March 8, 2007

Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

by Matthew Brown

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

TRENDS

TRENDS
Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge Management Archetypes
March 8, 2007

This is the 11th document in the Information Workplace series by Matthew Brown with Connie Moore, Erica Driver, and Jamie Barnett

EXECUT I V E S U M MA RY
When knowledge management (KM) practices, tools, and architectures burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s, they looked a lot like the old economy businesses that built them, hierarchical and workowdriven. Now, Social Computing tools are attening those architectures and extending the reach of KM well beyond the walls of the conventional enterprise to touch customers and business partners. Information and KM professionals are becoming knowledge facilitators, and they must get smart fast to capitalize on this trend. Although disruptive, Social Computing will transform KM, shifting the emphasis from repositories, which are hard to build and maintain, to more intuitive, tacit knowledge sharing. Social Computing is becoming the new KM, moving it from an often too academic exercise into the real world of people sharing knowledge and expertise with each other naturally, without even thinking about it.

TABLE O F CO N T E N TS
2 Social Computing Flattens Past KM Archetypes Knowledge Technologies Standardize In Fact, Flatten Our Virtual Worlds The Search For Productive Talent Goes External, Global, And Virtual Knowledge Workers Want Balanced Productivity From Caring Meritocracies 6 Technology Providers Make Software Tools Easier, And Smarter Social Computing Extends The Reach And Richness Of Communication New Technology Helps People Make Faster, More Informed Decisions
RECOMMENDATIONS

N OT E S & R E S O U R C E S
Forrester reviewed client inquiries, analyzed internal and external publications, and reviewed conference notes on overall trends in knowledge management and social computing.

Related Research Documents Wikis Change The Meaning of Groupthink January 10, 2007 Trends
Trends 2006: eLearning Goes Informal And Moves Closer To The Workers Job April 19, 2006 Trends The Information Workplace Will Redene The World Of Work At Last June 1, 2005 Forrester Big Idea

9 Information And KM Pros: Facilitate, Dont Manage, Knowledge Exchange

WHAT IT MEANS

10 Social Computing Is The Next Archetype For KM

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each gure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please email resourcecenter@forrester.com.

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

TARGET AUDIENCE Information and knowledge management professional SOCIAL COMPUTING FLATTENS PAST KM ARCHETYPES Knowledge management (KM) as a concept is simple. Its about how people across organizations create, capture, and share information to support innovation, product, and service delivery activities. Early KM thinking was repository-centric. Indeed, KM thinkers advised building taxonomies and repositories of documents, lessons learned, and best practices that could be shared across an organization. Many of these eorts failed; the now famous stories of the Xerox oce equipment service technicians who shared tips for xing printers and copiers globally via an online database that still percolate through KM strategy discussions are an example of one of the few real KM success stories.1 That KM has always been closely tied to collaboration became clear in the case of Caterpillar Equipment Corporation when KM professionals launched their Knowledge Network initiative.2 This project connected eld engineers in thousands of production plants and customer sites worldwide to support troubleshooting of construction equipment issues and encourage participation in virtual communities of practice around narrowly dened topics. Caterpillars KM was an early sign of the decentralization of the earlier repository-centric KM archetype that made the repository-centric view of KM seem obsolete. Now, enterprise software used to support networks like Caterpillars might soon become obsolete as well, eclipsed by Social Computing.3 Even the collaboration-centric view of KM is giving way to the broader, more powerful force of Social Computing. Front-line business people continue to tug at the fringes of hierarchical, bureaucratic, IT architectures by downloading and installing themselves productivity tools like desktop search, wikis and Weblogs, and free online email. That one of the best old world KM tools of all, the water cooler conversation, now lives somewhere between your instant messaging network, email discussion threads, and the public blogosphere represents the near complete decentralization of KM (see Figure 1). And its not going to stop.

