Enterprise social software

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Enterprise social software (also known as or regarded as a major component of Enterprise 2.0), comprises social software as used in "enterprise" (business/commercial) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to corporate 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, enterprise social software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.^{[citation needed]}

Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen defined Enterprise 2.0 in a report written for Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM)as "a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise".^[1]

Contents 1 Terminology 2 Applications of enterprise social software 2.1 Functionality 2.2 Software examples 2.3 Specific uses 3 Enterprise social software vendors 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 6.1 On wikis in particular

[edit] Terminology

The term "enterprise social software" generally describes this class of tools. As of 2006, "Enterprise 2.0" had become a catchier term, sometimes used to describe social and networked changes to enterprises, which often includes social software (but may transcend social software, social collaboration and software).

The phrase Enterprise Web 2.0 sometimes refers to the introduction and implementation within an enterprise of Web 2.0 technologies,^{[citation needed]} including rich Internet applications, providing software as a service, and using the web as a general platform.

[edit] Applications of enterprise social software

[edit] Functionality

Social software for an enterprise must (according to Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School) have the following functionality to work well(McAfee 2006):

• Search: allowing users to search for other users or content
• Links: grouping similar users or content together
• Authoring: including blogs and wikis
• Tags: allowing users to tag content
• Extensions: recommendations of users; or content based on profile
• Signals: allowing people to subscribe to users or content with RSS feeds^{[cite this quote]}

McAfee recommends installing easy-to-use software which does not impose any rigid structure on users. He envisages an informal roll-out,^{[citation needed]} but on a common platform to enable future collaboration between areas. He also recommends strong and visible managerial support to achieve this.

In 2007 Dion Hinchcliffe expanded the list above by adding the following four functions:^{[cite this quote]}

1. Freeform function: no barriers to authorship (meaning free from a learning curve or from restrictions)
2. Network-oriented function, requiring web-addressable content in all cases
3. Social function: stressing transparency (to access), diversity (in content and community members) and openness (to structure)
4. Emergence function: requiring the provision of approaches that detect and leverage the collective wisdom of the community

[edit] Software examples

Specific social software tools which programmers have adapted for enterprise use include:

• hypertext and unstructured search tools
• wikis
• weblogs for storytelling
• enterprise 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
• prediction markets for forecasting and identifying risks.

Social networking capabilities can help organizations capture unstructured tacit knowledge.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} This enables knowledge workers to find others with the knowledge they may need.^{[citation needed]} Large organizations find this especially useful.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Specific uses

Blogs and wikis function as collaboration tools, and as such, they have uses mainly in sharing "unstructured" information associated with ad hoc or ongoing projects and processes, but not for "structured informational" retrieval. However, Shell has started converting its official documentation to wikis, because this enables that company to make documentation updates available in real time and allows non-editors to contribute to the documentation. In this process Shell restructures the paper documents to a set of on-line wiki pages.

Business processes often rely on access to "structured" data, potentially from a variety of sources: databases, and directories. Social technologies work to address such complexities.^{[citation needed]}

The "unstructured" information provided by social technologies has proven particularly useful in business processes that lack rigid pre-definition, but where people work together in an adaptive way to innovate solutions.^{[citation needed]} Human interaction management provides the theory of such processes, and the associated type of software has become known as human interaction management systems (HIMS). A HIMS can provide management control over the use of social software.

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

Enterprise search differs from a typical web search in its focus on "use within an organization by employees seeking information held internally, in a variety of formats and locations, including databases, document management systems, and other repositories".^[2]

[edit] Enterprise social software vendors

Enterprise social software vendors fall into several categories, including platform vendors:

• Google Sites
• IBM Lotus Connections and IBM Lotus Quickr
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Oracle Beehive
• Neighborhood America
• Jumper 2.0 open source
• omCollab open source

[edit] See also

• Knowledge management
• Enterprise bookmarking
• Semantic wiki
• Wikinomics
• Semantic Web
• Workstreaming
• Web 2.0
• Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0)
• Service Network

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Intel's SuiteTwo & BTX Enterprise integrated Enterprise 2.0
• Web 2.0 in the Enterprise, The Architect Journal
• Web 2.0 for the Enterprise an article in Boxes and Arrows
• 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%)
• Writable Intranet, from khaitan.org
• "List of tools for the internal blogosphere" from scalefree.info
• Stenmark, D. (2005). "How intranets differ from the web: organisational culture's effect on technology". Proceedings of ECIS2005, Regensburg, Germany, 26-28 May 2005.
• Enterprise 2.0 - The Collaborative Technologies Conference - held annually in June in Boston.
• Enterprise 2.0: National Public Affairs Convention May 2008, Christopher Hire, Speaker
• Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew P. McAfee, 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.
• McAfee, Andrew P. (2006), "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration", Sloan Management Review 47 (3): 21-28, <http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2006/spring/47306/enterprise-the-dawn-of-emergent-collaboration/> The article in which McAfee introduced the term "Enterprise 2.0" to widespread use.
• 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: "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"
• McAfee, Andrew (2006). Wikis at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein: (A), (B), (C) (9-606-074), HBSP
• Mashups a hot item at Web 2.0 show
• Fouad Bajwa on Enterprise 2.0 Boot Camp Series

• Assyst Enterprise 2.0 Adaptive Learning Engine Platform and Enterprise Connectors[1] with Vocabulary for various Business Verticals to foster collaboration based on the relevancy of rich profiles and user generated content [2]

[edit] On wikis in particular

• "Wikis evolve as collaboration tools" - InfoWorld Jan 2007 review of Wiki products designed for enterprise use
• An enterprise panel on the organizational uses of wiki technology, from Wikimania 2006.