Business Service Management Hub

I know I have been quiet for the previous month, I took a little vacation and started becoming more attune to the discussion surrounding data, analytics, security, privacy and the value of our technologically connected world. First we have to rewind to the end of August when I had my first opportunity to discuss and explore the privacy discussion surrounding the use of technology and data to enrich our lives and business on Huff Post Live, “Get off my Cloud:  Floating the Risks of Big Data Storage ” (previous Qmunity post, Cloud Discussion:  Data Privacy, Availability and Performance on Huff Post Live). All of this technology sits on vast amounts of data that awaits being cracked open whether it be healthcare, location & GPS, marketing attendance, safety, cellular, data services, etc. the list is endless.

When I responded to a request to be on a panel with Huff Post Live, my mind was in my usual place of availability and performance of technology, not data privacy.  As I stated during the discussion, I firmly believe if you use technology and electronically push information about yourself into the public, it is searchable and accessible.  The first conclusion is to jump directly to privacy and someone monitoring/watching our every move. This is also driven by the folks taking the first stab at using these vast stores of data for what I’ll call “tracking” purposes. This is usual technology behavior, let’s track things and manage our known environment better rather than coming at it from a side of value and a value-add services. Ok, let’s take a few specific examples.

Social Media:
The simplest is Facebook. I’ve had the discussion with colleagues and friends about the accessablity to this information, let’s say when you are seeking employment or acceptance into a program. If it is public,  why shouldn’t it be accessable and why wouldn’t you expect it to be searched? I do a regular search on myself to see what shows up as we have long expected background checks to be performed in the past, this is just part of a background check. If you have something questionable, why would you publish it? I was a late bloomer to the world of Facebook and social media for this reason of privacy, but it wasn’t because I didn’t understand the risk, it was because I didn’t understand how to secure and use it properly. However, I use my credentials and name as it is part of building my own brand and credibility very regularly when I publish and comment and thus how I end up on panels like Huff Post Live. I look at the value and positive side of participating in the conversation, managing and using my credentials accordingly. I do recognize it is on me to manage the data and thus how it could be subsequently used.

Healthcare:
While on vacation in the local paper, cayCompass.com, there was an article regarding a new healthcare facility and the technology going into it to provide higher levels of healthcare to the residents. One of the discussion points was doctors using data to better diagnose patients. Again, the article took the negative side first regarding the “must use” the technology for a diagnosis. I’m not sure I want to remove the human subjective element from my doctor, however, I would welcome the use of my history and an all encompassing view of my current condition, weighing that against a database of possibilities that no human could carry with them daily, to make a better diagnosis. Why not make use of being able to carry that encyclopedia of information around with you to deliver better patient care? Again, the value side of the equation versus the“monitoring” of the physicians side of the equation. Both are useful and valuable.

Earlier this week in InformationWeek, there was an article titled, “Healthcare Execs Must Prepare for Big Data“, where the same discussion continues as well as knowing the location of patients, doctors, equipment to insure a safer environment and getting people and equipment where it is most needed. I most enjoyed the Wayne Gretzky quote: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”  We have embraced technological advances to assist in healing us faster, making surgery less invasive and remeding illnesses that just a decade ago were less treatable. Why is using the vast amounts of data for split second decisions any different?

GPS:
There are several technologies that fall into this category. The two that caused alarm and again I would suggest it is because it was hyped against the tracking feature as the initial focus versus the value it brings to the table. On Huff Post Live this week,  “Texas School District Reportedly Threatening Students Who Refuse Tracking ID, Can’t Vote For Homecoming“, with the crux of the discussion being the embedding of an RFID chip into school ID cards to be used for tracking attendance and insuring that funding continues to the schools. This is useful, but not the value to the public and causes debate. How many of you ever punched a time clock? I have on multiple occasions, well that was an early and crude form of attendance monitoring / tracking. Why is it now that we can use technology to more accurately track and rapidly assess to take action of value with the data different?

