The Software Abstractions Blog

Enterprise 2.0 and the Culture of Collaboration - Part II

This is Part II of a synopsis of the book The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen. This post is written by guest author Sham Karandikar. Here's the link to Part I.

Effects

True global companies go well beyond marketing, selling and supporting their wares worldwide. They design, assemble and produce both products and services concurrently around the world. Today's Global Collaborative Enterprise (GCE) is a collection of inter-dependent companies that engage in the shared creation of value, often in real-time. The GCE exploits time zones and global work-sharing to design, assemble and create products and services 24 hours a day.

For example, Boeing has re-invented itself as a global collaborative enterprise which includes the supply chain, customers and even the customer's customers (i.e. airline passengers). Boeing's largest multi-media room in Everett - where employees can participate in video and web conferences and share 3-dimensional CAD/CAM software - is named the Global Collaboration Center. Moscow, for instance, is almost exactly on the other side of the world from Everett, with a time difference of 11 hours; so, when Everett is sleeping, Moscow works; and vice versa.

Types of Collaboration

Collaboration can be classified into three types, based on the level of interaction among the participants:

1. Low-level:  Involves exchanging information through threaded text discussions, video conferencing, web conferencing and document-sharing.
2. Mid-level: Involves a more elaborate collaboration tool set, that allows companies to share information with external organizations via the web. These organizations may be partners on some projects and competitors on others.
3. High-level:  Involves designing parts, plans, tools and processes concurrently among global partners.

High-level collaboration is truly the highest form of sharing. At Toyota, product designers, manufacturing specialists and business partners connect globally through its visual and virtual communications system, which reduces cycle time, enhances product quality and boosts production efficiency. Toyota now manufactures vehicles at over 50 sites in 26 countries and must bridge many regional cultures as engineers collaborate.

Boeing and Toyota are setting the standard in the aerospace and automobile industries respectively, utilizing the best talent regardless of location.

Conclusion

As the culture of collaboration permeates work and life styles, our habits are changing faster than we realize. While asynchronous interaction has its place, collaboration is increasingly rich, real-time and spontaneous. Increasingly, businesses are rejecting bureaucracy as wasteful and costly. In contrast to red tape and a serial approach, we create greater value when we engage one another directly, design products concurrently and collaborate across functional, business unit, corporate and regional boundaries. The current economic trend is to exploit the best talent at the best price, regardless of geography. The clear lesson from Toyota, Boeing, Dow Chemicals, Mayo Clinic, Proctor & Gamble and other organizations is that good decisions include the perspective of people throughout the organization at every level. The necessity of maximizing time, talent and tools in the global economy gives the culture of collaboration an edge. The quest to innovate and create greater value drives the desire to collaborate as organizations embrace the global collaborative Enterprise.

This point - that the global collaborative enterprise has to design, assemble and create products and services concurrently around the world - is explained very well in Evan Rosen's book. Following the lessons of the leading corporations described in the many examples in this book is essential in order to survive and thrive in the economy of the future; I highly recommend this book. Good Luck.

                  

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Enterprise 2.0 and the Culture of Collaboration - Part I

This two-part article is a synopsis of the book The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen. This post is written by guest author Sham Karandikar (my dad) - who has been active in the field of Information Technology longer than I've been living.

Introduction

The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate. New technology has changed our lifestyle completely.  It was not very long ago that the concept of Teleconferencing was beyond our imagination. But now you can chat, discuss and seek opinions from others all over the world as easily as you can from the person in the next office. At the same time, the world is getting so compressed that many corporations have become multinational - some of them operate in over 30 countries. In this situation, adopting a collaborative approach is imperative in order to get total involvement from employees located all over the world

This change is explained very well in the book, The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy, by Evan Rosen. The book not only focuses on the theory of collaboration, but also provides lots of live examples to back it up.

The book explains how globalization has created unprecedented opportunities for maximizing resources. Realizing these opportunities however, requires a cultural shift. For example, the changing economics of the automobile industry required faster concept-to-delivery cycles; in response, BMW determined that tele-cooperation was the best way to achieve that goal. Thus, globalization is driving changes to business models, in order to maximize benefits by introducing the culture of collaboration. The name of the game in this changed world is real-time: shorten product development cycles, reduce response times, enhance interconnectivity and enable the free flow of ideas among global partners.

