2020 Social: Because Business is Social

Social Media Is Tailor-Made for SMBs

Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Dave in Announcements, How To Guides, Ideas

How three small to medium-sized businesses tapped social networks to connect with customer.

Post continues here.

Gautam Ghosh Has Joined 2020 Social to Build Our Organizational Collaboration Practice

Posted on 22. Oct, 2009 by gaurav in Announcements

I have a big announcement to make: Gautam Ghosh has joined 2020 Social to build the enterprise side of our Social Business Strategy practice. Gautam will join Dave, Upasana and myself in the core 2020 Social consulting team.

2020 Social is presently working with clients to leverage social technologies to achieve five types of strategic business objectives — increase revenue, decrease cost, design better products and processes, enable stronger relationships and increase productivity.

Instead of focusing on specific tools and technologies, we use a structured methodology to tap into the power of the five underlying value systems embedded in social technologies — user generated content, conversations, collaboration, community and collective intelligence.

Finally, we architect effective solutions in the form of community platforms, social applications, social commerce marketplaces, social CRM programs and enterprise collaboration programs.

Gautam will use his organizational development experience to help our clients think about the organizational culture and governance aspects of using social technologies. Specifically, here are the three questions Gautam will be working on –

1. What are the new challenges face by the customer-facing functions in the organization (sales, marketing, product and customer support) when the boundaries between employees, partners and consumers blur? How do organizations respond to these challenges?

2. What are the new pressures that organizational structures are subjected to when employees freely communicate and collaborate with other employees, customers and partners across departmental, geographical and organizations boundaries? How should organizational structures evolve to handle these pressures?

3. How can organizations use social technologies within the enterprise to simplify communication flows, enable stronger relationships with employees, catalyze innovation and improve employee productivity?

Over the next four weeks, Gautam and I will be co-authoring a series of posts (using, what else, a wiki) to come up with clear and actionable answers to these questions.

Everyone at 2020 Social is delighted that Gautam has joined our team and excited at the possibilities that we will be exploring together. Welcome, Gautam!

activeCollab – Enterprise Collaboration Tool Review

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Abha in Reviews

activeCollab is a project management tool by A51. It’s open source version was launched in 2006 by one of the founding members of A51 (which formally came into existence in 2007). A51 was born with the objective of developing a commercial version of activeCollab and an added option of being able to install the solution at the client’s end.

activeCollab comes in 2 licensing versions, one called Small Biz ($249) and the other Corporate ($499). Both licenses have unlimited number of users and projects and  are perpetual – you pay once and use for life. There are however annual support and upgradation fees. They also offer a 30 day (post purchase) refund policy. Corporate version adds some advanced tools, like better task management, a tool for collaborative writing, calendar, time tracking etc. on top of the Small Biz features.

activeCollab can be customized as per specific requirement as the full source code is provided with purchase of either license.

We found an interesting assortment of roles and permissions that could be granted to users. System rules included options like Administrator, Client Company Manager, Project Manager, Member etc. Project roles could be defined by the administrator which is great as it invests a lot of powerful options in the hands of the Project Manager / Administrator. There is also an added option of creating new system based roles.

We found the interface to be user friendly and easy to navigate. It was easy getting around and the tabbed interface made all essential elements very accessible.

Milestones, Discussions, Files, Calendar, Pages, Tickets, Time and People are the key elements associated with projects. Reminders and RSS feeds can be set for all of these.

-Milestones sync well with the inbuilt calendar and iCalendar.

-Discussions can be categorized, associated with milestones and also files can be attached to discussions.

-Mutliple files can be uploaded in one shot, tagged, categorized and linked to milestones.

-Pages are like Wiki pages and facilitate collaboration and discussions amongst team members. Definitely an essential element in any project management solution, but surprisingly missing from most!

-Tickets are essentially tasks. Time can directly be tracked on each of these and also put into relevant baskets like billable to client etc.

activeCollab is completely extensible and some of its current modules (at an added cost ) in the offering are an enhanced project planning module, Chronicle – desktop tool that can directly submit time into activCollab, Reports module, acGarage – housekeeping service etc.

