Jacob Morgan's Blog, page 38

The Vendor Opportunity Gap in The Future of Wok

The bulk of what I do entails working with large (and some mid size) organizations on helping them understand and then adapt to the changes we are seeing around the future of work and collaboration.  Part of this means understanding what’s happening on the technology side of things which is one of the reasons why I started doing my Friday Vendor Roundup.

An innovation problem or a marketing obstacle?

For the better part of a year now I’ve noticed a bit of stagnation on the innovation side for many of these vendors.  Granted they are still adding features, improving their products, and making other enhancements; but they are not innovating.  Most of the things I’m seeing are around new pricing structures, redesigned UIs, some new minor features, and perhaps some added integrations and capabilities. Of course this is still important but I don’t see anyone really pushing the envelope so to speak.

There’s been this long running joke where if you go to the exhibit call of a conference and cover up the logos and branding of the various products, that you won’t be able to tell them apart.  They all look the same, do the same thing, and integrate with the same applications.

Many of these technologies have been around for a while now and instead of completely rethinking how work is and should be done they are instead continuing to pile onto their existing platforms which are now not as innovative as they used to be half a decade ago. There is a big opportunity for some disruption to happen here (and I know of a few companies looking to break into this area in the next few months).

The current market challenge

Now having said that I also understand that vendors are also in a bit of a catch-22.  Vendors have switched from innovating and product development mode to marketing and selling mode while just doing enough on the product side to keep pace with the market.  While these technologies have been around for a few years now, many companies have yet to begin investing in deploying them and developing strategies around them.  I get the sense that perhaps some vendors want to move forward at a more rapid speed but then they realize that it might not make sense to do so unless they have more companies purchasing at least the very basic versions of their product.  In other words what’s the incentive to innovate unless more organizations start to get on board?  (of course I’m not their target market since I’m in the industry).

There are essentially five stages for building a collaborative organization but from a broader perspective I’m seeing a bifurcation in the market.  There are those companies who are heavily investing in the future of work and want more innovative technologies and then there are those companies who are at the very bottom of the totem pole who are just getting started (or who started a while ago but haven’t moved anywhere).

The challenge for vendors is how to address the needs of both.  How can they provide something for the advanced companies and also something for the companies just getting started?  Keep in mind that the market for companies that are just getting started is far bigger which is why most vendors are focusing on sales and marketing instead of on innovation, unfortunately this frustrates the advanced companies.  Many vendors are offering the same products and services to companies regardless of what their needs are or how advanced they might be, this is one of the reasons why I advocate the feature adoption framework for collaboration.

An opportunity gap

As mentioned above I see a big opportunity for new vendors entering the collaboration/future of work space that are going to challenge and disrupt the current state of things.  Many existing vendors have their hands tied so to speak.  They can’t innovate faster than the market is ready to adopt since so many customers are used to their existing platforms which means that they have to keep pace with things, at least until adoption of the technologies increases.  However, this doesn’t mean that new vendors can’t come in and start to shake things up a bit, and there are a few which are just on the horizon.

So now the question is what are existing vendors going to do to innovate and what are new vendors going to do to shake things up?

 

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Friday Vendor Roundup: Huddle, HiqhQ, Mango Apps, & Mindjet

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.

Huddle launched Connected Desktop

Connected Desktop is essentially a major update comprised of four main areas:

Cloud storage and access- files no longer need to be saved locally, the cloud is now your hard drive and you can edit, open, lock, store, and collaborate on files.
Outlook integration- basically everything that happens in Outlook is transposed into Huddle and moved into a collaborative threaded environment instead of email chains.
Huddle Viewer- images and videos can be previewed directly from the cloud as if you were accessing them directly on your computer or an external hard drive.
Huddle Dashboard- an activity stream that allows you to see content and activity happening within your organization.

Link to announcement

My POV

This is a huge upgrade for Huddle with a heavy bet on the cloud (which I think is the right bet to make).  The main challenge with Huddle is that while it might be a good platform for content management or project management, it still lacks in many of the collaborative capabilities that other vendors offer.  However, Huddle’s main competition is Box and Sharepoint and not necessarily Jive or Chatter.  I really like the new updates but still, it would be great to see features that allow employees to share what they are working, ask and answer questions, submit ideas, etc that don’t specifically revolve around a specific piece of content. 

