Research Summary: Demystifying Enterprise Gamification For Business

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Purpose and Intent

Much hype surrounds the topic of gamification. Often seen as a technique to add engagement to existing tasks, projects, marketing campaigns, and initiatives, the term gamification unfortunately lacks the seriousness it deserves. This report seeks to change the point of view and demonstrate where gamification plays a role in the enterprise. More importantly, executives will discover how gamification can drive behavior and outcomes through both monetary and non-monetary incentives in enterprise class settings.

Executive Summary

Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes. Originating from the video game industry, many of these pioneering concepts now play a key role in driving incentive and behavior management for both brands in the consumer world and internal scenarios in the workplace. Enterprise gamification is a user experience (UX) and consumerization of IT (CoIT) trend that will take the market by storm in 2012. Constellation believes that by 2013, more than 50 percent of all social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification component.

In interviews with 55 early adopters of enterprise gamification, Constellation identifies the three core pillars that include measurable action, reputation and incentives. By creating triggers through both monetary and non-monetary incentives among customers, employees, partners, suppliers and other interested parties, organizations can secure sustainable engagement and drive business outcomes such as improved marketing response from external communities, sustained long-term customer loyalty, increased collaboration among internal teams, or enriched onboarding, delivering success with new hires, partners, and customers.

Enterprise gamification requires an application of psychology and behavioral economics to incentivize outcomes. Because enterprise gamification maps closely to human behavior, organizations will want to follow Constellation’s best practices in appealing to the “Seven Deadly Sins” for gamification design.

Research report surfaces leading practices from 55 early adopters

Some highlights of the report include:

• Details on who’s using gamification across the enterprise
• The three pillars of enterprise gamification
• The six elements of sustainable engagement
• Sustainable behaviors to drive desired business outcomes
• The Seven Deadly Sins to Optimize Gamification Design
• The top gamified business processes for the enterprise (see Figure 1)

Figure 1. Marketing, Customer Service and HR Processes Lead in Gamified Processes

Your POV.

Designing your gamification models?  What enterprise business processes will you gamify first? next?   Ready to turbo charge your next generation customer experience?  Have you tested out iActionable, CrowdTwist or the 3B’s (i.e. Badgeville, Bigdoor, and Bunchball?  Ready to here how you can apply the white arts of the 7 Virtues to work?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Get the report and other great research on the Constellation site

Resources and Related Posts

20110824 News Analysis: Bunchball Gamifies Salesforce.com And Delivers Simplified Applets

20110223 Best Practices: Applying The Seven Deadly Sins To Successful Gamification

20110120 Trends: 5 Engagement Factors For Gamification And The Enterprise

Community Input

Thanks to the following individuals for their review, input and contributions as part of the broader enterprise gamification community.

David Buckholtz (@dbuckho) – VP, Divisional CIO, Corporate IT, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Yvette Cameron (@yvettecameron) – VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Inc.

Andrea Chin – Senior VP, Transformation Office, Citigroup

Kris Duggan (@kduggan) – CEO and Co-Founder, Badgeville

Richie Etwaru (@richieetwaru) – Director, Chief Technology Officer’s Office, UBS

Irvin Fain (@ifain) – CEO and Co-Founder, CrowdTwist

Frank Falcone (@frankcrm) – Co-Founder and Executive Program Director, Rotman Centre for CRM Excellence

Maggie Fox (@maggiefox) – Founder and CEO, Social Media Group

Paul Greenberg (@pgreenbe) – Founder and President, The 56 Group

Ben Haines (@benlhaines) – CIO, Pabst Brewing Co.

Peter Kim (@peterkim) – Managing Partner, Dachis Group

Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky) – President, ThinkJar, LLC

Marshall Lager (@lager) – Founder and Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting

Alan Lepofsky (@alanlepo) – VP & Principal Analyst, Constellation Research, Inc.

