Enterprise 2.0 Flourishes When You Understand The Business Side Of The Enterprise

Image by George Dearing via Flickr

I’m heading to Boston (here now) as I write this and wanted to share a few things I’ve thought about over the last few weeks.  Lately, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with customers with large-scale collaboration deployments either already underway or still being incubated. While all of these initiatives can easily take on a Web 2.0 or Enterprise tagline for what they’re trying to accomplish, the biggest challenge has less to do with the technology and tools and more to do with fighting perceptions and change. That’s no surprise to you in the echo chamber, but while many of realize this, I still see a fast-moving industry getting blind-sided by business fundamentals. 

My point, with emphasis, is that we all need to a better job of understanding how our customers operate.  Everyone needs to tell product managers that customers don’t care about your widget unless it can be tied to something larger that can transform business. It’s the classic technology silo. If your widget isn’t tied to a larger architecture that can be used to reconstruct a process, it’s just a widget that will rest on a digital shelf instead of a wooden one. (for you shrink-wrap folks)

I can back that up with multiple customer situations where we’ve discussed the desire to integrate the tools and unify them enough to roll out capabilities consistently and precisely.  When all of us understand the sum of the parts (2.0 tools)  and how its whole (platform) is more powerful, it’s much easier to paint a vision your client will understand. In other words, don’t lead with what a wiki or microblogging app can do. Tell the story of how you used Twitter to respond to a potential customer in a real-time environment, outside of email. And more importantly, always think about how that translates to a business outcome. Who knows? Perhaps you just just shortened the sales cycle with that touch point, and that’s something that’ll perk up your VP of  Sales.

That’s a bit of segue into an other one of the other trends I’m seeing from enterprise 2.0 companies; a focus on the big picture.  I like to reference Microsoft’s Stephen Elop, when he says, “Don’t tell me about what SharePoint will do for me, tell me how Microsoft can make me more productive.” Whether it’s innovation, sales 2.0, or things like knowledge networks, companies are making significant investments in the necessary resources to make sure collaboration is a part of their DNA. When vendors press for big picture questions early, they quickly have an opportunity to  brand themselves as strategic instead of the tool company.

I’d argue one of the other challenges for the toolset vendors at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference is addressing product development cycles. If you haven’t noticed what’s happening over at Apple’s AppStore and the implications for what it means to software companies and developers, you’ll also soon be a part of the blindsided crowd. The software companies that will thrive will be the ones that have the leadership to recognize the market can also contribute to your roadmap not just your advisory board and senior management. Moreover,  you’ll need the people, processes and tools to respond and react as fast as your competition.

The reason I brought up the AppStore example is because I’m continually fascinated by how easy it is to purchase and use software at a second’s notice. You can go from research to pilot to deployment to customer review in literally minutes. I think we’re all mistaken if we think that model won’t continue to creep into the enterprise. Granted the security and governance models are different, but the speed of communications and the agility required to adapt is no different inside or outside the firewall.

So I challenge vendors and I’m challenging myself to get better at understanding the dynamics of our clients’ needs. It’s surprising that we have such glaring omissions when the reason we build roadmaps is because of our customers. Let’s hit the collective alarm clock and wake up.

As I spend the next 3 days in Boston, what I plan to do is look at enterprise 2.o not from a toolset lens but from my customer’s lens.  The disparity between the two is what frustrates me. I’ve seen some of the best technology around with a bunch of folks sitting around a table unable to produce more than one use case for the how it can impact the business.   If you can’t do that, you might be working on the wrong stuff. And worse, you’re not listening to your customers.