Enterprise social software

Enterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing social software used in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.

Terminology

The term enterprise""' social software' is a general term for describing this class of tools. As of 2006, "Enterprise 2.0" is a catchier term sometimes used to describe social and networked changes to enterprise, which often includes social software (but is not limited to it, nor to either social collaboration or software); and "Enterprise Web 2.0" sometimes describes the introduction and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise including those rich internet applications, providing software as a service, and using the web as a general platform.

Applications of enterprise social software

Software examples

Specific social software tools that have been adapted for enterprise use include hypertext and unstructured search tools, wikis, weblogs for storytelling, social bookmarking for tagging and building organizational folksonomies, RSS for signaling, collaborative planning software for peer-based project planning and management, ideas banks for ideation (idea generation), social networking tools, mashups for visualization, and even prediction markets for forecasting and identifying risks.

Social networking capabilities can help organizations capture unstructured tacit knowledge. The challenge then becomes how to distill meaningful, re-usable knowledge from other content also captured in tools such as blogs, online communities, and wikis. In 2008, companies that provide Enterprise Social Software, started introducing profile pages to their products, to integrate the functionality of public online communities, within the enterprise. This enables knowledge workers to find others with the knowledge they may need. This is especially useful in large organizations.

Specific uses

Blogs and wikis are collaboration tools, and as such, they are useful mainly for sharing "unstructured" information associated with ad hoc or ongoing projects and processes, but not for "structured informational" retrieval. However, Shell is converting its official documentation to wiki's, because this enables the company to make documentation updates available in real time. And enable non-editors to contribute to the documentation. In this process they restructure the paper documents to a set of on line wiki pages.

Business processes often rely on access to "structured" data. This may be spread across many applications, databases, and directories. Social technologies work to address such complexities.

The "unstructured" information provided by social technologies is particularly useful in business processes that are not rigidly pre-defined, but where people work together in an adaptive way to innovate solutions. The theory of such processes is human interaction management, and there is an associated type of software known as a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS). A HIMS can be used to provide management control over the use of social software.

A Service Network is another application of enterprise social software within the context of service innovation initiatives that span academia, business, and government.

Ironically Law, which many view as a field where professionals are highly "un-collaborative", may prove to be among the first places to embrace Web 2.0 in the enterprise, because lawyers manage intensive document collaboration, and sit in both large legal departments in corporations and outside law firms.

Enterprise search differs from a typical web search in that it is "intended for use within an organizationby employees seeking information held internally, in a variety of formats and locations, including databases,document management systems, and other repositories. ["Enterprise Search: Seek and Ye Might Find," Computers in Libraries, July/August 2008, p. 22.]

Notes

References

* [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735306.aspx Web 2.0 in the Enterprise, The Architect Journal]
* [http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/a_web_2_0_tour_ Web 2.0 for the Enterprise] an article in Boxes and Arrows
* [http://www.cybaea.net/Journal/employee_productivity.html The 3/2 Rule of Employee Productivity] , financial research a building business case (when you add 10% employees the profitability of each drops by 6.3%)
* [http://www.khaitan.org/mt/archives/000126.html Writable Intranet] , from khaitan.org
* [http://www.scalefree.info/2006/03/list_of_tools_f.html "List of tools for the internal blogosphere"] from scalefree.info
* Stenmark, D. (2005). [http://www.viktoria.se/~dixi/publ/ecis_80.pdf "How intranets differ from the web: organisational culture's effect on technology"] . Proceedings of ECIS2005, Regensburg, Germany, 26-28 May 2005.
* [http://www.enterprise2conf.com/ Enterprise 2.0 - The Collaborative Technologies Conference] - held annually in June in Boston.
* [http://www.slideshare.net/2thinknow/enterprise-2-0-strategy/ Enterprise 2.0: National Public Affairs Convention May 2008, Christopher Hire, Speaker]
* Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew P. McAfee, [http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/ Case study on deleting "Enterprise 2.0" article] , Courseware #9-607-712, Harvard Business School, 2007 (GFDL) -- a case study on discussions surrounding the proposed deletion of an article which was merged into this page.
* "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration", MITSloan Management Review, Spring 2006. The article in which McAfee introduced the term "Enterprise 2.0" to widespread use.
* [http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/2008/02/enterprise_20_the_new_new_know_1.html Enterprise 2.0: The New, New Knowledge Management?] by Tom Davenport, Harvard Business Online, Feb. 19, 2008.
* Willms Buhse and Sören Stamer: "Enterprise 2.0: Die Kunst, loszulassen". Rhombos-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3938807687 (in German).
* Gabriela Ender, E-BOOK (2005-2008) PDF: [http://www.OpenSpace-Online.com/OpenSpace-Online_eBook_en.pdf "OpenSpace-Online® Real-time Methodology: The (R)evolutionary Global Dimension of Collaborative Excellence and Sustainable Development in Economy, Society, Politics, Education and Research, invented by the German Change Facilitator Gabriela Ender in 1999"]

On Wikis in particular

* [http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/05/02TCwiki_1.html "Wikis evolve as collaboration tools"] - InfoWorld Jan 2007 review of Wiki products designed for enterprise use
* An [http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:KL1 enterprise panel] on the organizational uses of wiki technology, from Wikimania 2006.
* McAfee, Andrew (2006). Wikis at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein: (A), (B), (C) (9-606-074), HBSP

ee also

*Semantic wiki
*Wikinomics
*Semantic Web
*Web 3.0 / Web 2.0
*Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0)
*Service Network
* [http://www.dresdner-zukunftsforum.de/blog/don-tapscott-abstract/ Abstract: Don Tapscott - Wikinomics: Winning with the enterprise 2.0]