Implementing Enterprise 2.0

What is Enterprise 2.0?

Enterprise 2.0 is the concept of using tools and services that employ Web 2.0 techniques such as tagging, ratings, networking, RSS, and sharing in the context of the enterprise. The term "Enterprise 2.0" was coined by Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School in an article in the spring 2006 issue of the Sloan Management Review (see Resources). His idea of Enterprise 2.0 makes use of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and blogs inside the corporate intranet. In addition to this, many organizations are also publishing corporate blogs on their Web sites and inviting customers and clients to openly comment and discuss their content as part of Enterprise 2.0. Similarly, many companies are creating enterprise wikis that can be viewed and edited by anyone in the world.

Enterprise 2.0 tools and services take advantage of social software features such as social bookmarking and linking, tagging, rating, user commenting and discussion, open creation and editing policies, syndication via RSS feeds (see Figure 1), and so on. These tools also incorporate sharing and networking to invite and encourage collaboration and contribution.

Figure 1. RSS feed (viewed in Firefox) for most popular IBM developerWorks tutorials




The relationship between Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0

A topic that is closely related to Enterprise 2.0 is Web 2.0. It is important to note, however, that the concepts are not one and the same, but rather they are two individual areas that are built on top of similar foundations. The term Web 2.0 describes the shift in focus from static and singular media to dynamic, interactive community-oriented social media.

A fine example of this shift is the increasing popularity of the blogosphere. While blogs have been around much longer than the term Web 2.0, they are one of the finest examples of what Web 2.0 is all about. Before blogs, some people published personal Web sites. These were static pages that usually provided biographical information about the owner of the Web site and potentially some photos of his or her family and pets, along with a page containing information on how to be contacted. All of this information is one-way and static. There is no room for interactivity, and as a result, the content becomes dated and useless before long. Once people have seen your photos the first time, they are not likely to feel the need to see them again. If you put new photos on the site, your visitors have no way of knowing you have done so without revisiting the site.

Enter Web 2.0 and blogging. Most popular blogging platforms such as WordPress, Moveable Type, and Blogger allow for the creation of "pages" where you can put biographical information (and easily update it as it becomes outdated) and "posts" where you can write your articles and express your opinions. But blogs are much more than an easy-to-use content management system. Blogs automatically syndicate your content using RSS feeds so that people can "subscribe" to your Web site using an RSS reader and receive timely updates whenever you publish new content. Blogs allow your visitors to comment on your posts, allowing interaction and discussion about the topics at hand. Also, features such as trackbacks and pingbacks notify you when someone has mentioned your blog post on his or her Web site or blog.

The Enterprise 2.0 view of blogging is slightly different. A corporate blog will often be a multi-user blog with multiple authors and contributors, or it will be a platform made up of many different blogs, each individually owned by a different person in the organization. Also, corporate blogging is not so much an extension of any prior concept. Sure, many companies posted bios for their employees on their Web sites in the past, but these were rarely controlled by the employees themselves. Blogging opens the door for employees to express their thoughts on the products and services they are working on and to interact with the community on any new ideas they may have for these products and services (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Oracle blogs, featuring multiple blog contributors (see tag cloud on right)

Many people believe that Enterprise 2.0 is the use of consumer-oriented Web 2.0 services by businesses—services such as Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and twitter. Going forward, however, the focus on Enterprise 2.0 is going to be in terms of products and services that are specifically targeted at businesses. Major software vendors, including IBM®, Microsoft®, Oracle®, and SAP® have all released Enterprise 2.0-centric products and platforms recently, and it is clear Enterprise 2.0 is an important aspect of the strategy of major players going forward. Forrester Research released a report in April 2008 stating that Enterprise 2.0 will be a USD 4.6 billion industry by 2013, and you can expect a high percentage of this to go to the major software vendors.

Enterprise 2.0 essentials

Moving on from the concepts behind Enterprise, below are some of the ways that Enterprise 2.0 can be implemented.

Folksonomy, or collaborative tagging

In the early days of the World Wide Web, Web site directories such as Yahoo! used a fixed hierarchy known as taxonomy to organize the links in their directory. This is also the case in most document management or file systems—documents and files are organized into directories and subdirectories that must be created first in order to be used. Web 2.0 (and now Enterprise 2.0) suggests the use of folksonomy, the concept of collaborative tagging, instead. This concept suggests that users (not just the creator of the document or file) should be allowed to enter free-form tags to describe and categorize the content they are creating, editing, or viewing. This categorization makes it easier for the document to be found by others looking for the same information at a later date.

Another key feature has arisen from the continued popularity of tagging: tag clouds. Tag clouds allow for instant visual recognition of popular tags by distinguishing the importance of particular terms by increasing font size or using color. Tags are generally listed alphabetically, and clicking on the tag navigates to a page with other pages that are related to that tag. Tag clouds are a prominent feature on many Web 2.0 services such as Flickr and Delicious (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. The Delicious tags page

Social bookmarking

Building on the concept of tagging is the idea of social bookmarking. Social bookmarking allows people to store, manage, and share their bookmarks on the Web. Such services usually suggest that users enter a series of tags with each bookmark to make it easier to find at a later point. Not only has social bookmarking made it much easier to manage catalogs of thousands of bookmarks (try managing such a collection in your browser), but it has also made it easier to share bookmarks with others via RSS feeds. Several tools are available that make it simple for blog and wiki visitors to submit pages to their favorite social bookmarking service in a snap.

Social bookmarking is an integral part of Enterprise 2.0, with offerings such as IBM Lotus Connections (coming soon to developerWorks; see Resources) and Connectbeam Spotlight offering social bookmarking features aimed squarely at the enterprise.

