Community Casebook

Sophisticated Solutions

Let's look at a particularly impressive, sophisticated solution:

Agile Commons is a community online, publicly available at www.agilecommons.org, that serves a user-community of those who work with the Agile software development methodology.  In effect, it is a learning and collaboration center, with multiple layers of community participation.

Multi-layer, Multi-Function Community: viewed on the top navigation bar, the community offers a Rally Community for Rally Software employees, customer and partners within the overall Agile Commons community, as well as a learning center through Agile University, and members area for registered "Agilistas".

• Member Level Permissions: every member is served content to match the level of access based on membership type.  In some cases, one may be able to view but not comment. In other cases, content view may be restricted and viewers' pages may be populated only by permissioned content and activities.
• Customer Service: alleviating call load by offering a community-driven knowledge base and peer to peer support, with participation by agile employees as well as Agile customers and partners.
• One Stop Shopping for networking, learning and sharing in Agile Commons!

Case Studies- Connecting Professional Expertise

Let's look at a few more case studies of note with regard to the importance of connecting professional expertise for learning and development competitive advantage, as well as for ensuring productivity and best practices in the workplace.

While the client names must remain confidential, a focus on purpose, features and functionality tells us plenty:

• A professional organization launched a SaaS community (software as a service, alleviating IT integration and hosting costs and limitations) to support the connection, social-networking style, of professionals in the financial/accounting field. The community allows them to discuss new and pertinent topics, upload documents for collaboration, comment together to evaluate and interpret new laws and rulings, and to share and learn from best practices. (more below)

• In another professional organization example, an environmental design organization serving environmentally compliant companies launched a community to facilitate collaboration and education, as well as evaluation of and learning from best practices for the environmental packaging and design industry.  Practitioners can talk about issues, educate one another, learn, and create awareness, upload and discuss design files and other creative content, as well as connect with peers social-networking style.

Where you place your money...

According to a recent article sent my way, Ed Moran, a Deloitte consultant, recently did a study of more than 100 businesses with online communities. Apparently, many sites failed to gain important traction (usership), despite investments in flashy technology.

"Thirty-five percent of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members – 6% of these businesses spent over $1 million on their community projects. “A disturbingly high number of these sites fail,” Moran tells us... about 30% of the businesses Deloitte studied have only one part-time worker in charge of their communities. Most other businesses put a single marketing pro [but not necessarily community pro] in charge of their sites."

The article cites that potential blunders include "a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology," a failure to put someone experienced in charge of the project, and a tendency to monitor meaningless metrics such as number of site visits vs. Google rankings or inbound links.

From a marketing standpoint, I would add that community activity, content value, contributions, time spent on the community or company website (as linked to from the community), increase in average sales dollar value, valuable customer insights, and even customer peer-to-peer support are measurable and valuable through thoughtful analysis.

From an HR standpoint, community activity, content value, contributions, and time spent on the community are all quite valuable from a soft-ROI perspective, and increase in applications/recruits, increase in retention and new business referrals all through the community have quantifiable and powerful ROI implications (as referenced in postings throughout this site).

 

Article from the Belfast Telegraph

Source: Bellfast Telegraph

"... too many of us in this part of the world think bricks-and-mortar first and internet second, if at all. The problem has been outlined in stark detail by the research company Gartner (www.gartner.com). Its recent survey, conducted in 18 countries, identified a failure to engage with the phenomenon of social networking — even though it has the potential to increase savings and improve productivity. So what kind of things can social networking help with?

Take the PR company Edelman (www.edelman.com). It recently revealed that it had managed to take 1% off its bottom line merely by using social networks as a recruitment tool. The recruits they managed to take on were a better ‘fit’ with the company, too...

Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0... more than just collaborative content...

These ideas are lifted from a whitepaper/profile by Matthew D. Lees, Vice President and Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, about "Building Blocks for Customer Community and Collaboration".

"Web 2.0 world is demonstrated by its non-hierarchical information architecture. Data structures in the Web 1.0 (and earlier) worlds exemplify hierarchical constructs, with their comfortably fixed directories and well-defined taxonomies. Web 2.0, on the other hand, emphasizes flat systems, where personal and group (folksonimic) tagging reigns."

It isn’t just about the information. The idea of a social networking platform supports the creation and organic growth and content flow of social networks among members... which facilitates the management of members, content, contributions, knowledge sharing and content collaboration. (In my view, it puts people at the center of content management.)

"Ideally, members have a considerable amount of control over how, whether, and with whom their profile information is shared. Member permissions can be set at multiple points, giving both community administrators and [permissioned users] ample control over who has access to what within those areas."

More about a unique approach

... and then I promise to get back to the case studies...

I read an interesting analyst report today assessing HiveLive's place in the complex and broad metaverse of white label community and social networking companies. Here's a little bit of info, some highlights, and a bit more detailed reading is below. You can download the complete report on HiveLive's website.

"HiveLive’s LiveConnect is one of the most creatively designed and original community platforms we’ve seen. A hosted system with a building-block approach, it gives both users and administrators wide-ranging flexibility to create unique spaces for collaboration and communication inside and outside your organization..."

LiveConnect’s building blocks, called “Hives,” can be configured to support conventional social applications (such as discussion boards, blogs, polls, and so on) as well as custom community applications... to meet exact needs...differentiates LiveConnect from other platforms."

