Kevin Benedict is a TCS futurist and lecturer focused on the signals and foresight that emerge as society, geopolitics, economies, science, technology, environment, and philosophy converge.
Last week while speaking with CIOs and IT strategists in Europe the topic of enterprise collaboration came up often. Of course, I was usually the one to raise it, but it is a natural extension of enterprise mobility so I am justified! You can now have real-time communications with all of your brightest minds via mobile devices. Why not use it! Why not provide real-time collaboration apps that enable you to have full situational awareness within your company? You can keep updated and contribute to all the important discussions and debates no matter your geographical location.
In this short video, I discuss the impact mobility and collaboration platforms are having and will continue to have on many different aspects of your business. Enjoy!
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
This week I had the pleasure of teaching a SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) strategies workshop in Brussels for a very large insurance and banking company. Following the workshop, my colleague in the mobility practice, Hugo Taborda, took me to see a visiting display of the Terra Cotta Army from China.
For those not familiar with the Terra Cotta Army, it is a collection of over 7,000 terra cotta statutes found by a Chinese farmer in 1974. Seven thousand soldiers and horses in long lines, standing silently, ready to escort their king into the afterlife.
Yesterday on my return flight to Boise, Idaho I had ample time to meditate on terra cotta statues. They were buried around 210 BC. They have stood silent, ready for duty, for over 2,000 years. Whether their king journeyed into an afterlife or not, they remained buried in Lintong district, Xi'an, Shaanix province, China. They were immobile. They have withstood the ravages of time (most of them), but cannot share their experiences or witness to the events of history. I know, as I tried to interview one.
How does a Terra Cotta army relate to social engagement platforms and enterprise mobility? Well here it goes! Many companies are blessed with large numbers of brilliant employees that bring with them in-depth industry experience, vast amounts of knowledge, skills, innovative ideas, and problem solving capabilities, but they are never effectively utilized. They are a modern day Terra Cotta Army, ready and willing, but immobile and silent, there is no effective engagement platform in place.
We have done a good job of automating business processes with ERPs and other systems, but when there are exceptions, problems, disagreements and opportunities, we almost completely fail at providing effective platforms of engagement. ERPs and other tools that capture, standardize and automate the routine, usually operate in silence and with minimal social interaction, however, the real-world operates in a noisy, chaotic, and non-standard place called reality. It is here, where innovation, negotiation, new products, new businesses, brain-storming and problem solving happens. It is here where profits are made or lost.
It is time for companies to research and learn about social engagement platforms. How can you better utilize and benefit from the brilliance lying dormant, silent and waiting to be discovered. I recently read an article where the author predicted the next big productivity wave will come from effectively utilizing existing resources through social engagement and enterprise collaboration platforms. I agree!
As in our personal lives, social engagement is enabled by social networking platforms and tools. Likewise, in our companies, social engagement platforms, purpose built to support effective business engagement and collaboration can provide huge benefits. These platforms will have a mobile first approach. Mobile apps will be the primary means by which participants engage. Apps that enable your best and brightest minds, no matter their physical location, to be able to contribute.
The world already has seven-thousand terra cotta soldiers. We don't need more. Today, we need an army of bright minds, engaged and contributing.
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
This week I was in four different countries in four days teaching mobile and social strategies for the enterprise. While in London, I was able to corner mobility expert and my friend, Ved Sen, and film a quick interview. In this segment, I ask him about the latest trends he is seeing and hearing about in Europe in 2013. If you would like to contact Ved Sen and ask his advice on anything enterprise mobility related click here.
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
This week I am teaching mobile and social strategies and will be visiting four countries in four days. This type of schedule is a blur of airports, meeting new people and learning more about how mobile and social solutions are being used in the real world. While on these trips I have a lot of time to ponder on flights.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the the word conduit - a means by which something is received and/or transmitted, as a useful way of describing mobile devices. Mobile devices are a conduit for voice communications. Mobile devices are a conduit for social networks. Mobile devices are a conduit for email, news, data collection, photos/videos, and now as e-wallets and mobile payments. So much of our lives are now run through this conduit.
In the last couple of weeks I have spent time with over a dozen companies keenly interested in the impact of mobility and social trends on their business. In each case, the impact will be different, but significant. In many cases the impact of these trends will be monumental.
Let's talk about retail financial services for a moment. In the book Bank 3.0 by Brett King, he states, "Retail financial service brands today are a collection of experiences, increasingly defined by multichannel interactions and customer discussions and debates in the social media space." The term multichannel interactions means communicating with a bank or other retail financial services company through a variety of different means including online, call centers, mobile, ATM (machines), physical offices, etc. Increasingly, however, these interactions are via mobile devices.
King uses the phrase a "collection of experiences" to describe a financial services company's interactions with customers and prospects. These experiences, often via online and mobile, are now the discussion of the blogosphere and social networks. As a result, it is critically important that companies invest time and money to ensuring these experiences are the best they can be.
Social networks are accelerators for good or bad. If something good happens, the world can know about it in seconds. Likewise, if something bad happens the world can know about it in seconds. The rules of the PR game have changed. Increasingly people go to their networks for recommendations rather than to the manufacturer of the product or the provider of a service. They trust their networks more than the companies providing the product.
Companies need to operate their businesses and invest in their businesses to meet their customers via the channels their customers are using. If customers are moving away from visiting physical buildings and preferring to interact with a company via a mobile app, then companies need that mobile app to be the very best possible. Companies that resist supporting the interaction channels preferred by their markets are in trouble. If you work for one of these companies - right the ship.
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
This week I have been working with companies in the Benelux on social and mobile strategies. Today, I met with one CIO who says they have done POCs (proof of concepts) with three different social collaboration platforms, and each time the projects failed to catch on and be used by employees.
I also recently read a ZDNet article that included an interview with Jive's CEO Tony Zingale. In this article, "Zingale acknowledged that the failure rate on
social software that's merely flipped on and expected to work wonders is 'pretty high.' He adds, 'You have to learn how to be social and collaborate.'" How does a company learn to be social and collaborate? Is this a technology issue or a change management issue? We as individuals have jumped into the social and collaboration scene pretty easily. We use Facebook for ourselves and our soccer clubs. We tweet and use Dropbox to share all kinds of files, we use email distribution lists to organize school events, and we follow our friends and business contacts on LinkedIn. The big question, however, is where does a business receive value from incorporating "social collaboration" internally? My analysis is that business "collaboration" is an absolute requirement. Mobile communications, smartphones and tablets have brought real-time data and real-time interactions to us all. We receive real-time news, updates and business intelligence that enables us to make real-time data driven decisions no matter our location. However, we don't work in isolation or in a vacuum. We still often need other people's input, recommendations and feedback. It is a logical next step to have the capability to collaborate in real-time - to form a real-time and mobile collaboration group that can discuss and debate an issue, make a plan and act via mobile devices. This capability is just as important when working with family, soccer clubs, friends, employees, customers or partners. Today, we all collaborate, it is just done badly. We schedule 10 individual's entire day around a conference call that is often irrelevant or dominated by only a couple of opinionated people. A great deal of time is wasted and little collaboration happens. A better use of time and talent would be to create a collaboration session, and schedule a time period (e.g. 1-3 hours) to collaborate on a topic. Invitations are sent, and people can share their thoughts and opinions back and forth during the designated collaboration period. They can collaborate when it is convenient for them. They can collaborate while listening in on endless conference calls. They can conduct research and return with a thoughtful opinion. They can fit their collaboration around customer calls and meetings. Collaboration is a requirement for business. The question is simply how to best collaborate, and what platforms and mobile technologies are best suited to help us.
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