Examples

• The Mayo Clinic was founded on the principle of collaboration. The book spends some time exploring this use case. For example, the Mayo Clinic has already implemented a satellite-based video conferencing network; for each new case, the coordinating doctor immediately assembles a geographically distributed team to evaluate the problem. Because of its track record, and a culture that embraces collaboration, Mayo is experiencing soaring demand.
• Toyota is another company that has exported a collaborative culture: make decisions slowly by consensus. Toyota's culture provides a stark contrast to many organizational cultures that value internal competition; such as Enron, which hired and rewarded only the very best and brightest, and is now in bankruptcy. Internal competition delivers results in the short term but collaboration builds long term value. One outcome is that Toyota has a stable workforce, which is a significant competitive advantage.
• The Dow Chemical Company, which creates value through collaboration, was perhaps the first company of its size to conduct all of its video conferencing over a Converged IP network. Called Dow-Net, it introduced i-Rooms and digital white boards that let users in 43 countries connect via Polycom video conferencing equipment to any Dow site while collaborating on applications and data.
• Proctor & Gamble has embraced spontaneous interaction since the company first made instant messaging available to employees in 2000. P&G employees increasingly connect with each other in real-time so that ideas fly and team members concurrently make better, quicker decisions.
• The World Bank is comprised of 10,000 employees from 184 countries, who provide loans and share knowledge globally. To help developing nations deal with globalization, the World Bank  encourages collaboration among globally dispersed staff. Building trust is a critical success factor in effective collaboration. Drawing on their global knowledge, cross-cultural collaborators can spark synergies and create greater value.

Dissolving Barriers

Within organizations, barriers develop among departments and functions. Marketing develops its own culture but has difficulty in interacting with sales. Product Management and Engineering disagree over product direction and avoid interaction. There was a time when many organizations refused to give employees Internet access because of fears that people would surf the web instead of work - yet another manifestation of an archaic Command & Control approach. Most organizations now realize that blocking such access interferes with information flow and idea generation. Encouraging interaction among people with common interests reinforces cross-functional collaboration.

Taking the example of the Mayo Clinic, perhaps the most important role the SPARC unit plays is to break down the barriers among functions. Because of its methodology for innovation and a physical environment that encourages brainstorming, SPARC consistently succeeds in cross-functional collaboration. The convergence of voice, data and video over IP has forced people, who previously had little or no contact, to collaborate.

Another trend enabling collaboration and breaking down barriers is the implementation of common processes and systems throughout the organization. For example, the use of common processes and systems allows Boeing to easily move people from one aircraft program to another and to share tasks.

Thus the culture of collaboration dissolves the barriers of time and distance, delivers awesome results and creates value. Deriving these benefits, however, requires an understanding of both the potential and the limitations of the tools involved.

Continued in Part II.

                  

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A conversation with Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics Guru

Avinash Kaushik is a leading expert in the new field of Web Analytics. His blog, Occam's Razor, is one of the most popular blogs on this subject. He has lots of other exciting things happening: he's the Analytics Evangelist for Google, author of the book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day published by Wiley, and most recently, is a co-founder of a startup, Market Motive, focused on spreading knowledge for Internet Marketing. He was kind enough to agree to an email interview, given below.

If you are interested or involved in Web Analytics, I guarantee that his answers will give you much to think about.

Q - How did you get into Web Analytics? What is it about this field that attracted your interest?

AK - I ended up in Web Analytics by pure chance.

My former roles were in decision support systems, both on the business and technical side of the fence. The Intuit job, my foray into web analytics, was attractive more because of the people and the company.

But I had always been fascinated by the web and the job allowed me to put my experience in decision support with the fantastic piece of art that the web is.

At some level it was lucky to get into web analytics with no baggage or hang ups or having read any books, it allowed me to bring a fresh and completely different perspective to it.

Q - In your study of web site user behavior, what are some of the most surprising results you've found?

AK - I am surprised that even in 2007 given how pervasive the web is and how it is used that we continue to obsess on conversion rates, essentially solving for a minority of site traffic as if people came to our sites for just one purpose. That is so 1997.