HighQ release Collaborate 3

This newest release includes some big new additions such as: responsive design for mobile (all devices), tablet, and desktops; secure file sharing, rich profiles, private messaging, activity streams (including microblogging, image sharing, commenting, and “liking”), and task management.

Link to announcement

My POV

Truth be told I can’t imagine how HighQ existed without having these features in place which many consider to be standard for any collaboration vendor.  This is certainly a huge release for HighQ which has really need to step up in order to be considered a “true” vendor of collaboration software.  Of course the challenge now is that with the current new features HighQ still isn’t better or ahead of anyone else, they simply caught up to where much of the market is and vendors are already taking next steps with 3rd party integrations (and building out their own ecosystems), adding video and voice calling, Office integration, and a host of other things.  Congrats to the team on a major release but they need to keep it coming!

Mango Apps  announces version 8.2 

Disclosure: Chess Media Group uses a no-cost version of the software which Mango has “given” us.

The new Mango release features things such as a new admin roles interface, ability to set user permissions on folders, smart settings which “remember” how you like to view information, moving folders between projects, and a host of other things.

Link to announcement

My POV

It’s funny, you don’t really notice many of these changes on the surface but you certainly notice them when you are actually working within Mango and realize that you would like to do something such as move a file from one group to the other.  This release mainly focused on specific use case that I’m sure customers were requesting and mainly deals with more functional or tactical changes instead of broader new feature sets.  Still, this new release makes it much easier to use Mango to get work done without worrying about the little tedious things that make you say “darn, I wish I could do XYZ.”  I’m excited to see the future versions of Mango, especially since I was given a little glimpse into their roadmap.  These guys really have a great product that rivals what the other major players have.

Mindjet releases newest version of MindManager

MindManager was given a big update to help teams improve the

way hey visualize and then act on the mind maps that they create. The full list of new updates is extensive but highlights include: the ability to build formulas directly into your mindmaps, “what if” analysis and visual decision making that allows users to set thresholds and color code information (to help make better decisions), and drag and drop functionality to easily move content around.

Link to annoucement

My POV

In all fairness I haven’t used or seen their product in quite some time.

If you use mindmapping software then MindMapper is certainly one of the leaders in that space. Imagine using a visual mapping tool to get all of your work done (assign tasks, budgeting, roadmaps, etc) and that’s what you have with MindManager.  I’d be curious to see how they fit in with enterprise collaboration platforms such as Chatter, Jive, Yammer, Telligent, and many others. While I can’t say that their product really fits within the enterprise collaboration space, I suspect that they will either release a product in this area or add features to their project management tool.

 

 

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The Evolution of Work Explained

For those not aware, I recently started a column on Forbes where I cover the future of work and collaboration.  I write there once a week and try to write here 2-3x a week when I can.  I recently shared an infographic that my team created on the evolution of work which became quite popular so I wanted to share it here as well.

I found that I was always explaining the future of work and repeating the same things over and over again and there wasn’t really a good visual which helps summarize what the future of work actually looks like.  So I decided to make something that anyone can use, which you can see below.

The full article on the evolution of work can be found on Forbes where I provide more detail around what these different things actually mean.

Let me know what you think

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Case Study: The Future of Work and Collaboration at Electronic Arts

We just released our new case study on the future of work and collaboration with Electronic Arts (EA).  We had the privilege of speaking with Bert Sandie who is their director of technical excellence and helps drive these efforts.  For those of you not familiar with EA they are one of the top distributors, publishers, and developers of interactive entertainment software.  They have around 10,000 employees globally and some of their flagship games include: Battlefield, SimCity, Command and Conquer, Dead Space, Mass Effect, and many others.

EA games are created by many teams (oftentimes at least 20) that are spread out across various geographical regions so being able to virtually bring together people and information was a huge business driver.  Hundreds of people come together to work on a single game!

In this case study we explore things such as:

How EA was able to leverage social and collaborative technologies to connect their people and information.
Where the push for new technologies and strategies came from and how they were formalized.
What tools EA is actually using and how they are using them to connect their people and information while providing a culture of collaboration.
The operational impact of these new technologies and strategies on EA.
The lessons learned.
Future plans for changes and enhancements.