Rajat Paharia (@rajatrocks), Founder and Chief Product Officer, Bunchball

Emanuele Quintarelli (@absolutezubzero) – Partner and Social Business Strategist, Open Knowledge

Alistair Rennie (@alistair_rennie) – General Manager Social Business, IBM

Ted Sapountzis (@sapountzis) – VP Social Media Audience Marketing, SAP

Adam Sold (@kafuchale) – Senior Director of Strategy, Dolby Labs

Dilip Soman (@dilipsoman) – Professor of Strategy, University of Toronto Rotman School of Management

Keith Smith (@chiefdoorman) – Chief Doorman and CEO, Big Door

Josh Weinberger (@kitson) – Independent Analyst

Michael Wu, PhD (@mich8elwu) – Principal Scientist, Lithium Technologies

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

News Analysis: SAP Buys SuccessFactors for $3.4B Signals SAP’s Commitment To Cloud, HCM, and Social

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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SuccessFactors Acquisition Puts SAP In Direct Competition With Workday And Taleo

SAP (NYSE:SAP) announced its $3.4B acquisition of SuccessFactors (NYSE: SFSF) as it seeks to bolster its position in the Cloud and more importantly in the rapidly growing strategic HCM market.  Based in San Mateo, CA, USA, SuccessFactors brings over 15 million subscription users from 3,500 customers in 168 countries.  The company has 1450 employees and has been one of the SaaS/Cloud darlings of the industry.  When completed, SuccessFactors will remain an independent entity renamed, SuccessFactors, an SAP company.  Lars Dalgaard, Founder and CEO, SuccessFactors will lead the cloud business for SAP.  A quick analysis of the news reveals:

• SAP seeking a comprehensive and complementary HCM solution. SAP believes the combination of SuccessFactors and SAP will create a comprehensive HCM solution, marrying strength in enterprise applications with people-focused cloud applications. Today, SAP serves the market with a comprehensive and international Core HR and payroll.  Other on-premise offerings include talent management, workforce analytics, and shared services delivery. Key offerings from SuccessFactors include areas such as talent management, recruiting management, goal management, performance reviews, and business execution.  Further, SAP believes the core SFSF offerings will be an attractive to more than 500 million employees of SAP customers .  SAP has 15,000 HCM deployments (not customers) that could benefit from one-stop shopping.
  
  Point of View (POV): While the core offerings provided a solid approach, these applications remained in the systems of transaction world and lacked many of the newer requirements for systems of engagement.  In fact, many customers left SAP to go to SuccessFactors to accelerate innovation in the talent space. The rise of Taleo, Workday, and Ultimate Software comes from the lack of general innovation in the HCM space by legacy vendors such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP.  Cloud computing provided the opportunity to deliver rapid innovation to customers.  Consequently, existing customers will welcome the move while best of breed purists will have to overcome the surprise and determine how innovative they expect SAP to become in HCM.

• SuccessFactors’ provides SAP with massive cross-sell opportunities. SAP believes the core SFSF offerings will be an attractive to more than 500 million employees of SAP customers .  SAP has 15,000 HCM deployments (not customers) that could potentially go for one-stop shopping from SAP.
  
  Point of View (POV): SAP sees the acquisition as a great cross-sell opportunity for other cloud apps and analytics.  Other opportunities include CRM, Collaboration, Travel, and Procurement in the cloud.  In the past two years, Success Factors has made the shift to focus on business performance execution and provides a real time decision making platform.  While customers can acquire a solution from one vendor, the integration of the various cloud platforms may prove to be a challenge.  However, from a financial play, Co-CEO, Bill McDermott sees this as an easy way to meet his 2015 target of €20billion and move towards the 35% margin he seeks to bring shareholders.

• SuccessFactors’ brings enhanced social, and cloud expertise while SAP provides mobile assets. Lars and company do bring cloud expertise and know how.  They have shown how to manage and innovate in large scale cloud deployments.  In addition, the CubeTree acquisition provides some basic social features and a solid set of pre-built integrations to many consumer and enterprise products including Twitter, Google Docs and Google Reader, Salesforce.com, WebEx and Basecamp.  Meanwhile, SAP hopes to add the Sybase platform to add business to employee mobility capabiltiies.
  