But for those who can’t or don’t want to pay for the new activeCollab version, project’s last open source release, version 0.7.1. called  ProjectPier.

In summary activeCollab has some very desirable features and we’d say it definitely features on the must evaluate list for anyone looking at deploying at a project management solution.

Community Platform Review : ELGG

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by karthick in Reviews

In our first series of Community platforms, we are going to dwell deep into the world of platforms (and tools) that give people the power of forming communities and groups. The first part is targeted at open source social platforms. If you are thinking about forming a community and would like to know which platform would suit your interests best, then these series of posts are for you.

Our first community platform – ELGG.
ELGG gets its name from a town in Switzerland and also means Moose in many languages. It (Website) is an open source social engine that helps you build and form your community.  ELGG has been in development since 2004. What does a 5 year old product (latest version being  1.6.1) have to offer us? Quite a lot of features.

Unlike a lot of other platforms, ELGG started off with a vision to integrate the best of Web 2.0 and all popular social media tools integrated into one community platform. While version 1.0 included RSS feeds, forming groups, uploading pictures and avatars a lot has been added since then.  The ease with which one can use ELGG has made it a popular platform and the Education sector has particularly taken a liking to it. Recognising its efforts, Infoworld awarded ELGG its Bossie Award for the best open social networking platform.

What does it offer?
At the start, it is an open source platform freely available for download. The download is relatively small and anyone can install it on their local domain or server. To someone who wants to sample the product before using it, a free demo version is hosted online.  ELGG is a feature rich platform with some of its offerings being –  user and file management, multiple view and access controls for administrators, event plugin and APIs, OpenId and OpenSocial login options and use of multiple databases.

As soon as you set up your profile, ELGG offers you immediate access to various features such as subscribing to RSS feeds of pages and groups, OpenID logins and API integrated logins (you can login into the install with your twitter account for example).

Forming groups (sub communities) and updating your profile is relatively easy and intuitive.  Some standard widgets are available to display various chunks of information. The Dashboard available at the start gives anyone logged in an overview of their activity, their friends activities and your bookmarks.ELGG offers customization in terms of functionality. Access controls allow you to privatize your page or group. You can also alternatively allow only logged in users to view your document or open it up to the public.

ELGG brings with a concept of Pages and subpages which are fully customizable (provided you know HTML and CSS) and this can be open to viewing by a whole group or all your friends.

Why would we recommend ELGG?

Uploading multiple file type formats: An area where they really seem to excel is giving members the option to upload files of all types. So whether it’s a .ppt, .zip, .rar or .docx you can upload them. Enabling a plugin gives you the option to auto zip the file after uploading.

Multiple Author Blogs: And a second area we see ELGG edge out competition is the ability to co-author a blog and set permissions for multi users to collaborate on one blog.

The Wire: ELGG introduces something called the wire. This is like your personal twitter messaging service. You can use this to post messages through the wire on to your twitter account or just keep it limited within the community. Tandy but not too original. They use 140 characters as a limit too.

Bookmarks are a great offering that allow you to bookmark “pages” or “groups” that you would like to visit often or straight off from your homepage.

Messaging: Private and group messaging and the ability to instant message someone online are welcome features as well.

Why not ELGG?

Installation not for non technical people: While ELGG seems to tether on breaking the cliché “something too good to be true probably”, there is a large problem to be addressed- that of the installation. A primary need is to simplify the installation on a private server. The documentation available does not offer much information on how to go about the whole matter painlessly.

Default plugins insufficient:  To harness the true power of the installation many plugins are required to be installed and setup. This is easier said than done. The alternative of skipping the plugin installation leaves you with a very bare framework.  The overall time spent to setup the installation is far longer than one would ideally want to endure.

Too much information on home screen: The dashboard is an information overload for a first time member. What others are doing, what you did, who uploaded what are all strewn over the home screen and navigating through all of this is tedious. We’d suggest better information cataloguing.