Flip the debate and think about some of the most tragic incidents that have occurred in our schools in the last decade and one that is close to home for me at VA Tech. When I was in school, we roamed campus freely including all of the buildings. We didn’t have cell phones, we knew our dormmates, we phoned each other on land lines, we had an idea of where those close to us were, we stuck together in groups and I knew I could phone one of the boys from the dorm to meet me and walk me back to the dorm in the dark if I got stuck somewhere alone and felt unsafe. So again, I challenge folks not to just look at it from a tracking standpoint, but from a ease of security standpoint. Who’s in the building? Where are my kids? Did they make it to the bus? The list goes on.

During my discussion on Huff Post Live it was more around the use of cellular data. I watched a television segment recently on the tracking of license plates and taking pictures of cars around a city with the purpose being repossession. Again, under ordinary situations, no one is tracking the ordinary. Under stressful situations, it can assist in regaining a safe situation and uncovering details that might not have been available previously.

We could go on for hours with this one as it generates the most debate, however, we all have location tracking in our cell phones and tablets. We like to be able to sound an alarm or find our device, pinpoint a good restaurant, provide directions in a pinch, the list is endless. There is great value in using the technology and data and we use it everyday whether consciencously or not.

Marketing:
In the Wall Street Journal earlier this week the article, “Big Brother, Now at the Mall“, discussed how a mall kiosk is using facial recognition software to estimate sex and age to present advertisements to those seeking information. This is using data to drive value to both the consumer and the retail organizations. This has been going on for a very long time. How many rewards cards do you carry and use? The ability to present items to you has been happening here for quite a while. If this use of data is troublesome, stop using the cards for the points / discounts and asking for assistance. However, the value is to both the organization and us as consumers in finding items that might interest us more than others and stocking retail organizations with items more in tune with the demographics of the location and patron buying patterns. Again, let’s seek the value in the technology and stop jumping to the Big Brother conclusion, but the answer is always simple, don’t use the technology.

Security:
I’ll end with this final article also from this week’s Wall Street Journal, “House Report On Huawei, ZTE Will Pose Security Questions For CIOs”. The article suggests that a manufacturer of a cellular device is collaborating for purposes of espionage. Whether the threat is true or not, it points out the very real requirements to take security and use of data and devices very seriously in our organizations and plan for it appropriately. This week Sally Hudson, Security Research Director, of IDC and a colleague of mine, Tom Crabb, Senior Product Marketing Manager, presented a webinar, “Security Access Governance and the New Normal”, on this topic of knowing who, where, why, etc. is accessing data you own and for what purpose as the perimeter has widened over night and is extremely fluid. They discuss the risks and how to best secure your data. Ensuring you have secured your data then enables you to leverage that data with analytics in powerful ways to drive competitive advantage into your organization.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of the possibilities that lie ahead in our digital world. As IT professionals, we must constantly think of security, build it into our services, use of data and the value we can provide to our customers everyday. Technology, including the use of big data, will drive competitive advantage and the next generation of innovation, but it must be used, managed and secured wisely.

Finally, “Technology without Imagination – Commodity — Technology with Imagination – Endless  Possibilities” is something I firmly believe and we have all benefited. I challenge this coming wave of technologists to not make the mistake of the past in first applying the use of big data technology as inward focused analytics, but seek how to create value first and secure / manage it appropriately.

I couldn’t resist this opportunity to discuss high availability, speed to root cause, speed to restoration, security and mission critical services. We sit on the eve of the largest single sporting event that comes around only every 4 years and the recent headlines are, “Twitter Down 2012:  Service Out for Users Throughout the World”. I scratched my head wondering how this would look on the London skyline, literally as the London Eye conveys the Sentiment with Twitteras the gauge of status with color and intensity for all to see?

Read more here . . . 