  POV: SAP’s many efforts headed up by Peter Lorenz may have to be rationalized quite quickly.  Why? SAP’s complete portfolio comprises five different software architectures from ByD, Career OnDemand, Plateau, and Business Suite 7.  Without harmonizing the architectures, SAP will inherit a technical deficit.  Lars first task must be how to integrate such a cacophony of technologies including how to fit Sybase Mobile onto the SuccessFactors architecture.  The Streamworks team will also face challenges with integrating the social business assets of CubeTree which include wikis, blogs, polls, file sharing, link sharing, search, and other consumer tech features.

The Bottom Line For Customers And Prospects (Buy-Side): Proceed With Caution

On the call with SAP and SuccessFactors executives, they reconfirmed that SuccessFactors will remain an independent entity and operate as “SuccessFactors, an SAP company”.  Lars Dalgaard is recommended for addition to the executive board of SAP AG.  However, customers and prospects should:

• Shore up existing concessions and agreements with SuccessFactors. Use this opportunity to add additional licenses as needed, make contract revisions, and secure commitments on product enhancements.  Sales folks will be clamoring to complete end of year deals.  Now is the best time to negotiate a deal.
• Seek clarity on the future cloud road map. Questions about the future road map abound.  With so many different offerings from SAP, which platform remains.  How will SAP handle cloud based integration at the process, data, and meta data level?
• Explore other SAP offerings. Now with a broader portfolio, existing SuccessFactors customers who are not SAP customers may want to explore some of the other Line of Business Cloud offerings.

The Bottom Line For Vendors (Sell-Side): SAP Must Continue To Make Selective Acquisitions In Three Out Of The Five Pillars of Consumer Tech To Grow

This acquisition and many others show why large enterprise software companies such as SAP must acquire for innovation in order to grow top line revenue.  In the mobile, cloud, and social space, we are seeing a war for footprint and users.  The market can expect more consolidation and more chaos as these acquisitions change the overall market landscape.  For enterprise software, Oracle, Salesforce.com, IBM, and SAP must place bets on the five pillars of consumer tech entering the enterprise in order to remain relevant and grow.  SAP currently has built a solid foundation in analytics/big data with Business Objects and has made forays into Cloud with Business By Design and Mobile with Sybase (see Figure 1).  This acquisition moves it further along in Cloud.  However, SAP will have to do more in Social (CubeTree perhaps) and mobile to move forward.  Unified communications may come from a partnership with Cisco and Microsoft instead of an outright acquisition or organic development.

Figure 1. SAP Covers Three Out Of Five Pillars In The Consumerization of IT

The cloud does change many dynamics for all technology vendors.  Here’s why:

• Hardware vendors emerge as cloud providers.  Dell’s entrance into providing bundled Cloud services shows how the model can also provide bundled services from a trusted hardware provider.
• System integrators move to the cloud to provide differentiated IP. Capgemini’s Immediate offering shows how a system integrator can provide Cloud BPO with bundled services under a single SLA and contract.
• Full stack providers move to create value to both the IT buyers and the line of business executive. For example,  IBM has led the way with its Social Business and Cross Channel Commerce acquisitions.  Oracle has finally acknowledging that the cloud exists with the RightNow acquisition and accelerated the cloud wars.

The next 12 to 18 months will show how innovation created by startups will find a natural path to existing legacy vendors.  The model is no different than in hardware 15 years ago.  However, with software, new innovators and entrants will continue to emerge due to the low barrier of entry for innovation and the compelling returns in exit strategies.

Your POV.

SuccessFactors customers, what’s your reaction to the SAP purchase?  SAP customers, will you move to SAP?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with your next gen apps strategy efforts.  Here’s how we can help:

• Mapping out the roadmap in the Future of Work
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support for SaaS, Cloud, and On-Premises software.
• Evaluating SaaS/Cloud options
• Assessing apps strategies (e.g. single instance, two-tier ERP, upgrade, custom dev, packaged deployments”
• Designing end to end processes and systems
• Comparing SaaS/Cloud integration strategies
• Assisting with legacy ERP migration
• Engaging in an SCRM, HR tech and strategy
• Planning upgrades and migration
• Performing vendor selection