User rating and commenting

Opening content up by allowing users to rate and comment on your content may seem like a daunting exercise to many businesses. Many companies don't like the idea of allowing an open forum on their turf where people can freely criticize and slate their products and services. On the other side of the coin, however, it does open the gates to free-flowing and highly valuable customer feedback and opinions. It also creates a channel of communication that can be used to get to know your customers better and helps forge a lasting relationship where customers are satisfied that you're willing to listen to what they have to say (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Customer ratings and reviews on Apple's online store

RSS feeds and syndication

RSS has been around since the late 1990s, but it has been one of the key aspects of the success of Web 2.0 services. A Web 2.0 tool that does not feature RSS in some shape or fashion is rare these days, as the power and simplicity of syndicating your content using this technology is so great. Customers can receive instant notification in their RSS readers when you launch a new product, post a new blog post, or add new pictures to your Flickr account. Users can subscribe to your Delicious bookmarks and Twitter updates so they are always up-to-date with your latest offerings.

Mashups and Web APIs

Mashups and Web APIs have offered consumers easy ways of providing Rich Internet Applications that are based upon data sources such as Google Maps for years now. Many useful Web applications have popped up all over the Web as a result, as they mix and mash data from several sources to provide some useful purpose to their end users.

Mashups (see Figure 5) really come into their own, however, when they are tied to a business function. Companies hold all sorts of data about their clients, employees, suppliers, products, services, and financials. They use an array of systems to manage and interact with this data on a daily basis, and as a result, the amount of data they store can be huge. This data is often stored for recording purposes, and may often be used with business intelligence tools to give some value. By mixing this data with the many web APIs that are available, however, companies can create some amazing applications that can add value and reduce costs on a large scale.

Figure 5. An example of a Google Maps mashup

Social networking in the enterprise

Over the past decade, social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have taken the world by storm, with hundreds of millions of users all across the globe. Aimed squarely at the younger generation of net-goers, these networks are the essence of Web 2.0 and what it's all about. Many organizations look at these social networks as a nuisance and a burden on employee productivity, and in many cases they may be correct. Some companies have even gone so far as to ban the use of social networks in the organization, preventing their use by blocking them with their corporate firewalls.

An important aspect of these services that cannot be ignored, however, is the way they allow people to connect with others, building a network of friends and acquaintances. Many of these connections may work for other companies that are potential or existing clients, and this employee's friendship could potentially result in a sales lead. For many years, corporate executives have used the golf course as their social networking base. Now they can use social networks for this task and concentrate on their game when playing golf.

The potential for loss of productivity with these services is still high of course, but this is eliminated to a certain extent with business-oriented social networks such as LinkedIn and PairUp. LinkedIn is a massive network of professionals, each linked to other users as a "Connection". A LinkedIn profile is much like a resume, detailing employment and education history, while allowing people to provide recommendations for one another, much like the concept of references. LinkedIn has several uses in business, one of the most important being recruitment. Hiring new people can be expensive, time consuming, and in the end you may often not end up with the right person for the job. LinkedIn (see Figure 6) can help ease the pain associated with the recruitment process by putting you in touch with highly skilled professionals who are looking for new challenges.

Figure 6. LinkedIn: the business-oriented social network

Enterprise 2.0 social networks are also emerging, such as the IBM Bluehouse network (see Figure 7). These services are aimed at medium to large businesses that want to create an internal social network featuring contact information, blogs and wikis, and reporting structure information for all the employees in a company. The enterprise social network is much like a detailed and personalized corporate directory with features like tagging, social bookmarking, and commenting—all integral components of the network.

Figure 7. IBM Lotus Bluehouse beta -- corporate social networking


Collaborative tools and services

Now I'll show you some collaborative tools and services for implementing an Enterprise 2.0 strategy.

Blogs

The starting point for most organizations looking to invest in an Enterprise 2.0 strategy is the creation of a corporate blog. Often this starts off as a single blog maintained by one person published on the corporate intranet. Other employees can leave comments on posts and subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. As this blog starts to grow, perhaps the blog is expanded to allow for multiple contributors. As the number of contributors grows, you may need to install a platform that offers multiple blogs, with each contributor, or perhaps each product team, having its own blog.

Once your company is actively blogging inside your intranet, it may be time to think about publishing a blog on your company's Web site that can be viewed by your customers and potential new customers alike, allowing you to take in positive and negative feedback and find out the exact thoughts of your clients. Posting regularly about product updates will allow your customers to receive up-to-the-minute notifications via RSS. You could even take it a step further and produce podcasts (basically audio blog posts) or video blog posts.

Wikis

Wikis are a group of Web pages that can be edited by anyone who accesses them. The most famous example of a wiki is the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Wikis usually allow anyone to create new pages and to view and edit existing ones using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. The wiki will keep a revision history of previous versions of the page and any comments made by the person who made the edit. This allows authors to revert to a previous version of the page should incorrect information be posted.

Wikis are becoming a very popular way of managing documents and information inside companies and are an important aspect of Enterprise 2.0. They allow true collaboration on the documents as anyone with access to the page can edit it, making any relevant changes or posting updated content. Most Enterprise 2.0 vendors provide integrated wikis as part of their platforms.

Conferencing and messaging tools

Conferencing tools have been around for a long time now, but in the past they have suffered by requiring everyone attending the conference to have the same software installed on their computers. This meant, for example, that users of Mac OS®, Linux®, and other non-Windows® operating systems could not participate in a Microsoft NetMeeting conference.

The answer to this problem is Web conferencing, and tools and services in this area are growing in popularity. Web conferencing tools usually come as either hosted services or downloadable modules that can be deployed to an organization's own Web server. Common features of Web conferencing software include slide show presentations, real-time instant messaging and chat, VoIP for audio, video functionality, whiteboards, screen sharing facilities, and the ability to record the conference so it can be viewed again at a later date.

The benefits of employing Enterprise 2.0 in an organization

It is important for organizations to understand why they are implementing an Enterprise 2.0 strategy. Following are some of the benefits.

