As we compared KCC. Part 2
Today we continue the topic of choosing a corporate social network, begun in the previous article . In it, we talked about the difficulties that await Russian companies when trying to make a decision on choosing a platform, based on Western surveys and descriptions of platforms. Therefore, having studied the available materials and having tried to work in the networks included in the review, we created a table of corporate social networking functionality. Taking this opportunity, I thank those active participants who have helped and continue to help supplement and expand the table of our analysis.
And now let's talk about two approaches that can be found when choosing corporate social networks - “top-down” and “bottom-up” - and give the recipe of choosing “super-on-the-street”. Let's start with the approach that is traditionally used when choosing classic IT systems in large companies.
In this approach, as a rule, the business customer is in the management of the company and is the primary beneficiary and engine of the project. The business customer analyzes the current processes and what is missing to achieve the desired result in the business. As a result, he finds new rules or processes to be implemented. If for implementation of processes any additional IT system is required - the information technology directorate is connected, which deals with current IT systems, forms technical requirements for the new platform. If a decision was made to introduce, for example, an ERP system, then a project would begin to deploy an IT platform and introduce new processes. The decision-making logic is slightly modified when it comes to corporate social networks that bring people, processes and communication technologies together. In this case, at the stage of analysis, the HR Directorate or the internal communications department is usually connected, which, based on the characteristics of the corporate culture, looks for ways to attract employees to use the new system, and then, at the project implementation stage, tries to involve staff in working with the new system. Schematically, the process looks like this:
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If to sum up - as a result of serious preparatory work a weighted decision is made. Due to a comprehensive analysis, the likelihood of facing growth problems or the narrowness of the technical capabilities of the system will be minimized. However, this approach implies high time and resource costs for personnel involvement and evidence that it really needs an additional platform to work.
I remember a little story from my practice. I once had a representative of a large customer on the horizon — the deputy IT director who asked for a comparative analysis of the functionality of Yammer with SharePoint to justify the transition to a new platform. At that time, I already had a steady habit of first searching for information on the corporate social network. Therefore, the first request I sent there. I admit, I was puzzled by the answer received from a foreign colleague who sold Yammer almost from the day of its foundation. It turned out that he already had experience when he was asked to do a similar analysis. Of the dozen of the comparison points, the functionality was very similar - the total score was almost equal, a little in favor of SharePoint. But after all, these are completely different platforms with different appearance! As a result, the customer bought Salesforce Chatter, because a representative of the IT department asked questions about the functional comparison, and the business customer at that time simply opened up test access to Chatter and started using it.
Therefore, my colleague did not give me a comparative analysis and strongly recommended not to be conducted, but to identify a business customer and make him a live demonstration. I advise you to take note of this experience and, selling corporate social networks, not only evaluate the functionality, but the most important thing is to let the future users see and use the platform themselves, while some of the options will immediately like them or dislike them. The given case describes another approach - “bottom-up”.
This is an option when the decision is made not at the level of the company's management, but in the field and then spreads to the top and to the side. As a rule, it can be any business department that needs to solve its local problem. Department activists find a solution, most likely a cloud one, in order to contact their IT service, and start working there. The idea is distributed by the word of mouth method, new departments are connected to the system with their own use cases. At some point, it turns out that the already visible part of the communication processes in the company has changed and the company itself works a little differently on the new platform. As a result of such a spontaneous development of events, problems associated with the rejection of the corporate social network by management are possible. Also, due to the lack of a serious analysis of the technical capabilities of the new system, there is a chance to face the difficulties of integrating a corporate social network with existing IT systems. But there is also an important positive moment - no one needs to be involved in the new system, people are starting to use it almost immediately. Schematically, the process looks like this:
Life, of course, is not limited to the two options described; in reality, a combination of two co-directed processes can be observed. However, if you look at the platforms we are exploring, it is clear that, conceptually, developers take for themselves one or another way of making decisions and adjust their products to it.
The top-down option is more Jive and IBM Connections. One way or another, but their creators began their movement towards social networks through the socialization of portals, which historically began as corporate media and spread “top-down”. By the way, earlier SharePoint was developing along this path, but then it stopped in the development of socialization functions. Therefore, in these platforms:
For the bottom-up approach, platforms like Yammer and DaOffice are more likely to:
Although, at present, Yammer is actively rewritten under Office 365, for example, it has “stretched” the interface and does some more perfidy.
Bitrix24 in this sense cannot be counted among one group or another. It goes its own way and initially develops as a social intranet.