Resources

SAP Conference Call Replay With Bill McDermott and Lars Dalgaard

News Analysis: Oracle Buys RightNow For $1.43B

Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT

Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business

Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1

Media Coverage

20111203 ZDNet: Between The Lines – Larry Dignan “SAP acquires SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion: Cloud consolidation accelerates”

20111203 ZDNet: Irregular Enterprise – Dennis Howlett “SAP acquires SuccessFactors: a first take”

20111203 IDG News Service – Elizabeth Heichler “Update: SAP buys SuccessFactors for $3.4 bn to boost cloud offering”

20111203 SAP On The Cloud – Sven Denecken “SAP to Accelerate Cloud Strategy with Acquisition of SuccessFactors – will talk more #SAPSummit”

20111203 Bloomberg BusinessWeek -Ragnhild Kjetland “SAP to Buy SuccessFactors for $3.4 Billion to Match Oracle”

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact sales (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com.

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

Speech Analytics Gains Traction with Avaya's Purchase of Aurix

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Avaya announced its purchase of speech analytics firm Aurix to support its UC and contact center solutions. This acquisition indicates the growing need for companies to mine, analyze and understand their customers’ conversations. For too long contact center metrics focused on the agent’s conversation but were unable to categorize voice interactions of their customers to assess their concerns and attitudes. I believe it is an important shift for customer service organization to use speech analytics to better understand customers’ attitudes and improve their experience through analysis and interpretation of what they are saying. Speech analytics is ready for prime time and is an important tool to gain valuable customer insight. Benefits of speech analytics allow you to:

Strategy for Successful Video Rollout

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Enterprises are actively expanding their use of video and consider it an essential component of their overall communication initiatives. Video conferencing has become pervasive, as technical improvements make it easier to use, less expensive and more manageable. Today’s diverse workforce creates a high demand for personalized contact with external locations and video conferencing promotes more intimate meetings. Sales managers also find video conferencing creates a closer relationship with prospective and existing customers. However, video conferencing expansion should not be left to sporadic upgrades across departments but part of a well thought out plan to ensure maximum usage without sacrificing quality and the user’s experience. Consider the following steps when developing your enterprise videoconferencing strategy. Picture your end state. Video conferencing should not be considered a solution where one size fits all. There are many practical options for using video and it is important that you prioritize which types of solutions will deliver the results needed. Solutions may range from high level global meetings to internal training classes. Develop end users’ requirements. Classify different work groups according to their job functions and communication responsibilities. Knowledge workers may consider frequent video conferencing sessions as essential to their job performance, while other employees may be an occasional attendee of a video conferencing meeting. Additionally, determine if the videoconferencing sessions will be mostly for internal communications or for external meetings with customers and partners. Identify what type of experience users’ require. Most video conferencing today takes place in a room equipped with a video conferencing camera and speakers. However, desktop video is growing quickly and enables users participate in video conferencing sessions through their PC or a video phone. Tablets and smart phones are also growing in importance especially for remote and mobile workers. Executive level meetings may favor high quality immersive experience of telepresence. Also, note limitations to some types of video conferencing sessions. An employee who sits in a cubicle may disturb others using desktop video requiring video endpoints be set up in convenient break out rooms. Manage the quality of the uses’ experience. Video conferencing requires real time connectivity for high resolution. When expanding video conferencing, it is critical to ensure there is adequate bandwidth and that packet loss is less than 0.1% in any five minute period. It is also necessary to support QoS on the LAN and WAN for uninterrupted traffic flow. Include special-use applications. As tablet adoption increases, mobile video will expand as businesses use tablets for multiple business purposes. Using the video capabilities of tablets, organizations can capture and record real time events to remote sites. For example, a healthcare organization may equip its doctors and nurses with tablets to provide face to face meetings with distant patients or a manufacturer can use tablets to see inside remote facilities to observe workers and conditions. Consider real time video support. As video adoption becomes viral, it is important to measure its effect on the overall capacity of the network. When planning for video conferencing adoption determine the number of simultaneous sessions you plan to support and additional network equipment, such as gateways or session border controllers, that may be needed. It is also essential to address video’s security requirements, such as NAT/Firewall traversal or HTTP tunneling, etc. Highlight its ease of use. Although video calls have become very simple to set up, there is still some reluctance on users who may not feel confident in setting up a video conference. For those groups who plan to participate in video conferencing, set up training sessions to ensure widespread adoption. Determine purchase method. Video conferencing solutions are available as premise based and cloud solutions. The purchase option depends somewhat on the company’s network capabilities to support video and its implementation of security and management tools. If the network is video ready, then the premise based solution may offer a lower cost. Cloud solutions reduce management time and are faster to implement and many consider cloud solutions as an operational expense, which appeals to some companies. Integrate with overall UC plan. Video should be considered a part of a company’s overall communication strategy and be included in its Unified Communications upgrade plan. This enables users to have a common interface for video and integrate more fully into the overall communication infrastructure. Interoperability is also important criteria and you need to understand how vendors support other vendors’ video endpoints.

