My father was never one to use profanity, with one exception. In those instances when I was taking just too long to make a decision or show progress, he'd say, "Rob, it's time to ... or get off the pot!" We're pretty much at that point with Enterprise Social.
In 2012 Forrester embarked on an extensive research project to determine the business value of collaboration and enterprise social initiatives. The backdrop was straightforward; overall adoption was not at the levels projected by the organizations that had made the investment. Just about half had made the investment in some form, and just about half were waiting for more evidence of true business value.
Through extensive interviews, we discovered that the value was indeed emerging, albeit somewhat slowly. If that's the case, then the question changes from "is there value?" to "how do we accelerate time to value?" The research indicated that when enterprise social solutions and tenets are applied to known business processes with an eye toward increasing the quality through better access to content and expertise, the results are demonstrable. Additional benefits came from removing human latency from processes by applying not only social, but mobile as well. How do you find the low-hanging fruit in your organization? The more case studies there are, the better chance of finding on that would resonate for you. To that end, Forrester has assembled an all-star cast of vendors to discuss specific use cases within their customer bases. The goal of the panel is to discuss business, not products.
Joining me on stage will be:
Adam Pisoni of Yammer
Andy Kershaw of Oracle
Ram Menon, head of tibbr at Tibco
Rob Howard of Telligent
I've known all of these folks for a long time, and I'm honored that they will join me to discuss this at this vital point in time. The shindig will be in Washington DC on May 6 & 7.
Forrester's CIO Forum