March 8, 2007

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

Figure 1 Changing KM Archetypes

Reviewed repository Contributors Facilitated community Social networks

Reviewers

= Facilitators

Characteristics Single, central repository Reviewers manage quality along workow Contributors add and access content
Issues Technical barriers to publication Lowest-common denominator tools Limited trust and incentives to participate

Characteristics Multiple, domain-specic communities with common tools Facilitator-led and managed Contributors utilize multiple communities
Issues Membership controlled by facilitator limits access Tools managed by central IT authoritative policy Decentralization of quality standards
Success stories Caterpillar Knowledge Network

Characteristics Networks emerge through serendipitous personal interactions and interests Participants opt-in, self organize Tools are chosen and integrated by the community
Issues Fostering conditions for network development Little control of tools and information used Limited central authority Quality managed through active participation
Success stories Wikipedia LinkedIn

Success stories Xerox printer case

Enabling technology Database Document management Search

41369

Enabling technology Portals Groupware

Enabling technology Wikis, Weblogs, podcasts, Web multimedia, enterprise search

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

Knowledge Technologies Standardize In Fact, Flatten Our Virtual Worlds In the past, the conceptual archetype for KM, as for many technology architectures, was top-down. Grass roots eorts often materialized, but usually failed unless coupled with a top-down eort at the same time. IT professionals dealt with security rst, modeling a hierarchical representation of complex security entitlements and document taxonomies into rigid software like early portals, document management systems, and databases. Simultaneously, business line sponsors jockeyed for position on hierarchically structured intranet home pages and fought over everything from fonts to hyperlinks. Business sponsors knew full well it would take six months for IT to change anything, and they were right. Meanwhile, sponsors struggled to bake document workow processes into awkward and rigid content management systems, which they ultimately gave back to IT, saying, Keep your software. Well give you our content to load.4 In the end (and this hasnt really ended), companies wound up with KM hierarchies that looked remarkably similar to the hierarchies they used to organize their human resources and departments. Even worse, they settled for software that was engineered before it was designed, making it very hard to use, and put software workow back into the hands of the people who invented it, technologists. Since then, weve learned that most important work doesnt get done in hierarchies; it gets done across hierarchies, supported by the following.

Free and/or Web-accessible software thats easy to use. Self-provisioned workspaces, desktop
search, wikis, Weblogs, Googles Gmail, widgets, and many other consumer Web and Social Computing tools have penetrated the hearts and minds of knowledge workers, especially the younger generation.5 These tools have overcome many of the interface, usability, and learning curve shortcomings of their earlier enterprise software counterparts. Ask most knowledge workers how theyd react if their work queue in Siebel or the company portal disappeared and theyd say Thank you, give you a hug, and go check their email. Try to remove their desktop search software and theyll break your knuckles.

Communication standards, interface standards, and gateways. During the past few years,

innovations from Google, IBM, Microsoft and many others have put people, not users, at the forefront. Not only have these vendors knocked down many proprietary technical standards walls, theyve oered gateways for translating among legacy and competing standards for communication across email, calendaring, instant messaging, voice, video, and application interfaces. And beyond the plumbing, theyre building user interfaces that maintain delity, consistency, and richness across application silos and devices in ways that were unimaginable even ve years ago, extending the reach and removing barriers to widespread use of these tools.6

Search oers universal information access. Search is now an interface thats universally

understood and, at least on the Web, perceived to have virtually innite reach, despite the fact that it really doesnt. As a result, the enterprise search market is growing at double-digit rates. Email overload, bloated laptops, syndication, self-provisioned workspaces, and external research
2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

sources continue to add reams of information that people have to sift through to get their jobs done, and search has become an attractive alternative to making people cram all their digital stu into rigid, workow-heavy repositories. Today, indexing technologies are the new integration tool, serving all sorts of information from internal customer data to external market research in ways that make it immediately useful and understandable to knowledge workers. Search, when applied correctly, is a major attener of IT architectures. Why bother learning the intricacies of a complex ERP system if a text query can reach out and grab contact information for a supply chain partner in less than a second?7 Our current computing markets are the greatest example of software natural selection in the history of the Internet; given a choice, people choose to download and install their own tools rather than let IT departments do it for them. Many people choose to bypass the corporate stu altogether, setting up their own Gmail, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Yahoo! Groups on the Internet. Why is this happening? Its simple: enterprising business people will nd ways to get their jobs done whether a central IT department helps them or not. IT organizations are now facilitators, not gatekeepers, of technology enablement. The Search For Productive Talent Goes External, Global, And Virtual In his recently updated book, The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman quotes Intel Chairman Craig Barrett as saying, Intel could thrive today, even if it never hired another US citizen.8 A recent PBS story highlights the massive collaborative network that Boeing has established among engineers across its supply chain worldwide using 3-D modeling software from Dassault Systemes to build the Boeing 787 aircraft, despite signicant risks to doing so.9 HR representatives report using Webenabled Social Computing tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace to nd and qualify talent from around the world. Connecting these dots suggests that the way we nd, qualify, develop, and retain knowledgeable talent is undergoing massive change. Information workers feel the pressure of global markets for talent, fastidiously adding people to their LinkedIn connections while employers struggle to get them to update even the most basic internal personal data on corporate intranet directories. Why the attraction to Social Computing? Because professionals realize there is power in personal and professional networks. Given the choice, why not extend this power beyond the political, hierarchical, corporate walls of a single organization? In eect, LinkedIn and other professional networks are the quiet social revolution knowledge workers stage against any big corporation thats more eager to source labor than work hard to retain and develop its own people. It doesnt matter if they dont use the network now; its an insurance policy. Want evidence? Just follow the almost daily social commentary on the bifurcation of wage rates, global competition, and commentary on labor sourcing.10 Information workers in developed economies wearing collars of all shades from blue to white can hear the wolf of labor productivity at the door, and they will seek comfort in social networks if they cant nd it in the paychecks that their