User specific access to page not available: The option to allow select members (from different groups or from your friends list) to view your pages isn’t an option. That means choosing a sub page on motorcycles that I want only 2 of my friends to view and not the whole group is something I’d personally like to see in its future versions.

Themes aren’t diverse: Theming and customization is not something that is easily available or is easily achieved by non-techie people. There is this green bar that can get to be a bit annoying and last we checked the option to remove it isn’t easily available in notifications.

For everything else?
ELGG is a fine choice of a software platform. Get on it, get used to it and spread the love.

Who is using it?
Being free is one of ELGGs biggest selling points. A lot of communities have adopted the ELGG platform. There are user communities that have even taken it to extreme customization like the SwatchtheClub, Budokin (martial art website) and iJedi.

The university of Brighton has over 40,000 members actively engaged in the platform and were one of the first to embrace the ELGG platform. There are lots of other academic institutions that have also embraced this platform and the list of admirers include – Victoria University (Australia), University of Leeds, Kingston University, Columbia University and Claremont Graduate University among others.

In summary
So if you want to look for a good platform that requires a relatively large investment in the installation but smoothens the ride thereafter, we’d recommend you look into the ELGG platform. We understand that there are many developments happening in the version and would be looking forward to reviewing them again in the future releases.

Social Media Face of Consumer Companies

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Reviews

Social Media Face of Consumer Companies
To tie in with our Social Media in India report, this post covers a review of two International consumer-facing companies-Proctor & Gamble and Nestle- functioning within the Indian social media eco-system. Whilst International companies act as benchmarks in introducing and promoting social media in India, this particular analysis provides an interesting example of how to tweak certain social media aspects to suit cultural backgrounds as a gentle push in the right direction.

Proctor & Gamble

We begin with Proctor & Gamble’s Indian presence through its Indian face – Beinggirl.co.in. Beinggirl.co.in is an online community targeting Indian teenage girls, effortlessly blending in social networking with feminine care. In keeping with this theme, one discovers that the site provides expert advice and extensive articles on healthcare and growing up issues which are still traditionally taboo in the Indian society and not talked about openly. Registration is fairly easy and provides easy access to the articles via the user’s profile page. All possible and related questions are listed, with the added element to post questions publicly or privately. The community educates and addresses numerous concerns ranging from puberty and career to depression and relationships and allows members to engage with the content.

As a social networking platform, various features such as photo-sharing, games, download music, quizzes are offered to the registered members. A miniature yet not well-defined section -Hanging Out-allows members to chat and engage with each other. Security and support are in-built and members are advised to refrain from giving out personal information. However, the site also incorporates quite an amount of product-endorsement. An added feature Which product is right for you? offers ample factual information and suggestions following the questionnaire method to facilitate correct product choices. The community portal is well-designed and vibrant to appeal to its younger teenage audience.

In comparison to its Indian counterpart, the UK portal – Beinggirl.co.uk- has many more components to explore. The UK portal allows registered members to create online avatars via the Me2 element and share them on various social networking platforms- a feature that could well be adapted in the Indian set up. In addition, a Happy Islands portal allows members to register, engage and share content without compromising on one’s security and information.  Again the articles provide more in-depth factual information and members can also enter user generated content contests to win goodies.

The Beinggirl community is tailored to 46 different countries, with some in the local language like the Arabic version below.

Nestle

Family Nestle Kitchen is the social network platform built by Nestle India to build conversations around the social object-lifestyle, passion & cause- of passion for cooking. The community provides a platform for home-makers to share all things cooking. Registration is easy and post registration members are promised a welcome kit to be delivered at the mailing address. Whilst the community allows members to share experiences, post recipes, plan offline meets and shop online, it is still restrictive in engagement between members themselves which offers an opportunity to explore.  Members can also refer to the Useful Tools forum to gain working knowledge of cookery terms, weights & measures and kitchen equipment to grasp recipes better.

An interesting feature offered by the community is the free mobile application allowing access on the go. The application allows members the same convenience as does the online community.

Overall, we can say that while there is much work left to be done, yet both Proctor & Gamble and Nestle’s communities have the makings of setting benchmarks in the Indian social media universe.