The Hub Commentary_

I’ll start with, those that lead their markets, lead by a lot.  It is no surprise the leader of the Top 25 Social CIO’s is SAP.  Oliver Bussmann not only leads by >20% over the nearest follower, but by >80% over the #3 competitor.  Just as I mentioned in my previous post this morning, the next generation will be our future leaders, workers, buyers and customers.

I love when I can manage to triangulate and hit the trifecta of 3 blog posts in one day (Metrics, Top 25 Social CIOs and this article).  This is an IT department that doesn’t measure number of tickets closed or server uptime, but product innovation, interactions with customers, etc.  This is the difference in a CIO that “keeps the lights on” spending 1-2% of revenue annually just operating, from one that counts the financial aspects of business transformation and the one that leads strategic innovation and growth of the company.

I think back to 2007 and my entre into social media marketing.  I had a forward thinking marketing co-worker, Frank Strong, who was always on me to post a blog driving our companies presence in the market.  I must say, I would avoid him in the hall.  Then I didn’t have a Tweet account, much less Facebook, etc.  Then I needed to figure out how to build awareness for a product in a family of dozens of products and how would I make this small fish standout in the market – Social Media.  That was late 2010 / early 2011 ….. The BSM Hub had a Facebook page long before I had one personally.

Today, I communicate with my network via LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, etc. from my TweetDeck console over coffee and lunch each day.  I have had customers reach in and I have had a few prospects do a bit of research via the Twitter that I’ve attended to personally, long before a sales executive is involved.  Oliver is correct, putting a face to the product and company, making it personable is much more the norm than a customer working directly with a sales executive these days.  I know I would never hear from my baby nephew if I didn’t learn to text, Tweet and Facebook!

This is how the next generation works and buys, are you social and personally available to your customers, workers, prospects and the market?

Michele

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Picture yourself as an Executive in 2017, struggling to make sense of how many of your peers failed to become social. Many of them pushed aside by their more savvy underlings who built up both internal and external social networks.  Their large networks wield tremendous power, collective intelligence and the ability to influence both employees and customers. Many of the executives that didn’t adapt were caught in a type of ‘vocational innovator’s dilemma’; where they stubbornly refused to change despite the warning signs.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

I couldn’t pass on this post this week.  What is interesting is the amount of commentary and the chord the author struck.  What I would find interesting is juxtaposing this list of CIO’s against their competition in the Fortune 500 list for 2012.  Do they lead their industry?  Are they on the move?  I suspect they are.

For those naysayers about the Social CIO’s, I have to mention that how the leadership acts, tells you a lot about the organization.  How personable is the organization regardless of size? Are they Tweeting for sake of Tweeting or is there content linked to the Tweet that is insightful?  There is method to the madness of jumping into the social media marketplace to advance your organization.

This is a whole new generation, they expect to surf the web/Tweets, quickly access data and make a decision about where they buy and why.  These are the future buyers, workers and leaders in the business world.  It’s time us old timers understand. learn and use these tools in a very competitive world.

How is your organization entering the Social World?

Michele

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The transformation from traditional business to social business is incredibly difficult. As is the case in any organizational metamorphosis, making technology decisions must take worker behavior and corporate culture into account, since people and culture are by far the biggest obstacles to change (Read Full Article…)

I traveled the globe from October to February meeting with customers and our sales teams discussing NetIQ’s IT Operations Management (ITOM) value and solutions, then I traded in wings for a bit.  Now it’s time for one of my favorite battery re-charging conferences of the year, the Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Management Summit (IOM).  I enjoy the Summit to see old friends in the vendor community as well as many old analyst friends, but this year there is a lot of buzz around the Summit and ITOM has become the talk of the town again.  Here are few quotes and phrases from the opening pages of the Summit Agenda:

• “Delivering Accelerated Business Value:  Cloud, Mobility and More”
• Hot Topics:
  • Enterprise mobility
  • Private/Public cloud computing
  • Moving beyond server virtualization
  • Cost optimzation
  • Data center space, power and cooling
  • ITIL and process improvement
  • Improving IT service quality
  • Business value
• “The reign of the PC is over.  A new era is emerging, one that will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver services to users.”