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

organizations now deliver to them electronically rather than personally with a handshake and a thank you. Witness the tendency of disgruntled workers to hide behind public blogs that disparage current and former employers. Social Computing can be used for good and bad reasons, and it will have increasing inuence from both inside and outside of companies. Knowledge Workers Want Balanced Productivity From Caring Meritocracies At the conuence of all of this change global collaboration and attening of architectures, standards, and technologies are real people who already work 60-hour weeks answering emails, IMs, and phone calls from trains and hotel rooms and wherever else they work. Many want to compete, change the world, and develop themselves through learning, hopefully earning a decent wage and seeing their families occasionally. In a sign of the times, a KM professional recently asked Forrester: Can you talk to my team about how to achieve balance given all of this technology and business change? Unfortunately, you cant just turn o the 60 to 80 emails that knowledge workers receive, on average, every day without also turning o critical tasks, companywide news items, and correspondence with customers, colleagues, and family. And more software tools and communication channels such as presence awareness, wikis, Weblogs, social networking tools, and podcasts arent the whole answer.11 TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS MAKE SOFTWARE TOOLS EASIER, AND SMARTER If you believe that Social Computing is a force we must live with instead of a force that can be controlled and beaten back, youll quickly realize that were no longer in an age of managing knowledge. Instead, the best thing more technology can do is oer tools to help keep information from managing us. This means helping knowledge workers do the following.

Establish and maintain work context. Academics whove studied the issue know that task

switching is the hobgoblin of productivity due to the mental load of changing work contexts.12 Not unlike manufacturing processes, in which production run setup and tear-down activities make or break the productivity of a given line, task switching aects knowledge worker productivity. A few notable technology developments this year stand out as ways to let knowledge workers establish and maintain context.13

Link information to ad hoc, ephemeral processes. How do you link tacit knowledge work like

negotiating contracts, planning events, and creating proposals into a particular process context? Today, much of this gets done in email where critical linkages between chat conversations, voice messages, and related people never materialize because of the disconnected mode of communication. This year, IBM will launch a new type of tool, which will be part of Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Connections, to help people complete activities. Activities are like tasks on

March 8, 2007

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

steroids, with loosely dened, iterative processes linking with documents, Web pages, and other resources and following people onto multiple computing environments and devices.14 Examples of more traditional BPM vendors reaching out to incorporate collaboration into structured processes include Appian, HandySoft, and IBM (FileNet).15

Get more leverage out of presence awareness. In the latest release of IBM Lotus Sametime

(version 7.5) and in Microsoft Oce Communications Server 2007, presence awareness that funny little icon in instant messaging clients has been made a lot smarter. Now, it reads your calendar and looks at whether you are delivering a presentation or are engaged in a phone call before declaring that you are available for a chat. In other words, it says dont bug me on your behalf. Lotus Sametime 7.5 even automatically tells people where youre physically sitting if you want it to, to avoid those annoying moments of hunting and pecking for cell phone numbers and roaming halls or city streets in search of a colleagues location. This is a valuable tool for people who work or interact with or manage others from remote locations.

Social Computing Extends The Reach And Richness Of Communication Whats clear today is that we dont need more channels of communication. Its hard enough to manage all the channels we already have. But giving people broader reach via Social Computing tools for business such as IBM Lotus Connections, or wikis, or Weblog templates from Microsoft or Vignette and a more contextual experience serves to remove the authoring hurdles of conventional databases and document management systems. Examples that push the reach and richness of communications include the following:

Microsoft maintains interface delity across applications and devices. A major theme of

Microsofts 2007 wave of products is familiarity. This means that the iconography, menu systems, and look and feel between applications on a PC and those presented through mobile devices are far more unied (despite some dierences required by form factor), reducing the learning curve and cognitive lift required to move between devices and application environments.