Information access

Information stored in a system that is Enterprise 2.0-enabled allows employees and other stakeholders in the organization to access information that is timely, up-to-date, and relevant to their needs from anywhere in the world, as long as they have Internet access. With the increase in availability in Wi-Fi and 3G networks, they can get this information on their mobile devices instantly whether they are waiting in an airport or sitting at home.

Instant notification

When new updates are made to your blog or wiki, subscribers to your company's RSS feeds can get instant notification via their RSS readers on their computers or cell phones. No longer do people have to keep returning to your Web site to see if it has been updated. With RSS, when people do revisit your site, you'll know it is for another specific purpose.

Simplicity and cost effectiveness

Web 2.0 and indeed Enterprise 2.0 strive to make it simpler and less expensive for individuals and businesses alike to share information, communicate with each other, and collaborate on projects. Enterprise 2.0 services are, by their nature, simple to set up and use. Many Web 2.0 services are available free-of-charge, but even pay-for Enterprise 2.0 tools tend to be inexpensive compared to their bloated predecessors.

Potential pitfalls and issues

Below are some potential pitfalls and issues in implementing an Enterprise 2.0 solution.

Security

A major issue with Enterprise 2.0 tools is the area of security. The World Wide Web is renowned for being a major source of security threats in terms of hackers, viruses, malware, and so on. Traditionally, companies maintained a tight seal on any information that was exposed to the outside world and held strict controls on their internal document management systems. Wikis, for example, allow anyone to create and edit content—employees can potentially (knowingly or unknowingly) publish information on an external wiki that was meant for internal eyes only. This can lead to major consequences should something like detailed product design documents fall into the hands of competitors.

Web 2.0 is all about sharing and openness, but Enterprise 2.0 is less so. The major software vendors are all working on Enterprise 2.0 platforms, and security issues such as these are certain to be addressed. The important thing for organizations implementing an Enterprise 2.0 system is that they ensure a correct balance of security and protection and openness and sharing. Without security, confidential information may be at risk, but without sharing, Enterprise 2.0 is defunct.

Loss of productivity

A huge concern for companies when adopting new and emerging technologies that incorporate ideas such as social networking and social bookmarking is that employees will waste a lot of time "playing" with such features. Many major companies have already taken steps to ban employees from using social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, and they may have the same concerns about any corporate social tools.

It is important that companies try to find a balance here, where the usefulness of the tools is not overshadowed by employees wasting valuable time using them. That being said, corporate social networks are unlikely to feature "Poke" applications and customizable layouts, which are a common source of procrastination in the workplace. They are more likely to center on building connections with other employees, perhaps in other parts of the organization, and creating relationships to better their productivity, not reduce it.

Lack of adoption by staff

Depending on the age profile of your staff, you may run into issues with lack of adoption and a fear of the unknown. Younger employees are going to be more open to the idea of trying out new features and software and spending some time helping the system to grow. Older employees, many of whom may not like using computers and avoid doing so as much as possible, are less likely to embrace emerging concepts such as Enterprise 2.0.

Summary

Enterprise 2.0 is not a cutting edge phenomenon. The technologies surrounding it are certainly not new, and the concepts behind it have been prevalent in Web 2.0 consumer-oriented services for a number of years now. Enterprise 2.0 has been slow to catch on because companies were afraid that it was just another catchy buzzword that would die away as quickly as it came along. They were afraid that Web 2.0 would not last, and before long Web 3.0 would arrive and all their hard work implementing new technology would be deprecated. They were also slow to adopt products and services from companies that have been in existence for just several months rather than several decades. A plethora of new companies have formed around the provision of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 services, and it remains to be seen how many of these will be there in the long run.

What is certain, however, is that Enterprise 2.0 is finally ready to launch into the mainstream business market. Major software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle are all readying new technology offerings that are loaded with Enterprise 2.0 features such as blogs, wikis, social networking, and social bookmarking tools—so expect to see such tools in your business very soon.

By Joe Lennon, Software Developer, Core International

B2B Marketing 2.0

By Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.

Buyers in businesses have embraced the web and social media tools to find and research solutions, just like individual consumers. Of course, a "considered" purchase of an enterprise software system costing $50,000 or more is much more complex than buying a $200 digital camera.

51 percent of marketing organizations are using lead management systems and 60 percent are using some form of lead scoring before passing leads to sales.

Still, the process often starts with research on the web and ends with a purchase. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers are optimizing what happens in the middle with strategies and tools to engage with buyers more effectively, and increase the flow of qualified leads to sales reps.

B2B marketing tools, first introduced a decade ago, have moved into the mainstream. CSO Insights' 2008 Lead Life Cycle Optimization study found that technology is playing a larger role: 51 percent of marketing organizations are using lead management systems and 60 percent are using some form of lead scoring before passing leads to sales. The global economic crisis may boost demand further, because it has "turned the spotlight on improving efficiency," says Will Schnabel, Silverpop's VP of international markets and former CEO of Vtrenz, a lead management pioneer acquired in 2007 by Silverpop.

Buyer-Centricity

Alight, a software maker of planning tools for finance and product managers, exemplifies a new breed B2B marketer that matches marketing and buying processes. Typically buyers find Alight through a Google search with keywords like "budgeting software" and then click on a paid ad promising to help the buyer "learn the 5 capabilities budgeting software should deliver." A landing page invites the prospect to fill out a short form to view an online demo.

Whether the offer is a white paper, webinar, demo or free trial, there's nothing remarkable about this. Anyone can easily place ads on Google or other search engines, create a registration form, and collect "leads."

The key is how these leads—more accurately called contacts or inquiries—are handled. Done right, it's magical. Alight uses Marketo's lead management solution to collect the leads, generate stats on what users do after they click, and hand over qualified leads to sales via a Salesforce.com connection. Prospects who don't reply immediately to a phone call are put on an automated "nurturing" program to received targeted messages with other offers designed to revive interest at a future date.

