Enterprise Social Networking
by Geoff Holle, Principal Education Consultant, and
Tammy Scandalis, Senior Education Consultant, CA Technologies
A social business is one that is optimized to benefit its entire ecosystem (customers, employees, owners, and partners) by embedding collaboration, information sharing, and active engagement into its operations and culture. This definition includes social software or technologies, as one means for business to become social, and has emerged as one of the most important technological developments within recent years. The importance of social business to organizations is expected to grow continuously over time. While just 18% of all survey respondents in the Social Business Global Executive Study – conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte1– believe social business is important to their
organization today, 63% say it will be important in three years. That’s a jump of 250%. The study further concludes that the need to connect with others is one of three basic psychological needs of human beings. The other two — the need to feel competent and the need to feel autonomous in one’s actions — may also play a vital role in social business activities.
Motivations to participate in social business activities are not superficial and go beyond our social nature; they can help fulfill basic psychological needs. Additionally, a new generation of workers is building momentum for new ways of collaborating and communicating that are enabled by social business. The real promise of social business involves breaking down barriers that limit human potential and business performance. However, fulfilling this promise requires fundamentally rethinking how work gets done and how value is created.
Like many large enterprise organizations, CA Technologies has been somewhat slower on social business adoption, but now appears to be catching up. Approximately 79% of companies surveyed use or are planning to use social networking tools and processes. Nearly half of the companies who were rated as 'effective' in social business said it was central to their organization’s strategy (Harvard Business Review Analytics Services).2However, adoption doesn’t come without significant challenges and uncertainty as to how to “get there.”
Consider that 46% of companies globally planned to increase their investment in social networking tools and processes this year. However, only 22% of middle managers felt prepared to properly incorporate social business principles into their work (IBM 2012 Social Business Study).3Further, there has been a rapid evolution of social tools, but large enterprises may be slow to adopt them due to an entrenched culture, infrastructure needs, security concerns, and budget limitations.
The purpose of this article is to tell the story of how CA Education leveraged
About the authors
Geoff Holle is an Art Director and
Principal Education Consultant at CA Technologies responsible for visual media content design and
development.
Geoff leads the education visual media team while working across CA to establish standards and process for all CA education training and performance support. Geoff directed design, technology, and media development for CA Education’s first virtual learning conference described in this article.
Geoff joined CA Technologies in 2006 and has held creative, technical and management roles throughout his career.
Tammy Scandalis is a member of
existing tools and technology to conduct a virtual Education conference that successfully implemented social networking tools and practices, thus enabling a sense of community, heightening engagement, and connecting a global team of people in a shared and positive experience.
Our Story
In October 2012, the CA Education organization had the opportunity to explore social enterprise and collaboration through virtual conferencing. For the previous two years, the Education organization met in person as a team for on-site training, collaboration, and team building, but they were unable to do so in FY13 due to budget restrictions. A decision needed to be made to either cancel the event or proceed with a lower budget and prepare a full team virtual conference. With only 4 months to prepare, time was tight and the process was unfamiliar. The decision to proceed largely centered on the ability to effectively achieve the goals of the conference in a virtual setting.
The following is a look at the conference goals aligned with potential solutions in a virtual setting.
Physical events and virtual events have similar traits and may accomplish some of the same goals: presenting a prepared message and training to a targeted audience, while establishing opportunities for participants to socialize and collaborate. Both physical and virtual events use speakers and presentations to deliver a message, while attendees get to learn and talk or interact with speakers. For both, there is an opportunity to meet and collaborate with colleagues.
The advantages of virtual events over on-site events include savings, both in cost and time, and the possibility of enhanced engagement through technology. In addition, the quality of the content can be better with a virtual event, since expert speakers can address a virtual audience from anywhere, without geographic limitations. Essentially, there are more options when identifying speakers.
Education decided to proceed with the virtual conference as planned, with the next step being to identify a platform that would meet conference goals and work for schedule and budget. The choice was narrowed to two options.
Option 1: On24
On24 is a virtual event platform that provides interactive locations, webcasts, social networking, scheduled chats, idea storming, and blogs. The On24 system provides users an opportunity to pull reports that measure user behavior, content popularity, and social networking interactions. On24 was successfully
the design and development of education resources, as well as for direction on user experience, attempting to integrate and unify learning resources across a variety of platforms. Tammy is also a member of the Education core team for social business technologies, and has served as a member on a number of collaborative teams across the organization, including CA Education’s first virtual learning conference.
For nearly a decade, Tammy has worked in the IT field in varying capacities, with an emphasis on instructional design and technical training, She has an M.S. in Instructional Technology, and her interests include innovations in technology, social business and education.
Conference Goals Virtual Solution
Professional development/informal
learning Virtual speakers and training
Collaboration within and across teams Shared whiteboard, presentations with open discussion Building a community with colleagues Virtual environment, discussions,shared learning and collaboration Socializing/deepening relationships Trivia games, sharing personal information, sharing photos and videos Brainstorming Dedicated virtual discussions, collaboration
used for past CA World and Mainframe Madness events and consequently seemed a possible fit for the experience envisioned for Education conference attendees.
Using On24 required support from the On24 team to customize the interface and load content assets for access by conference attendees. Cost varied based on duration, number of events, and number of assets hosted. Live webcasts added to the cost. The On24 solution would be an engaging, immersive experience. There was still the need, however, to work quickly and independently.