Cognos pushes reports to BlackBerry devices, and eLearning meets podcasting. Aiming to

reach a more mobile work force, Cognos now lets people access business reports via Blackberry. And forward-thinking enterprises, especially those recruiting younger workers, are beginning to pilot informal learning delivered to workers in new, higher impact ways, as through blogs, wikis, and podcasts.16

Just dont expect all this technology to make people better communicators. Poor communicators are poor communicators and they communicate poorly regardless of the device or channel they choose. Hence, the tools and technology are not the whole story.

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

New Technology Helps People Make Faster, More Informed Decisions The text-laden interfaces we all work with today must give way to richer, more visual interfaces that help people understand information more quickly and completely.17 This, along with intelligent algorithms and syndication technologies like RSS, will deliver information to people rather than force them to hunt for it. Examples include the following.

Google oers Google Apps for Your Domain. In late 2006, Google released a set of applications
Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Page Creator, and a start page designed to enable workers to compose a lightweight, simple page for searching the Web and accessing Google gadgets and Web-based applications. Whats new about it is not a lot of fancy, esoteric features, but the fact that its an easily congured, lightweight portal page without the portal server. The Economist recently reported that Arizona State University has just set up 65,000 students with the service, and project leaders report signicant reductions in the costs of maintaining such systems.18

Upstart Serendipity oers RSS-enabled business mash-ups. Serendipity Software just released
a secure RSS server called WorkLight, which morphs RSS from news feed technology into lightweight integration technology. Eectively, it lets companies quickly assemble application mash-ups from secure RSS feeds o their ERP, CRM, and other enterprise systems at a fraction of the cost associated with typical application integration. The company has extended the traditional idea of RSS news feeds to include data and information from enterprise applications.

SAP adds related links to its search experience. In addition to common search conventions
like tabbed searches, SAPs search technology anticipates the next action a person will likely take after completing a search. For example, a search for a particular person not only returns an organic set of results from SAPs systems, but also devotes a portion of the results interface to related links to the searched persons LinkedIn prole, or any Web service-enabled social networking site. Similarly, a search for a particular company returns a list of companies stored within the SAP system as well as direct links to D&B report subscriptions or public company news, reducing the tyranny of dierent interfaces for accessing information.

Zimbras open source collaboration platform includes mash-ups. Zimbra Collaboration Suite
is an upstart competitor to market-leading collaboration platforms from IBM and Microsoft.19 Zimbra Collaboration Suite includes a set of what Zimbra calls Zimlets plug-ins for creating mash-ups and an Ajax toolkit for creating new Zimlets. Within the suite, a person can mouse over a link and get a real-time preview of, for example, calendar entries, contact information, ight status, bug tracking status, a map of an address, or the status of an Internet order.

March 8, 2007

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S

INFORMATION AND KM PROS: FACILITATE, DONT MANAGE, KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

Realize that Social Computing has put powerful tools into the hands of business users, and theyre unlikely to give them up easily. But the tools themselves are not the whole story; the main point is the power of the networks the tools support. Use some of the following guiding principles when making technology-buying decisions.

Find a balance between corporate standards and freedoms. Develop an architecture,

governance model, and three-year collaboration/Social Computing strategy.20 Discouraging the use of Social Computing tools is unlikely to make much dierence. Instead, embrace these tools thoughtfully; ensure that tools like wikis and Weblogs are oered as part of a broader platform that integrates well with your identity management system, underlying search systems, and existing corporate portals and intranets. Left completely unchecked, lots of unique software tools can recreate the very information silos they were meant to destroy, and make information much harder to nd.

Look rst to technology providers that eat what they serve. All vendors claim to eat their
own dog food. But the ones who really eat it are capable of managing many parts of their operations virtually. IBM and RADVISION, among others, actually build their own products using the Social Computing and video conferencing technologies they build and sell. After all, thats what theyre telling you that you and your competitors can do, so make sure theyre doing it themselves.