Quite possibly the company couldn't exist without this "B2B marketing 2.0" approach. According to Alight's VP of Sales Ben Lamorte, VCs didn't think the company could sell software solutions to mid-market enterprises at a price point from $10,000 to $50,000 without expensive feet on the street—which can increase the cost of sales to the point that the business model isn't viable. Alight is beating conventional wisdom by combining effective search campaigns with affordable tools like Marketo for lead management, Salesforce.com for sales automation, Citrix GoToMeeting for online meetings, and Camtasia to turn recorded demos into short video clips.

Understanding the Buying Process

Consumers research online, so do business buyers. A 2007 study by Enquiro Search Solutions found that 65.3 percent of B2B prospects in the Awareness phase started their search with general search engines. As they move through the Research and Negotiation phases, prospects increase their usage of B2B vertical search engines and vendor web sites.

B2B Search Activity by Buying Phase: (Source: Enquiro)

It's critical, therefore, for B2B marketers to have an effective search strategy, both organic and paid, to engage with the prospect during online research. The prospect must be served up content and offers that are appropriate for the stage of the buying process.

1. Awareness: Starting out, prospects will use general search terms and be attracted to educational white papers and webinars.
2. Research: Digging deeper, prospects will search on specific solution and brand names, and are more likely to respond to demos and free trials.
3. Negotiation: During the final decision-making phase, buyers will search with comparison and review terms, and consume content that pits one vendor against another.

Who makes the purchase happen? In most B2B transactions, sales reps do. And what do sales reps need? Qualified leads, that's what.

Giving the right offer at the right time is not as simple as it sounds. It doesn't make sense, for example, to offer a high-level white paper that buyers will read in the awareness phase, and then treat these as qualified leads. Sales will be frustrated and the money generating these prospects will be wasted. But if marketers only target those ready to buy immediately, by the time the buyer is ready to make a decision, the vendor/solution may not be in prospect's "consideration set"—a mental short list of options that the buyer is seriously considering.

Serena Software, a maker of software development tools, discovered it was introducing a free trial too early in the marketing process. Michaline Todd, Director of Corporate Marketing, said this resulted in too many unqualified prospects because they weren't sufficiently educated on Serena's solutions and pricing. Now trial offers are introduced more strategically and Serena uses a solution from MarketBright to manage web content in a more "flexible and agile" way.

Working Backwards From Revenue Goal

The key to success in B2B marketing is working backwards from the main business goal: revenue. Marketing, after all, doesn't directly produce revenue, only a purchase does.

Who makes the purchase happen? In most B2B transactions, sales reps do. And what do sales reps need? Qualified leads, that's what. In fact, a major conclusion of CustomerThink's 2008 sales productivity study was that sales executives should "focus on getting more of the right prospects into the funnel to begin with, then ensure that you invest sales time on those properly qualified."

So what really matters is the flow of qualified leads. But what, exactly, is a "qualified," or as some call it, a "sales-ready" lead? Forrester analyst Laura Ramos, who has been researching B2B marketing best practices for the past three years, say a lead is qualified "where there has been a series of interactions that demonstrate to sales that prospect has moved from early awareness to consideration."

In other words, a lead is much more than a prospect filling out a web form. This indicates interest, but that's it. Savvy sales reps won't waste their time culling through lists of these so-called "leads" to find a few good prospects. Instead, they cherry pick a few contacts from companies that look promising, ignore the rest, and thus waste most of the marketing investment.

Breaking Marketing and Sales Gridlock

It's not easy to get two organizations with different ideologies to agree on anything. Witness the limited success U.S. President Obama has had getting agreement between the Democrats and Republicans. They just see the world differently.

So, too, is the case between marketing and sales. Marketers are often rewarded for lead volume, so they generate leads that aren't a good use of sales time. Quota-focused reps, on the other hand, don't want to spend time on opportunities unless they are ready to buy now. Result: potentially good prospects are either never called, or called once and forgotten. Marketing and sales, like political opponents, then play the blame game when revenue falls short of plan.

While sales reps may never fully appreciate the value of brand marketing, and marketing professionals may not understand the art involved in selling, they can create common ground around lead qualification. Barry Trailer, managing partner with CSO Insights, agrees that "technology gives leverage if you use appropriately," but adds that scoring leads is a critical activity, because you need a systematic way to decide whether a lead is sales worthy. Even new companies with no history can convene experienced sales reps in a session to build a "perfect prospect profile"—prospects that would close 80 percent of the time. This profile would include demographics and psychographics.

While sales reps may never fully appreciate the value of brand marketing, and marketing professionals may not understand the art involved in selling, they can create common ground around lead qualification.

Marketing can add value by providing intelligence on the behavior of prospects online. Eloqua co-founder and CTO Steven Woods calls this "digital body language." Much like a rep would look for signs of prospect interest in a face-to-face meeting, interest can be assessed with online prospects by analyzing what content is accessed; the frequency and depth of interaction; and even when others from the same organization take a peek. Ideally, marketing and sales executives should agree on a scoring method to include all the relevant factors and decide what score meets the sales-ready threshold.

Finally, marketers can provide tools to directly help reps interact with their prospects. Erik Bower, co-founder of Marketbright, believes that "social selling" is the next wave of innovation. The company's just released Prospect Portal makes it easy to "give prospects their own water cooler" with a micro-portal that a sales rep can deploy for individual prospects. Reps can publish content, events and messages, plus enable the prospect to share information with colleagues involved in the buying decision. The prospect should get a better buying experience while the rep improves selling effectiveness.

Return on Innovation

In this economy, what's the case to spend money on B2B marketing automation solution? To be sure, there's plenty to gain by making existing processes work incrementally better. But keep an open mind, because the Web 2.0 era is making innovate new approaches viable, too.

• Optimize search investments. This is the low-hanging fruit right now, says Marketo's CEO Phil Fernandez. Clicks on B2B ads can cost $7 to $10 each, and some B2B marketers spend tens of thousands per month on Google. Using analytics to increase conversion rates will put more leads into the funnel at the same spending level, or allow a marketer to maintain lead volume when budgets get whacked.
  
