The business case for a social office white paper

www.encanvas.com

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR A SOCIAL OFFICE

July 2008

Ian Tomlin

WHITE PAPER

2 © 2008 Encanvas Inc.

ENCANVAS WHITE PAPER | The Business Case for a Social Office

Contents

OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 3

Adoption of new working practises in the office workspace...................................... 4

Expanded use of online social and collaborative technologies ................................. 7

Leveraging online communities ......................................................................................... 10

WHAT DOES A SOCIAL OFFICE LOOK LIKE? ................................................................... 11

ADOPTION CHALLENGES ....................................................................................................... 12

BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE FOR A SOCIAL OFFICE .................................................. 13

Building cohesion ...................................................................................................................... 14

Creating communities and harvesting social ties ......................................................... 14

Improving the productivity of project teams .................................................................. 16

Working on the same page ................................................................................................... 16

Bridging across silos of information .................................................................................. 17

To capture, analyze, present and share content in smarter ways ........................... 17

Improve the utilization of knowledge and corporate information assets ........... 18

BOTTOM–LINE COST SAVINGS ............................................................................................ 19

Environmental savings ............................................................................................................. 19

Time savings (productivity gains) ........................................................................................ 19

Reductions in paper usage .................................................................................................... 20

Contact information ................................................................................................................. 23



OVERVIEW

The social office is a term used to describe a new kind of working

environment for information workers who discharge their role largely online

(so-called web workers). These are people for whom information capture,

analysis and sharing is integral to their role and is facilitated by the use of

modern online web-based socially oriented technologies and collaboration

tools.

A social office represents a seed-change in perceptions of what an ‘office

workplace’ looks like and how it operates underpinning by the:

1. Adoption of new working practises in the office workspace

2. Expanded use of online social and collaborative technologies

3. Emergence of strategies to gain economic advantage and operational

excellence from socially oriented online business communities

This paper examines the business case for a social online workplace.



Adoption of new working practises in the office workspace

In the latter years of the 20th century, information workers expected to

discharge their work in a corporate office. This bricks and mortar perspective

of ‘the office workplace’ has today become less of a reality for many people

that perform information-working roles. Presented with online and mobile

access to information and applications, many information workers find

themselves more productive when they balance work time between office

locations; including the home office where sometimes they will typically work

for one or two days a week.

Drivers for smarter ways of working are partly encouraged by the growing

capabilities of web-based software tools and mobile phones that enable

people to communicate with colleagues and customers wherever they might

be. Distance and location has become less of a barrier to productivity.

Many employers are playing their part to encourage a change in workforce

operating behaviours towards smarter working. They identify the economic

and environmental rewards that come from helping workers to play it smart

when planning where they work in the week. Why increase costs (plus

environmental impact) and lose time by commuting to the office every day if

you don’t need to physically be there? Another big reason why employers are

listening to their employees on matters of smarter working practises is the fact

that, despite a world population of 1.174 billion young people between the

ages of 15 and 24, it’s estimated there simply aren’t enough Generation Y

workers to meet future employment demands.

While employer attitudes and technologies are influencing factors, it’s

information workers themselves who are pushing for a change in workforce

operating behaviours. Workers today are more time conscious, tech savvy and

environmentally aware than ever before. They don’t want to waste time in a

daily commute when they know they’re just as capable of working from

another location to discharge their role – such as their home office, coffee

house or a more local branch of the business they work for.

Event driven workers

Time awareness is very different to new generations accustomed to instant

rewards when they play digital games, swap Instant Messages with friends or

watch fast-paced action movies. An on-demand consumer world is driving

expectations in the workplace for a working environment that is equally

instant. No surprise that when new generations of information workers meet a

slow-paced working environment and find themselves being asked to

commute to an office miles away that serves no greater purpose than their

“The bricks and mortar perspective of ‘the office workplace’ has today become less of a reality for many people…”

“It’s information workers themselves who are pushing for a change in workforce operating behaviours…”



downstairs cubby hole, they question the logic of these entrenched operating

behaviours.

Rather than seek a lifetime commitment to a single employer, information

workers increasingly view work as a series of project-based engagements. In

fact, the nature of business has itself become more project oriented and event

driven. With a wealth of cross-organizational projects (many of which extend

beyond the enterprise), senior executives very often find themselves managing

projects, teams and outcomes rather than a dedicated staff. These factors

endorse and support beliefs of information workers that they need to protect

their own best interest by developing their social relationships and grow their

support networks so that they can help themselves step up the career ladder.