I am frequently humbled by the lessons customers have taught me when we listen to them using surveys or multivariate tests or site visits. Cool and sexy is not always enough. Simplicity is the key. Solving for customers and bottom-line is possible. Having clear calls to action on all pages (especially on those where there is no "add to cart button") and the importance of solving for your customer personas (just look at www.newegg.com, no one will call it the prettiest site in the world and yet it consistently outranks www.apple.com and www.amazon.com when it comes to customer satisfaction!) cannot be emphasized enough.

Q - With the benefit of your deep background in this field, what do you think of the Google Analytics product: What are its strengths? Which types of companies is it most useful for? Which areas do you think need to be improved?

AK - I have just published a comprehensive review of all web analytics vendors - link: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge.html . Your readers might find that video helpful in understanding the industry, its challenges and what unique strength each web analytics vendor brings to the table.

In the video I mention two key strengths of Google Analytics:

1) Data Democracy: Google Analytics is a drop dead easy tool to use and presents a lot of complex web analytics data in a very easy to understand manner. Because of this it flips the traditional web analytics model were a few people in the company had access to the data and shared it with others. With GA you can give everyone access to the tool and they can help themselves.

2) Best of breed search analytics: The reports and segmentation options you'll find in Google Analytics to analyze your site's search data is really good. Perhaps it should not be surprising that a web analytics tool from a search engine is good at that. You don't have to tag your campaigns because of auto tagging which saves hassle and improves data quality. Your data is also imported and integrated and presented with some unique reports.

In terms of who GA is right for...... Google Analytics is right for any company that will benefit from the above two features. The nice thing is that unlike the past were you can rule tools in and out on paper, now you don't have to take a random person's, or a "guru's" opinion, on benefits of the tool. GA is free. Throw it on your site and try it for yourself and using your own data from your own site you can determine if it is right for you.

In terms of what needs improvement.... Currently GA provides 27 pre-built segments that you can apply to any of the 80 odd reports to get 27 times 80 sets of segmented data. But I am selfish. I would love to have even more flexibility when it comes to creating visitor segments that are most relevant to each business.

Q - Your blog, Occam's Razor is one of the most successful blogs in this field. What has blogging meant to you? Are there things you would do differently with the blog if you had to start over?

AK - My wife's opinion is that the blog is our third child. :)

When I started writing the blog a little over a year ago my hope was to have around a thousand visitors a month because that is how many people I thought were my core target audience. Yesterday the number of RSS feed subscribers were at 4,600 and there were 30,000 visitors last month. That in many ways simply astounds me.

These numbers also mean that I feel a deep sense of obligation to the people who read the blog. There is always a pressure to deliver the highest possible quality in the posts that my humble skills will allow.

The blog means the world to me because of the conversation that I can have with people from around the world (around 30% of the site traffic is international). All these wonderful people write comments and their own perspectives which I learn from and all these comments add to the conversation (on my blog visitors have written approximately as much content as I have written, word for word).

In terms of different..... I wrote a post at the end of the first month I think, I would not have written that in hindsight. But other than that I would not do anything different, the blog has managed to stay hyper focused on what my initial vision was and I think it works well.

Q - Even now, Web Analytics is seen as an afterthought in some web companies, rather than being an integral part of the business process. How do you convince these companies of its importance?

AK - I agree with you, it still exits in silos (both from organization and data perspectives).

At some level it really requires the business realizing the importance from the inside that matters. No amount of outsiders coming and pontificating can drive fundamental change.

If you are inside the company then you have an inside track to helping your company realize the value of web analytics. My advice would be to focus on two simple things in a very hard core way: 1) value the web can deliver to the bottom line and 2) value the web can deliver to your customers. The interesting thing is that the web can do both of those in an efficient and scalable manner, unlike any other channel.

And if you want to help your company do #1 and #2 you need web analytics. Start showing it in small ways (rather than trying to create a overnight revolution, those rarely succeed) and I assure you that your company will "get it". Few people can argue with profit and fewer still can argue making customers happy.

Q - You've just launched a new company, Market Motive. Can you tell us more about it? Who are your target customers? Will you be offering any free content, or is it all behind the "paid" curtain?

AK - Market Motive's mission is to focus on helping Online Professionals be massively successful through access to the latest best practices and insights from the best people in each discipline. We hope to deliver that by providing fresh and unique content that will only be available at www.marketmotive.com.

The initial areas of attention will be: SEO, PPC/SEM, Web Analytics, Conversion, Email Marketing, Online PR, and Marketing Processes. We will provide videos, podcasts that provide a unique way to learn, these will be complemented with live phone-in sessions were subscribers will be able to ask their questions and get them answered by the dream team.