  
• Warm up cold leads. Most marketers have stockpiles of dormant contacts that never went anywhere. Experts estimate that around 10 percent of these so-called "cold" leads will eventually become warm again, if properly nurtured. One company told me that of 30,000 contacts acquired, about 1500 re-engage each month, thanks to nurturing. That's a lot of extra value extracted out of a sunk marketing cost.
  
  
• Improve marketing and sales process. At Enquiro, the same outfit that did the B2B research mentioned earlier, they used to generate leads via a white paper offer, then give ("dump" might be a better term) them all to reps. Now they score leads with Marketo and only send promising leads to reps. "Sales reps love the process," says marketing director Spoeth, and marketing efficiency has been improved, too.
  
  
• Support new business models. Clever use of search and B2B marketing/sales technologies can enable a company to tackle markets that are not viable with traditional approaches. Acteva, an event registration service, can quickly set up and manage campaigns targeted to different vertical markets. Each campaign includes tailored landing page, email, lead routing and reporting. Doing this with the old process, which involved conventional web page design and IT coding, was too time consuming to even consider, according to marketing director Elias Terman.

Tips for Success

Industry experts agree that the best B2B marketers understand precisely how their prospect buy, work to integrate marketing with sales, and deploy the right technology for the right jobs. To improve your odds of success, follow these words of advice.

First, as Andrew Spoeth, Enquiro's Director of Marketing advises, invest quality time to understand exactly how the customer really buys, both online and offline. Online research, focus groups and usability testing can all play a role. You may be surprised to learn, Spoeth says, that "the buying process doesn't follow a neat progression" as you might expect from looking the typical buying funnel. People jump around, so be prepared to engage when the buyer is ready.

Marketing and sales leaders must then clearly define a "qualified lead" and agree to work together toward a common goal. Their boss can encourage this by giving them shared revenue objectives, and fixing measurement systems that motivate lead volume over quality. Developing a mutually agreed leading scoring and reporting process is crucial.

To engage with prospective buyers, the right offer delivered at the right time is paramount. Billy Martin, VP of Marketing at Weather Trends International, said the company uses Eloqua's system to help deliver messages that are "high value and relevant" at a frequency that will increase engagement, not stimulate opt-out behavior.

Finally, deploy the right solutions. Eloqua and Vtrenz pioneered B2B marketing solutions a decade ago, and now offer powerful suites of functionality. As the industry has expanded and matured, upstarts like Marketo and Marketbright have entered with fresh designs and innovative features. And, there are many more solutions in the market from specialty vendors, while mainstream CRM vendors are adding basic capabilities that are bound to grow over time.

In the end, the point of B2B marketing is not about contact generation, it's about creating qualified opportunities for reps and increasing revenue. Marketing needs creative professionals, and sales needs artful reps to close deals. But both can benefit by taking a more systematic approach to B2B lead management, to better connect with buyers and increase the overall effectiveness of the marketing/sales process.

Government 2.0 trends to watch

The winds of change are blowing in the government marketplace, and nowhere is that change more felt than in the realm of web-based communications. For the latest in Government 2.0 trends, we recently sat down with Andrea Baker, director of technology and self-described “social web evangelist,” who works with Navstar, a Falls, Church, Va.-based provider of IT services for the government and private sectors. Here Baker shares the latest in social media trends and how organizations can use dynamic web tools in their organizations and on behalf of their government clients.

Could you tell us what a social web evangelist does?

Andrea Baker: I borrowed the term “evangelist” after I met Anil Dash, a Vice President of Six Apart, a social blogging software platform, last fall. He called himself an evangelist on his business card. He inspired me with what he was doing in bringing better blogging software to the world. I look to use the phrase “social web evangelist” to help the user experience with new tools, how to use the tools and improve productivity.
What are your thoughts on the term Web 2.0?

Andrea Baker: I don’t like the term Web 2.0. It puts us in an ordered state and I don’t think that the web is very orderly. There is always a new tool, a new technology coming out. If we say Web 2.0 today, what is it next week? Hopefully, something better. I like to put the web in 3 different stages: There was the web as we knew it prior to this fusion of the user-oriented web and then the next phase should be the semantic web. Right now we’re still in the user-interactive web space.

What’s your role with Navstar?

Andrea Baker: I’ve been with Navstar for two years now and I am the director of technology. I help not only the intelligence community, but also Navstar embrace social web tools as part of their business process and bringing that expertise to other areas in federal government. I am helping to build the knowledge of enterprise collaboration inside the company as well.

How do you keep up with the pulse of new technologies?

Andrea Baker: I definitely have to keep reading. There are several tricks for how I try to keep up with what’s going on. One way is using Twitter, a microblogging software platform that I’ve embraced and have been using a little more than a year. When a new social web tool pops up on the radar, usually the other leading edge technologists grab on to it and tell others about it through Twitter. Another way is that I have my Google Alerts set up to notify me. Additionally I utilize RSS feeds to subscribe to certain technology blogs. Usually another technologist gets a tip off about something and they then share their experience or give a link to a beta platform. It also helps to be involved in the Washington area technology scene. We have a lot of good technologists in the area developing their own social web tools.

Can you share some possible future trends in the social web space of interest to the government contracting community?

Andrea Baker: In the intelligence community, we want to use more widgets and mash-ups. The rest of the world is already embracing these technologies. When a technology emerges, someone else comes along and creates a symbiotic technology that works with it. However, we don’t yet have these connective widgets inside the federal government since we’re just still getting used to platforms such as wikis and blogs. So, we’re looking at real life examples and checking how we can bring those into the government.

I’ve seen widgets (e.g., AdaptiveBlue) — should the govt make their own widgets?

