Blogs, wikis, virtual communities and social networking may soon be part of your workplace collaboration tools, thanks to a new trend called social software from IBM.
While email has become an indispensable tool at work, relatively new Internet phenomena such as blog-ging, twittering, social bookmark-ing and networking have been slowly creeping into your office through social software.
Social software is software that encourages group interaction and community-based projects, where anyone is allowed to contribute and share information.
Bob Picciano, general manager of Lotus Software at IBM, says social software reflects a new way of thinking. It replaces the traditional pyramid hierarchy that exists among employees.
By eliminating barriers of seniority and rank among employees, communication and information can flow freely, driving employees to produce better results.
This pyramid can become an inverted one, or even flattened, as social software empowers employees with more freedom in how they work.
IBM is so serious about social computing that it has set up the Center for Social Software in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study human social behaviour in collaboration efforts. These studies assist the development of IBM's social software, which was adopted in-house before being released.
Lotus Connections is one of the social software applications used extensively at IBM. It incorporates features such as blogs, online communities, social bookmarks and employee profiles. Internally, IBM has a total of 1,796 online communities and 601,835 profiles. The company has discovered that some of its employees have become highly dependent on these tools to do their work.
With Lotus Connections, users can easily reach out to a fellow expert by searching keywords in profiles for their expertise. They also have access to the experts' bookmarks, communities and blog posts.
Users can start or join a project where team members have access to tasks, files, instant messages and web links. As more people work on a problem or project, innovative products and services can be created due to a bigger pool of resources. Ultimately, it creates a stronger network of colleagues that go beyond your own team and department.
"In my previous company, we used to work in a tightly knit group. We didn't know what was happening outside our group and we had no idea if another group was doing the same things that we did. With social software in IBM, I have access to so many people and experts. I can also engage with my customers and partners early in product development to get their input by opening forum discussions or blog-ging about our progress," says Susan Minassian, IBM product manager for Lotus Connections.
Film Foundation is an organisation that has benefited directly from social software. This organisation works to preserve classic films as well as educate the public on classic films and their techniques. One of its roles is to establish curricula for universities and schools. By using the "Activities" feature in Lotus Connections, they invite instructors, teachers and students to contribute to the curriculum. Members would contribute lesson plans and pictures as well as provide feedback on what they want the curriculum to cover.
"It's a soft ROI (return on investment) with social software. From a management perspective, they will be able to assess employees' productivity, the time all this will produce better customer service, product development and even drive sales. You can see people become more motivated to do their work as there is more interaction with each other. We can group people with the same interests and expertise. Execution is faster," says Minassian.
Picciano says while social software may change the working culture, companies who are not open to this idea can still benefit from being able to establish workflow for their business processes that might not have been captured before.
"One of the interesting facets of our social software approach, besides the social aspect, is a new programming model that's good for individuals working in silos as well as teams. We are able to create a workflow where there was no business logic attached to it previously. For example, a complex process such as hiring will raise issues such as what questions to ask for a productive dialogue, what the approval process is and what can be done to make sure the new hires have a good work experience. That process is something good managers may know but the newer managers might not. For us, we can now capture those steps and we are able to use them as a general template for all hiring processes. This new programming model of IBM's social software is able to capture a tacit workflow," says Picciano.
IBM will soon be offering social software through SaaS (Software as a Service) with its new Lotus Live brand. The first product to be released will be Lotus Live Engage, an online collaboration service that offers conference meetings, project management, social networking, file sharing and communities. The beauty of a SaaS service is that companies can do away with its in-house IT team for maintenance, which will reduce costs in the long run. Small to medium-sized companies can certainly benefit from this as tools such as web meetings or project management are available online without having to go through the IT team.
Lotus Live Engage is also being integrated with Linkedln, a business social network of 34 million professionals. Users will soon be able to search Linkedln's vast network and engage with new contacts and business partners. For example, a company wanting to find a suitable legal firm will be able to search through the network or look at their partners' and peers' business connections. SalesForce and Skype have also been announced as system integration partners.
Edward Orange, Lotus director for IBM Asia-Pacific, says the adoption rate for social software in some countries is slower than others due to the different cultural practices. China and Singapore have the highest adoption rate in Asia-Pacific. In Malaysia, it is still a relatively new concept, which makes it too early to determine the adoption rate. "Malaysia needs to be more open to new technologies to stay competitive in the world," he says.
New technologies may come and go, but it appears that the Web 2.0 culture of community-based interactions has managed to influence another aspect of our life — our work life.
While blogging and social networking may be viewed as a waste of time at the office, social software now aims to channel these pastimes towards a more conducive working environment for us all.
Source: Malaysia, The Edge, 16 February 2009