Self-confident computer users

Computer literacy in workers is higher today than it has ever been. Computing

is assumed to play a role in most professions and is integral to the education

syllabus of most countries. A 2009 Canadian Survey* of people entering the

workplace from tertiary education found that the majority saw themselves as

computer literate and able to serve themselves with the information they need.

This self-confidence in computing ability has been nurtured by major mobile

and Internet platform providers like Apple, Vodafone, Facebook, Microsoft,

Google and Yaho that provide easy to use tools individuals can learn

themselves to use and work with data. The consequence of this self-confidence

in computing skills is that information workers feel – given access to

appropriate tools – they’re perfectly capable of serving themselves with the

information they need to discharge their roles online, no matter where they

may be physically located.

*Approximately 69 per cent of the more than 1,000 people

surveyed in Freedom to Compute: The Empowerment of

Generation Y said they regard themselves as highly proficient

computer users. This was particularly true among those between

18 and 29 with a postgraduate degree, 80 per cent of whom said

they were highly proficient. Men also tended to rate their IT

expertise highly at 77 per cent. Those who earn more than

$100,000 annually thought they had a good grasp of computing

hardware and software compared to those who earned less than

$50,000.

Environmentally aware-workers

The so-called Generation Y (18- to 25-year olds) just entering, or poised to

enter, the workforce aren’t likely to be satisfied with drab cubicles and wasteful

corproate practises that harm the environment. This highly educated, mobile

“Rather than seek a lifetime commitment to a single employer, information workers increasingly view work role as a series of project-based engagements…”



and tech-savvy group wants a workplace that is an extension of their college

campus and that’s like them: urban, flexible, collaborative, environmentally

sensitive and unconventional according to a study published in May 2010 by

Johnson Controls Inc. of 3,011 18- to 25-year-olds in the United States, UK

Germany, India and China. With the Baby Boomers retiring and millions fewer

in the younger generations to replace them in the workforce in the US, UK and

Western Europe, employers are trying hard to understand what makes Gen Y

tick.

Changing information worker cultural attitudes

Attitudes* of new generations entering the workplace (currently Generation Y)

towards employment relationships, social interaction, communications and

environment are vastly different to preceding generations. A growing number

of people in the workplace (something like 30% according to recent surveys)

expect to have access to the social networking tools they’re accustomed to

using when ‘out of the office’. But while organizations may be reluctant to

consider adoption of social tools, a shortage of information workers entering

the job market means that great competition exists for talent.

This gives Generation Y far more influence on how the world of work they are

entering should cater for their needs.

Oxygenz is a research project led by Global Workplace Innovation

to understand how important the future workplace is to

generations in the workplace. The research gathered information

from 5,000 students at universities worldwide, and young

employees from a range of professions since February 2008.

Oxygenz aims to understand how important the workplace is to

Generation Y and what factors employers, designers, facilities

managers need to take into account. According to its findings, 18-

25 year-olds view the office as an extension of their home life,

impacting the demands on employers requiring leading talent to

stay competitive.

The consequence of this belief that work-life should be considered ‘an

extension of the social day rather than a prison cell where noone enters and

noone leaves until clocking off time’ is that employee attitudes towards social

rights are at odds with organizational demands for data security, 100%

commitment to the job while employed and the clear separation of work and

home life.

Unfortunately for employers that retain a traditional mindset of how the

relationship between staff and organizations should work, the best talent now

“Gen-Y wants a workplace that is an extension of their college campus and that’s like them…”

“The best talent now comes with the unwanted baggage of embedded social networking behaviour.”



comes with this unwanted baggage of a natural human tendancy to want to

network. Online social networking technologies provide a new vehicle to make

social networking easier – and it’s habit forming. Fears of the negative impact

of social networking behaviours in the office are not helped by media reports

that suggest well known platforms like Facebook are causing workers to loose

something like 1.5 percent of their productivity.

A 2009 research paper from Nucleus Research reported that

organizations were at risk of loosing 1.5 percent of productive

time because their workers were using Facebook at work. The

research company interviewed 237 randomly selected office

workers about their Facebook use and also found that the social

network is being used as an alternative e-mail platform to Outlook

and similar applications. The research company reported that

seventy-seven percent of these workers had a Facebook account,

with nearly two-thirds of those users accessing Facebook for at

least 15 minutes a day during working hours.

