A critique that missed the mark.

Yesterday a client of mine shared with me the following link and asked for my comment.  The article (from Infoworld) titled “IT snake oil: Six tech cure-alls that went bunk”  describes six technologies that were oversold and under-delivered. The first was Artificial Intelligence (which struck a chord with me, as my undergraduate degree is in AI), and the list continued onto CASE tools, Thin Clients, and eventually to Enterprise Social Media. In each case the author described a short history of failure.

I chuckled at first, because this was a healthy look at some of the over hyped technologies of the past 20 years. Each was a big deal in its time, but many failed to deliver to overblown expectations.  And thus the author implies that Enterprise Social Media (ESM) is on the same path.

I find three flaws with the section on ESM, which I shared with my client, and now with you.

1. Even if ESM is being oversold, lets not confuse the victim — the clients.

There are shoddy consultants and vendors out there who don’t have a clue about corporate reality. They are over-selling the message.  That’s a real problem.  But there are many companies that have real needs. The unfortunate reality is that some of those companies meet up with some of those vendors, and then things  fall apart.

But the need and opportunity to improve corporate communication and leverage ESM is still there.  Many companies spend an awful lot of money on their intranet, and it is still a disaster.  Employees do not know where to find information, how to share information, where to find people they should be working with.  They misuse email and shared file servers.  And this results in misinformation, project delays, wasted time, money, and opportunity.  Yet some of these problems can be attenuated or even solved.  We see many successes in large and small companies that ESM technology is meeting some of the needs for workplace collaboration. And yes, there’s more to improve. But this does not mean that ESM (or E2.0) is a sham or a crock.

So I think it’s unfair to deny the value of the ESM market in a broad sense. Enterprise Social Media is not a cure-all, but it is a solution to a real problem. Those people with the problem know they need help, and those people who have found help are glad they did. The problem is that we have some people overselling it.

2. It’s not fair to switch meanings in an article

The article starts with a quote from an unnamed ESM vendor. It took 3 seconds to see this was Jive Software.  Then the author begins:

“Your employees schmooze on Twitter, Facebook, and countless other social networks… The idea: Instead of tweeting about what they had for lunch and engaging in Mafia Family Wars, your workforce can be using these tools to brainstorm new ideas and collaborate on projects.”

Now that’s unfair.  Enterprise Social Media tools like Jive (or their many worthy competitors) do NOT propose that employees should use Twitter or Facebook at work.   Of course many people waste time on those sites. That’s not the solution to enterprise problems.  But those are the inspiration to the solution.  The author is confused about terminology — ESM is not SM. Yes, we agree that playing games on Facebook is a time killer. But that’s not what the ESM market is all about. So it’s an unfair critique.

Instead, ESM tools take inspiration from consumer social activities.  And then they provide a separate environment that focuses on the workplace and work behaviors.  These vendors realize that public Social Media is a phenomenon worthy of understanding, but that workplaces require different tools for workplace habits.  So they provide those kinds of tools.

To draw an analogy: Imagine reading the reviews from the latest fashion show in Paris.  Most journalists will say things like: “Hems are longer this season, natural fibers and bold colors are back in style…”   But there’s always one who says something like: “there’s no way the designer will sell those clothes, most people are not that thin.”  Oy!  He doesn’t get it. There is a difference between the inspiration for a trend and the actual item.

3. It missed all the real problems.
As it turns out, the ESM market has some real problems.  This is what I study as an analyst.  The article totally misses out addressing any of them.  A shame, since this could have been a very insightful and helpful piece.

What are the problems you ask?  It’s a topic for another day — but I’ll hint as a few:  Some are functional: e.g. Integration with Enterprise fixtures, integration with real-time needs, management of collaborative information v.s. published information.  Some are business strategy e.g. pricing strategy, messaging, gap in the cost to value-perception.  Too many (or too few) potential buyers. etc.  There are others too — like Adoption issues.  These, and others, are problems that are being addressed by the industry thought leaders.  But the article did not cover these.

So I’m not saying the ESM market is without critique.  But this Infoworld article missed the mark for me.  It squarely criticized the act of facebooking doing the work day. Um, OK – most of us agree that this is not a productive use of corporate resources (sure, some argue with this — but that’s not my point).  The ESM market is not here to sell Facebook to the workplace.

What this means: Let me not blame the author.  From what I can tell, he knows the technology marketplace well.  But focuses on the consumer side of tech.  Enterprise technology is different.  And this shift of perspective caused his well-intentioned arrow to miss the mark.  We simply have more evidence that there is a messaging problem in the Enterprise “social technology” space.  ”Social” is word that does not capture the concept of “work”.  And thus people get very confused.

Tagged as: confusion, Enterprise 2.0, intranet, tool, Twitter, workplace