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I’d like to take a quick break from the Enterprise Connections series to focus a revelation I had early on in my career at BroadVision. The issue of understanding what an enterprise social network is often made more complicated then it needs to be. The fact that the same words tend to be used for different things, depending on who you talk to, certainly doesn’t help. We look at use cases and customer cases studies, reports about ROI and many other things that can be very helpful, but only if you have a basic understanding of what an ESN is and how it should function.

It didn’t take me long to “get” Clearvale because it reminded me of fractals.

Remember fractals? (If not)

You look at a fractal and see patterns:

Then you zoom in and see the exact same patterns:

You keep zooming in, but the patterns remain:

I’ve always looked at our internal Clearvale network (see video here) as being similar to a fractal. The below images are from a demo network but if you watch the video, you’ll see what our actual network looks like.

You start with the whole network, which includes everyone, has an activity stream,  houses files, blogs and wikis, all of which are relevant to the entire network:

Zoom in a little, and you see communities, which exist in the network but are organized around something specific, such as a department, project or product.  They have the same pattern; activity stream, files, blog, wiki, etc., all of which are relevant to the entire community:

Zoom in further, and you have the profile page with the same pattern, but everything is relevant to that particular profile:

It’s all very neat and tidy, and it helps (for me anyway) dictate where things go. Everything (with some exceptions) goes into the network, but only things relevant to marketing go into the marketing community. All marketing materials go into the marketing community, but only the ones that I wrote are stored in my profile.

The point is, you only need to get a handle on the pattern once.

Parts of 1 and 2 of Enterprise Connections focused on the benefits of a company intranet. However those benefits are not limited to internal use; brands also have much to gain by engaging with their customers via an enterprise social network. Of course, this is nothing new, brands have always found creative and unorthodox ways of learning about their customers and using this new information improve its interactions with them. A good example is Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing Company, which learned that without them ever being marketed to by the company, its beer had become favorite of the younger, hipster crowd. In turn, it saw significant success by altering its marketing efforts to better reach that audience. (Though those marketing efforts were not what most people would have expected. Read this piece in Fast Company to see how they did it)

A public facing customer network is an excellent way to help facilitate the interaction between brand and customers, as well as the brand’s response to those interactions. A great example of this would be WeBank’s WePad project, which used a public facing Clearvale network to help get customers involved in the creation of a WeBank iPad app. www.wepadproject.it

For 6 weeks, 6 experts in fields such as social media, design and technology brainstormed every week for 4 hours, with the aim of producing an iPad application to make the interactions between WeBank and its customers social and collaborative, and to save their customers’ money. Each brainstorming session was broadcast live via a webcam and participants were encouraged to contribute by uploading comments, videos and feedback. An exciting, interactive and thought-leading initiative, the WePad Project successfully bridged the gap between company and customer. The entire project took place on a Clearvale network created and maintained by WeBank.

The WePad Project is a great example of how an enterprise social network can be used as platform for managing one-off campaigns and special events. The next part of Enterprise Connections will focus on the ongoing, day-to-day benefits of a customer network.

“There was a chemist, Kekule, who worked for decades trying to figure out the structure of the benzene ring. One night he went to sleep and he had a dream of a snake swallowing its tale, and he woke up and said, That’s it! That’s the structure of the benzene ring!

So his student said, Not bad, you go to sleep, wake up, and you’ve got the structure of the benzene ring.

And Kekule said, Visions come to prepared spirits.”
David Milch, speaking at the Paley Center for Media, 10/4/2004

In the world of enterprise social networking, and the tech world in general, we sometimes play Buzzword Bingo. Everyone has at least one buzzword that makes them cringe, either because the way the word sounds, how often it is used or because the word is not appropriate for the situation. At the moment, the word that is being used to describe the positive consequences that often arise in a “pull society” (see Learning to Pull by Richard Hughes for more info.) is serendipity, or a “happy accident”. I’m not a fan of this word, because I think it undermines what is really happening.

For the record, I know that several factors of the above scenario are disputed (it was actually a day-dream, Kekule was kidding, etc.) but I think the way Milch tells the story does a great job of illustrating what happens in a “pull society”.

We have been extensively using our own ESN, Clearvale, for some time here at BroadVision, and I have seen many projects, queries and general thoughts written as blog posts. While responses come from expected places, such as within the community the blog was posted, or from a team member from the author’s same department, many discussions occur company wide, with ideas and answers coming from every department. When this happens, it’s not serendipity but the result of preparedness. The more people that are “pulling”, the greater the pool that is being drawn from, the more intelligent and creative the answers. Likewise, people begin to respond to other responses; with the whole process allowing for far greater opportunities then might be produced in a series of emails or chatting by the coffee pot.

The above image illustrates our new SET program, which will help companies go beyond the step of simply creating a Clearvale network. Participants of the 90 day SET program will learn how to transition into a social enterprise, one that is in a constant state of preparedness, getting the most of its talent and resources. For more info about the Clearvale SET program, please visit: http://www.clearvale.com/mkt/en/set.php.