As the result of concerns over productivity (no doubt encouraged by press

reports like the one above) many organizations are attempting to implement

blanket bans on social networking tools. But this Dickensian approach to

preventing social collaboration is unlikely to yield a long-term answer given

that it doesn’t change the desire of Generation Y to network; or their belief

that it’s within their rights to do so.

Emergant socially oriented working practises

Rather than attempt to stem the tide, enlightened business leaders are

exploring how they can provide information workers with secure and live

online spaces that empower workers to serve themselves with the information,

business applications, and rich social collaborative tools they need to be more

productive; measured not through greater output of files or documents, but by

their contributions to projects, team activities and outcomes.

Expanded use of online social and collaborative technologies

A raft of new computing technologies has emerged in the last decade that

provide web-workers with richer acces to information online, and tools that

enable capture, analysis, presentation and sharing of content.

“Many organizations are now adopting Dickensian steps to attempt to halt the tide of on premises social networking.”



Use of social networking applications designed to serve online communities

such as Facebook, Twitter, MSN, Myspace and Google Maps have become

impregnated into social activity.

Underpinning these technologies are more fundamental innovations in the

way applications can be served to online and mobile users. Core web

operating systems such as Microsoft ASP.NET have made dramatic

improvements in their designg to enable a much broader community of

entrepreneurs to find ways of serving their customer groups with secure and

live online applications and workspaces. A key technology step-change

emerged early in the 21st century with the emergence of AJAX (Asynchronous

Java and XML); a technology innovation that essentially means that browsers

no longer need to refresh an entire page of data when only specific

components are affected by a change. Programmers are today able to design

user interfacing applications that refresh only one component of a page whilst

retaining the remaining components in the memory of the browser. This

means that user experiences are more attractive and intuitive. It also means

that response times online are much improved compared to earlier attempts

to fashion applications for web workers.

Investments by entreprenurs into what Generation Y wants are also having an

impact on the types of approaches and technologies being introduced.

Modern web-based applications technologies that enable users to serve

themselves with information and applications have been grouped into a

technology description called ‘Web 2.0’ suggesting that Web 1.0 was about

URLs and finding information and Web 2.0 is about self-service and the self

formation and organization of online communities. With the advantage of

technologies like AJAX and ASP.NET, Web 2.0 applications provide a similar

user interface quality consistent to installed desktop software.

Whilst the majority of Web 2.0 applications and platforms designed for social

networking have been targeted to the much larger consumer market for online

tools, a new generation of software applications is now emerging built for

business. In addition to the major technology providers like IBM and Microsoft,

a new generation of Web 2.0 software publishers including Social Cast, Jackbe,

Jive Software, Salesforce.com, 37Signals, Zoho and Encanvas are introducing a

new portfolio of tools that provide smarter ways of working for web workers.

“Underpinning these technologies are more fundamental innovations in the way applications can be served to online and mobile users…”



Key genres of Web 2.0 software include:

Personal productivity tools (the equivalent of Microsoft Office online)

Collaboration tools for working together online on the same page

Wiki and blogging tools for self-publishing content

Geospatial mapping tools to locate entities on maps

Applications design tools

Data mashup tools that enable

Social networking tools that facilitate the sharing of user profiles and

communications across online social communities.

Some organizations like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Encanvas

provide web-based operating platforms able to provide the majority of these

components in a single common architecture.

Fundamental to the success of Web 2.0 software publishers is their security

provisioning including the secure management of data, systems and networks,

users and groups, intellectual property and digital assets. Organizations are

encouraged by the IT press to heavily scrutinize the security and scalability of

Web 2.0 online web working technologies in the belief that any system that

extends people networks beyond the boundaries of the enterprise, must firstly

ensure that data and networks are secure. This is a major challenge for Web

2.0 software vendors that is further complicated by the operating behaviours

and incumbent systems that organizations already use.

The pace of adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by businesses has so far been

relatively slow compared to its progress in consumer markets owing to

concerns over data security and accepted norms of procurement. Today,

organizations are accustomed to purchasing software licenses and then

instaling software on to their personal computers, networks and servers. But

this market behaviour is also changing now that organizations are able to

migrate their entire platforms to multi-tennant hosted services (what’s

becoming known as cloud computing) whereby organizations are able to fully

outsource their incumbent IT systems platforms to outsourced service

providers).