The target audience is Professionals whose job it is to deliver for their companies in any / all of the above mentioned seven areas.

The content created at Market Motive will be available on an unlimited consumption basis to only the subscribers. All the faculty have blogs on which they are very active.

Q - What advice would you give to a small company that's just starting to get deeper into Web Analytics (beyond basic Page Views and Referrer URLs)?

AK - Use your web analytics tool to answer questions and not simply measure "KPI's".

Here are the three questions to answer:

1) Where are people coming from? (Referring URL's, Search Engines, Key Words, etc) This helps you infer intent and identify valuable sources of qualified traffic (by simply measuring bounce rate).

2) What do they do when they are on my site? (Content Consumption, Top Entry Pages, Top Visited Pages, Site Overlay etc) This helps you understand what people might be looking for and is it easy to find and is it what you want them to see.

3) What were the outcomes, both for you and the visitors?  (Revenue, Conversion Rate, Task Completion Rates, # of leads, Likelihood to Recommend, Customer Satisfaction etc) Your site should make a difference to their existence. Is it?

Q - What is the biggest mistake in the use of WA? What should people watch out for?

AK - Usually the weakest link is that website owners rarely sit down and define why their site exists and if that's the case then any metric will look like success. You should be able to answer in fifteen words of less "why does my site exist" and then be able to identify two metrics that help you measure if your website is delivering.

The other big mistake is that Marketers and Website Owners think that they represent their customers. This is mostly false. We, company employees, are too close to our companies to ever be able to think like our customers. If you want to know what your customers think of your website experience, ask them.

Q - What radical changes do you think we will see in Web Analytics in the next 3-5 years? Do you expect to see a big impact from the proliferation of Social Networks (like Facebook)? What about SEO and the increasing importance of search engine traffic?

AK - The web reinvents itself and that is what makes it fun. I think with all the web 2.0 buzz we are in the middle of one such transformative experience. Each such transformation like that requires the measurement methodologies to evolve as well. We are now trying to figure out how to measure ajax and flash and videos and podcasts and so on.

In the next couple of years I think web analytics will change radically. In the near term we will evolve to measure the aforementioned fluid experiences much more effectively. In the slightly longer term I am anticipating (and hoping) that web analytics will transform into business analytics. A way of life, a normal way of existence, just like other pieces of analytics that tend to have nothing special about them, and not an afterthought.

I have recently written about Web Analytics 2.0 (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/09/rethink-web-analytics-introducing-web-analytics-20.html) and how we already need to think differently to be more optimally competitive.

As regards to social networks and SEO etc I think that these types of wonderful things will never leave us (hopefully not). From a web analytics perspective we need to come up with more efficient ways to collect data, not matter which way life on the web evolves. I am optimistic that in the next few years we'll have that figured out.

 

Previous related articles:

      Top 8 Reasons to Implement Tracking and Measurement for your Web Site

      Web Design and the Scientific Method

       A conversation with Guy Kawasaki

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Great Videos: Jeff Han's Multi-touch Sensing Display

Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Over the past few years, he has been focusing on developing technology for "multi-touch sensing" and has come up with the a radical new user interface, the multi-touch display.

A demo of this interface is shown here. This video is already extremely popular, so you may already have seen this. If you have not, I highly recommend it - this is truly the future of User Interface.

Here is another video that demonstrates the Microsoft touchscreen coffee table, based on the same technology.

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What's More Important in Web Search: the Algorithm or the UI?

Over at Alt Search Engines, we've been having a debate about what it takes for a search engine startup to take on Google - a great Algorithm, a terrific new User Interface, or both?

My perspective is that it's the algorithm that is critical; Charles Knight (the editor of ASE), on the other hand, comes down heavily on the side of the UI, and makes a great argument for it in his post. Kaila Colbin, of the vortexDNA blog, has the last word - well, you have to read the posts for yourself before you make up your mind!

Links to the posts are given below:

• The Future of Web Search - Beauty or Brains?    by yours truly
• The Greatest Debate: Algorithms vs. Interfaces    by Charles Knight
• The Greatest Debate conclusion: Om Shanti Shanti    by Kaila Colbin

Which position do you agree with? Drop me an email or a comment and let me know!

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