Strategic Social Media Engagement Lowers Contact Center Costs

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Many companies support social media sites to reach the millions of customers who actively network on their sites to communicate, publish comments and seek information. However, a major opportunity is often overlooked, which is to proactively use social media to reduce costs in their contact centers. Customer support centers are primarily reactive and rely heavily on expensive inbound telephone calls to support the needs of its customers. However, strategic use of social media sites can reach out to customers before they need to make a call and deliver value-added support for their customers.

What's Behind Contact Center Job Repatriation?

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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After many years of moving contact center operations off-shore, either directly or through outsourcers, several companies have changed direction and are repatriating agents to onshore locations.

Lower salaries and improved profit margins drove companies to off-shore locations, such as India and the Philippines but now a growing number of companies are reconsidering their decision. Bringing agents back onshore is not based on any new spirit of nationalism but on the fact that many customers complain about the quality of services received from off-shore agents. For routine questions, customers seem satisfied working with off-shore agents who offer a simple direct response. However, for more complex interactions, customers much prefer a live agent and one who can quickly provide the information needed. Customer satisfaction ratings often fall short with non-native English speakers who rely heavily on scripted conversations and perform poorly when they need to deviate from their script. This results in agent’s lack of contextual understanding of the issue, fewer first call resolutions, longer hold times and multiple transfers. Callers’ dissatisfaction may ultimately result in customer defections.

The timing seems right to bring some agents back on shore, as the growth in home agents by several outsourcers attracts a better educated pool of workers and increased flexibility in work hours. Although on-shore home agents receive a higher hourly wage, companies save in other areas, such a more call completions, lower travel costs, and higher agent retention, which results in lower training expenditures. Rather than viewing customer support as a commodity, several companies realize that improved service deliver is a competitive differentiator that promotes customer affinity.

The move to bring more agents on-shore will happen gradually but slow economic conditions makes organizations even more aware of the value of retaining their customers with improved support. Some examples of companies that moved some of their operations back onshore include the airlines such as Delta and US Airways manufactures such as Dell and Chrysler and retail operations such as Netflix. For companies that want to outsource on-shore agents, there are many available vendors who support both onshore and offshore outsourcing including Convergys, Sitel, and Teleperformance. Outsourcers that specialize in supporting home onshore agents include Alpine Access, LiveOps and West Communications.

UC Adoptions Increase but Future Investment Plans Stagnate

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Unified Communications (UC) adoptions will continue to grow in NA in 2011 but future investment plans show a significant decline over the prior two years. Constellation Research partnered with Computer Economics to survey UC decision makers and found a steady growth in the adoption of UC among companies with earnings greater than fifty million dollars annually for the current year. This survey revealed a steady uptake in UC adoption from a 25% adoption rate in 2009, a 27% adoption rate in 2010 and a 34% adoption rate this year. However, the survey also found a sharp decline in short term plans to invest in UC during the next 18 months. In 2011, 18% of respondents planned short term UC investments compared to 40% in 2010 and 35% in 2009.