Web 2.0 technologies are gradually overcoming the operational performance,

user experience, security, and norms of procurement behaviour obstacles that

have prevented their adoption to this point. A tidal wave of new Web 2.0

software innovations is emerging at a time when the business world is seeking

to find new ways of making its web-workers more productive. For most

organizations, these innovations are not ‘walking in the front door’ but are

being adopted and recommended by middle-managers and small teams that

are quick to register the opportunities they offer and evidence their worth.

“Fundamental to the success of Web 2.0 software publishers is their security provisioning…”

“The pace of adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by businesses has so far been relatively slow..”



Leveraging online communities

Faced with hyper-competitive global online markets, significant changes to

regulatory and compliance standards and huge swings towards cost efficiency

programmes, organizations today are being impacted by external forces that

demand near-constant change in business plans and operating behaviours.

Competitive advantage once embodied by trusted business models that rarely

ever changed is now more transient. Sourcing a competitive advantage for an

organization is expected by most leaders to come from speed-to-market,

ability to optimally leverage assets and relationships or finding a great idea.

Communities play a key role in this new world of competitive advantage. No

longer do organizations expect to deliver their full customer value alone; they

know they will have to depend on supplier partners, stakeholder groups,

channel partners – even customers to source the next competitive edge of

their business. People and talent remain key weapons in the battle for

competitive advantage. Teamworking, realizing and harvesting talent have

become strategic priorities.

But there’s a problem:

As more information workers find themselves working remotely, and in consort

with partners and customers, the practicality of working in a common office or

geography becomes less plausible. Information workers need to be as

productive as they know they can be no matter where they’re located. They

need to communicate with online colleagues, access their information, tools

and core business systems in the knowledge that their data is secure and the

systems they use can be trusted. And they want to feel emotionally supported

by their supervisors and colleagues; they want to feel a part of an

‘organization’ even though they might be drafting a report in an isolated

cubicle, snatching time to update project plans in a café or preparing a

proposal on the way to a meeting.

For executives that need to keep staff on the same page, informed of new

events and want to encourage ideas sharing and problem solving, traditional

personal use desktop software productivity tools hold little reward. The

world’s most popular office worker productivity tools - Microsoft Outlook,

Excel, PowerPoint and Word - were designed for an era of personal

productivity rather than online social collaboration. These tools are made

available to individuals on their personal computers accessible through

identity management systems built for an era when everyone in the team

worked in the same building and were employed by the organization.

“Communities play a key role in this new world of competitive advantage..”



The appearance of Web 2.0 technologies comes at a time when organizations

are keen to find better ways to nurture and support online web worker

communities; providing tools and mechanisms to create secure and live

workspaces that extend people networks and processes beyond the traditional

bricks and mortar boundaries of the enterprise.

WHAT DOES A SOCIAL OFFICE LOOK LIKE?

A social office is a way of working for information workers that is supported by

a enabling technology platform. This new way of working is characterized by:

Organizations having the ability to…

Create, operate and harvest the talents and relationship potential of online

communities

Meet project resourcing needs by staffing on-demand by leveraging the

specialist skills of their addressible online talent markets (whether they be

inside or outside of the enterprise).

Understand the talent and capabilities of their enterprise.

Lever creative potential and ideas from their employees and online

communities.

Make sense of how their enterprise actually works rather than believing the

structural picture presented by the organogram.

Boost the productivity of workers by ensuring their activities are contributing

to project activities and strategic outcomes.

Web workers having the ability to…

Serve themselves with user group design, information and applications without

needing to re-key or re-purpose data.

Discharge their role from any location by having access to their social

networks, information, business systems, content and processes via a web

browser or mobile phone.

“Web 2.0 technologies come at a time when organizations are keen to find better ways to nurture and support online web worker communities..”



Feel emotionally supported and part of a team; being kept informed of events

and community activity through online contact and communications; abel to

be on the same page as colleagues and customers at any time.

Perform social processes online (in a similar way as people do today in an

office environment).

Managers having the ability to…

Engender emotional intelligence and followership.

Create and manage projects, create and supervise work teams.

Provide mentoring and emotional support – without necessarily having to be

present / in the same location.

