Micro blog(Twitter) in enterprise #2-Usecase of micro blog in enterprise September 28, 2009

Strategy of micro blog in enterprise

We understand how many values micro blog system has (In previous article). So what can we do in enterprise? Can we bring the potential of the system into efficiency of enterprise? Here is strategy

Micro blog for collaboration framework in enterprise

What can we do with micro blog in enterprise? There are use cases about internal use of micro blog system.

Develop personal brand.

Messages in micro blog are related to quality of personal brand. Message of expertise category or progress of work makes people know about the writer’s quality. Company uses this personal brand to optimize efficiency of their organization and let the company selects appropriate people for their work objective.

Aware risk quickly

By analyzing RT and hash tags in micro blog, company aware trend and risk. Field employee becomes aware risk most quickly. Analyzing trend let manager know that “Many employees think the problem can be risky. Many other people agree about that by RT etc.” It makes company find risk quickly and prepare the risk.

Make connection to expert

In huge company it is hard to find person who has an experience or knowledge about a problem. To find the people, employee asks to their manager with formal process. (face to face meeting or writing email.) The manager tries to find the people by asking another people etc. It takes a lot of time. And hard to find appropriate people.

In micro blog system, employee finds a people with hash tag search. And measure his expertise with history of his message in micro blog. If he is suitable to the job. Employee can ask a help by posting message in micro blog. This work is done in micro blog in a few minute. But it takes long time in traditional enterprise communication style.

Share knowledge

People saved link of useful information in micro blog. Qualified or useful information are re posted (RT) by others.  People can search information by searching the link with tag and recognized what contents is useful (How many copied by others? How many favorite by others?)

It is different style of search. Traditional enterprise search is based on accuracy. But this search mechanism is based on relationship and reputation. Many recommended information is more useful.

Share business context

Person who is newly joined a new job or project cannot understand project status, issue etc. It needs education and time to understand context. Message in micro blog represents status and emotion of employee. Employee’s message history means history of his work. So other people understand context – “What had been going on?” “What had been happened?” “What issue was ?”

Raise relationship and develop trust

Message in micro blog is not formal form but casual form. It expresses emotional things and status. Reader can understand what he is thinking and give a comment to his current status. It leverages communication between employees. Indeed it strengthens relationships.

In structured organization it is hard to communicate with higher level manager from employee. In Micro blog system employee subscribe higher level (CXX Level) message and can understand about him, communicate with him. It helps employee reduce gap from organization.

Horizontal and opened communication

Traditionally enterprise has structured organization. Communication is established by the organization structure. It has a lot of stack. The stack makes communication burden.

As a result communication time is increased and some idea is not reached to the stake holders.

Communication in micro blog blows away this gap. Micro blog is 1:N communication. Employee can post message and get a feedback from whoever who has interest in. It changed communication style from traditional vertical style to horizontal and opened style.

Opened communication is objectives what every company want to achieve.  It reduces communication time and share idea easily without organization wall.

Near Real Time communication

With mobile device support and async communication basics micro blog supports near real time communication without place & time restriction.

Micro blog in enterprise for external communication

So what about external communication tools for enterprise with micro blog? Already many company uses twitter.com for their marketing purpose. For example Amazon.com posted their news to twitter first not a formal media (News paper etc)

Marketing

Provide product information and event information.

Communicate with Customer.

Company analyze customer trend by analyzing twitter message. Get a feedback about their service and product.

CEO of Doosan group uses Twitter.com very well.

Here is episode about company marketing.  One of customer’s children wants to get a Doosan excavator model.  The customer simply post his thinking to Twitter and shared with CEO of Doosan. So he really sent Doosan excavator model to the customer.

This episode was posted many blogs and re-tweeted many time. As a result Doosan can advertise name value of company and their excavator  with just one excavator model price and without any marketing budget, any agency.

There can be many other usage of micro blog for external communication in enterprise. But this document focus on internal usage of micro blog enterprise. So I will not mention about external communication with micro blog anymore.

In next article i will introduce enterprise micro blog adoption strategy. (Architecture, Challenges, Implementation process)