6 Secrets Of Solid Social Business Deployments

| secrets of social business deployment
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6 secrets of solid social business deployments.
Your guide to painless deployment and adoption.

www.jivesoftware.com

Overview.
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In this paper we are going to assume that you’ve already made a decision to socialize your enterprise IT
infrastructure with Social Business Software.

First, a reality check. Any big changes in IT can cause to, from the silverback gorilla old-school mechanical
significant disruptions in even the most flexible engineering chieftains to the Tweetdeck devotees who
organizations. For Social Business Software *only* send emails while at work.
deployments, the transition must be managed with
particular care because it entails something of a mental Following some pretty basic principles can go a long
shift in how a business functions and how business way towards nailing a successful deployment, a high
processes come together. out-of-the-gate adoption and use rate and, by extension,
a rapid realization of the real benefits of a social IT
Some employees, understandably, have trouble getting infrastructure. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide for
used to social-style information streams, wiki-style maximizing your social deployment impact while
curated project collaboration, and other new-fangled minimizing discomfort and encouraging everyone
things. No matter. A well-rehearsed, well-planned to share along in their own special way.
social deployment has something everyone can relate


1. Make sure you have two senior champions:
one from business and one from IT. 03

Business units (sales and marketing) and IT units in enterprises and organizations tend to co-exist uneasily,
with a constant back-and-forth over what’s possible, what’s acceptable, what’s affordable, and what’s really
effing stupid.

If you’ve worked at a company that has endured a big You also need a united front because social media and
new tech deployment, that lacked support somewhere use of social mores in corporate settings remains a
in the upper ranks of the business unit, you know how fairly novel concept to the majority of people in the
tricky it can be to convince the minions that they too workforce. Many still remember all-too-fresh articles
should pay attention. about people getting fired for using Facebook to flaunt
their boredom or air dirty personal laundry during work
Likewise, software deployments rammed down the hours.
throat of the IT staff tend to get second-class treatment
None of this is to say bad online social acts are acceptable,
behind other “more mission critical” priorities. For that
but bringing in both sides of the house helps to set up
reason, a united front is essential for a social deployment
the new status quo and underscore both the sincerity
to work well.
and depth of the commitment to the project.


2. Sit down and re-calibrate your implementation
with the business case. 04

You would be amazed at how much can get lost in translation between building the business case, when the
champion mapped out the way he or she thinks Social Business Software should work, and the simplest, least
disruptive way to bring social into your business processes.

And make no mistake. Always, always err on the side of With Social Business Software platforms, adding new
simplicity, providing just enough functionality to make functionality should be fairly simple. It can be achieved
the new social environment useful and sufficient to either by layering on apps from nascent application
achieve the expected results. Building added complexity marketplaces or by writing code and connectors that
not only loads on costs upfront but it can add confusion can access the social business platform’s APIs. So
as employees deal with a greater number of changes to aim low, at first. Make it stupid simple to use for real
existing processes. business activities and ensure that everyone “just gets
it” nearly at first glance. The complexity can come later.


3. Decide on the flavor of your deployment:
self-hosted or SaaS. 05

While not a huge upfront sticking point, companies should decide whether they need social running inside the
firewall or whether it should be hosted and operated by a third-party.

What are the benefits of a SaaS flavor? This type of Fortunately, Social Business Software need not be
deployment means the vendor handles all maintenance complicated like a massive and risky ERP install. The
and upgrades to the hardware and the software, best social business platforms can be brought up to a
removing the burden from your IT team.Further, under live instance in a day or two with the full-time assistance
this arrangement users can easily grow the deployment of one or two IT engineers and a few software installation
to accommodate higher seat-counts, uses of richer consultants (usually the vendor’s specialized team).
media-like video (requiring greater drive capacity and
more I/O), and other modifications. Bottom line is this. The best self-hosted deployment of
Social Business Software is relatively risk free and does
For customers saddled with rigorous auditing policies, not involve month-long, pay-spray-pray deployment under
data control mandates, heavy security concerns, and the auspices of an army of consultants. Good social
non-trivial business continuity requirements (mainly should be simpler than this, and deployments should be
government entities, financial houses, and publicly- far more manageable. So if the vendor tells you otherwise,
traded companies), self-hosted is the only acceptable you may wish to reconsider your Social Business Software
path. choice.


4. Hire a full-time community manager
for your internal social business deployment. 06

Ok, so you’ve got your two senior gorilla champions from IT and the business side. If you want a lively, engaging,
well-loved social community for employees, the thing you do next is hire a community manager. Among its
countless responsibilities, this job includes articulating how employees will use Social Business Software for
business use, cheerleading, and identifying ways that different types of employees can contribute without leaving
their comfort zone.