There are many sessions on the power of these emerging technologies, how we will manage them, how we will deliver value to the business and how technology is no longer just operating the business – technology is powering the business.  At least that’s what our businesses are expecting in the coming couple of years and how the competition with the service providers is stacking up and pushing the IT Wake Up call.

I’m jazzed to start my day tomorrow with 3 back to back keynotes with a couple of old friends:

• 10 Emerging Trends that will Impact Infrastructure and Operations – David Cappuccio
• Applications 2020:  The Impact on Infrastructure and Operations of Current and Emerging Trends in Applications – Valentin Sribar
• The IT Operations Scenario – Ronni Colville & Deb Curtis

Then we move into lunch, come see us at the NetIQ solution showcase to chat about the sessions with my old friends and how we see their insights coming to life in our every day worlds.  I’ve been posting on the need for IT to better align in how it speaks of technology in the business as services and driving top line revenue rather than just bottom line with cost savings for a while now.  In the last bullet above from the opening pages of the agenda, the one thing that did strike me odd is “deliver services to users”.  I would restate that as it is how we will “deliver services to our customers”  to drive revenue.  Yes, driving efficiency into the organization is part of the IT balancing act, but the first focus has shifted to the customer and value.

Then I’ll finish the afternoon with:

• Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012:  Will You Be Able to Manage Them? (Before They Manage You?) – Cameron Haight
• Compuware, VMware and Dell will provide simultaneous session with a App Performance, Cloud Mgmt and a CIO Panel, repsectively – How will I choose?
• 2 More Choices to Make:
  • VDI and other Virtualization Strategies to Securely Support and Manage a Dynamic Workforce – Neil MacDonald & Philip Redman
  • Leveraging Mobility, Content and Communication in you Business Processes – Bern Elliot
• 2 More Final Choices to Make:
  • Lessons Learned from Early Adopters of Social IT Management – Jeffrey M. Brooks & George Spafford
  • Networking and Mobility Trends for the Next Decade – Tim Zimmerman

Then we are back to wrap up at the NetIQ solution showcase with a head spinning with many new viewpoints and ideas.  I look forward to speaking with many of the attendees to gain their insights into the sessions, stop on by and join the conversation, follow us in real-time on Twitter and send your comments to these posts.

As you can see from my agenda for just the first day, many new trends to wrap our management arms around to provide flexibility with balance of controls.  Change is coming fast and furious and managing it with controlled risk will be the key to the successful in the coming year.   I have some choices to make tomorrow regarding the sessions I can attend, but look forward to hearing about the risks and value of new technologies applied to our business challenges.  You even see a little Social Media has creeped into IT Management.  Wonder what that’s all about?  🙂

I’ll send a few early comments on Twitter tomorrow during my adventures.  Follow:  @BSMHub this week and catch the real-time insights, at least my perspective, of the conference.  I’ll post my take aways each evening.  Drop me your comments, I’d love to hear what’s happening out there in the real-world.

Michele

The Hub Commentary_

I find this piece interesting for a couple of reasons.  The first being the application of technology to drive business and change the business, the second for the use of technology internally for productivity and the final interesting component are the comments that follow the article.

Most of the comments were not very positive, but they illustrated their point and opinion and created a conversation in a social media channel with the comment.  How we interact inside and outside our organizations is changing and will continue to change as new technologies arrive and they are applied in new and different ways.

I’ve noticed a change in many businesses I interact with in my personal life.  Many are becoming reachable, personable and are fostering the customer relationship more than ever before.  Some better than others and represent both small and very large organizations.    I’ve been surprised by those that are in touch with their customers and those that are not so in touch.

We all use the internet to read reviews, find product comparisons, provide feedback, ask questions, etc.  Why wouldn’t we expect the growth of social media channels and tools to grow exponentially in the coming years?  The companies that embrace, manage and exploit it will be the ones with the most loyal customers.