While the overall market outlook for UC remains positive, it is evident that the current economic slowdown has put a damper on UC investments for many organizations, where tight budgets limit spending. This same survey also revealed that the majority of companies investing in UC had a positive ROI on their investment, so decision makers understand the benefits of UC deployments. With a slow economy it is up to vendors to do more to demonstrate quantifiable savings for specific industries to help prioritize the adoption of UC solutions. Providing customers with tools to better quantify realistic savings will facilitate business case development and help organizations move forward with their UC upgrades. For full survey results see Constellation Research Group’s report, “2011 Unified Communications Adoption Trends”.

Is Chatter the Center of the Universe?

Last week at Dreamforce, Marc Benioff spent 2.5 hours of the opening keynote extolling the virtues of Chatter.  A life-size iPad showcased the ease of collaborating on sales deals and other work.  And, even more telling, a number of technology providers announced they were plugging into the Chatter way of life – including HR vendors Workday and Vana Workforce, as well as Infor (marketing), Concur (expenses), and Kenandy (supply chain).

The event sparks both a turning point and a bundle of questions …

Could chatter get any bigger?

Internal Social Networking – Reborn

Buzz aside, this event will mark a major shift in the perception of internal social networking going forward.  Benioff deemed the space “Social Enterprise” and identified “in-context social collaboration” as the business value differentiator. Truth be told, though, business leaders have accepted external social networks as a necessary business tool – for things like recruiting, prospecting, and customer service.  On the other hand, internal social networking continues to be met by raised eyebrows, headshakes, and outright skepticism.

Benioff makes a strong case that maybe the networks, to date, just haven’t been in the right place (in the middle of business activities) or connected to the right things (work products).  Though specific customer examples – such as NBC Universal’s use of chatter across all properties to collaborate on such things as marketing products – are still few, an impressive number of hands were raised in the keynote auditorium when asked “who’s using chatter?”

Who Isn’t Using Chatter?

Though a couple of HR vendors announced Chatter plug-ins, other social collaboration-oriented vendors were noticeably absent from such announcements.  Notably, Saba and SuccessFactors.  The question remains whether worker-centric applications such as these can connect to work and business activities while retaining the stream of work within their application set. Or, will they ultimately need to connect up with a business-centric social stream?  Where will the center of work gravity fall when everything shakes out?

What Will Larry Do?

With Oracle OpenWorld just weeks away, one wonders how Larry Ellison will respond to his protege and nemesis.  Though Ellison has a social platform in Webcenter Connect and ties to business application activities in Fusion Network at Work, will it come across as a “me too”?  It is hard to imagine Ellison extolling the virtues of a business application that could “enable customers and employees to rise up against corporate leadership” as Marc Benioff charged the 45,000 Dreamforce attendees, in what was certainly the most electrifying moment of the keynote. Still, it’s also hard to imagine Larry Ellison ceding the universe to Chatter.

Research Summary: Getting the Most from Your Calibration Process

Forward

With traditional performance processes under fire, but continued pressure to deliver a vehicle for measurement and feedback, leading organizations have incorporated calibration into the process. If done right, calibration can not only improve the value of reviews today, but create a foundation for business-centric performance management going forward. However, if done wrong, calibration only serves to exacerbate the complaints and frustrations of the business.  Based on interviews with more than twenty organizations, this best practice report lays out the best methods for creating and running successful calibration sessions.

A. Introduction

As HR organizations look to transform their performance management practice from an after-the-fact forced documentation to a driver of business outcomes, calibration can not only improve the perceived fairness of today’s process, but raise the value of performance management to the business by:

• Socializing expectations.
• Gaining visibility into cross-team capabilities.
• Better preparing managers to coach employees.
• Providing a natural segue to broader business conversations.

Figure 1. Incorporating Calibration into the Performance Process

B. 7 Key Steps in Running a Successful Calibration Process

In order to leverage calibration as a business value generator rather than a mechanism for further frustration, organizations must understand the key steps in running successful calibration sessions:

1. Get what matters on the table.
2. Make the conversation king.
3. Make the tough calls.
4. Own the result.
5. Broaden insight.
6. Move toward future-focused business impact.
7. Communicate “what’s in it for me” to managers and employees.