ADOPTION CHALLENGES

It’s not easy for organizations to move from their traditional ways of working

and familiar incumbent technologies like email and MS Outlook to the social

office in a single jump. Vendors of social office technologies like Encanvas still

lack the ability to provide customers with robust migration .

Current moves to adopt social office approaches are haphazard and not seen

as a collective all-embracing shift to something new. Organizations are

exploring specific pieces of the social office puzzle such as social networking,

online collaboration, desk sharing, but none of these offerings so far present a

coherent and complete technology platform to support the move to a social

office approach.

In addition, there are a number of roadblocks that organizations must

overcome:

Security concerns over how data, systems and networks will be

protected from attach or thoughtless misuse.

Cultural reluctance to change.

Poor management appreciation of the rewards of a social office.

Embedded belief systems like ‘I get my own desk when I get promoted’

and ‘I commute to the office every day because that’s what I do’.

Lack of confidence over the business benefits of a social office working.

IT leaders and teams that feel they are losing power, authority and/or

control of IT in the enterprise

“Current moves to adopt social office approaches are haphazard…”



These and other factors mean that leaders attempting to make progressive

step improvements towards may find their projects planted at the base of the

priority list even though a social office approach could make a significant

impact on project performance, costs and strategic outcomes.

A typical roadmap for moving towards a social office approach includes:

1. Provisioning of a socially-oriented self-service IT architecture –

designing information management strategy to organize and serve up

data so that it can be consumed by workspace applications. This

architecture must include provision of a federated identity

management solution.

2. Selection of a social office portal platform calable of bringing people

together on the same page by providing social profiling, social

graphing, contact management, mashup and data self-service tools,

collaborative tools, integrated communications etc. – key vendors

include Google, Jive software, Encanvas, Social Cast, Microsoft, IBM,

Oracle, and Salesforce.com.

3. Re-designing the IT function to re-assign business analysts to become

Process Value Improvement Consultants able to re-educate and

support end users with expertise on how to harness social office tools.

BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE FOR A SOCIAL OFFICE

What executives are now exploring are technology-enabled initiatives to solve

a series of obstacles to smarter working for their web-workers. How to:

Build cohesion and a company ‘spirit’ that provides emotional support

and informs colleagues on organizational matters and events

Create communities and harvest social ties (build a sense of

community)

Improve the productivity of project teams

Give people the ability to work ‘on the same page’ no matter where

they’re physically located

Bridge across silos of information

Capture, analyze, present and share content in smarter ways

Improve the utilization of knowledge and corporate information assets

In this section we examine the business justification for each of these key

changes to operating behaviour.

“..leaders attempting to make progressive step improvements towards may find their projects planted at the base of the priority list…”



Building cohesion

Good leaders want to create a cohesive workforce where individuals feel a

deep bond with the organization they work for and are prepared to go ‘above

an beyond’ obligatory effort levels in support of business activities. Creating

this bond demands that leaders can provide emotional support to staff in

addition to keeping them informed, providing practical tools and information

services.

The reward for leaders that create an engaging, supportive environment for

their workforce is normally measured by the things that DON’t HAPPEN such

as – high levels of absenteeism (because workers don’t feel any emotional

commitment towards their employer), lack of creativity and innovation, poor

performing teams, a decaying quality of customer service, soured relationships,

low levels of cooperation, difficulties in recruiting new talent and negativity

towards improvement and change initiatives.

Can these negative business impacts be measured in terms of a monetary cost

to an organization? It’s true that many organizations are able to operate with

all of these sub-optimal factors. Perhaps the bigger issue is not the short-term

impact of a lack of cohesion but the long-term sustainability implications given

that attempts to achieve operational excellence will inevitably be undermined.

Creating communities and harvesting social ties

The 21st business world is becoming a battle communities. Whether it’s

winning the hearts and minds of employees, engaging with stakeholders and

industry partners, collaborating with project teams or building online customer

groups, communities perform an increasing role in business. For many

industries, the focus of business success has moved from the value of assets to

the number of clicks or customer relationships. The Internet makes it easier for

organizations to stay in touch with their customers and feel more of a bond

with the people and organizations they communicate with, while Web 2.0

technologies such as Wikis, Crowdsourcing tools and online chat systems

make contributors feel more empowered.

