Longtime followers of Bamboo Nation know that I'm a sucker for "social' sessions when covering conferences, so it should come as little surprise that yesterday afternoon found me in the front row for Naomi Moneypenny's SharePoint Fest D.C. presentation, Yamming it Up - Collaboration Beyond SharePoint.
Naomi is CTO of ManyWorlds, Inc. (of which Synxi is the relevant brand concerning yesterday's talk), and she sourced the Yammer and SharePoint case study findings she shared from internal usage within the ManyWorlds organization. Of her agenda, Naomi said she would cover the value case around enterprise social, including the aforementioned case studies; integrating SharePoint and Yammer; and the future of integrated collaboration.
Naomi's first suggestion was that you replace the phrase "enterprise social" with whatever phrase best captures its meaning for your particular organization and culture. She also mentioned that a recent McKinsey finding showed that "90% of companies report some business value from social technologies."
Referencing the industrial revolution and its assembly line approach to ironing out flaws to achieve cost savings, Naomi pointed out that errors can also be a source of innovation, and that fact shouldn't be discounted.
Moving on, Naomi used the example of Tower Records, the once-powerful retailer which failed when the delivery method changed, and they hadn't recognized it was happening until it was too late. "It's all about adaptability," as Naomi said, and this is a key part of the value proposition of enterprise social.
For context, Naomi said that: enterprises are social systems by their nature; innovation comes from serendipitous connections (and social opportunities increase the likelihood of such innovation occurring); it can be difficult to locate expertise in the enterprise; and millennials "expect everything to be on the intranet."
Regarding the sources of value in enterprise social, Naomi discussed four pillars:
- Decentralize decision making, which empowers those workers on the front lines.
- Alignment of employees' higher level motivations (beyond process), which helps engagement, e.g., the CEO "liking" a post of front line worker.
- Culture of transparency and constant improvement, particularly as regards transparency of conversations and building internal trust.
- Engage employees for ideas, looking to the entire enterprise to identify problems as well as potential solutions.
Corporate considerations to bear in mind include: governance, culture, architecture (e.g., Yammer is only available in the cloud), requirements, business case, adoption, etc.
Sharing a quote of Eugene Lee's that "only two industries call customers 'users' - drug dealers and IT," Naomi slyly commented, "whatever we're selling, it must be compelling."
Naomi shared that Yammer currently boasts eight million users, but she cautioned that certain features that you get out-of-the-box in SharePoint (e.g., analytics), you have to pay extra for—in the form of apps—in Yammer today. Which is also to say that, yes, there is some overlap in functionality between SharePoint and Yammer. Users can interact with Yammer via email, "which is great for adoption." Naomi shared a rather telling quote from Microsoft's Jeff Teper in terms of what to expect in the future: "We really think of SharePoint, Exchange, and Yammer as one product."
Naomi's ManyWorlds case study included findings such as: while SharePoint is better for dedicated communities, Yammer's supremacy in conversations led to a 90% reduction in email, because "general conversations work better in Yammer," and business value is delivered via the associated cost savings (bandwidth/email); productivity increased; and connections between international offices increased, thereby increasing the likelihood of serendipitous connections sparking innovation.
In the future, Naomi says to expect conversation and context in every app. One example she shared was a screenshot of a conversation layer in Yammer appearing as an onscreen sidebar while two users edited a PowerPoint deck together in the main window. Naomi expects that this capability will be "rolled out pretty soon."
In conclusion, Naomi confidently made a prediction regarding the Microsoft SharePoint Conference taking place in March, that the big story will be SharePoint/Yammer integration. Naomi also predicts that "conversations will be embedded in all business systems" in the future, and I, for one, am inclined to agree with her.