Figure 2. Structure of a Performance Calibration Session

C. Actionable Advice for HR Leaders

With few organizations satisfied with performance-appraisal results and most re-designing their process every three to five years, it is easy to incorporate a new fad and quickly become disenchanted. The calibration process is not a new fad – it has been found to be an effective practice. However, it needs to be done right or it will just lead to further frustration. Summary recommendations to get started:

• Ensure proper investment. Can your organization invest in facilitators, coaching for managers, and getting executive support for establishing what matters?  Such investment is critical in rolling out a process that positively impacts managers and their teams.
• Keep it simple. The investment in the process should center around driving better conversations – amongst managers within the meeting and between managers and employees outside of the meeting.  Meanwhile complex processes and administrative demands should be kept to a minimum.
• Look for calibrations already occurring in the organization. Since this is a business-driven activity, some business areas or teams might be conducting calibration-type sessions.  Some groups may be effectively using calibration sessions to drive useful conversations and consistent results.  Look to these pockets for initial investment and value creation; then leverage these examples throughout the organization.

D. Report Links

Get the full framework with component details on what’s different and where the business benefits lay. Find out how vendors will need to respond – and what you should expect from them.

Buy the full research report on the Constellation Research website.

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Are Check-ins The Future Nirvana of Time Tracking?

Time tracking has always been at the forefront of the internet of things – from the early days of punch cards fed to a mainframe to more recent advancements such as interactive voice response and biometric devices.  How do advancements in SoLoMo technology open up even further possibilities?

Time tracking itself began as a compliance necessity – ensuring people were paid for the proper time worked and no one (especially the company) was getting cheated.  However, tracking time worked has generated far greater benefits than just that.  Knowing when, how many, and on what people work allows for optimized near-term scheduling and, when tied to outcomes (such as widgets sold, widgets produced, and customers satisfied), it can enable predictive planning – including hiring, scheduling, and deployment.  In other words, collecting data on what people are working on and tying that to desirable outcomes can mean big money.  Meanwhile, technology advancements – in particular, biometric devices – make this data more accurate and due to ease and speed, more specific.

For those whose paycheck is tightly tied to clocking in and out, this works great.  However, there is a huge gaping void of workers whose work activities are a complete mystery.  For this population, the act of filling out a timesheet – though often tried at companies to get a “handle on things” – leads to complaints and non-compliance, at best, and mutiny and attrition, at worst. There have also been attempts to raise things up a level – via goal tracking.  Tracking progress and completion toward goals (that could also be tied to projects and outcomes) would garner a similar level of visibility into the work activities of a more elusive population. However, getting individuals to track goals day-to-day is even less realistic than getting people to fill out a timesheet. “We would love it if people did that,” remarked an HR executive in a recent interview.  But they don’t.  It’s a burden and doesn’t help them get work done.  It sure would be great data to have though.

Enter “checking into work objects.” Just as Foursquare and Facebook Places (soon to be replaced by embedded check-ins) allow a consumer to check into a restaurant, airport, or other spot of interest – and then enables others to comment, share experiences, and make suggestions (in addition to suggestions and “offers” made by the system itself), work systems could allow workers to check into a project, customer, product, etc., forming the basis of a useful, collaborative work activity.  This is just what DoubleDutch proposes with its new Hyve product.  Such a mechanism bridges the unstructured, natural way of working of a large population of knowledge workers and structured data collection that can be used for high value visibility and decision making.  (See below)

Though check-in data cannot replace the highly granular and accurate time keeping made possible by badge swipes and biometric devices, perhaps there will be a marrying of the two for the on-the-clock crowd as well.  With mobile devices becoming more pervasive, an increased desire for social-based work environments, and increased mobile device sophistication (such as QR code readers), checking into work may become a natural and productive way to keep time.

DoubleDutch screenshots:

Check into a work object with DoubleDutch

Visibility into what people are actually working on - made possible by structured data collection

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For more on this subject, check out (DoubleDutch CEO) Lawrence Coburn’s blog post on work objects.