Kids that are entering the work force this year have been using social media in one form or another since they started high school. They grew up with MySpace always being a part of their vocabulary. The iPhone came out during their freshman year of college. Twitter to this generation is a tool for older folks although I think that’s changing. Theses kids have posted video’s to the web of teachers talking on the phone in class. They have recorded phone calls where parents have lost it and posted the audio. They know how easy it is to use multimedia and integrated it with social media to get buzz, publicity, notoriety, and make things happen. This group completed homework assignments through social network platforms and have even used it to cheat, although cheating will be considered collaboration now that they are in the work force.

So what does this mean for business? The younger workforce will continue to be more and more comfortable with social media, and building online brands, and collaborating together online. While some of the older generation does not feel you get to know people through social media, this generation knows that you are who you project yourself to be. This trait of projecting personalities can be very valuable to businesses if they take the opportunity to cultivate the values they want their employees to project. If your business wants to project honesty, commitment, hard work it’s very easy to do and a benefit to projecting these values through social media is that the values often manifest themselves in real life. It’s hard to project one set of values and live by another. I know personally I’ve become a much better person because of my projections.

The additional value collaborative tools provide is the ability to maximize the employee knowledge base. Collaboration through micro-blogging allows the community to see status on all projects that are currently in progress and provides the opportunity to provide input if the community has expertise to provide. Of course there need to be policies in place so that these tools are not abused but most people at work use the tools for work and if the larger community is using the tools correctly then they will police and moderate the community for you.

Finally on individual projects tools such as wiki’s provide the ability for a team to collaborate on documentation, decisions, and email like communication that should be captured via a company knowledge base. Tracking these communications via a wiki allows for the companies knowledge capital to be centralized and available. Now anyone can see why a decision was made even years later. This process allows future decisions to be better informed and made with all detail necessary. The best wiki tools search all attached documents as well as standard wiki pages and they allow you to convert or attach emails, documents, spread sheets and presentations to the wiki. This provides truly powerful knowledge content management and the new workforce is not only comfortable with it but will demand it from their employers.

Don’t forget that providing these tools helps to raise the moral of your work force by provide better communication and delivering on their expectations. Moving to Enterprise 2.0 technologies is no longer an option but a necessity. It’s only a matter of time if you haven’t started the process already.

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There are many service companies out there that have to do client integrations so that they can best serve their clients. So what should I expect in the way of support as a client and how easy should a company make it for me to integrate?

Let’s start from the beginning. The Sales Process:
During the sales process the service company should know what types of questions to ask so they can recommend the most efficient and effective way to integrate with your company. They should already have a profile of companies that are similar in size, function, industry, technology infrastructure and revenue so they know how to recommend integration. I know I know you’re special and different and so is everyone else. For that matter so is every project I have ever work on yet somehow they always get developed through the same processes even if it’s agile, XP, or some other methodology. In the end the methodology is always get the requirements, design, build and test. So as I was saying the service company should know approximately where you will fit into their integration process. The service company should be able to explain why you fit into that integration level and approximately how much effort it will be to integrate with them based on past experience. Obviously they should also be able to explain the benefits of the integration to your organization.

Once there is agreement to move forward with the service the sales person will begin gathering a pre-defined set of data. Ideally this information will be written down on a nice check list that can be presented to the customer with definitions of the needed information and a short explanation of why the information is needed. If the service company has this information put together in this manor then you know they really have their stuff together.

The next step in the process will be for the sales person to bring back the information collected from the customer to the integration team and review what is needed for the specific customer as well as finalize on the decision of which integration is appropriate for the customer. The integration team will then put together the standard set of documentation pertaining to the defined integration level including project plans, technical documentation, communications plan, and any other supporting documentation.

It is now time to schedule a meeting with the customer and their development team. All documentation should have been provided and reviewed before the meeting begins. The goal of the meeting should be to answer any questions about the integration and build plans for implementation. There obviously may be other meetings and discussions along the way to facilitate the process but this outlines a smooth and well established path to integration.

Look for my next article on how can Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 better faciliate this process.

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