The IBM example - Social network structure enhancing business growth.

Social tools have helped to change the way people interact. In businesses, “smart” companies have taken advantage of these social tools; forming communities of their clients/consumers. They gained from these communitie's products/service criticism and better understanding of the needs of their clients; an information which has helped them evolve products/services that now satisfy their clients.

 Many other smart companies have used social tools(networks) to form talent communities – a way of filtering interested contributors who are knowledgeable about their kind of business and are useful potentials in forging ideas that would move their businesses to new heights.

 But how does this social networking “structure” (we really mean the “structure” not the social network itself) apply directly to business growth? To answer this, we ask another question; what has driven most social networks to popularity?

•  Ease of use

• Interoperability

• Sharing

While “ease of use” and “interoperability” are already parts of most companies plan for particular products or services, the not so new (yet most overlooked) strategy is sharing.

Smart companies have already implemented sharing as a means to quickly popularize their products and services. Sharing in this context simply means to take responsibility together.  It means creating products and services that other companies can share in. Take IBM for example with its partner program that creates millions of dollars in revenue for partners sharing in the IBM experience. IBM produces world class software and hardware that its partners can market around their region. Some partners complete the IBM products more by building software that runs on the hardware or hardware that utilizes the software. IBM goes a step further by helping their clients all the way through by been part of any negotiation process if partners need an expert to shed more light on the IBM product in questions.

One might begin to see business sharing as an IT thing or like the traditional business distributorship; it is more. For a company to share products/services effectively, that product/service must first be complete on its own while having the ability to accept a third party plug-in – essentially for a new functionality. As another example, facebook and the Zynga app; and a lot more in power generation, banking, etc.

Research and development teams must begin to design innovative products/services that are sharable i.e. products and services that have responsibilities that can be shared by potential clients/partners.

The concept of Sharing implemented on any product/service gives room for third party innovation (creating room for the much needed openness on your product/service); which creates new use for your product/service, new market you don’t need to compete in and quickly popularizes your brand. 

Related readings:   

•  Gartner research gives an example of how Scotiabank Boosts Productivity, Communication and Collaboration With Social Software.

• Rules of social recruiting -  social recruiting.

GETTING THE RIGHT INFORMATION FOR A PROJECT - RESEARCHING (PART 2)

Research involves gathering the right information you’ll need to complete your project. No one is an island of information and No one man has all the information needed to sustain his life talk less of satisfying others.

The truth is that all human beings see things from different perspective. My perspective of up might be someone else’s upside down. So keeping in mind that our soft solution will be used by different people with a whole lot of different perspectives, we need research that will bring the views of a whole lot of different people.

Some of the easiest ways to get this kind of information for your solution include (but are not limited to) the following:-

• Try brainstorming with other neutral minded people on this project. They could see the project from dimensions you never imagined.

Brainstorming should be done in a way that the bias if it exists at all is insignificant and the contributor gives his true and creative input. For instance, The extent to which you get true constructive (or Destructive) criticism over an issue differs if your friend or family was criticizing you on one side and some government policy on the other.

• Meeting with Clients - Meetings with clients should be detailed. For each meeting, you must have a clear issue you intend to get an answer; and you must get it. With this new information, brainstorm and have a new meeting till all issues are crystal clear.

It is better to go through this process no matter how painstakingly it goes than providing an incomplete work to the client that makes you look unprofessional with no attention to detail. Most clients forget to tell you everything so you will need to bring it out of them.

To aid these meetings, you could draw up a mock up of your current understanding of the system and have them add, delete or modify the system as you see it until they (the clients) are satisfied. So many open source tools are available for designing soft project models or layouts ( we talk about these in the last part of this series).

• Meeting with Experts - Experts could be people who have probably implemented a similar project or people who are authorities in this field you are working to implement a solution.

Talking with experts gives you the first hand opportunity to see your project from an even more practical side. They have been there and they know at least most of the hurdles there might be.

They are good at advising on the best platform to work on for scalability, The kind of programming paradigm to implement for robustness and could show you bottlenecks you never envisaged.

BEGINNING A SOFTWARE PROJECT - THE BASICS. (PART 1)

To begin any project in any field, research is key. How large the research gets definitely varies on the size of the project. Good project research prior to project implementation will always :-

1. Save time - When goals are clearly seen and written down, the very next step in the way is known. No time is lost due to the fact that an unforeseen road suddenly pops up and you have to re-evaluate several thousand lines of codes.
2. Save cost - An athlete who runs into an unseen hurdle in an Olympics loses the race with broken bones (Double tragedy). You will be so shocked to realize how much an hour lag costs your business. That your competitor was able to deliver a project just as yours in less the time lies in the minutes you spent trying to re-evaluate implementation of an incomplete research which accumulated into hours and days and weeks; then you lost to your competitor.

The key in every project research is to find out specifics that will guide you to implement the project THE RIGHT WAY THE FIRST TIME. Some questions that if answered guide you in this light are:-

• How long do I have till I deliver this project.

• Am I absolutely (not assumed) clear on the needs of my client.

• Am I absolutely clear on what my project needs to solve.

• Which sets of people am I designing for - (are people with disabilities users of this system).

• What tools are important to implement this project from designing to deployment.

• Do I have the knowhow or do I need Experts.

• Has anyone implemented this kind of project previously.

NB: It must be done right. Doing it right means satisfying your client.

In the part two if this series, we evaluate very simple research techniques to help you get the right information you need to complete that project.