Focus on richer interactions among people, not more interactions. Any hardworking
knowledge worker is already inundated by email, IM, RSS feeds, multiple phone lines, and beeping and blinking devices. Dont believe anyone who tells you a new way to connect will enhance knowledge worker productivity. But give your work force richer ways to interact, build models, draw and paint pictures, and see and hear each other over the networks in which they work. Help them create, surface, debate, and agree upon ideas. Help people work smarter and build trusting relationships.

Help your knowledge workers manage context. Context takes many forms and shapes in
enterprises such as process contexts, team contexts, and departmental contexts and can be ephemeral or long-lasting. Evaluate whether new approaches like IBMs activitycentric computing adequately capture process context for ad hoc work. Where deeper system integrations are cost-prohibitive or too inexible, consider using lighter-weight application integration via Ajax or RSS-enabled mash-ups to quickly assemble and deliver contextual information, tools, and services.

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

10

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

Think of Social Computing as a Trojan horse for KM. Social Computing concepts applied
to an enterprise are a little like doing KM without knowing it. A blog post, for example, is more like sending a mass email that can be shared broadly than it is like working within a complex workow-based system. These communications are immediately made accessible to a large audience for an extended period of time. Social Computing concepts promise more contexts for idea sharing, broader reach, and much more simplied knowledge management than weve ever seen before.
W H AT I T M E A N S

SOCIAL COMPUTING IS THE NEXT ARCHETYPE FOR KM

The age of repository-centric KM archetypes is behind us, except in unique circumstances in which the conditions for success, such as having dedicated people to ensure quality and information accuracy, are present. Collaboration and communication will continue to be core technologies for KM as knowledge workers are asked to extend themselves and their teams across wider physical and cultural distances. Over time, Social Computing will atten not only the technology architectures that capture our thinking, but also organizations as companies seek out the most productive work force and workers extend their reach beyond the physical and virtual walls of their organizations.

ENDNOTES
1

Xerox created a system used by 14,000 of its service technicians and support center representatives to share tips for xing oce equipment. Those technicians make approximately a million service calls per month to maintain printers, copiers, networks, and other aspects of customer operations. The umbrella project for automating eld service incorporates remote diagnostics, service documentation, and knowledge repositories. Source: Connie Moore, Eureka! Xerox discovers way to grow community knowledge . . . And customer satisfaction (http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9140). In 1999, Caterpillar rolled out its Knowledge Network initiative to 12 communities of practice around topics that included standards, compliance, and best practice sharing. Within two years, facilitators were managing more than 3,000 communities of practice and had combined the initiative with Caterpillar University, the companys internal learning and leadership organization. Source: Caterpillar Knowledge Network Software (http://www.cat.com/cda/components/securedFile/displaySecuredFileServletJSP?leId=9 6624&languageId=7). Easy connections enabled by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists. See the February 13, 2006, Forrester Big Idea Social Computing.

March 8, 2007

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

11

Historically, content management has been used largely by IT-oriented users and eBusiness teams. Use of content management by true line of business users remains limited. Wikis have the potential to streamline a diverse range of business activities from developing documentation and policies, creating meeting agendas and minutes, writing course syllabi, and preparing reports, to doing competitive analysis, developing new products, brainstorming ideas or strategies, and much more. See the January 10, 2007, Trends Wikis Change The Meaning Of Groupthink. IBM is a leader in the collaboration platforms market with its Lotus Notes/Domino platform and related products (QuickPlace and Sametime) and the emerging IBM Workplace Collaboration Services oering. With its strong vision and product road map, it is the overall market presence leader, oering strong messaging, real-time collaboration, and team collaboration platforms and solid security and information workplace readiness. See the May 24, 2006, Tech Choices IBM Is A Leader In The Collaboration Platforms Market. Imagine quickly nding any workplace information you need including documents, forms, business intelligence, ight tracking information, market reports, sales forecasts, customer contact information, FedEx packages, and so on through a single white bar search. Googles latest search appliance (GSA) for enterprises does just that and more, leapfrogging conventional methods employed by incumbent enterprise search and portal vendors peddling information access technologies for intranets. See the April 19, 2006, Quick Take Google Search Appliance Gets Smarter. Barrett explains that if you look at where Intel is making its new engineering level investments, its in Russia, China, India, and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia and Israel. These are also markets in which Intel is selling more chips. Barrett adds that Intel still hires a lot of Americans, but can hire the best talent around the world and be successful. Source: Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 2005. PBS NewsHour ran a story on January 9, 2007 about Boeings innovation network of engineers worldwide developing the next 787 Dreamliner. The company is designing and testing components of the plane virtually using networked 3-D modeling software from Dessault Systemes. Source: Airplane Production Evolves with New Technology (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june07/airplane_01-09.html). Source: Globalization and the rise of inequality | Rich man, poor man, The Economist, January 18, 2007. Todays information worker relies on a disjointed set of oce productivity, content, collaboration, and portal tools. The information workplace will be made much simpler, yet richer than todays by incorporating contextual, role-based information from business systems, applications, and processes; delivering voice, documents, rich media, process models, business intelligence, and real-time analytics; integrating just-in-time eLearning; and fostering collaboration. See the June 1, 2005, Forrester Big Idea The Information Workplace Will Redene The World Of Work At Last. University of California-Irvine professor Gloria Marks scrutinized the daily work lives of 24 information workers at a nancial services outsourcing company in the United States and published her ndings in an April 2005 study. Marks found that it takes, on average, 25 minutes to return to task after an interruption. See the July 11, 2006, Trends Untethering Information Workers: Rethinking Workplace Location And Layout.