The case study also features several screenshots from their collaboration portal as well as plenty of insights and tips from Bert.

You can download the EA case study here.

 

 

 

 

 

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Friday Vendor Roundup: Socialtext, Lithium Technologies, Salesforce

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.

Socialtext releases version 6.0 Socialtext recently upgraded their platform to include several new enhancements and features.  The addition of video technology allows users to record, host, and share videos with each other (among a few other things).  The activity stream was also update to show a preview of any content that is shared in the feed.  Search functionality was also updated with auto complete and term suggestions to help users find information.  Finally, some cosmetic changes were also done to some layouts and the people and groups directories.

Link to announcement (with video walk-through)

My POV Some great additions here.  Most of the features should be expected from most platforms but the video technology is something that many vendors still don’t offer (for some strange reason).  Ironically video conferencing and recordings are becoming very popular within organizations so I’m glad to see that Socialtext added this to their recent release.

Lithium raises another $50 million in preparation for IPO 

Some very exciting news from my friends over at Lithium Technologies today.  They raised another $50 million and are getting ready to become a publicly traded company.  They also hired former Yahoo! executive Tapan Bhat to be their new SVP and Chief Product Officer.

Link to announcement

My POV

Lithium has quite frankly been kicking ass lately.  They have an all-star executive team, recently moved into new offices in San Francisco to prepare for rapid growth, were ranked a visionary, leader, and major player in Gartner, Forrester, and IDC reports (respectively), and are now getting ready to become a public company.  On a side note I recently found out that Tapan Bhat is my friend’s cousin, which I learned during my birthday dinner, small world!  Anyway, back to the point.  As customer experience and engagement continues to be a major focus for business leaders around the world Lithium is in a perfect spot to dominate, and that is what they are doing.

Salesforce cuts 200 people and announces new file sync and share service called “files” 

After the ExactTarget acquisition SFDC says there was some overlap in roles and so they decided to trim those roles back.  Salesforce also announced that they are killing off Chatterbox (a Box-like feature for file sharing and storage).  Details on “files” are scarce and the new service should be launched in 2014 but you can expect mention of it at Dreamforce this year.

Link to announcement

Link to “files” announcement

My POV Nobody likes to hear about job cuts and it’s really unfortunate that 200 people had to be let go.  The overlap was due to the Radian6 acquisition that happened a few years ago and Buddy Media.  ExactTarget, Buddy Media, and Radian6 are a part of the new Marketing cloud.  However, the good news is that SFDC is providing as much support as possible for the 200 employees to help them get situated elsewhere.

Salesforce certainly has the resources and manpower to create a powerful Box-like platform but it sounds like this new direction is more of an integration with other existing platforms such as Box instead of a new product.  Either way the name “files” make it sound like it’s something from the 1980′s but that could just be the millennial in me talking.

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Don’t be Scared to Provide Feedback to Your Vendors

Many of the companies I work with and speak with are not always completely satisfied with the collaboration technologies that they deploy.  In fact I’d say it’s rare for a company to say that they are 100% happy with everything that the vendor offers.  The reality is that the words “perfection” and “technology” don’t really go that well together especially when considering that every company has different needs and expectations (as do individuals).  The key is to understand and expect that this will be the case.

Sometimes a feature doesn’t work the way they would like it to, perhaps an integration isn’t that smooth, or maybe the reporting and analytics isn’t providing the insight and data that they are expecting (this is actually a very common issue).  Most of the time what happens is…absolutely nothing.  The company goes on in frustration with the team complaining and moaning to each other about how the technology doesn’t meet all of their needs.

Organizations need to speak up and communicate with vendors to let them know where they are lacking and what can be done to fix any issues.  If reporting and analytics is an issue then pick up the phone and call the vendor and let them know what you need and see how they can work with you to provide that.  Simply staying quiet and swallowing the frustration isn’t going to help anyone.  Keep in mind that you are paying them not vice versa.

I’m not saying you need to be a jerk about it but there is nothing wrong with providing feedback to your technology vendor to let them know  what they need to improve on.  Don’t be scared to apply a little bit of pressure either, especially if you are working for a large or well known organization.  Oftentimes these vendors will do whatever they can to keep your business.