Social Media in India report: International automobile company review

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

This is the third post in a series where we will review performance of companies (and brands) using Social media to connect with Indian customers. As mentioned in our methodology post on soon to be published Social Media in India report, we are reviewing top Indian and International companies from the Forbes list for their presence in social media in India.  In the previous posts we had reviewed some of the Indian companies” ( like the Tatas, Airtel, Reliance Communications) presence on Social Media. In this post we will be reviewing the presence of some international automobile companies on the Indian social web.

The Forbes 2009 list features 4 automobile companies in the top 50 having an Indian market presence. They are Toyota (3), Volkswagen (15) , Mitsubishi ( actually the list ranks Mitsubishi UFJ Financial as the 21st company but since the parent company also has an Indian presence in the car & SUV market, we have considered it for this review ) and Honda (39). Out of these, we found Toyota & Mitsubishi doing something interesting specific to Indian consumers.

We begin with Toyota, the Forbes 2009 rank 3 company. The international automobile major has an Indian presence through cars like Corolla, Camry, Innova, Altis, Land Cruiser, Prado etc. Owing to its global positioning as a company that is concerned about environment, the company has partnered with NDTV ( an Indian news and media company ) for its ”Green Future” web platform. ”Green Future” is essentially an environment news platform which features many influencers speaking on environmental causes and supporting various campaigns conducted by the company and the news channel. However, this social platform is more than just environment gyan. It has many social applications which takes its readers across multiple levels of social engagement. Readers can read news, watch videos, post comments and opinions on various topics. There is also an ideation platform called ”24-hour green ideas” where members can pool in their creative ideas for an eco-friendly future. Moreover, there is a separate kid’’s platform called ”Kid’’s club” where the next generation is being guided to a cleaner environment by engaging them to share their stories and thoughts, poems etc on environment.

Overall, Toyota’’s ”Green Future” is an interesting social website built around a noble cause which the company has known to support for years. It is an impressive start as an environment news channels that features many influencers and celebrities talking about a greener earth. Perhaps in the future they would like to have these celebrities blogging and interacting with readers- something on the lines of Huffington Post- or adopt a user generated environment news aggregation model like ngopost.org. In the future we would also like to see Toyota leveraging its user engagement to promote trial and purchase of its products also.

Moving on to Mitsubishi; the Forbes international rank 21 company has presence in India through cars like Lancer, Cedia, Pajero, Montero, Outlander. The Japanese auto major recently launched an online reality contest called The Great Driving Challenge for the promotion of Mitsubishi Cedia. Contestants were shortlisted on the basis of votes from visitors/members who rated the contestant based on their testimonials, profile and uploaded online content like blogs, photos, videos etc. The final 3 contestants were then sponsored for a paid road trip on Mitsubishi Cedia sports car on their chosen circuit where they were supposed to post blogs, photos and videos based on their trip experiences. Finally the winner was decided on the number of posts, content quality, user votes and number of profile visitors.

The Great Driving challenge is a good example of an online reality show. It effectively integrates the product marketing with the social media campaign. Unfortunately many such campaigns die out after some time and so does the buzz around it. If such social media campaigns are kept alive all round the year, we think it would add a lot more value to the company. Young and Free Alberta is one such example of an online reality contest where members & participants are kept engaged all round the year.

Summarizing, we can see international car companies making special efforts in social media for Indian customers. This shows that these companies recognize the importance of engaging customers around their product or social object (lifestyle, passion or cause) as well as customizing social media campaigns for target markets. In the near future we would like to see companies like Toyota and others, which have excellent social platforms and applications for international markets ( e.g. togethergreen.org) , bringing their Indian counterparts to an equivalent level.

On Joining 2020 Social

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Gautam in Announcements

‘Today I joined 20:20 Social, India’s first social business strategy consulting firm\n\nMost people I told this asked me what the heck is a social business strategy consulting firm?

