Extending social capabilities across your company can improve both individual and team productivity. With online communities, information is made transparent and corporate knowledge is bubbled up to where it can be used - no longer buried in email inboxes, hard drives or isolated in silos.
This whitepaper explores the business value that an online community can provide to specific departmental teams by exploring some common collaboration issues that each may face. Discover real life examples that illustrate the benefits of business social software, including: making connections to improve employee productivity between teams and departments; creating a knowledge base to align sales with marketing to close more deals; and bringing products to market faster by reducing project cycles, duplicate efforts and overall costs.
Online Communities to Connect Geographically
Dispersed Teams: Improve Productivity & Enhance
Employee Engagement December 2009
Workplace Communities
Contents Contents ............................................................................................................... i Introduction......................................................................................................... 2 The Internet Affect - Web 2.0 ....................................................................... 2 Online Communities ........................................................................................ 3 Workplace Communities ...................................................................................... 4 Human Resources-Connecting the Workforce ....................................................... 5 Recruitment and Onboarding .......................................................................... 5 Managing and Retaining Top Talent ................................................................. 6 Sales-Streamlining the Sales Cycle ........................................................................ 8 Establishing Relationships to Close Deals ........................................................ 8 Streamlining the Request for Proposal (RFP) Process ...................................... 9 R&D-Improving Products and Time to Market .................................................... 11 Decreasing Project Lifecycles and Increasing Time-to-Market ...................... 11 Implement Quickly and Affordably ..................................................................... 13 Technology ..................................................................................................... 13 Deployment ................................................................................................... 13 Culture ........................................................................................................... 14 Conclusion-the C-Level Perspective .................................................................... 15
Property of IGLOO Inc. All rights reserved. i Workplace Communities
Introduction
Most companies today, regardless of location, size or industry focus struggle with the same things:
1. Vital corporate knowledge being trapped in information silos like email inboxes and structured information systems like ERP and CRM (knowledge). 2. A limited understanding of organizational expertise (talent). 3. Creating their connected but globally dispersed workforce (relationships).
These issues hamper productivity, decrease corporate capacity and
cripple the pace of innovation.
The Internet Affect - Web 2.0 Over the last 10 years the Internet has changed our lives forever-
both from a social and a business perspective. Currently we are in a
technology phase that the experts call Web 2.0 - a set of new and innovative tools that take us beyond simple
browsing, searching and publishing of static web sites. These new Web 2.0 tools enable us to actively
participate, publish and interact with others on the web quickly, easily and at little or no cost.
Web 2.0 technologies are quickly changing how organizations, institutions and enterprises innovate, collaborate
and share knowledge. New user-driven networked business models, practices and processes are emerging
where collaboration, contribution and sharing are promoted and rewarded within an organization. This cultural
shift is just starting to transform old hierarchical-driven organizations into interactive, vibrant online
communities that are more agile, productive and competitive. Corporations, associations and academic
institutions are rethinking old business models and evolving their cultures to include Web 2.0 technology to
compete in an emerging global knowledge economy.
What is interesting is that many companies do not realize that networking is not a new concept in the business world. Business users have been networking for decades, long before anyone had ever heard of Facebook or Linked-In. From the daily telephone conversations we have with ... [download for more]
