You’d think the CEO of a public company would have better things to do with his time than to blog anonymously about his company’s performance and trash the competition. But this seems not to be the case with John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods Market, whose “sock puppeting” behavior, “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company” has now landed him in hot water with the Feds and competitors in the natural foods grocery business. Probably a gaggle of lawyers will figure out a way to solve the Mackey issue . . . at least for now.
Yet, this latest escapade got me thinking (once again) about the double-edge sword of social computing. Sometimes we can be too social – not just speaking out of turn but also crossing important organizational boundaries. In our era of instant communications, it is possible to communicate too freely.
What we need are a few good models for how we’re going to “collaborate” with one another over the Net—figuring out the boundaries without building walls. (By enterprise collaboration I mean exchanging and sharing both information and insights, to do our jobs better.) Behind all the Web 2.0 hype, I suspect there are a few pointers towards new models.
One of my current favorites for a new model is Lotus Connections, an integrated suite of five services for social software (IBM’s moniker for the market). These services are (a) communities, (b) social book marking, (c) enterprise profiles, (d) activities, and (e) blogs. Not surprisingly, these services are based on the ways that IBM typically does business. In fact, Connections productizes several internally developed IBM technologies.
I realize that I have the same feelings for Connections that I had with Lotus Notes in the early days of the groupware revolution – a terrific concept for a new computing paradigm, yet where the devil’s in the details. With a $110 per user price tag, IBM is focusing (for now) on the large enterprise marketplace. Designed to run inside an enterprise, Connections bundles restricted versions of WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Enterprise Database, and Tivoli Directory Integrator. To be sure, large organizations have large internal collaboration problems – such as quickly assembling ad hoc task teams of company experts who do not necessarily know one another to solve a pressing problem, or coordinating constantly changing schedules and deliverables.
But I am still bothered by the boundary problem of social computing – which Connections (despite all its promise) does little to address. Yes, as soon as we are authorized and authenticated by our networked environment, we can collaborate and share information. With current technologies, we’re living in a binary world. Either we’re inside the firewall/enterprise or we’re public on the Net. Either things are “private” or “public.”
In real life though, we’re dealing not with just black or white. Social computing’s going to have to do better, and be able to deal with many shades of gray. This means being able to manage content, schedules, and relationships across an “extended” enterprise – and being able to adjust the degree of connectedness we want to have with colleagues across different organizations.
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 173 of 479)
This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.
Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.
Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.
For some historical perspective see:
https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/
The recording from our June 26th webinar, “Utilizing Web CMS as an eMarketing Platform to Deliver Tangible ROI” is now available here.
During the webinar, my co-presenters from Hot Banana Software and I talked about how the Web is a critical component of marketing and sales strategies for organizations large and small. We noted that more and more marketing dollars are moving to online activities, in billions. Not many would argue with that. But we also reminded our audience that “the other side of the coin” in having more money to spend is the parallel rise in corporate expectations for ROI on that spend. Not many can argue with that.
The heat is on. Organizations want eMarketing to drive sales, period. Proving that it can – and quantifying that it does – remains the conundrum for many. As we discussed how to prove marketing ROI, we asked the audience to tell us about their eMarketing goals. Their responses clearly have accountability (read: measurement!) in mind:
We also talked about the fact that eMarketing is a dizzying challenge, given an array of emerging approaches, techniques, and technologies. Selecting the most lucrative methods is as far from a one-dimensional process as you can get. Here’s a snapshot of the methods our webinar audience is using today:
It can be interesting for both analysts and technology vendors to understand the rate of technology adoption within the field — as opposed to within the market forecast. Here’s a case in point, where “2.0”-driven techniques such as social media advertising and RSS content distribution lag begin more traditional “e” methods, focused squarely around email and search.
Want to read more on Web CMS and eMarketing? Download here.
This week’s topic: Growth in language translations.
5 questions,
30 seconds,
Promise.
Your day in the sun may finally be dawning.
While preparing for an upcoming webinar on technical publications in global markets, we reviewed the content/globalizaton management topics that we’ve covered recently in white papers, case studies, and other webinars. An emerging–and insistent–theme is the role that product support content plays in the nearly universal drive for positive customer experience.
This signals an important shift in the value proposition for investment in content technologies for
technical documentation. One that should warm the hearts of techpubs pros everywhere.
Historically, companies have spent money on technical publishing technology in order to realize operational benefits–more automation, content reuse, lower headcount, and so on. The value proposition was inward-facing. Now, however, value is increasingly derived from outside the operations of the organization. High-quality technical content impacts customer satisfaction, drives new revenue in new markets, enhances product usability, and reinforces brand. The value prop is now outward-facing. And these dimensions of ROI can pour a whole lotta sunshine in the corner offices of worldwide organizations.