It’s hard to find the “perfect” technology solution which is why you need to look at these vendors as types of technology partners who are going to learn and grow with you.

The worst thing you can do is stay quiet.

 

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Friday Vendor Roundup: Clarizen, Badgeville, and Smartsheet

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week.

This week was relatively quiet most likely due to the long weekend coming up.  Here is the roundup for this week:

Clarizen releases Version 6 (client) 

Clarizen is an enterprise collaboration and project management vendor. A few days ago Clarizen released the newest version of their product which has a strong focus on social and collaborative capabilities. Key features include the ability to add hashtags to conversations and updates and the ability to tag people in relevant conversations. Clarizen also added drag and drop functionality for project management, a powerful new search engine, and the ability to more effectively collaborate on and share documents directly within the platform.

Link to announcement

My POV

The new release is fantastic.  As my business partner Connie mentioned, the big challenge with Clarizen in the past was that they were a great project management tool that lacked in social and collaborative capabilities.  While many of the existing enterprise collaboration vendors out there have been offering these new social and collaborative capabilities for a while now, what they have been lacking (and still lack) is a powerful project management solution to help bridge the social, work, and collaboration layers together.  Clarizen has now been able to bridge that gap because with this recent update they now not only offer a superior project management platform but they also have the capabilities of many of the leading enterprise collaboration vendors today.

Badgeville launches new behavior lab 

Badgeville is a technology platform which adds game concepts and mechanics to work environments (such as Jive, Yammer, and others) to make it more fun and engaging for employees to participate (i.e. badges, leaderboards, status, etc).  Today Badgeville is launching a center of excellence for behavior management solutions.  The goal of this new lab is to focus on: research and innovation, solutions methodology, and solutions templates.

Link to announcement

My POV

When I first heard about this I immediately thought of Pavlov’s dogs except instead of dogs we are using humans.  It’s certainly valuable for organizations to understand employee behavior but a part of me things it’s a bit strange to use game mechanics and concepts to manipulate employees in doing things that we want them to do.  I’m sure the new lab isn’t just going to be about that though (or at least I hope it won’t).  I’d like to this this center of excellence extended to go beyond just looking at workplace behavior and game mechanics to looking at what employees actually value from a broader perspective.  For example do employees care more about money or doing something they are passionate about?  I’m curious to read about some of the research and findings that come out of this.

Smartsheet adds Dropbox and Zapier access 

Smartsheet is an enterprise collaboration with an emphasis on document collaboration and information management. Today Smartsheet announced an integration with Dropbox so that customers can easily attach and share files from Dropbox inside of Smartsheet.  They also announced a connection with Zapier which is a marketplace for connecting various apps together.  The Zapier addition means that Smartsheet can now be connected to hundreds of other applications through a third party.

Link to announcement 

My POV 

Smartsheet is a much smaller vendor but I like the approach they are taking, especially the Zapier addition.  This widely opens up their ecosystem to hundreds of other vendors.  To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if Smartsheet was acquired by a larger vendor in the next year or so.

 

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It’s Crunch Time for the Future of Work

Within the next 2 years millennials (ages 18-35) will make up the majority of the workforce.  As I mentioned on Facebook page, these (myself included) are people who don’t know what it’s like to not have social and collaborative tools to get work done. We search on Google, share comments on Twitter, post pictures on Instagram, connect with friends on Facebook, share our location on Foursquare, write our ideas in blogs, post reviews on Yelp, and build our resumes on Linkedin. We don’t know what it’s like to use a legacy intranet, to get 150 emails a day, work in a cubicle, and to not be able to easily connect with and engage with people and information. Yet for some reason this is exactly how organizations are set up today.

Most organizations are “pointing” 180 degrees away from the future workforce, and it’s a scary thing.  In other words it’s as if someone is telling all these companies what they need to do to prepare for the future and they are literally saying, “nah we’ll do the exact opposite and see what happens.”

Some companies have already been working on adapting their organizations for the past few years, but many have not.  Those companies should really be feeling a sense of urgency right about now.

If your organization is still stuck using legacy technologies and approaches to getting work done what do you think will happen when millennials join your organization? In fact, why would they want to join your organization at all?  They wouldn’t.  This means that as the baby boomers retire and as knowledge and experience literally walks out your front that you don’t have an attractive enough proposition to replace those employees with new top talent.