There are four major stages to the life-cycle of community management:

1. Formation

2. Operation

3. Harvesting

4. Sustaining

“Good leaders want to create a cohesive workforce where individuals feel a deep bond with the organization they work for…”



Formation

Creating the community. This could be as simple as uploading a contact list

and inviting everyone on it to join. But it’s more common for organizations not

to know all of the potential individuals that go to make up a community.

Therefore, individuals need to be alerted to the existence of a community and

they need to be encouraged to join. Normally an individual’s consent will be

needed to secure their involvement in a community. Security of the community

will be a key factor. So too will be the terms of use of the community. And any

online community demands a supporting platform that’s able to provide

account administration and personalisation features.

Normally the greatest challenge in forming a community is encouraging

individuals to want to join. Participation in any community demands time and

effort. Unless the personal rewards are obvious, savvy web workers are unlikely

to want to expend effort. In most cases, it's the existence and/or endorsement

of other community members that convinces people to join an online

community – so for any community, there will be a critical mass of members

required to participate in order to secure its future.

Operation

The operation of a community demands that participants have access to useful

content and tools. Increasingly, participants want access to self-service

features that enable them to capture, manipulate, sort, view, organize and

share their content. They may also value collaborative tools to enable sharing

of ideas, working together on documents, asking questions, booking facilities,

managing schedules etc.

Harvesting

Making the most of social ties is not a precise art, but there are clear benefits

in understanding how social relationships work and having the ability to

leverage bonds of trust between individuals to affect introductions and get

things done. Modern online social office platforms provide social graphing

tools that enable participants in a community to understand degrees of

relationship tie separation, strength of ties, nature of ties etc. This insight helps

participants to realize the full potential of their community and encourages

them to grow their networking credentials and community relationships to

achieve a wider breadth of influence.

Sustaining

Without frequent reasons to visit a community space – probably because of

helpful insights, news, helpful organizer tools etc. - the value to participants of

communities soon decays and attendance drops. Maintaining the energy and

commitment to a community demands that managers and owners constantly

“Increasingly, participants want access to self-service features that enable them to capture, manipulate, sort, view, organize and share their content…”



consider what matters most to the community in terms of value. Sometimes, in

the case of internal team spaces for example, being attentive to community

needs is not so easy and can itself become a burdon.

What’s the monetary impact of underperforming community management

tools? The answer to this question largely depends on the circumstances of the

organization. Some enterprises depend more on their communities to drive

success. The inability to harness online communities is somewhat more

important to book publishers and research companies selling their intellectual

property perhaps when compared to a bearing manufacturer. Nevertheless, all

organizations have their communities (including shareholders, staff, customers,

suppliers etc.) that can benefit from online collaborative and community

development solutions.

Improving the productivity of project teams

Most organizations have adopted project-based behaviours in their operations

given the significant numbers of cross-organizational and collaborative

activities that now happen. The adoption of outsourcing and shared service

strategies to support non-core strains of business activity have perpetuated

the need for project portfolio management and tools to manage and

coordinate the activities of project teams.

Web 2.0 secure and live portals powered by data mashup tools enable project

teams to acquire data from back-office systems and office files to bring

together information needed to support project activities.

Working on the same page

Social networking and collaboration tools bring project teams together on the

same page so they can work more efficiently together nomatter where they’re

located. People are able to use mapping and data visualization tools to work

on the same page and see landscapes of their business in a single holistic view

that exposes events and non conformities in data behaviours.

Use of these sorts of tools enable web workers to make sense of large volumes

of data and not get overwhelmed by the large amounts of data on the

Internet. Web workers are able to make more informed decisions on the data

they’re looking at and are often able to dramatically reduce the time spent on

analysis; particulalry when analysis typically involves referencing multiple

systems.

“Social networking and collaboration tools bring project teams together on the same page ”



Bridging across silos of information

It’s common for information workers to struggle to access the important data

they need from business systems because it’s not accessible to them. This

accessibility problem may be caused by:

Knowledge – The person wanting the data doesn’t know it exists.

IT bottlenecks– either technical weaknesses, resource capacity issues or

just the unwillingness of an IT function or provider to want to help.

Skills – The person wanting to use the data doesn’t know how to use

the tools they’ve been provided with to access it.

