I just finished watching last week's episode of 'The Office' (thanks TiVo!!!!). In it, they have a hilarious scene about a failed attempt at adding social networking capabilities to their Dunder Mifflin v1.0 web site (which purpose is to sell paper). The employees are concerned about how sexual predators infiltrated their social networking site and stole customers' identities.
It's great to see that the writers of the show have caught up with social networking. Even they understand that almost everyone is adding some sort of social networking capabilities to their sites. In fact, the producers of the show keep a blog supposedly written by one of the characters of the show. When the employees asked Ryan, the executive, why the company had chosen to add social networking features to a paper selling web site, he said: "We were trying to build a one stop shop for our consumers". This approach, of course, is totally wrong!!
Sure, social networking features have a place in customer-facing applications (e.g. Lotus Greenhouse). But not everyone should be building the next Facebook into their existing customer-facing portals!! We need to help our customers understand how and why they should implement social networking in their customer-facing web sites. Mostly, you want to do it so that you can collaborate with your end-users and/or business partners to generate new ideas and provide another means of innovation. And, more importantly, customers should have a sound adoption plan.
For example, The Office producers use the show's blog to keep the audience engaged even when the show is not in the air. But they don't have a social bookmarking or a social community service implemented. When you implement social networking capabilities, you have to implement the right ones!! How do you know which features are right for you? That's all discussed in the aforementioned 12-step adoption plan. Make sure it's part of every Lotus Connections PoC and/or Pilot activities with your customers. When we make our customers successful, we make ourselves successful!!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
My customer just said: "I like that"
I just finished a call where we are in a competitive situation against Telligent. This calculator maker gave us 1 hour to convince them why they should at least consider IBM Lotus Connections instead of Telligent's Community Server.
As the sales rep was positioning the business value of Lotus Connections, she mentioned how important Blogs are in these times were so many people are retiring from the workforce. She went on to say how it's pretty unlikely that Baby Boomers will start blogging, but surely they'll serve as a mentor to one of the organization's new hire. This new hire will most likely be more receptive to blogging. And it is this new hire who will Blog about the knowledge that has been captured from the soon-to-be retiree.
And that's how Blogs help preserve soon-to-be-gone intellectual capital. To that, the customer said: "I like that, nobody has positioned Blogs or social software that way before. That's really important for us".
As the call continued on our competitive situation we went on to highlight all of our integration capabilities. In case, you missed it, this is what we can do today (for free!):
After we showed the customer all these integration capabilities (via screenshots), he again said: "I like that very much. That's a lot of stuff that it can do". He didn't say it, but seems like our competitor really lacks these features. In fact, he later said: "Most of our workforce is mobile and Blackberry integration is key".
Go Lotus Connections!!
As the sales rep was positioning the business value of Lotus Connections, she mentioned how important Blogs are in these times were so many people are retiring from the workforce. She went on to say how it's pretty unlikely that Baby Boomers will start blogging, but surely they'll serve as a mentor to one of the organization's new hire. This new hire will most likely be more receptive to blogging. And it is this new hire who will Blog about the knowledge that has been captured from the soon-to-be retiree.
And that's how Blogs help preserve soon-to-be-gone intellectual capital. To that, the customer said: "I like that, nobody has positioned Blogs or social software that way before. That's really important for us".
As the call continued on our competitive situation we went on to highlight all of our integration capabilities. In case, you missed it, this is what we can do today (for free!):
- Integration with ST 7.5.1+
- Integration with Notes 8+
- Integration with MS Outlook
- Integration with the MS Office suite
- Integration with MS Windows Explorer
- Integration with Quickr
- Integration with SocialText / Confluence
- Integration with WebSphere Portal
- Integration with Lotus Symphony (coming in a couple of days)
- Integration with Blackberry (coming in a couple of days)
- Integration with the Windows sign on domain
After we showed the customer all these integration capabilities (via screenshots), he again said: "I like that very much. That's a lot of stuff that it can do". He didn't say it, but seems like our competitor really lacks these features. In fact, he later said: "Most of our workforce is mobile and Blackberry integration is key".
