, la vue simpliste consistant à réduire le branding à un dialogue entre marque et consommateurs est compréhensible, mais cache en fait une complexité grandissante. La marque « client-centrique » est en fait le produit plus ou moins conscient de plusieurs points d’attraction. Fournisseurs, partenaires, fabricants, grossistes, détaillants, chaîne de livraison, services internes et externes, du design à la relation client, font tous partie de l’expérience utilisateur. Comprendre où se situent les principaux attracteurs de votre marque préconditionne votre compréhension de sa perception. Il n’est ici ni question de contrôler la chaîne dans son entier, ni de la résumer à une interaction simple. Le branding dans un univers complexe demande la compréhension des points d’attraction positifs et négatifs, une simple modification de l’un d’entre eux risquant de détruire ce qui est un fragile équilibre. Un changement de fournisseur risque ainsi d’avoir un impact considérable sur le produit fini, et donc sur l’expérience utilisateur ; un changement de personnel dans un point de vente peut éloigner vos clients… Votre marque dépend de ses attracteurs. Apprenez à les connaître. Vous ne pourrez pas toujours exercer sur eux l’action voulue, mais vous serez au moins capable de prévenir les effets négatifs d’un changement de condition initiale.

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A Fractal Perspective on Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

Posted on November 4, 2009 by thierry

is enterprise 2.0 fractal?

Whichever definition and/or paradigm we are trying to wrap Enterprise 2.0 in, whichever framework we are tempted to fit it in when boarding key departments from enterprise, one of the main challenges we, practitioners, are facing every day, is to find relevant patterns and routines to foster change and facilitate adoption among employees.

Involving marketing people is usually a matter of one-to-one education, accompanying them in the journey from “listening” to “adding value to your customers’ experience”. Implementing large scale collaborative tools require a different approach, usually a mix between selective evangelization and viral facilitation. But, how far does virality live up to its promises?

The downside of virality

Basically, virality relies on two pre-requisites: a propitious ground, whether it be a shared comprehension of the objectives or a strong sense of community, and a well-defined adoption program. If (and only if, remember that you cannot plan virality, you can at best sustain it) adoption takes off, most people will build their collaborative behavior from observation of a few early adopters or evangelists, triggering a lot of mimesis among participants. Paradoxally, successful viral adoption may lead to misuse of tools or misbehavior.

Early adopters and evangelists have to be carefully chosen to trigger the right behaviors among other people. Alas, the qualities involved in community activity are usually not the very same needed to drive adoption. Moreover, mimesis is often a blindfold, and, in most cases, people will not be able to discriminate a correct behavior, in accordance to their role, from the one induced by early adopters, before the late stage of adoption.

Not to say that virality is a useless factor in Enterprise 2.0 adoption, but in such a closed system, the expected exponential results of virality take the typical S-shape of an innovation adoption curve; the individuals able to induce a different behaviors to community members and to align community roles with business objectives might well be among late adopters, thus leaving a flock of users clueless about real value of Enterprise 2.0.

A fractal perspective

Businesses are complex, dynamic and non-linear systems. Interweaving social tools into such systems require much more than virality. Aligning collaborative practices with business objectives require new social processes to foster decision taking and emergence of consensus in non-deterministic way. At pilot or department level, 2.0 initiatives usually succeed due to the impulsion of a few individuals, but this kind of approach usually doesn’t scale well. Among factors to take into account are corporate culture, meaningful organizational patterns, interactions between every stage of the value chain,… and the need to provide individuals with empowering micro-processes.

From many points, Enterprise 2.0 structure might be helpfully viewed as a fractal structure: recognizable, scalable interaction patterns, instable equilibrium state, complex and quite unpredictable output. In this perspective, how could fractals help us facilitate adoption and maximize value?

  • Fractal patterns are scale-independent. Better than relying on early adopters and evangelists, we should try to enroll key actors (managers, facilitators, support functions…) as soon as possible, letting other employees arrange and model their interaction according to these pre-existing business patterns. “Setting clear objectives” is nothing else but implementing otherwise successful patterns into 2.0 initiatives.
  • This same scale invariance could help dealing with difficulties inherent to organizational change. Enterprise 2.0 adoption is not only taking what works at some level to evangelize broader initiatives. It is about implementing these same successful features at different level.
  • At individual level, the need for micro-processes, or social routines, is easily understood as requested by scale invariance. People should get, inside communities, the very same capabilities and roles the department they belong to has inside the company’s value chain.
  • Fractal systems are also characterized by existence of strange attractors, which maintain global equilibrium. Changing little parameters may lead to a totally different state. This is an interesting analogy with the management of internal communities. Raising the necessary consensus is not a role-based process, but rather a practice-based one, which positively accounts for more instability, thus more innovation.

Looking at Enterprise 2.0 adoption and value from a complex system perspective gives us interesting insights on the necessary culture shift to undertake and might provide us with a roadmap to successfully implement and scale initiatives while maximizing a company’s competitive advantages.

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