So what does this have to do with IT and BSM?  Our technology organizations must be leading the charge in applying new technology in our organizations both for productivity, but most importantly to drive competitive advantage and growth  Technology organizations as we know them today are transforming as business takes on the function of applying technology and driving innovation.  I suspect in the not so distant future we will have centers of innovation rather than IT organizations.

How are you applying social media channels and tools to drive your business?

Michele

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When Red Robin Gourmet Burgers introduced its new Tavern Double burger line last month, the company had to get everything right. So it turned to social media.  The 460-restaurant chain used an internal social network that resembles Facebook to teach its managers everything from the recipes to the best, fastest way to make them. Instead of mailing out spiral-bound books, getting feedback during executives’ sporadic store visits and taking six months to act on advice from the trenches, the network’s freewheeling discussion and video produced results in days.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

This is a topic I lean a little less toward IT driving than I do marketing as a technology to reach customers and prospects.  Most social media tools are external to an organization and not really something I believe IT should own and more the realm of the marketeers to use to reach out to their customers and prospects.

Now as a rogue marketeer in my own organization, I will say that there are a couple of tools and items that some technical assistance would be nice.  This comes in the forms of blogs and websites you might use in your social media strategy.  It is true, as a rogue, you can set-up your own blog and website hosted by others with a mild amount of technical expertise, however, I’m sure there are others who could have moved me faster.

The other item I’ll mention is that when these rogue efforts happen, who owns the domain, who keeps it going after the employee leaves, etc.?  These are items where the IT organization could come in handy to negotiate contracts, insure domains are with the company, etc.

I believe the social media strategy is a marketing strategy, however, I do believe there is a supporting role where IT should be involved and with Service Managers in place marrying IT and business objectives, this could be well managed.

How does your IT organization work with Marketing on Social Media, customer outreach?

Michele

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Social technology is coming into every organization whether IT wants it or not. The adoption of social technologies to support business and customer needs has been fastest outside of IT — often with IT playing catch-up and struggling to provide value. CIOs are at a crossroads where they can either choose to lead IT toward social business maturity or sit back and watch as the rest of the organization pushes ahead, leaving IT in social business obscurity. The choice is easy, but the execution is difficult.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Nice article and similar to a previous post of mine on Finding your Services. In that post I described mapping your services based upon cost and value to the organization.  Keeping those differentiating services in house and evaluating other deployment options, like Cloud, for those that do not differentiate your organization.

A component called out in this article is usually the obstacle that keeps these projects from being right sourced, fear of losing jobs.  It’s a job evolution as the author describes to a service provider, business analyst, value add analytics driving growth into the business.

The model is much like that of the manager of managers.  IT becomes the manager of managers and analyst of services and will require the tools to aid in turning data into information.  There becomes the requirement for the integration platform that pulls data from the various monitors and service providers, as well as the value/volume of transactions being processed driving growth.

IT becomes “glue and the view” into the services they provide and their performance to the organization.

How are you preparing to evolve your data center staff and services?

Michele

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When CIOs take calculated risks, choosing emerging technologies from less established companies, the payoff can be enticing. We take you inside the journey of two established organizations for a deeper look at this success.   (Read Full Article…)

As I wrote in an earlier post, the world is getting more mobile and social and this all links to the cloud. In fact, the three are inextricably linked as mobile and the cloud make it so much easier to be social, whether posting a photo from your mobile phone to Facebook or checking in at your favorite restaurant on Foursquare. It’s easy to think that this has nothing to do with you and your business, but as the world becomes more socially focused, it puts a powerful communications tool into the hands of your customers.

In the old days, the way business worked was you developed a product and crafted a message to sell the product. You controlled the entire process, especially what you told the customer. Whether they had a positive or negative experience with your product didn’t matter much in the scheme of things because individual customers had no personal broadcasting platform except word of mouth and that wasn’t very efficient. Today, that’s all changed because using social media tools, customers can tell the world when they love your product, or conversely when they don’t.