LiveConnect users have created Hives to be media archives, idea centers, file exchanges, software marketplaces, and more [announcements, contact lists, polls, idea centers, research libraries, content libraries, video libraries, book lists, file exchanges, photo galleries, meeting agendas/minutes, marketplaces].

LiveConnect strengths are in its [Hive construct,] social networking and member management (and permissioning) system, its straightforward integration of widgets (such as YouTube videos, Google Calendars, and Flickr slideshows), and its easy-to-use thumbs-up / thumbs-down rating system.

... It looks and feels different, and it is. This is largely due to HiveLive’s approach to de-sign, which focuses on users (and the relationships among them) and information, not technology."

As Promised: Here's What's Cool!

Here is what's cool about the HiveLive social networking platform approach:

- Any business leader can get started with community, for any segment.
Sales could connect the sales force to share information, marketing could collaborate on projects.
IT could work on feature requests and product roadmaps, while evaluating optimal community potential.
HR could could connect to plan, share insights, follow status of hiring, branding or change initiatives.   
Marketing could connect with the entire retail force could be connected via a "virtual water cooler" to gain insights and information despite being geographically dispersed.
Marketing could connect with a VIP customer base or long-term focus group to gain invaluable insights and follow customer dialog.
Product Development could connect with marketing, with strategic partners, and with customers- all with different and private levels of access to content and conversation- to speed successful market initiatives.
... And the list goes on.

- It is as simple as a few clicks to include multiple layers of permission to content view or editing.
What is truly unique, against the dozen or so community providers I've evaluated in recent months, creating community, inviting people in, setting permissions for content access or editing, skinning (branding/designing) the pages, building an activity onto a page (wiki, blog, forum, Q&A, or even custom activities soliciting specific information and driving unique conversations...), or even determining content ordering on a page by page basis- is all as easy as clicking and selecting from drop down menus- NO CODING IS NEEDED.  When it comes to empowering business users and avoiding costly and time consuming IT special requests, this is very powerful, and very valuable. I've seen people say, "I wish our entire website worked this way!"

- Community growth is organic and brings the outside-in. Growth is inexpensive and modular.
Marketing may decide to create a VIP customer community with surveys, opportunities to share, photos, celebrations of past campaigns- the sky is the limit. Customer insights communities have become quite popular, and this platform enables them for a fraction of the going price. Or perhaps Sales decided to start communicating with top distribution partners or top clients. HR/Recruiters might even like to create community areas for top, hot prospects and "talent pipelines" to follow, or a community for retirees or alumni to stay connected to the company for future rehire/contract or mentoring opportunities. IT & Product might facilitate customer support by allowing community experts help answer questions and soliciting insights on product development opportunities.

Social Inside- Intranets get interesting- the start of community

I heard from my friend Jeanne Meister today, someone who's blog, New Learning Playbook, I've been following for some time. Jeanne is a thought leader and consultant in the learning and development space and started following and advising on Web 2.0 for corporate learning initiatives some time ago. She is inside working with some terrific companies.  Recently Jeanne posted on Intranets... and it really struck me because I too am hearing from companies that think that making their Intranet social might be the critical first step towards a company move towards social networking.

Jeanne points out:

"...a growing number of companies are looking to their Intranet to... operate in a social way so employees can share, collaborate and find information.  While I have written in past posts about the benefits of starting a company blog, there is no reason why blogging should be your first foray into the world of social media. In fact, I could build a case that maybe you should start with a project that is not threatening to your IT or legal department, not to mention your PR department. Re-vamping your company Intranet to include wiki’s, tagging, rating and even image galleries may in fact be an interesting starting point on your path toward social media."

Thanks Jeanne! Read on to find out what this is particularly timely insight!

35+ Examples of Corporate 2.0

Invited to attend a Mashable networking event in New York on August 7th, I was led to the Mashable blog where I found a list of 35+ Exampes of Corporate Social Media (companies using Web 2.0 strategies for corporate advantage)... Not exactly "community solutions" in the depth and detail that we are considering here, but nonetheless, interesting to note. 

The list includes: Blendtec (and their awesome YouTube videos), Adobe, Best Western, Cadence, Cisco, Coca-Cola (apparently lame in the eyes of teens for sending "friend" invitations through Facebook), Dell (also bringing in new biz through Twitter action), Fujifilm, GM, HP, H&R Block (they twit with customers as well), HSBC, Intel, Intuit, Jeep, Jet Blue (including great L&D solutions!), Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, Marriott, McDonalds, SAP, Southwest Airlines, Sun (think they are interested in Web 2.0 for L&D as well), National Geographic, New York TImes (several initiatives going on... and a cool new integration with LinkedIn), Nike, Starbucks, Toyota, Visa, Wells Fargo, WWE, Xerox and Zappos (whose CEO is a twitter-extraordinaire as well).

Dow Chemical Connects to Retirees

Dow Chemical has had great success with its recently launched corporate social network called “My Dow Network” which serves retirees, former employees, women and current employees. Senior management, business leaders, HR, and PR are all involved in the strategy of the corporate online community.

At Dow, more than forty percent of Dow’s current workforce will be retirement eligible in the coming five years, making talent considerations and career transitions essential to core business strategy. The social network solution seems to be bridging generational gaps, and has even led to an increase in rehires.  Simply by creating a community for retirees, Dow maintains the knowledge base to ensure productivity, while retirees gain a broad personal and professional network with the ability to stay connected or even to re-enter the workforce and have access to critical retiree benefit information they need.