Andrea Baker: Yes and no. Yes, we should create our own, if possible, because we have certain tools and software applications that are not available to commercial companies. However, there are many technologies out there that we can borrow from and adapt. AdaptiveBlue is a good example and I have that on my personal blog. It hyperlinks a specific word or term, and the link takes you to more information — so simple and yet so complex but we don’t yet have that inside the government. If we were to have something like AdaptiveBlue on, say, the word “China” on Intellipedia, we would be able to find out a whole lot more just by clicking on that word.

Any other social media trends for executives with government clients to keep on their radar?

Andrea Baker: I mentioned Twitter before. One of the things I like that we’re testing at Navstar is a tool called Yammer, a TechCrunch 50 award winner. The Yammer tool is a take-off of what Twitter is for the rest of the world as massive-social messaging software. This tool is used for a group and you attach it to your email domain. At Navstar we are using Yammer to communicate internally throughout the rest of the dispersed Navstar family. For the federal government we would like to use a tool like Yammer or Twitter to talk to each other, share links. It’s something we’re looking into and whether to bring a tool like this inside the various networks.

What’s the next step in blog evolution?

Andrea Baker: I’d like to see an evolution of blogs as the next step for us. We use WordPress blogs as our platform in the federal government. Everybody is blogging and sharing information, which is great. Now we want to take it to the next level with smarter blogs. We want to bring in more plug-ins and other complimentary technologies to increase the value of our blog posts. It would also make the information easier to find. We’re always looking for better technologies to increase the findability of information that we’ve already been creating.

Any final thoughts?

Andrea Baker: We need to engage with potential customers and other colleagues and find the way they’re communicating and join into the conversation. You should talk about your brand (company or organization) and listen for people talking about you. We’ve already mentioned Twitter, I use that daily to be a part of the world’s conversation. I also believe corporations and executives should be blogging on their corporate websites, to let us know what they’re about, in order to reach out to potential and existing customers.

By JD Kathuria

26 Aralık Günü Dersimizin Konuğu: Sarper Danış

Konu: "Advertising 2.0"

Konuşan(lar):

1) Sarper Danış
2) Yüce Zerey

Dijital Reklam Dünyasında, doygun altyapısını tükenmek bilmeyen enerjisi ve özgün yeteneği ile birleştirmiş ender profesyonellerden olan Sarper Danış , bu hafta bizlere Advertising 2.0 konusunu anlatacak. Sarper'i dinlemek için ben 26 Aralık Cuma günü Saat 19.00 da Bilgi Üniversitesi Santral Kampüsü'ndeyim.

Peki ya siz?
Sarper Danış da kim oluyor diyecek olursanız:

"Sarper Danış Türkiye'nin lider interaktif ajanslarından Zap Medya'nın yönetici ortağıdır. Online reklam ve pazarlama iletişimi alanında 10 seneyi aşkın süredir çalışmakta ve danışmanlık yapmaktadır. A'dan Z'ye; bir markanın internette yaratılması, konumlandırılması, sunumu, müşteri ilişkileri, satış ve geri dönüşleri gibi konularda deneyimlerini hizmet verdiği ajans ve müşterileriyle paylaşmaktadır. Şirkete katıldığı son 4 senede, Zap Medya finansal ve fiziksel anlamda 10 kat büyümüş, interaktif alanda satınalmalar gerçekleştirmiş ve uluslararası bir şirket olmuştur.

Zap Medya'da internet ve medya stratejileri, SEO - SEM ve arge departmanlarına liderlik yapan Danış, aynı zamanda mecraya yenilikler getirme yolundaki çalışmalarını sürdürmektedir. İnteraktif reklamcılığın hiçbir zaman durmayacağı ve gelişerek süreceğini savunan ve Türkiye'de internet reklamcılığının gelişimi için fikirler üreten Danış, IAB Türkiye'nin kuruluşunda da yer almıştır.

1994 İstanbul Lisesi ve 1999 Marmara Üniversitesi Almanca Enformatik mezunudur. Eğitimi sırasında 1996-1997 senesinde Almanya - Bielefeld Üniversitesi Avrupa İşletme Bilimleri ve 1998-2000 senesinde Almanya - Lüneburg Üniversitesinde MIS eğitimleri aldı. Deutche Telekom'da pazarlama ve teknoloji, Carat Medya'da interaktif medya ve Plus v.2 Ajansı'nda interaktif proje yönetimi konularında görevler almıştır. Danış, 2004 senesinden beri Zap Medya'da çalışmaktadır.

1976 doğumlu Sarper Danış İstanbul'da yaşamaktadır."

Can Web 2.0 really work for Enterprise 2.0?

In spite of its roaring success on consumer IT desktops, considerable scepticism still remains about the value of Web 2.0 in business organisations. Can Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, blogs and social networking really help to grow a business and make the leap to Enterprise 2.0?

Like open source, Web 2.0 concepts now deserve corporate consideration

It used to be the case that open source was a momentary distraction for CIOs and IT directors. Not so any more. More companies are asking their IT leaders to apply open source to their corporate IT strategies. The same cannot yet be said of Web 2.0 technologies, but we expect Web 2.0 to creep its way into the vernacular of business software over the coming years.

The success of consumer-led Web 2.0 technologies cannot be ignored. Facebook, MySpace, blogs, RSS, mash-ups, Ajax and a myriad of other web-based technologies all now rally under the Web 2.0 banner. Some of these are now starting to show potential behind corporate firewalls to facilitate more effective forms of collaboration (beyond standard email) and provide a richer, more interactive information experience for business IT users - i.e. the two-way use of the Web that allows users not only to access information but also to express their own knowledge.

Enterprise software vendors are also starting to bake 2.0 capabilities into their applications. For example, SAP uses wikis and blogs extensively on its SDN, and Oracle has built social networking into a broad-release CRM offering.

Think of Web 2.0 not as a tool but as an information experience

While many Web 2.0 technologies are now deployed for enterprise use, they are still a long way from being mature or universal. The trick is to figure out how to take Web 2.0 ideas and use them in a business environment to interact better with employees, customers and suppliers. It's not a direct translation. IT users have distinct needs from consumers, and organisations will have to carefully target, evaluate and refine their initial Web 2.0 deployments.