Customers are much more in control of the message now, and not only that, you as a company are much more engaged in a two-way conversation. That’s why locking down external social media could end up being counter-productive. It actually makes sense to engage your customers in a dialogue and react to negative experiences before they escalate.

Because all of this important business is going on in social channels, there has to be a way to measure your engagement and that’s precisely why IBM has developed two new products (from recent analytics company purchases). The first is IBM Coremetrics Social and the other is Unica Pivotal Veracity Email Optimization Suite.  What these tools have in common is that they give you the ability to track and understand your customers inside various social channels. The Unica tools tracks links from emails across social channels, while the Coremetrics product gives you the ability to measure the ever-elusive social media ROI.

As your conversations with your customers and between your customers (and other interested parties) moves into social channels outside of your direct control, it only makes sense that your organization begins to find tools that help you measure how effectively you are engaging with your customers in the online social sphere. Only by having meaningful metrics (as with any enterprise strategy) can you provide accurate measurement of just how effective your online social strategy is and tools like these examples can help you do that.

Photo by Guarvaronomics on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

I took a test on SearchCIO-Midmarket.com today to clear my head from other more distressing work details.  I’ve been in the deep end of the social media swimming pool for the past 90 days and I’ve read many interesting articles, books, blogs, you name it on social media and inbound marketing.  I’ve also read my fair share of articles regarding who in IT owns and manages social media and it’s process for your company.  Most are pointing to the CIO.

Screech, time out, slow down, hold on – IT in most businesses is not currently aligned to managing system performance in alignment to the objectives of the company and do not practice good business service management.  Thus the explosion of service providers creating competition for the business and new flexible and simple buying models from the external providers.  When you ask an IT professional at a cocktail party what they do for a living, the response is generally, I’m a data base administrator, I manage networks, I write applications, the list goes on.  When the answer should be I sell insurance for the largest organization in the world and I manage the network that interacts with our customers.

Rewind – back to the first question, so the organization that does not currently understand business objectives and priorities of the company is now being looked at to manage and implement the social media process for your organization’s brand and marketing.  This is like oil and water or two battering rams knocking heads – or Michele and Tobin daily – Marketing versus Product Management 🙂  The infrastructure that will be used to grow awareness and dominance in the marketplace won’t be managed by your IT organization, this is a marketing strategy with new, free and public tools.  It is live and in real-time interactions versus the days of old with snail mail flyers and phone calls – it’s brand, strategy and just a new set of tools that are free and in the domain of the cloud.

The touch point into IT is when you finally strike gold, go viral and have a swarm of killer bees after you coming into your web front.  Then your IT organization should be alerted that a crazy marketing person is about to make revenue quota in an hours worth of sales on your network.  In case your marketing folks forget that there might be capacity constraints in taking orders and creating revenue through the network.  Then IT should have the business service management practices in place and the early warning system that value / volume of transactions are spiking and can take action to increase capacity to cash the checks and grow revenue.  The alternative is melt down, lost revenue, lost customers and a very angry marketing team that worked hard to bring customers to the business.

We can no longer think in terms of business and IT, IT is the business and both have to have the same objectives, know the priorities and understand the points of interaction and impact to be successful together.

How well did you do on the test and how are you supporting your business growth?

Michele

The Hub Commentary_

Social media marketing to your customers is a no brainer and makes sense.  Use within the organization becomes sticky as the article points out regarding broadcasting to the external world, internal projects.  So what is the answer to leveraging this real-time communication trend within the organization?

Novell has built into it’s Configuration Management System a social media interface watching the trend and adoption of social media back in 2008.  It provides the opportunity to share information during projects as well as post project inclusive of a tag wall.

Configuration management databases are notoriously difficult to maintain and often fall out of date when not used.  The concept in developing this system was to provide open access and, much like Wikipedia, enable many people from various roles to add to the data regarding configurations

While this addresses one component within a data center, I expect that more and more avenues will be adopted as we move through transformation.  Many development organization already use wiki’s and twiki’s to interact and track information during projects and most organizations have long since been using some form of Instant Messenger.

