Balancing Candy and Aspirin
The Goal for Enterprise 2.0

Business has two main objectives: generate revenues and keep costs and risks low. All organizations must learn to strike the perfect balance between meeting the expectations of Web site visitors and those of internal teams. Customers look for information to make informed choices. Internal teams have lead generation goals and must control public information.

There is a balance between fun and engagement vs. risk and cost, and achieving this balance means offering incentives to visit corporate Web sites yet with management tools to moderate and protect data under information governance policies. Is this balance Candy vs. Aspirin?

Everybody wants candy...
Today we know the Web 2.0 wave from consumer communities like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. They offer information sharing sites to bridge family, friends and colleagues, and the factors that make these social networking tools attractive for personal use can apply to the enterprise. Rich media such as photos, videos and sound clips, user-generated content and social networking sites can be very powerful when used for corporate collaboration. Corporate intranets can be enriched by drawing on the knowledge of the workforce by providing them with communication tools—inspired by Web 2.0 blogs, forums, podcasts and wikis, as well as instant messaging and collaborative spaces. Wrapping these tools in a message of empowerment and self-expression is the candy treat often needed to encourage more discussion corporately.

...but organizations also need aspirin.
Compliance is a shadow over business practices. Information handling and disclosures have become subject to laws and regulations, and companies need to be mindful about the legal and compliance implications related to an open culture. Social networking and the exchange of ideas and information can be tracked and followed. Management can be held responsible for any material information provided by staff. Once information is in digital form, it becomes traceable, and information in the hands of users means more content volume and risk. Email is now the corporate Achilles heel. Organizations adopting Web 2.0 must be cognizant that 2.0 content can be subject to compliance just as other content types. Reducing burden and headache means balancing "Aspirin" to ensure relief from the pain of controlling the risk and cost of 2.0 tools.

The Social Workplace
Innovations that exist in the consumer world will permeate the enterprise, and today, employees bring expectations and Web experiences shaped by their personal online habits into the work environment, resulting in the desire for similar capabilities. They seek opportunities during their work day to participate in the collaborative and social nature of the Web. Like the early days of email and Internet years ago, management can be slow to see the value of new tools in the work experience. The fact that employees may use some of their work time to blog, chat or read wikis or discussion forums may not seem to have immediate benefit, but many will do it anyway, and with the information gleaned or techniques learned, this time may prove useful in future work.

While consumer adoption of social computing has been enormous, the surge in organizational adoption has just begun. Web-based businesses and communications companies have been among the early adopters, but the real change in organizational adoption of 2.0 technologies is happening within organizations not viewed as Web-centric.

Organizations will have different objectives for social computing depending on the information sharing challenges they face: geographic distribution, staff comfort level or their target customer group. Regardless of product or industry, the success of a social computing strategy will be based on how well it is integrated with business culture and organizational processes. All organizations have the common objective of achieving stronger networking groups, integration of internal and external target groups and improvement of the communication and knowledge sharing culture throughout the company. By using social computing, companies turn one-way communication into two-way conversations and achieve the objective of turning recipients of content into suppliers of additional information.

Candy = Fun and Attractive
From building brand awareness and reaching new prospects to improving customer relations and gaining insights into product evolution, the following social computing benefits are achieved across industries:

• Integration of customers, partners and employees;
• Involvement of target groups with products, brands, etc.;
• Strengthening of relationships and creation of transparency; and
• Collect and publish knowledge in the company.

Aspirin = Controlling Pain and Risk
Enterprises can’t jump headlong into adopting multiple Web 2.0 technologies simply for the sake of doing so. Goals should target specific initiatives so growth can be managed in line with content governance requirements. Successful and safe rollouts are the objective:

• Have a plan in place;
• Require security checks and balances;
• Base it on a solid ECM foundation to leverage content and experience; and
• Reduce regulatory and compliance headaches.

Making aspirin work.
The fun part of Web 2.0 is obvious: freer voices by adopting intuitive tools. But the implementation of a working infrastructure requires some strategic steps to succeed. Starting with business culture and a clear definition of the business goals, Open Text has developed a set of steps to help you to attain the highest level of fun (and return) from your traditional compliance-driven projects:

• Develop a plan and define key stakeholders.

Just like the Internet encouraged risky behaviors, Web 2.0 can have the same effect. Many companies rush into a project without a clear understanding of the goals. But as with all investments, only those that can be measured can be successful. Although better customer service or a nicer interface to a records retention plan is hard to measure, even intangible goals should be articulated.

• Establish a 2.0 culture.

While many organizations claim to be open to new ideas and embrace an open door policy, it requires a bravery to commit to some Web 2.0 ideas—opening direct dialogue with customers means accepting criticism in public about poor service or quality. Allowing less senior staff to blog and comment on discussion sites will appear risky to management. Organizations committed to 2.0 culture can update their email- or IM-use policies to include 2.0, and these policies can outline Web 2.0 tools to use—and should be accepted by PR, HR, legal and business management. Monitoring and responding to the results needs to be part of this management commitment to 2.0.

• Make sure it’s built to last.

When we analyze projects that fail, we see a pattern: a strong start, a well-defined plan, senior management support and initial success. But over time, the project loses momentum and eventually ends in apathy. In dialogues with successful customers, we have identified three major topics that can help to overcome or avoid this risk: 1. Turn the worker into an evangelist for change; 2. Turn the evangelist into an engaged worker; and 3. Communicate along the way.

• Make it part of your strategy.

Any Web 2.0 strategy should enhance—not detract from—employee productivity, the customer’s ability to work with you or the regulations you have to abide by.