Format – The format of the file is incompatible or not presented in the

right way – so it has to be re-purposed

Tools – The tools provided to the user

Security – A security policy prevents an individual from accessing the

data they need (this might be a legimate policy or could just be the

consequence of poort user and group security governance)

Other operational silos not being prepared to share their data

Whatever the reason why a user is prevented from accessing the data they

need, the consequences to operational effectiveness are likely to be these:

Users are required to invest time in re-keying and repurposing data.

‘Shadow systems’ are created by users making best use of the available

desktop tools they have access to in order to fashion, organize and

analyze data.

Poor decisions are made because of an absence of insights.

Projects and activities don’t happen because people can’t get their jobs

done without having access to the data they need.

Paper documents and forms are used as a conduit between systems to

paste over the cracks in systems that don’t speak to one another.

Labor intensive approaches are adopted to overcome weaknesses in

data flows.

Opportunities are missed to do better things because managers and

workers are unable to exploit the knowledge their organization

posseses.

To capture, analyze, present and share content in smarter ways

In the absence of useful tools to work with databases and make sense of data,

desktop tools like spreadsheets, wordprocessing document and presentation

tools become the defacto ‘best-fit’ answer to re-using and re-purposing data

for information workers. The challenge this represents is that data held in

these containers is not secure. Another wasteful aspect of this approach is that

“In the absence of useful tools to work with databases and make sense of data, desktop tools like spreadsheets become the defact answer to re-using and re-purposing data.”



data is consistently re-purposed in order to make sense of it, summarize it or

present it. Some organizations employ dedicated analysts simply to re-

gurgitate information in this fashion (and recently, the U.S. Military has been in

the news because of its war on Powerpoint claiming that the organization has

become so dependent on PowerPoint as a conduit for data interchange and

discovery that it’s become an operational overhead, creates the ‘illustion of

understanding and being in control’ and represents a major security threat).

A fundamental improvement in information management happens when data

held in unstructured forms such as paper documents, and quasi-informal

forms such as PowerPoint slides and Word documents, becomes organized in

relational databases. It’s recognized that up to 60% of corporate information

resides in forms beyond the control of IT because it’s not held in databases.

When data exists beyond the database it’s very difficult to re-use and just as

difficult to protect. But ask the average office worker whether they could

create a database by themselves and most would still say no. Tools used to

create databases are designed for business analysts and database developers,

not users.

New enterprise mashup tools and point-and-click database design and

reporting applications are progressively pushing back the boundaries on what

users can do to serve themselves with databases. Given access to these tools

through social office systems, web workers are better equipped to use data

held in its source without having to create quasi-unstructured content. This not

only increases the usefulness of the data for the specific application, but it

normally leads to data being enriched or improved as the consequence of its

use.

Improve the utilization of knowledge and corporate information assets

Organizations lack the basic tools to leverage their corporate intelligence.

Workers are more likely today to use Google to search for documents that

workers know they’ve referenced before than to scour intranet systems. One of

the major challenges information workers face is the difficulties in accessing

and making sense of data held on disparate IT systems designed to serve a

specific purpose. Often the data structures of these databases are such that

users aren’t familiar with where data is held or how they can access it.

Improving the ability of users to access data makes a huge impact on their

productivity. Data can become much more valuable when referecned against

other data. Enterprise mashup tools and geo-spatial referencing of data can

bring new value to data that’s sitting around the enterprise’ under-utilized.

“Organizations lack the basic tools to leverage their corporate intelligence.”



BOTTOM–LINE COST SAVINGS

For organizations there are substaintial bottom-line rewards to be gained by

adopting a social office culture and platform:

Environmental savings

Collaborative tools (see Webshow360 from Encanvas) mean that staff

make fewer trips to meet with colleagues, partners or customers

because they can share documents online.

Workers have less reason to meet to attend meetings or commute to

the office given that they have access to their people networks, systems

and processes from anywhere via their web browser.

Social office technology platforms are web-based and are normally

deployed on hosted cloud platforms which means organizations do not

need to run the server themselves. Personal computers and laptops

only require a basic specification and so power and energy can be

minimized.

A reduction in the amount of paper used and distributed has a

significan impact on meeting environmental targets – not forgetting

the obvious impact on office space savings and power consumption.

Advanced social office platforms include facilities to share desk (so-

called desk hotelling solutions) that mean workers can book a desk at

the most appropriate location anytime they want one.