We would like to note that all of the above does not imply any restrictions like “this platform should be implemented only this way, but this one is different.” Simply, if you make a detailed analysis of the functionality, representatives of the top-down group will collect more ticks, and it will be easier for you to test the platforms from the bottom-up group.
So how do you choose a platform? There is no single answer. You must find a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches that best suits your company's organizational culture. The following sequence seems to be the most adequate for us, which combines the advantages of both approaches:
The ending follows. In it, we will give some tips on testing corporate social networks, as well as present the collected user experiences from various platforms. It will be emotional!
(*) It must be admitted, the similarity of some corporate and public social networks has arisen for a reason, and is a consequence of the so-called A / B testing . It looks like this: thanks to customer surveys and the work of the analytical group, the idea arises of optimizing the interface or adding new functionality that the development team implements. Then there are two similar groups of users of the cloud service - one group uses the current interface, and the second one is modified or with new functionality. Unlike a boxed installation in a cloud service, this can be easily done. Using the example of these two groups of users, an analysis is being made - is the second group starting to use the new function and is the use of the cloud service increasing at all? If so, it means that the new revision has passed the test of "battle" and it can be used already for all users. If not, the new functionality is removed as unworthy of the corporate social network. For example, a column listing the groups in which you belong will always be on the left, and never on the right, because according to A / B testing, it’s more convenient for users.
That is why many social networks are so similar - they are made for the most easy perception by users. That, however, does not mean that you will like them.
Vladimir Ivanitsa
And now let's talk about two approaches that can be found when choosing corporate social networks - “top-down” and “bottom-up” - and give the recipe of choosing “super-on-the-street”. Let's start with the approach that is traditionally used when choosing classic IT systems in large companies.
Top-down approach
In this approach, as a rule, the business customer is in the management of the company and is the primary beneficiary and engine of the project. The business customer analyzes the current processes and what is missing to achieve the desired result in the business. As a result, he finds new rules or processes to be implemented. If for implementation of processes any additional IT system is required - the information technology directorate is connected, which deals with current IT systems, forms technical requirements for the new platform. If a decision was made to introduce, for example, an ERP system, then a project would begin to deploy an IT platform and introduce new processes. The decision-making logic is slightly modified when it comes to corporate social networks that bring people, processes and communication technologies together. In this case, at the stage of analysis, the HR Directorate or the internal communications department is usually connected, which, based on the characteristics of the corporate culture, looks for ways to attract employees to use the new system, and then, at the project implementation stage, tries to involve staff in working with the new system. Schematically, the process looks like this:
')
If to sum up - as a result of serious preparatory work a weighted decision is made. Due to a comprehensive analysis, the likelihood of facing growth problems or the narrowness of the technical capabilities of the system will be minimized. However, this approach implies high time and resource costs for personnel involvement and evidence that it really needs an additional platform to work.
Bottom-up approach
I remember a little story from my practice. I once had a representative of a large customer on the horizon — the deputy IT director who asked for a comparative analysis of the functionality of Yammer with SharePoint to justify the transition to a new platform. At that time, I already had a steady habit of first searching for information on the corporate social network. Therefore, the first request I sent there. I admit, I was puzzled by the answer received from a foreign colleague who sold Yammer almost from the day of its foundation. It turned out that he already had experience when he was asked to do a similar analysis. Of the dozen of the comparison points, the functionality was very similar - the total score was almost equal, a little in favor of SharePoint. But after all, these are completely different platforms with different appearance! As a result, the customer bought Salesforce Chatter, because a representative of the IT department asked questions about the functional comparison, and the business customer at that time simply opened up test access to Chatter and started using it.
Therefore, my colleague did not give me a comparative analysis and strongly recommended not to be conducted, but to identify a business customer and make him a live demonstration. I advise you to take note of this experience and, selling corporate social networks, not only evaluate the functionality, but the most important thing is to let the future users see and use the platform themselves, while some of the options will immediately like them or dislike them. The given case describes another approach - “bottom-up”.
