• Enterprise Collaboration Technology Deployment Scenarios
  [May 13, 2013] I’m seeing a few trends around how organizations are deploying enterprise collaboration platforms. Typically one of four paths are taken which are: a unified solution, multiple solutions (not connected), an aggregator solution, or multiple solutions which are integrated together. These are explained in more detail in the table below.
• How Does Your Company Want to Approach Uncertainty?
  [April 24, 2013] We really can’t be certain of anything; not just in relation to our companies but in our personal lives as well. We talk about the future of work and collaboration but the truth is who knows what will happen. We can look at trends and make reasonable predictions based on the information we have available [...]
• Do You Know Outstanding Social Business Leaders for 2013?
  [April 1, 2013] The Brainyard is seeking Outstanding Social Business Leaders For 2013. They are looking for introductions to the best of the best, a new set of Social Business Leaders to be announced at June's E2 Conference in Boston. In 2012, they honored Bonobos, Cemex, Ford Motor Co., McKesson, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, TD Bank and Unisys. [...]
• How Would You Work Without Email?
  [March 18, 2013] Sometimes when I speak with clients or companies interested in understanding the future of work and collaboration it helps to put things into an interesting perspective. There are many people (including business leaders) out there who are still not up to speed on what is happening in the world of enterprise social software, collaboration, and [...]
• IBM Global CMO Study: Highlights
  [February 25, 2013] I am looking forward to attending IBM's Connect 2013 next week. Here is a relavnt post. In IBM's 2011 IBM CMO Study they interviewed more than 1,700 of the world’s most prominent Chief Marketing Officers – face to face – to find out what they feel is important for their success. These executives control many billions in [...]
• New Whitepaper: Common Collaboration Problems that Organizations are Faced With
  [February 11, 2013] As part of our ongoing effort to provide some much needed educational content around collaboration, we have released another whitepaper on The Common Collaboration Problems that organizations are facing. The purpose of this resource is to explore some of the common challenges that organizations are being faced with, regardless of their industry or company size. [...]
• Social business and knowledge as an accident of paper
  [January 21, 2013] Is your internal social business platform shaping up to become just a slightly better intranet or a good-looking SharePoint site? Is most of your content held in private communities? Are your online conversations happening predominantly in the form of direct messages or private discussions? Are status updates an under-utilized resource in your organization? If that’s [...]
• CIO Job Requirements 2012
  [December 17, 2012] Rob Preston recently wrote about What CIOs Want In Their Successors in Information Week. Rob talked with four CIOs in the U.S. about the attributes they’re looking for in a successor.  First, they want multidimensional leaders. This makes sense as the IT scene is getting increasingly complex with a number of transformative trends such as [...]
• The Risks of Not Investing in Collaboration
  [November 26, 2012] All good chess players understand the risks of the moves they make on the board and the consequences that can result. However, chess players also have plans in place for what to do if those risks are taken advantage of by their opponents. Here are some of the risks of not making the investment in collaboration (taken from “The Collaborative Organization“)
• 5 Tips To Improve A Marketing Agenda With Your CIO
  [November 5, 2012] On occasion we connect with smart people and ideas we think are worth sharing as a guest post here at Online Marketing Blog. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Heidi Ambler, Director of Social Business at IBM. Heidi has over 20 years with IBM where she leads a team responsible for their enterprise social software business.
• SharePoint’s Potential: Enabling the Networked Enterprise
  [October 15, 2012] This is the second of a six part series I wrote, Robust SharePoint Performance in the Emerging Distributed Enterprise: Turning the Potential for Chaos into the Means for Success, sponsored by Certeon. The remaining parts of my discussion will appear on this blog over the next two weeks.
• Follow The Money To The CMO
  [September 24, 2012] It began in 2009. Tech companies woke up and saw the growing role of technology in the marketing department - web analytics, marketing automation, social media, digital advertising and digital creation. The CMO's budget was surging and the CIO's was receding.
• What are the Technology Capabilities that Enable Collaboration?