Time savings (productivity gains)

Time savings result from the following activity areas:

Reducing re-keying and re-purposing of content

Finding social connections

Accessing knowledge and data

Sourcing ideas and solving problems

Keeping informed

Working on the activities that matter

Not having to manually distribute paper

Capturing data at source



Reductions in paper usage

The ability to distribute, share and manage files online provided by

social office platforms means that less paper is used, printed and

distributed. This also means less paper documents are copied and

saved.

SUMMARY

There are obvious and quantifiable bottom-line cost savings – i.e. time,

transport costs, reduced paper usage and energy savings – of moving

to a social office orineted workplace.

It’s difficult today to monetize the full business impact of social office

working practises. This is partly because the innovation is so new that

no conclusive research has been performed, but it’s also because its

impact is likely to be felt in every aspect of business behavior – finding

customers, winning customers, energizing staff and partners, working

smarter, making the most of corporate intelligence, to drive smarter

decision making, reducing the environmental impact of business

operations by reducing the number of people that need to commute or

make unnecessary trips, improving performance and productivity of

work teams and projects etc.

The authors believe that - in the next 5 years - social office working

practises and technology will become endemic to the modern

enterprise. As such, many of the rewards and benefits gained from

investments into social office approaches will be attributed as a bi-

product of ‘the way we work’ rather than any specific technology

component or aspect of operational effectiveness.

Reductions in the cost of IT matched by improvements to the quality

and usefulness of IT will no doubt be one of the more recognizable

rewards of adopting social office technologies, accepting that most

information workers do not believe they have seen any great

improvement to their productivity enabled by IT since the introduction

of the spreadsheet.

Organizations can expect to see a step-change in the productivity of

information workers and the ability to do more with less. The economic

impact of this change will likely be equivalent to the introduction of



email where managers found they were able (or required) to manage

their own administration leading to a reduction in the number of

people engaged in supportive roles. While the output produced by

managers may have declined slightly as the result of this, savings in

administrative positions have been seen to clearly benefit operating

budgets.

The social office will create a more open and engaging enterprise. The

economic benefits of closer emotional ties with customers,

stakeholders, colleagues and industry partners will vary considerably

depending on capabilities. It will improve the ability of both employees

and employers to measure direct productivity towards project

outcomes. While this will encourage trust in remote and home working,

the probably consequence of the social office is that individuals will be

asked to absorb non-productive tasks that do not directly contribute to

project success into the twilight hours of their working week (in much

the ame way as contracted staff today have to invest their own time in

project scoping and expenses management).

The authors anticipate that the social office will lead to a much greater

specialization of skills made possible by employers being able to tap

into specialist practitioners for projects on demand without the high

costs of recruitment and move employment behaviors further in the

direction of project working.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin is a management consultant and technology advocate. As co-founder of

NDMC Consulting he has for the last 10 years led or contributed to transformation

projects for large public and private sector organizations seeking to achieve greater

business agility and customer value.

About NDMC Consulting

NDMC Consulting is a pioneering management consulting business focusing on the

application of agile software technologies and large-scale information change

management engagements. The company also provides market insights and horizon

scanning services for some of the world’s largest technology companies.

About Encanvas

Encanvas®

software makes the workplace work better. We bring added value to the

Microsoft®

enterprise platform by creating the technologies organizations need to

spend less and receive more from their software investments. Our Secure&Live™

platform enables the design, deployment and operation of applications without

coding or scripting all made possible by a single tightly coupled architecture. It

facilitates the massive scaling of portal architectures; so users can communicate, share

information and their applications in real-time while operating in ‘secure spaces’ that

protect systems, data, identity and intellectual property.

More reading

To find out more about this subject, please read ‘Cloud Coffee House’ by Ian Tomlin,

available from www.amazon.com.



Intellectual property

All information of whatever kind contained in this documentation remains the property

of Encanvas Inc. Encanvas Inc.’s appointed data controller is Mr Nick Lawrie. Further

information is available on request.

Contact information

Encanvas Inc.

2710 Thomas Avenue

Cheyenne

Wyoming 82001

United States of America

+1 201 777 3398

Encanvas Europe

Dove Cottage Offices

Abingdon Road

Marcham

Oxfordshire

OX13 6NU

United Kingdom

+44 1865 596151

www.encanvas.com

Encanvas is a registered trademark of Encanvas Inc. All other trademarks and trade names

contained in this document are recognized as belonging to their respective owners.