In particular, we believe that companies should consider Web 2.0 not in terms of technology but as an enhanced web information experience for solving business problems. For example, instead of looking at blog-style publishing, wiki-style editing and social networking as just tools, enterprises should frame their use in business scenarios or goals, both within and outside the four walls of the enterprise - e.g. as a way to better engage with their most profitable customers or build up a stronger corporate online brand.

Importantly, Web 2.0 is also about advancing information experiences for business users, helping them to make the most of the systems and data management investments that a company has already put in place. Web 2.0 helps to make IT systems user-friendly and accessible. It allows for communities of interest to be built from crowds of business users looking at certain slices of corporate information.

Finally, Web 2.0 information experience also calls for a bi-directional link between users and information. One of the biggest benefits of Web 2.0 is the opportunity to use the activities and business domain expertise within businesses as they interact with information. Rather than being passive information consumers, users participate in its creation and organisation through tagging, commentary and ranking.

Web 2.0 remains a leap of faith for many companies, but one worth risking

Adding Web 2.0 to an enterprise context also represents a democratic and social shift for a company's IT strategy, moving control from the organisation's IT department to individual users. But traditional views of enterprise IT are still relatively conservative right now. Few companies are prepared to look outside the box at unproven Web 2.0 models, especially in tight economic times.

As with any new and evolving technology, implementing Web 2.0 tools is a risk. The risk is more pronounced given the unclear return on investment from their use - which is ultimately measured in how effectively people collaborate, as opposed to business optimisation or revenue-generating ideas.

Only when companies start to understand the information democratising benefits of these tools, the specific business case scenarios for uses of the applications, and the effort and cost of implementing them will we see wide-scale adoption.

By Madan Sheina

The Top 10 Enterprise 2.0 Stories of 2008

The enterprise 2.0 space saw good action this year. I’ve had a chance to see it up close, starting the year with BEA Systems (now Oracle) and closing out the year with Connectbeam. I think it’s fair to say that in 2007, social software was still something of a missionary sale. In 2008, company inquiries increased a lot. The burden still falls on the vendors to articulate business benefits, adoption strategies and use cases. But enterprise customers are now partners in this work.

So let’s get to it. Here are my top ten stories for the year:

1. Activity Streams

Facebook really got this going with its newsfeed, and FriendFeed took it to an art form with its lifestreaming service. In 2008, many vendors added activity streams to their applications: Connectbeam, BEA Systems, Atlassian, SocialText, Jive Software and others.  Activity streams are great for improving awareness of colleagues’ activities, and adding a new searchable object: actions.

2. Forrester’s $4.6 Billion Forecast

Forrester Research made a splash with its forecast that Enterprise 2.0 will be a $4.6 billion market by 2013. The ReadWriteWeb story about it has been bookmarked to Del.icio.us 386 times and counting. Forrester’s projections provided a solid analytical framework for the different tools, used internally and externally. According to the analysis, social networking will be the most popular tool for companies. Whether you buy the forecast or not, they remain the best-known, most visible numbers to date.

3. Oracle Beehive

Larry Ellison is fond of essentially dismissing SaaS. He does not have Oracle invest much in the trend. But Oracle did seem to embrace Enterprise 2.0 in a big way this year with Beehive, which is an “integrated set of collaboration services.”  The New York Times quotes Oracle EVP  Chuck Rozwat: “It is a product we built from scratch over the last three years.” Now since Oracle is a huge enterprise software company, there’s plenty of skepticism about the capabilities and innovation of Beehive. But there’s no denying that Oracle has the ear of the enterprise, and picks up a lot of market intelligence through its customer base. While Beehive itself may or may not succeed, the idea that Oracle came out with Beehive was a big story.

4. AIIM/McKinsey Surveys

Research and consulting firms AIIM and McKinsey each came out with surveys of corporate interest in enterprise 2.0. The AIIM survey looked at levels of awareness and interest among different Enterprise 2.0 technologies. AIIM also took a fairly expansive view of social software. The top 3 “Enterprise 2.0″ technologies in terms of corporate awareness? Email, instant messaging, search. That’s actually a funny list, yet there are lessons there for vendors and consultants in the social software industry. If those are entrenched, can you play nicely with them? One other quote I like from the report:

This study of 441 end users found that a majority of organizations recognize Enterprise 2.0 as critical to the success of their business goals and objectives, but that most do not have a clear understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is.

McKinsey’s survey of enterprises looked at the interest in various tools as well. It also asked respondents what the leading barriers were for success of social software initiatives. Top three were: (1) Lack of understanding for their financial return; (2) Company culture; (3) Insufficient incentives to adopt or experiment with the tools.

5. Facebook Co-Founder Leaves to Start an Enterprise 2.0 Company

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and colleague Justin Rosenstein announced they were leaving the hot consumer social network to start a new company. The new company will “build an extensible enterprise productivity suite,” with the goal of “making companies themselves run better.” Why would these young guys, sitting on top of the leader in consumer social networking, choose to exit? As I wrote at the time:

The Enterprise 2.0 market is still quite nascent and fragmented. Combine that industry profile with projected spending in the category, and suddenly you understand why these guys are striking out on their own.

Assuming they’ll be able to tap the mother ship for help, I think this was a fairly important story this year.

6. Microblogging Enters the Enterprise

Joining wikis, blogs, social bookmarking and other incumbent tools this year was microblogging . Given the way Twitter is used by Enterprise 2.0 aficionados, and is enjoying skyrocketing popularity, it’s no surprise we started seeing microblogging emerge for internal use. At the mostly consumer-focused TechCrunch50, enterprise microblogging start-up Yammer won the top prize. Other start-ups in the category include SocialCast and Present.ly. SocialText added microblogging with its release of Signals.