I predict that in the not so distant future we will see Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) versions of Twitter and Facebook for use internally to the organization as communication tools.  This will require cost and value discussions as with any business service management practice and will require some education to become useful and powerful tools without becoming toys and distractions.

Having grown up with the telephone and prior to the internet, I see the value to instant access to folks I know who could provide a quick answer real-time via an IM, etc.  However, I do believe we lose far more than we gain by losing the live interactions and organizations will need to work to maintain healthy, productive environments.

What is your social media implementation inside your organization?

Michele

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Social Networking has always existed in different forms. In the distant past, people communicated face-to-face or wrote letters to each other. With the advent of the electronics age, social networking took different forms: phone calls, emails, texting, IM, etc.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Consumer technology trends will always push that of the internal IT organizations.  The next generation of workforce I think of as the “me generation”.  When did we shift from getting a job and doing the job to me the worker defining the job and how it is done?  I do find this curious and am a proponent of the flexible work environment.

With everything there comes a need for balance:  flexibility and control, the heart of any good business service management practice.  The first example of social media driving sales is an excellent example.  That same sort of internal community building can be useful in finding pockets of expertise with business and productivity applications.  You are creating a big presentation, who has done something similar? who might have an example? who could help with this tricky macro?  The possibilities are endless.

I do, however, see a significant risk to the business when everyone works the way they choose to work, with their own devices.  Where is the data? How secure is the transport? Are you losing your IP when these workers leave the company?

The balancing act of cost, risk and service value will become increasingly more relevant as the conversation continues.

How flexible is your business and how do you manage risk?

Michele

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Social media’s emergence as a key business app is just one of the trends that have led to a point of no return on consumer IT. Dell’s Paul D’Arcy explains — and shares how CIOs can plan for and benefit from the consumerization of IT.   (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

We have all become accustomed to social media avenues, we expect to interact with companies on the internet and CIOs must incorporate it as part of the infrastructure.  As the article states, it isn’t an IT strategy, it’s for IT to support as required, but an executive strategy.

Many of us think of it as a marketing strategy, however, it can also be a support and information avenue with your customers who demand instant access to information.  It is a paradigm for sharing internal communication and keeping data current too.  The challenge is just as the article states, looking at driving revenue growth through new and different channels.

How do you incorporate Social Media into your strategy?

Michele

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What does it take for businesses to successfully harness the power of social media? A new report from Forrester Research says that a social business strategy is key. Here’s how to create one.   (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

As a marketeer and IT professional, I’m not sure I see the connection between IT and social media unless the infrastructure is set up inside a business.  I say this as someone who has spent a great deal of time in recent months both studying and deploying inbound marketing via social media technologies.  As a business service management practice it relates in driving growth for the business, internally the technologies are useful in driving collaboration and efficiency, but only if there is value to the business for the objective of the practice.

I don’t see it as ITs role to set policy on the use or management of external sources for social media content.  I am fortunate to work for an organization that sees the benefit of the external conversation, has minimal policies and trusts employees to use good common sense in their external social conversations.  External social media is about creating the relationship with your customers, prospects, providing good information – it’s not about Tweeting for the sake of it or Facebook just to have a page.  There needs to be a business driver, otherwise it is a personal action.

The opening comments of it gets in the way of work and is a nuisance is perplexing to me.  It isn’t an IT concern to control or manage the external world.  It is company policy that should define what employees do via external channels.  That said, these external channels are inbound marketing, awareness, and leads generation.  This is the problem with IT, they do not control all technology and need to seek how to best leverage, evolve, exploit and support new uses of technology to drive business growth versus being the usual, eternal obstacle.