For a Social Business Software deployment to succeed So the community manager must quickly locate and Lastly, the FTE community manager should make sure
at a major company, this should come as no surprise. At nurture the “true believers”, and give them the training to have regular meet-ups with this crew. These meet-ups
smaller companies with more modest resources, an FTE and tools to educate and evangelize in their network. should be a combination of “tips-and-tricks” sessions,
might bust the budget. In those cases, carving out a When possible, it’s ideal to grant these volunteer advocates group troubleshooting, and best practice sharing. It
half or quarter-time responsibility and making it official and facilitators as much flexibility as possible in running might help to have the CEO drop by once in a while to
reduces the danger of the project becoming a lonely their ship (because they are doing this for free). give them a pat on the back and, in turn, have the
orphan, beloved in concept but largely shelf ware. volunteers educate the CEO both on how social business
Community managers also need to create a formalized works, and how it’s working at the company.
Perhaps the most important job of the community “on-boarding” curriculum for these volunteers to make
manager, though, is to identify effective volunteer sure they are truly experts both in the operational side
advocates and facilitators for various units or sections and the theoretical side of your company’s Social Business
(marketing, sales, finance, R&D, manufacturing, etc.). Software rollout.
Without these foot soldiers, the community will not
take flight.


5. Encourage participation by getting
in your user’s comfort zone. 07

Let’s be realistic: achieving a 100% adoption and participation rate in a Social Business Software deployment
won’t happen out of the gate. So set your expectations accordingly. A stellar social business program could hit
a mark of 50% employee participation within six months, an extremely impressive statistic. The exception to this
is when leaders make social a mandatory part of business processes. When it’s mandatory, when there’s no other
choice, you can expect 100% adoption pretty quickly.

The key to attaining this type of penetration is to was desperate to capture some of their sequestered This is just one example, but there are myriad other
subtly meld the launch program to fit the natural social knowledge to pass on to the rest of the company tribe. ways to ensure that employees can more comfortably
propensities of nearly everyone. Collaborators can participate in a social business program. Marketers,
collaborate. Bloggers can blog. Mentors can mentor. Trouble was, these silverbacks were not really into the who are used to writing, may enjoy doing blog posts
Joiners can join. And sharers can share knowledge social thing. And so they initially turned their nose up at about their experience. Front line sales executives,
with the tribe. The key is to provide a wide range of the Social Business Software deployment. A community with a less expansive attention span, may choose to
ways to contribute and to incorporate inputs from as manager pushed forth a strategy asking the younger post status updates. Project managers may choose
many types of employees and via as many mediums engineers to interview the older guys and have those to curate or actively follow other interesting internal
as possible without upping complexity levels to any conversations transcribed and then published as blog company projects.
serious degree. posts.
For many employees, turning on a social business
How might this work? A major farm equipment The interaction was structured as mentorship, program will feel as comfortable as breathing or
manufacturing company had a strong cadre of old- something the silverbacks loved to do. And so telling walking. For others, the concept of social is so novel
school engineers. These guys happened to also hold the young whippersnappers the secrets of their success that they need to be nudged into it gently and in a
a ridiculous amount of institutional wisdom on how drew them in. Over time they began to do the blogging comfortable way.
to really make innovative and durable tractors and on their own before finally becoming social with their
combines that beat the pants off the competition. knowledge and project participation, almost without
Many were nearing retirement age and the company realizing the arc of their progress.


6. Conduct monthly update meetings with the
champions and community facilitators. 08

Keeping on top of progress, developments, and how the tribe is embracing its new Social Business Software
is critical for several reasons.

First, these discussions can be a convenient early goals are adjusted to reflect the business challenges
period to address brewing problems or pivot use cases users are actually using social to solve. This can make
to better reflect reality. Second, these types of informal or break the C-suite’s view of a project as a success or
chats and meetings can help guide the second and third a failure. For example, a company may believe it needs
iterations of the social IT architecture at the company. social business to drive product innovation, but in
Like social media itself, social business is evolving reality employees may embrace it for collaboration—
rapidly and will continue to evolve. because that’s the most critical business need. So
calibrating actual results to expectations ASAP is
These meetings are also a convenient place to compare simply good corporate hygiene.
actual results to goals stated before project launch.
When dealing with upper management, make sure


In conclusion… get two champions,
confirm the business case, hire a community manager, 09

get in the comfort zone, and meet often.
A mouthful of a conclusion but the basic point we’re trying to make is this. Unlike many flavors of enterprise IT
installs, there are no smoke and mirrors, no wizards behind the curtain, no secret sauce to making a social
deployment work for your business.

Social Business Software is the most transparent piece product and the user “gets it” so quickly that much of
of software on the market in terms of what it’s designed the dreaded training and continuing education required
to do, and how it can be leveraged to produce business for ERP, financial packages, HR and other software is
results. ridiculously unnecessary. Remember, above all, social
has to be simple and simple is as simple does, in the
So don’t think too hard about all this stuff. The beauty most positive sense.
of social is the user direction ultimately defines the

Jive. First in Social Business.
Jive is the largest and fastest-growing independent Social Business Software company in the world.
For more information, visit www.jivesoftware.com.

jive software 325 lytton avenue, palo alto, ca 94301 o 1.877.495.3700

6 Secrets Of Solid Social Business Deployments

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