Option 2: Virtual Conference Mash-Up
A second option was to develop a conference solution using tools that the Education team works with on a daily basis. To virtually collaborate and share information, Microsoft ® SharePoint® could serve as the platform, combined with additional tools used such as Microsoft®YammerTM, WebExTM, Microsoft®Live MeetingTM, YouTubeTM, Google+TM, and the GuidebookTMmobile application. The combination of technology offered a rich, immersive experience for attendees, added no cost for the tools and technology beyond some enterprise licensing already in place and for the small cost of a mobile application, and enabled the Education team to develop the solution independently so there would be more control of schedule. Exploring technology solutions that may again be used in the future outside of this conference, in a relatively safe environment, provided an additional benefit.
The decision, however, was based mainly on the ability to achieve conference goals through alignment with this identified combination of technology. It was decided that this mash-up approach would work.
Preparing for the Conference
Once the decision was made to go virtual, it was time for budget planning, identification of work assignments, and resource scheduling.
Budget
A benefit of a virtual event is the potential for significant savings over a live event. Consider that, in FY12, the cost for travel and food alone for the live event that was held in Islandia, New York, were considerable, and when speaker and event costs are factored in, it’s not an insignificant amount. For a similarly sized group in FY13, the virtual conference budget was over ten times lower than the live conference cost.
Time and Teams to Develop
To develop the virtual conference center, forty-four Education/Operations volunteers were divided into four committees: Events, Training/Speakers, Communications, and Media (which included testing/documentation of technology). Program and Project Management coordinated and maintained status and deadlines. Duration to prepare was 119 days. A core Planning Team of six spent approximately four to six hours per week
prepping for and participating in meetings. Each core team member led individual teams that met weekly, approximately four hours per member per week.
Technology
An array of technology was identified that would fill
conference goals and integrate into the conference experience. To prepare, technology was tested, documentation was created as needed to guide users, and then the solution was deployed to provide an integrated user experience.
Virtual Conference Center
The main page of the SharePoint® virtual site was a graphic representation of a conference center interior space that included photographs of CA Education team members and let attendees navigate to other “rooms” within the site. Each day, there was a new video welcome message, hosted on a YouTubeTM channel created for the conference and embedded directly into the SharePoint® page. The following sections describe content for each interior room on the virtual site.
Live Events
The Live Events room enabled attendees to access the conference agenda and participate in live sessions scheduled before the conference. This room also supplied information on getting course credit in the CA Learning Management System, rating sessions, and accessing course presentations. As on all SharePoint® site pages, Microsoft®YammerTMwas integrated into the page for ongoing attendee dialog.
House of EdCon
Here, attendees could both list their own and listen to their colleagues’ favorite songs through a YouTube playlist. A slide show of Education team photos showed attendees in their home offices or near local landmarks. A selection of self-recorded videos answered questions about collaborating virtually, performance consulting, and transformation. This was meant to encourage socializing, getting to know the team, and having fun.
Romper Room
Technology Showroom
The Technology Booths room took the form of interactive Adobe Acrobat® PDF files, representing new and evolving technologies relevant to Education, with embedded YouTubeTMcontent.
Self-Learning
Conference recordings and related Education content was provided in a variety of formats for visitors to access independently. Visiting this room was intended to mimic visiting a live conference
showroom with vendors and product demos.
Manager Lounge
This room served as the training launch page for the manager-only first day of the conference, and linked to additional related
resources.
Running the Conference
Conference communications to attendees began about three weeks prior to the event to prepare for session registration, confirm technology requirements, and ask for submission of photos and videos. During the conference, a help area was available for attendees to ask questions and receive immediate assistance with any issues. Each live session had a separate facilitator to help run the meeting and manage recordings. Overnight, select meetings were converted and loaded to the YouTubeTMchannel and embedded on the SharePoint® site to be seen the following day.
Participating in the Conference
Doors opened to the conference site the day before official sessions began and attendees were encouraged to look around. Each day of the conference opened with a live session that everyone was encouraged to attend. These sessions had guest speakers address the audience, followed by highlights of the day. In addition to 132 Education attendees, the invitation was extended to the full HR team with no impact on delivery of content or increased cost.
Summary
in a social manner, and they reacted very positively to the experience – it created a buzz. Additionally, the sense of connectedness contributed to an increased sense of community. The tools were most powerful when they were integrated into the environment and were used in the context of the activities that were going on (for example, an embedded YammerTMfeed). Upon reflection, it seemed as though the engagement level was higher and the participation was greater in the virtual conference than when we met in person for the FY12 live conference.
Social technologies can be used to shape business and the way people naturally interact. As time, attention, and the engagement of employees and customers becomes a more valuable resource than computer power or standardized efficient processes, social platforms can help transform rather than serve traditional organizational limits.
We’re no longer building technologies to enable simple interaction – social platforms and technologies can be built for specific business purposes: specialized content, enhanced with context, enriched by the power of
communities. This calls for a thoughtful, intentional course of action to rethink how business activities are undertaken, incorporating social tools to improve processes, systems, and organization for the new economy.
References
1“Social Reengineering by Design,” Deloitte, accessed February, 2012. http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Services/consulting/technology-consulting/4e3484b05462c310VgnVCM1000003256f70aRCRD.htm?id=us_furl _cons_general_tt13_socreeng_012313
2 “Social Media: What Most Companies Don’t Know,” Harvard Business Review, accessed February, 2012. http://hbr.org/web/slideshows/social-media-what-most-companies-dont-know/1-slide
3“Struggling With Social Media: Study Finds Middle Managers Bear the Brunt,” Midsize Insider, accessed January, 2012. http://midsizeinsider.com/en-us/article/struggling-with-social-media-study-find
Social technologies can be used to shape business and the way people naturally interact.
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