7. Gartner Narrows its Criteria for Social Software

Gartner came out with its Social Software Magic Quadrant in October. As SageCircle notes:

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is probably the iconic piece of analyst research. With its visibility and status, it also has enormous influence on vendor sales opportunities, especially when it comes time for IT buyers to draw up the all-important vendor short lists.

The effect of that is to establish those two tools as the de facto standard for enterprise social software inside the enterprise. To the extent corporate buyers are listening to Gartner for signals about the market, this will make it a bit more challenging for start-ups with interesting offerings that address other parts of the social software market. Yammer, for instance, won’t make it into their Magic Quadrant.

8. Enterprise RSS Fails to Take Off

RSS is one of those technologies that you know has huge value, and yet continues to struggle for awareness and adoption. Google tracks the leading “what is” searches. The fifth most popular on its list? “What is RSS?” Take that as both good and bad. Good that people want to know, bad that awareness continues to be a struggle.

Forrester analyst Oliver Young has a sharp write-up that shows enterprise RSS did not expand inside companies as many had thought it would this year. As he notes:

Of the three enterprise RSS vendors selling into this space at the start of 2008: KnowNow went out of business completely; NewsGator shifted focus and now leads with its Social Sites for SharePoint offering, while its Enterprise Server catches much less attention; and Attensa has been very quiet this year.

RSS is a great way to distribute content inside companies, but its ongoing limited adoption was a big non-story for the year.

9. IBM and Intel Issue Employee Social Media Guidelines

IBM and Intel each established guidelines for their employees who participate in social media. As I wrote, this essentially was a deputization of employees as brand managers out on the web. These market leaders were essentially saying, “have at it out there on blogs, social networks, Twitter, etc. But make sure you know the company’s expectations.” These guidelines represent a milestone in large enterprises’ comfort with social media. I expect we’ll see more of this in 2009.

10. The Recession

This affects all industries, globally, of course. And Enterprise 2.0 is no exception. Jive Software made news with its layoffs, but the effect was industry-wide. And of course, corporate buyers aren’t immune either. It’s a time for companies to hunker down, get slimmer, more focused and creative than they are in flush times. This recession will be a marvelous test for the resiliency of the Enterprise 2.0 sector.

Those are my ten. Did I miss a big story for 2008? Add your thoughts in the comments.

If you’re interested in tracking what happens in 2009, I encourage you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed. It is a centralized location for tweets and Del.icio.us bookmarks that specifically relate to Enterprise 2.0.

By Hutch Carpenter

CRM 2.0: Fantasy or Reality?

The rise of Social Computing means that customer relationship management (CRM) professionals must find innovative new ways to cope with the emerging phenomenon of "social customers." Forrester Research talked to early-adopter companies and leading CRM vendors as part of its research into CRM 2.0 strategies to understand the business tactics and the technologies involved.

Principal analyst William Band says customers are demanding that enterprises engage with them in new, more "social" ways. The technologies needed to support CRM 2.0 strategies are maturing, and early adopters are already gaining competitive advantage by forging new and tighter relationships with their buyer communities.

Key CRM 2.0 objectives include: Listening, the on-going monitoring of customers conversations with each other; Talking, participating in and stimulating two-way conversations customers have with each other; Energizing, making it possible for enthusiastic customers to help sell or make introductions to each other; Supporting, enabling your customers to support each other; and Embracing, helping customers work with each other to come up with ideas to improve products and services.

So how do you take the CRM 2.0 plunge? Band offers these recommendations:

Initiate CRM 2.0 experiments immediately. Define a near-term opportunity to apply CRM 2.0 ideas to a customer-facing challenge at your company. Build some practical experience that will break you out of out of old mindsets. Refine your strategies later as new learnings emerge. Ten years ago, Electronic Arts recognized it could not cope with the anticipated tenfold increase in customer support inquiries as the result of launching large-scale online multiplayer games. There were no commercial solutions to help at the time, so it began experimenting and developing its own solutions. Trying new ideas and discarding the old, EA actively worked to gain matter-of-fact experience by actively participating in the "virtual worlds" of its social game players.

Benchmark customer and prospect social readiness. Survey your customers to assess their Social Computing behavior and attitudes. Use Forrester's Social Technographics® as a framework for assessing whether prospects and customers are willing to comment on blogs, contribute content to online forums or wikis, or view online video segments.

Define your social customer objectives. The most important decision is not what technology to use; most important is determining who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. At Forrester, we advocate using a systematic, four-step method for next-generation customer management strategy formation. The acronym for the four steps is POST: people, objectives, strategy, and technology.
Assess your CRM 2.0 capabilities. Undertake a self-assessment to understand how your organization stacks up compared to CRM 2.0 best practices and identify where you should focus your attention for quick wins.

Understand the social computing solutions landscape. You must learn to navigate an emerging CRM solutions landscape that includes both traditional solutions and new Social Computing capabilities.

Map out your social CRM capabilities-building plan. A CRM 2.0 plan should be tightly linked to business goals, focused on customer benefits, clearly identify the processes and constituencies that will be affected, and specify the associated information and capabilities required.
Define your metrics for success. Exceptional discipline is what sets CRM winners apart from failures. CRM 2.0 comprises both a strategy and a set of tools, but you also need to pay attention to how well you are tracking toward your goals over the long term. Establishing the right metrics is part of the discipline that leads to success.

Social technology adoption has increased tremendously during the past 12 months. Three in four U.S. online adults now use social tools to connect with each other compared with 56% in 2007. Leading CRM vendors are adding collaborative capabilities to augment the transactional business processes of marketing, sales, service, and product/service development. These technology and social changes are transforming the way all businesses operate, create products, and relate to customers.

Early adopters are already experimenting, gaining experience, and achieving early successes adopting the concepts and solutions that comprise CRM 2.0. This is not fantasy, it is a reality.
To download a complimentary copy of this report, please visit.

by CIO Zone