Go Lotus Connections!!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
My migration to a Mac - successes!
Aside from using the Mac in my Home Office, I really hadn't had the chance to test it in a real customer situation. I'm EXTREMELY happy to report that I'm VERY impressed so far!
- Responsive - it takes 14 seconds to boot up, 2 seconds to stand by and 7 seconds to shut down... try that Windows!
- Connecting to wireless networks: Seamless I don't have to do anything (unless they are protected by a password of course)
- Connecting external hard drives: No annoying pop-ups saying "please wait while we install the USB drivers"
- Connecting external monitors: No annoying Fn+F7 -- it simply works!
- Lighter - My backpack feels about 5 pounds lighter w/out my Lenovo T60p
- Cool effect - The fact that I can whip out a Mac somehow lifts my self-esteem. Maybe I'm an iJerk ?
- IBMers want in - 3 IBMers stopped me at the airline lounge and asked me what I was doing with a Mac (they figured I was an IBM employee because of my backpack and my shirt). They want in (although 1 said he had to wait cause he was Tivoli and Tivoli products don't run on Mac)
- FileZilla works - I was a bit sad to leave the Windows world because I was going to lose FileZilla, but NO.. it DOES work on my Mac!
- Great customer reaction - A customer in the Connections PoT asked me why I chose Mac and I said "I simply wanted to stick it to the man". They laughed histerically!
- Memory - for the first time I can actually have and use 4 GB of RAM!
- Battery life - a full charge is currently giving me 4.5-5 hours!!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Lotus Greenhouse is on Connections 2.0 -- woo hoo!
I just happened to go to the Lotus Greenhouse today and noticed that they have 'upgraded' the environment to Lotus Connections 2.0 Beta 1. WOO HOO!!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Ok, the BlackBerry client for Lotus Connections IS useful
So yesterday I had to accompany my wife and take the new baby to the doctor. I logged on to Sametime from my BlackBerry using the Sametime 8 client for BlackBerry. As I was working with email, I got an ST message from a colleague in Canada. (You gotta love it.. I was collaborating in real-time wih someone from Canada using my BlackBerry -- but wait it gets better!!)
He was looking to find out what were the ISSL capabilities around Lotus Connections. More specifically, he wanted to know if there was some sort of quickstart for Lotus Connections. I knew ISSL had an offering for Lotus Connnections, but I wasn't sure what it was. (Hey! It's been 4 months since I left that team!!!)
Anyway, instead of telling my co-worker "do a search on Dogear", I figured I could use the new BlackBerry client for Lotus Connections and do some research myself. So I launched the client for Lotus Connections, selected Dogear and did a search on 'issl connections'. Lo and behold the FIRST result was: ISSL capabilities around Lotus Connections!!!!!. I copied the link and pasted it in my ST chat with my co-worker and voila!!! This all happened in less than 2 minutes!!!!
Simply amazing!! There's just no way I would've been that productive first without Dogear, second without my BlackBerry and third without the BlackBerry clien for Lotus Connections.
Now, how do I calculate the ROI on that ?
He was looking to find out what were the ISSL capabilities around Lotus Connections. More specifically, he wanted to know if there was some sort of quickstart for Lotus Connections. I knew ISSL had an offering for Lotus Connnections, but I wasn't sure what it was. (Hey! It's been 4 months since I left that team!!!)
Anyway, instead of telling my co-worker "do a search on Dogear", I figured I could use the new BlackBerry client for Lotus Connections and do some research myself. So I launched the client for Lotus Connections, selected Dogear and did a search on 'issl connections'. Lo and behold the FIRST result was: ISSL capabilities around Lotus Connections!!!!!. I copied the link and pasted it in my ST chat with my co-worker and voila!!! This all happened in less than 2 minutes!!!!
Simply amazing!! There's just no way I would've been that productive first without Dogear, second without my BlackBerry and third without the BlackBerry clien for Lotus Connections.
Now, how do I calculate the ROI on that ?
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