Social business is the new term (or meme, if you will) that is emerging to describe organizations that are leveraging social software and tools to connect with customers and other stakeholders – that’s right folks, bringing the social web into the organization. As I have believed – such tools (call them web 2.0 or whatever) help in facilitating transparency and openness and help achieve the true goals of Organization Development

In my role in 2020 social (follow it on twitter) I would be looking at the enterprise practice – or essentially how organizations can deploy social tools to empower employees, build collaboration, develop knowledge and positively impact business. Yeah, some people call this Enterprise 2.0 too.

It takes me back to the starting point of my career – when I started out looking at organizational processes for Knowledge Managementand then e-learning.

However as much as I love tools – I know that culture always trumps tactics, tools and even strategy. So I am looking at leveraging my HR and OD learnings to help client organizations deploy these social tools. Additionally, I am super-excited to be working along with the amazing 2020 social team that includes an old blogging acquaintanceGaurav Mishra who blogs at gauravonomics.com. What makes Gaurav a kindred spirit is his openness and transparency as CEO – he blogs about the organization as he manages itCheck out Gaurav’s posts onhow to build an Open and Collaborative Professional Services Firm, andTop 10 FAQs on Building a Social Business Strategy Firm in India. Am also looking forward to working with a true blue Thought Leader Dave Evans (not the AC/DC guyauthor of a book on Social Media Marketing who blogs at http://readthis.com

Who are the other folks who are doing something similar?

Well there are two that I know of – the Altimeter Group and Dachis Group.

2020 Social has just started its journey and I am very excited to be part of something so new and emergent.

(cross posted from my other blog)

Huddle – Enterprise Collaboration Tool Review

Posted on 08. Oct, 2009 by Abha in Reviews

Ninian Solutions is UK based company in action since 2006 that offers Huddle.net as an online collaboration tool. It offers a network of workspaces supported by a set of simple and secure project management, collaboration and document sharing tools.

Price plans range from free to $200 per month primarily differing on the number of workspaces, storage, web conferencing features and custom banding options. Security, support and conferencing features are bundled alongwith all plans. Huddle.net does not base costs on the number of users. There are unlimited number of users for all plan types which is great. Currently they have a one month free trial but this is a Limited period offering.

Signing up and getting started with Huddle.net is fairly simple. Glad they avoid the unnecessary complications like detailed sign up forms and restrictive passwords. The confirmation mail for activating the account was almost instantaneous and lead us to our new workspace with single click!

At first sight the dashboard seemed a bit intimidating, but on closer inspection we felt it to be well laid out and packed with a lot of useful features.

We found the design and interface easy to work with and largely self guiding. Liked the option of being able to invite multiple users to the workspace by simply filling in their email IDs on a simple invitation form rather than having to invite each person individually!

It was nice working with a tabbed interface – easy to navigate and quick to load on screen.

Creating and sharing files and documents was simple. Huddle.net allows the option of creating online Word and Excel docs using Zoho. This however was a little slow to work with (especially since everything else was loading so fast, you kindof get used to that kind of super service!). You can mail files directly from the workspace, in fact there’s also the option of zipping and attaching the files in the email.

Whiteboards and Discussion boards offer easy and effective collaboration options. The version control adds to the utility of Whiteboards. By default all members on the project have access to these sections, you cannot restrict access amongst team members.

Tasks can bet set according to date. Tried to a lot the task to an individual but surprisingly all in the team were getting selected. There seems to be a bug here. However there were no options for time tracking reports and task dependencies which was a big disappointment.

Also amiss is the integration with Google docs unlike many other project management tools. Though Huddle.net offers integration with Zoho, this is not as universally accepted as Google Docs and also has its own set of limitations.

Huddle.net offers an interactive feedback forum. What’s even better is a voting mechanism wherein users can vote on ideas/suggestions. Huddle representatives then respond to these ideas and also update the community on the status of the ideas that they pick up for implementation. It’s a good way for the Voice of the customer to reach Huddle.net.

In summary we felt that Huddle.net is a great tool with some noteworthy offerings. It definitely scores above its competitors on the collaboration front, but could do with sharpening some features on the project management side.