  [September 4, 2012] Over the past few years collaborative platforms have evolved quite a bit. It’s important for us to consider what makes these collaborative tools what they are. In other words, “what are the capabilities that collaborative tools have now that we didn’t have years ago?” In 2006 Andrew McAfee developed an acronym, SLATES, to help explain what the key capabilities were of emergent collaboration solutions. Not long after than, Dion Hinchcliffe added to the acronym which then became FLATNESSES. I just wanted to review these here as a reference for anyone that is having these conversations at their workplace. Keep in mind that just a few years ago many of that collaboration platforms that companies use today didn’t exist. So the underlying technologies or capabilities that spell out FLATNESSES are:
• A Guide to Enterprise Collaboration Costs
  [August 15, 2012] One of the common questions that business leaders want to know is what kind of an investment needs to be made in collaboration. In other words, what sort of a budget should they be planning for and where should this money be coming from? It seems that this topic isn't as widely addressed as it ought to be. I can't tell you what the costs are going to be because there are a lot variables that go into this and each company is going to have different needs. However, I can at least try to help further the discussion that your team should be having by taking a look at some of the items and variables that you should consider. It's easy to get carried away and right a massive article on this but I wanted to try to keep things as simple as possible.
• The 5 Must Avoid Enterprise Collaboration Mistakes
  [July 30, 2012] Today I had the privilege of presenting a webinar for PBworks on 5 must avoid collaboration mistakes that I see companies making quite frequently. If your organization is interested in enterprise collaboration then you may find this presentation valuable. The 5 risks that I discuss are:
• HR’s Critical Role In Social Business Transformation
  [July 9, 2012] Early in my career, I was never a fan of HR. I always thought of it as the Principal's office - a place where I spent a lot of time in elementary school, middle school and yes, even a little in high school. After all, when a call came in from HR, usually someone was written up, put on probation and even terminated.
• Research: The View Of Social Business From The C-Suite
  [June 4, 2012] Just yesterday, MIT Sloan in collaboration with Deloitte released a study, "Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?" that highlights the growing importance of social business initiatives. What I found most interesting was the view and perceptions from the C-Suite.
• What Would Happen if Your Organization Didn?t Invest in Collaboration?
  [May 14, 2012] I (and many others) have spent a great deal of time talking about why organizations should invest their resources in collaboration tools and strategies. But let's assume for a moment that you didn't. How long do you realistically see your organization going on without making this investment; 1 year, 2 years, 3 years? Do you really see your organization waiting this long?
• Determining If Your Site Got Hit By Panda Or Penguin
  [April 30, 2012] First, before you start your campaign for Penguin recovery, you should probably determine whether you were actually hit by the Penguin update, or by the Panda update (or even some other Google algorithm change).
• Disruptive Technology and How to Compete for the Future
  [April 16, 2012] Disruptive technology is the bearer of tremendous opportunity and equally a harbinger of obsolescence. Technology's impact on society and business is substantial, if not underestimated. As technology continues to become part of everyday life, it becomes disruptive in how people communicate, work, and connect. The evolution of society and technology happens with or without adaptation or understanding. And, it's contributing to a very real phenomenon of Digital Darwinism, a situation where organizations are faced with a need to adapt to markets and customer behavior or risk a loss in favor, competitive advantage or worse, irrelevance.
• Looking At The Total Cost Of Website Testing
  [April 4, 2012] Monetate has put out an interesting infographic looking at the total cost of website testing. The top challenges, according to Monetate are: deciding what to test, prioritizing testing initiatives, conducting the actual tests, obtaining enough traffic for statistical significance and acting on the test results.
• Are You Measuring The Right Thing?
  [March 20, 2012] Would you consider a marketing tactic a success if it didn't ultimately put money in your bank account?
• 2012 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Will Occur on May 22
  [March 5, 2012] The ninth annual 2012 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium will occur on May 22, 2012 The theme is to "Explore Piloting the Untethered Enterprise. There will be over a dozen keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions from business executives, technologists, and academics. Some of the questions to be addressed include: How you can manage data for your organization's success? How do you take advantage of mobility and social tools? How to drive to the right enterprise architecture?
• Do Organizations Need a Chief Collaboration Officer?
  [February 13, 2012] More organizations are starting to deploy new collaborative tools and strategies as a core part of their business evolution to connect and engage employees. It's becoming increasingly difficult (especially at large companies) to oversee these initiatives as typically there isn't a role devoted to collaboration. Usually collaboration falls on the shoulders of employees with an existing full plate of things that need to get done (such as the CIO). So is it about time for organizations to create the role of the CCO (chief collaboration officer)?
• Where are Collaboration Budgets Being Allocated?
  [February 1, 2012] When it comes to deploying a collaboration solution for the enterprise there are a lot of things to consider especially when it comes to budgets. Towards the end of the 2009 I wrote an article called, "Companies Interested in Enterprise 2.0 Need to Take Strategy Seriously," which looked at data collected from a 2009 report on collaboration. What I found particularly shocking was the small budget allocation that strategy was receiving. Towards the end of 2011 Chess conducted another survey on the "State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration" and one of the topics we looked at was budget allocation.