This is an option when the decision is made not at the level of the company's management, but in the field and then spreads to the top and to the side. As a rule, it can be any business department that needs to solve its local problem. Department activists find a solution, most likely a cloud one, in order to contact their IT service, and start working there. The idea is distributed by the word of mouth method, new departments are connected to the system with their own use cases. At some point, it turns out that the already visible part of the communication processes in the company has changed and the company itself works a little differently on the new platform. As a result of such a spontaneous development of events, problems associated with the rejection of the corporate social network by management are possible. Also, due to the lack of a serious analysis of the technical capabilities of the new system, there is a chance to face the difficulties of integrating a corporate social network with existing IT systems. But there is also an important positive moment - no one needs to be involved in the new system, people are starting to use it almost immediately. Schematically, the process looks like this:
Life, of course, is not limited to the two options described; in reality, a combination of two co-directed processes can be observed. However, if you look at the platforms we are exploring, it is clear that, conceptually, developers take for themselves one or another way of making decisions and adjust their products to it.
The top-down option is more Jive and IBM Connections. One way or another, but their creators began their movement towards social networks through the socialization of portals, which historically began as corporate media and spread “top-down”. By the way, earlier SharePoint was developing along this path, but then it stopped in the development of socialization functions. Therefore, in these platforms:
- there is always the logic of the portal, just more personalized than ordinary portals, and with elements of a social network;
- as a consequence of the first item, by default, users on the screen will see several levels of the hierarchy at once, and will have to be able to “read” complex interfaces;
- a large administration apparatus has been developed and there are ample opportunities for configuring the interface, the latter can be changed beyond recognition;
- limited time testing cloud service;
- By the way, another interesting observation is that the interface of these systems will most likely stretch across the entire width of your screen.
For the bottom-up approach, platforms like Yammer and DaOffice are more likely to:
- they do not try to replace corporate portals, they look like “clean” social networks, initially have a clear, simple and intuitive interface;
- as a consequence of the first item, they are very similar to their public counterparts Facebook, Vkontakte, etc. (*);
- integrates perfectly with existing portal solutions, primarily with SharePoint;
- There are no time limits for free trial use (I know an example when one of the world's largest companies used the free version of Yammer for a year and a half);
- have limited ability to customize the interface.
Although, at present, Yammer is actively rewritten under Office 365, for example, it has “stretched” the interface and does some more perfidy.
Bitrix24 in this sense cannot be counted among one group or another. It goes its own way and initially develops as a social intranet.
We would like to note that all of the above does not imply any restrictions like “this platform should be implemented only this way, but this one is different.” Simply, if you make a detailed analysis of the functionality, representatives of the top-down group will collect more ticks, and it will be easier for you to test the platforms from the bottom-up group.
Supereonovsk approach
So how do you choose a platform? There is no single answer. You must find a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches that best suits your company's organizational culture. The following sequence seems to be the most adequate for us, which combines the advantages of both approaches:
- It is usually easy to make a list of finalists, but then it is long and painful to choose the final winner. Therefore, first collect the general system requirements, and, using analyst reports, requesting comparison tables from manufacturers, applying our comparison table from the previous article, knowing your IT landscape, understanding the historical context of your organization — select no more than three finalists from corporate social networks. meet all the above requirements.
- Then test each platform from the list of finalists. The most effective way to test is to start using them to implement specific, well-understood business tasks: a joint meeting protocol, a group discussing the pros and cons of this platform, proposing new ideas for using the corporate social network and voting for them, searching for like-minded people in project implementation, examination and the help of colleagues in solving important problems. At the end of the test periods (having previously saved all the valuable information), it will be possible to make an informed decision about the convenience of users.
- Based on the analysis of the functionality and user feedback, select your platform. And do not listen to anyone else except yourself and your colleagues, since it is you who will then have to work with them in this system.
The ending follows. In it, we will give some tips on testing corporate social networks, as well as present the collected user experiences from various platforms. It will be emotional!
(*) It must be admitted, the similarity of some corporate and public social networks has arisen for a reason, and is a consequence of the so-called A / B testing . It looks like this: thanks to customer surveys and the work of the analytical group, the idea arises of optimizing the interface or adding new functionality that the development team implements. Then there are two similar groups of users of the cloud service - one group uses the current interface, and the second one is modified or with new functionality. Unlike a boxed installation in a cloud service, this can be easily done. Using the example of these two groups of users, an analysis is being made - is the second group starting to use the new function and is the use of the cloud service increasing at all? If so, it means that the new revision has passed the test of "battle" and it can be used already for all users. If not, the new functionality is removed as unworthy of the corporate social network. For example, a column listing the groups in which you belong will always be on the left, and never on the right, because according to A / B testing, it’s more convenient for users.
That is why many social networks are so similar - they are made for the most easy perception by users. That, however, does not mean that you will like them.
Vladimir Ivanitsa
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293840/
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