Social Media in India: Methodology and Scope

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews

With the advent of social technologies grabbing marketing spaces, many brands can be seen embracing social media for adding value to themselves. Dell, IBM and Starbucks are some of the best examples of companies having a majority of their marketing efforts directed towards social media. In India you can see Tata, Airtel, Reliance BIG, HT Media, Toyota and many more doing the same. Hence we at 20:20 social thought it would be interesting to see how different companies are performing in social media specifically in the Indian Ecosystem and document it in form of a report.

In this report we want to look at 2 sets of companies; International companies having a separate social media presence specifically for India and Indian Companies again having a social media presence in their parent country; and rank them on the basis of their presence and engagement. This is to ensure that Companies are compared on an equal platform since most of the international companies have been using social technologies for quite some time while many Indian Companies have recently realized their importance. Also as we want this set of companies to be internationally recognized, we have chosen Forbes top 50 International companies having Indian presence and top 50 Indian companies in Forbes 2000 list as our sample space.

Moreover we will limit our scope of research to either company websites building conversations around a social object like a lifestyle, passion or cause bigger than the company itself. ( eg: Tata tea for jaagore.com) or Community platforms like Sunsilk gang of girls or social applications like Tata Indica Xeta Shootouts.\n\nHaving said that we will particularly look into four things to rate Companies” social media engagement and presence :

1) Social Object: Since communities and conversations don”t happen in vacuum, they coalesce around a social object which can be a lifestyle, cause or passion. We will see whether the company’’s website/ community platform which is meant to engage users or utilize their social behaviour is built around any social object ( See our position paper)

2) Infrastructure for engagement: Brands/ companies can engage their consumers on various levels of engagement like content consumption, curation, creating, collaboration, trial, purchase and recommendation. We will see whether the company’’s social platform has infrastructure to engage consumers on these levels of engagement.

3) Interactions on the social platforms: Once seen that the company has infrastructure to engage consumers, the next logical step would be to see that till what levels on the ladder of engagement ( consume, curate, create content etc.) do the consumers actually interact.  We will be rate companies on their company to user and user to user conversations in social media.

4) Multiple presence: Many companies like Tata, Reliance, Airtel etc have multiple social media platforms and we think that some credit must be given to this.

Also as there is a scope that many outliers who do not appear on the Forbes list might be doing something exceptional worth deserving a mention and for this report we will also look for some such benchmark examples.

However we would like to keep the scope and parameters open to readers for discussions. Any comments, suggestions are most welcome

5PM – Enterprise Collaboration Tool review

Posted on 05. Oct, 2009 by Abha in Reviews

5PM is a web based project management solution from QG Software, a US based company founded in 2003. It is offered at price plans ranging from $18 – $175 per month, each primarily differing on number of users, storage and projects. There’s a 2 week trial period and also the option of creating customized plans as per specific client requirements.

5PM has a self guiding and friendly interface that is quick to load on screen (no download delays). It has good navigational features and a well defined project workflow. We particularly liked its dual panel layout and projects timeline.

E-mails have been integrated well with tasks in 5PM. This is a useful feature as it brings together 2 of the most important aspects of project related work – mails and the project management tool and thus shows a clear intent by the 5PM team of bringing together everything related to project work onto one common platform!

Visual cues and rollover hints make the tool very usable (especially for new users and team members). It’s easy to navigate and switch between projects, tasks, progress notes and time reporting/tracking. E.g. when adding a progress note you can also specify the time spent on a task, which is good coz most project management tools expect you to specifically go to the time tab then select the project and the respective task and the time spent on the same!

RSS feeds have been put to good use for frequently updating team members on all activities and progress related to a specific project.

5PM integrates well with Google Docs and iCalendar and offers the option of multiple time formats and zones to choose from.

The application specifically recommended for small business owing to its relatively moderate cost, ease of use and no requirement for any IT infrastructure. 5PM however, lacks advanced features for heavy business users like online chats, conferencing, task prioritization, custom branding etc.

5PM boasts of a flawless server uptime.
Website monitoring by Myserveralerts.com.

In summary, 5PM is on the must evaluate list for small and medium businesses with less than 100 active projects and limited file storage requirements.