Social media is not something for IT to govern.  Until it makes a connection back to the organization, IT is not involved.  Once the connection back to the organization occurs, then there needs to be a business requirement and policy enforced – most of all support to leverage that relationship as best as possible to drive business growth as possible.  The external conversation is not for IT to manage or govern, that is a company policy.  Times have changed and building a relationship with your customers is relevant and expected.  So I disagree with ITs role in social media until it links back to the organization and the mechanics of that link.

So as the article slightly mentions, it is service to your customers and it is marketing to your prospective customers and thus business growth.  Drive business growth and create competitive advantage with better customer service with new technologies, ideas and avenues rather than being the usual obstacle.  So I challenge you not to find fault with social media, but…..

How do you use social media to grow your business?

Michele

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The Hub Commentary_

Social platforms in IT have actually been there, just as prevalent in the business.  Most of us use a Wiki or some sort of shared collaboration and we update it with information as we come by it and correct information others have posted, etc.  Most of us have been to Wikipedia at least once.  The ability to manage massive amounts of data about devices in the work place becomes challenging as they become mobile, connected and disconnected through multiple forms of connections.  Self service and social platforms are accepted forms of keeping many sources of the data up to date and accurate.

Think about it, most of us do not keep rolodexes any longer.  We expect our friends and colleagues to update their own online cards with the most accurate data and we access it in real-time when we need it or capture it when they phone or email us next, why not with the assets and data in the work place?

Michele

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Report says social platforms evolving as new source of business intelligence; cloud computing as driver of business growth

The future of information technology (IT) will be dominated by data, with social platforms evolving as a new source of business intelligence, and cloud computing delivering on IT’s role as a driver of business growth, according to a new report from Accenture.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Applying a social interface to IT may sound crazy to the technologists, however, if you move past the initial reaction and think about many of the initiatives from IT and the response from the business, it may just be the interface that drives acceptance.  We have all been exposed and most (even I must admit to it) have used, adopted and/or totally embrace the social media explosion.  Business Service Management is  practice and part of that practice is the interactions with our customers and how they want to interact with IT.

I consider myself middle of the road in adoption as I still like the human interaction and speaking with colleagues and customers face-to-face, however, those interactions become planned and raise in relevance given the accepted methods of quick, short interactions that occur all day long with text messages, emails, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, RSS Feeds, you name it.

The earliest form was chat and we all know it has been a long standing request for most service and support software to deploy chat methods to ask for help.  This could be a long post, but let’s keep it simple.  Social Media interfaces for the sake of it will fail, Social Media interfaces applied in the right situations could be wildly successful.  A couple of examples that pop to mind are:

Service Dashboards – Most of us think of these as one-way and very limited information and thus they are useful and provide information during a service impacting event and I would debate how much they are used outside of IT during smooth running hours.  However, Service and Support is a great example of where a social interface may make sense.  The experience is 2 way – giving, taking and sharing information.  A smart interface to accept and present information rather than merely accepting a new ticket.  Tobin’s power outage post is a great example.  Instead of entering a ticket, he clicked his way to the right information.

Configuration/Inventory/Service Information: Wikipedia is a great example of keeping information accurate and relevant through the use of consuming audience.  Now apply that what is typically thought of as the most technical of IT projects, the CMDB or Configuration Management System.  We all use a variety of technical devices and we all have varying levels of comfort and/or time to deal with servicing them, however, up-to-date information is required for service and support.

At the very least, we want to know when we will be affected by maintenance or service outages.  What if we could subscribe to communities of users of the various applications we use day-to-day and could find the power users of Excel or Adobe Presenter in our organization to help us with that important presentation?  The classic support challenge has been the questions of how to use a piece of software, the users of the software are the best choice outside of the supplier and finding those who may have figured out a clever function might be helpful.

Just  a couple of applications that come to mind.  I agree with Nigel, the Social Media interfaces are coming, we use them in daily life and should seek to evaluate the best method of interacting with our customers.

How socially accepted is your IT?

Michele

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IT has been here before, having to clean up islands of automation that left organizations unable to coordinate information and react rapidly to changing market dynamics.  (Read Full Article…)