In addition to the July 11 webinar with Idiom and EMC, check out these Gilbane artifacts for evidence of the value shift in technical publishing.
From the Autodesk case study:
Regarded as a strategic and essential company asset, product documentation is a significant component of the company’s customer-centric information supply chain. With over 60 percent of revenue derived from outside the United States, Autodesk’s vision for content globalization is paramount to continued market leadership.
See also the Sun Microsystems case study and recorded webinars with Medtronic and Astoria.
I was part of a Web 2.0 panel in New York City earlier this week, moderated by Bryant Shea, Director of Content Management at Molecular. It was an intimate affair – we had about thirty people in the room, drawn largely from media/entertainment, financial services, and insurance firms.
We wanted to encourage audience participation — about five minutes into the event, one person piped up, “We know that Web 2.0 is all about user generated content. We certainly agree – we’ve put up a blog for our customers. Now what do we do with all this content?” Good question – we spent the rest of the evening trying to answer.
I’m not sure we ever reached a resolution but this got me thinking. What’s equally important is the prior question – why put up a blog in the first place? Business strategies need to drive technology choices; technology options can then drive business opportunities.
Now there are certainly plenty of plausible reasons for companies to want to encourage blogging about their products and services. Building brand loyalty, supporting the fans, wanting to learn about customers experiences (both the good and the bad), facilitating a peer group who can support one another, perhaps even turning to loyal end users to help with product development – the list goes on.
Companies have many options for engaging their customers. But they first have to be open to having the conversation with them, and have some inkling of how they’ll use all the insights they acquire.
Note, an inkling is a clue or a hunch – it’s not (yet) a plan. Allowing customers to blog back, blog about, and blog with one another is only the first step in a larger process. With Web 2.0, there’s lots of room for experimentation – trying things out, and seeing what works, moving on. What’s new is the ability to link things together.
Implementers and the business managers who support them need not have a formal plan about how they’re going to use all the user generated content. What they do need, I believe, is the willingness and the time to listen, and then to figure out how best to join the conversation.
Are here.
The results are in — and they’re not surprising. Well, actually one is. A mere 35% of respondents indicated that their companies have a formal brand management team. The result to our second question, “Does the team include a localization or translation subject matter expert?” was a resounding 100% “No.” This, unfortunately, is the “not surprising” part. Although our N was smaller than we’d like, we expect that the trend would have continued on the same course.
The fact is, most companies have work to do to ensure that corporate brand flows through multi-geographical market segments in a way that’s both consistent and relevant to customers and prospects in specific cultures and locales. It’s not easy. According to Economist Intelligence Unit, authors of Guarding the Brand, almost half of their respondents believed expanding into new territories made brand management all the more difficult. The top two challenges? 63 percent cited cultural differences and 44 percent cited language barriers and translations issues.
It’s sometimes “easier” to avoid dealing with the presence of some 4000+ languages worldwide, but it’s not so easy to ignore when one investigates the facts in smaller “chunks” so to speak. Consider this list of “The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages” as a more easily digestible example.
If your company aims to expand footprint and revenue generation in this “flat world,” globalization needs to be a part of the brand management discussion. And if you are responsible for leading the charge into a new geographic region — you need to have a voice that’s heard.
The Enterprise 2.0 conference is winding down in Boston today so it’s a good time to reflect on the “two dot oh” phenomena. As industry watchers and marketers, we’ve come a long way since Tim O’Reilly coined the concept two years ago. With hordes of people crowded into the new Westin Hotel in South Boston and the exhibit hall packed like Grand Central at rush hour (I’ve yet to hear an attendance count) I felt a rush of excitement in the air. There’s a certain sense of headiness when talking with entrepreneurs about their latest products and solutions. I was floored by the breadth of creativity.
But what struck me most is the vision thing – the gulf between the claims about Enterprise 2.0 and the realities of how work gets done. Enterprise 2.0 seems to be about blogging for a living, putting up a wiki, realizing that email is broken, and communicating with customers. Oh yes, then there’s unleashing the power of teams, user generated content, and building communities. The list goes on . . .
Yet two words are missing – management and process. In our always on world, we are inundated with information, and constrained by the limits of the twenty-four hour day. We need to take a hard look at how sharing information online creates new sources of value and better modes of organization. David Weinberger said it best in his opening keynote – everything is now metadata. We need to figure out how to harness this incredible openness at our fingertips. Developing a compelling information architecture is going to be even harder than an effective technical architecture.
What comes next? I’m now planning the collaboration and social computing track for our fall conference. (Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing the program later this summer.) I think we need to take a look at the hard issues of designing collaborative business processes. What do you think? I’m open to suggestions. Let me know, beginning by responding to this post. I look forward to our continuing conversation.
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