10 11

12

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

March 8, 2007

12

Trends | Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge

13

Several examples of technology innovations that enable workers to maintain work context include presence awareness embedded directly into application interfaces, eLearning modules delivered directly into the context of process ows, and capabilities from Cardi and others that automatically search and retrieve information that is relevant to a given form or task. According to Charles Hill and others researchers at IBM, until now the greatest productivity gains in business processes have been achieved by formalizing the processes into computer-managed workows. But for the many processes that have not yielded to this approach, users have instead depended on ad hoc collaboration tools like email and instant messaging to coordinate their work. Source: Beyond predictable workows: Enhancing productivity in artful business processes, IBM Systems Journal. Many enterprises are now turning to business process management suites (BPMS) as a way to realize their strategic focus on business processes. To see how human-centric BPMS vendors stack up, Forrester evaluated 12 vendors across 215 criteria. See the February 24, 2006, Tech Choices The Forrester Wave: Human-Centric Business Process Management Suites, Q1 2006. Todays competitive market puts incessant pressure on enterprises to keep their employees highly skilled and productive. In response, enterprises are beginning to tie eLearning to work activities, delivering both on-demand (embedded into applications) and just-in-time (learning a click away) learning, all within the context of business applications. See the April 19, 2006, Trends Trends 2006: eLearning Goes Informal And Moves Closer To The Workers Job. Most visualization tools assume that users are either Xbox gamers or Ph.D.s. Between these extremes are mainstream business users underserved by basic charts and graphs. Even twinkling executive dashboards that use speedometers, stoplights, and gas gauges are rudimentary and insult human intelligence by failing to provide enough context for data. See July 12, 2006, Quick Take A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Data Points. Source: Computing, The Economist, December 19, 2006. Forrester evaluated ve leading collaboration platform vendors across 98 criteria and found that IBM and Microsoft are still the leaders in this market. See the May 24, 2006, Tech Choices Forrester Wave: Collaboration Platforms, Q2 2006. Trying to develop an enterprise collaboration strategy can be an exercise in frustration. Issues like culture, politics, and inertia sometimes get in the way, thwarting even the most diligent eorts. But these problems can be minimized by breaking the strategy development process down into a set of clear work steps that start with dening and scoping collaboration and end with dening new processes and procedures to support new technologies. See the June 29, 2005, Best Practices A 10-Step Collaboration Strategy Work Plan.

14

15

16

17

18 19

20

March 8, 2007

2007, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc. 400 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Tel: +1 617/613-6000 Fax: +1 617/613-5000 Email: forrester@forrester.com Nasdaq symbol: FORR www.forrester.com Research and Sales Oces Australia Brazil Canada Denmark France Germany Hong Kong India For a complete list of worldwide locations, visit www.forrester.com/about. For information on hard-copy or electronic reprints, please contact the Client Resource Center at +1 866/367-7378, +1 617/617-5730, or resourcecenter@forrester.com. We oer quantity discounts and special pricing for academic and nonprot institutions. Israel Japan Korea The Netherlands Switzerland United Kingdom United States

Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent technology and market research company that provides pragmatic and forwardthinking advice about technologys impact on business and consumers. For 22 years, Forrester has been a thought leader and trusted advisor, helping global clients lead in their markets through its research, consulting, events, and peer-topeer executive programs. For more information, visit www.forrester.com.

41369