The Business Case for Social Computing #SPC09

Session notes from SharePoint Conference 2009:

• Knowledge Management Issues within the enterprise are still looking for a solution, and social computing might be part of it: Rapid response to problems, capturing knowledge to ensure business continuity, and reducing transition costs. Although social computing may be part of the solution, it is not THE solution to knowledge management.
• If we manage by commitment, and employees meet their commitments, do we really care when, where, and how they do it?
• The evolution of Social Computing: Facilitated Knowledge Management, to collaborative workgroups, to social enterprise.
• We do social things regardless of whether we have social computing tools or not.
  If you're not measure ROI of social computing investments, you're not alone. No one else is either.
• See the "What's the ROI" slide for a great list of social computing benefits.
• Work life is very different than personal life. So, the way we use social media in work life is very different than in personal life. How work differs: Time constraints, negotiated priorities and commitments, processes, functional silos, physical and virtual spaces, regulatory and legal requirements, document centricity, legacy systems, performance evaluations, productivity, control, and knowledge retention.
• When all of your economics come from the industrial age, everything is measured like a factory.
• "Six Sigma almost killed 3M."
• Knowledge work is an iterative process.
• The reason you cannot calculate the ROI of social computing (or telephones, or e-mail), is that you have no idea how people are going to use them. You cannot know who will communicate with whom, what they will talk about, whether they will talk about business, or how much time they will spend communicating.
• Social computing increases the frequency of "knowledge accidents" within a company – which is a good thing.
• Take look at the "Future Vision" graphic slide.
• Plan for success: Create a organizational social media charter, understand how people are using or want to use social computing, determine how social computing can augment existing processes and systems, create awareness, document and share successes.
• Be strategic. Align the social computing goals with the business goals.
• Check out slide on measuring social computing effectiveness.
• Experiment – Monitor – Learn
• If you don't build it they will go somewhere else.
• Social computing is really just a shift in communication channels. It is not something to justify, but something to navigate through, embrace, and leverage as a new capability and manage as a new risk.
• "The anti-social organization is ultimately non-productive." – Chris Howard, Burton Group.