Most organizations today are still working the same way they did 20, 30, and 50 years ago. It’s time to adapt quickly, or you can leave things the way they are and see what happens…

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Friday Vendor Roundup: Avectra, Moxie Software, Box, Alfresco, and Citrix

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week. Here is the roundup for this week:

Avectra acquired by Abila

Avectra is a former client of ours and they offered a great platform for customer and membership management as well as employee collaboration.  They had a strong focus on the non-profit space as did Abila which acquired them.

My POV

I think it’s a great move for both companies.  I think Avectra needed more resources to grow their customer base and improve their product and Abila needed a powerful membership and community management software to allow non-profits to better engage with donors and members.  Both companies have a strong focus in the non-profit area so the acquisition makes sense.  I’m actually very curious to see what Abila will do with the Avectra product over the next year.

Link to announcement 

Box targeting smaller businesses 

Box recently announced two things, the first is that they are doubling the amount of storage space (from 5 to 10 gigs) for personal accounts.  The second is a new “starter package” for smaller businesses which offers 100 gigs of storage for 1-10 people starting at just $5/month.

My POV

Box has been all over the place recently, and I mean that in good way.  It really feels as though Aaron Levie and Box want to take over the world and just dominate every corner of the industry.  This move is great for the company as it helps fight competition from other cloud providers such as Dropbox who already have a very strong grip on the individual and small business market. Their price point is fantastic and 100 gigs is certainly a good amount of storage for a “starter package.”  Not only that but it helps build their prospect funnel to help move companies from the basic package to more expensive packages once they use up their 100 gigs.

Link to announcement 

Moxie Software adds live document editor and IOS app

Moxie customers can now edit Microsoft documents within the activity stream of “collaboration spaces,” previously the document would have to be downloaded, edited, and the re-uploaded to the platform.  Now users can edit it directly within the application.  Moxie also released their IOS app for their “collaboration spaces” product.

My POV

While the new features are certainly a good thing they are merely adding things to allow them to catch up to other vendors who have offered live editing features and IOS app for quite some time already.  Their “collaboration spaces” product hasn’t been out for that long but what they have now is still lacking when compared to what other vendors are offering.  However, Moxie does allow you to use their product for free which is definitely a plus.

Link to announcement

Alfresco updates their UI

Alfresco made some changes to look and feel of their product based on customer feedback.  They trimmed back their navigation bar and added advanced search capabilities.

My POV

I haven’t seen their product in a little while but the last time I did, it was a bit of a cluttered mess.  Their recent changes really allow for some breathing room which is a good thing.  Having a product which is intuitive and easy to use is a big help for employee adoption.   When the product is cluttered and overwhelming employees tend to not use it so this recent update is definitely welcomed.

Link to announcement 

Citrix (client) announces over 100 committed apps to their enterprise mobile ecosystem 

The title pretty much says everything you need to know.  There are now over 100 apps in the mobile enterprise ecosystem that companies can chose from, called Worx, with many more on the way.

My POV

Citrix is doing a great job of helping empower the mobile worker which is a huge factor when thinking about the future of work.  As Citrix points in their announcement there’s a lot that goes into making a mobile app enterprise ready so to have 100 enterprise ready mobile apps is a huge milestone (and it’s growing quickly!).  As we see more organizations empowering their employees to work from whenever and wherever these mobile app ecosystems are going to play an ever increasing crucial role.

Link to announcement 

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Introducing TheFutureWorkplace.com

For the past few months Connie and I have been working on a few big things.  This new site is one of them.  Jmorganmarketing.com and Socialbusinessadvisor.com will now be pointing here to TheFutureWorkplace.com.  As you can undoubtedly tell, this site is very different than its predecessors and there’s good reason for that.  Over the past year or so I distanced myself from the whole “social business” meme and have begun focusing much more on “the future of work” which is exactly what I want this site to be about.

There are a few key things to point out about this new site.

Even the though the content of the site won’t really be changing I wanted to focus on breaking it up into three distinct areas: strategy, culture, and technology (there will also be a “more” section which will have some other less primary categories).  You will the icons representing each one of these areas next to each blog post and on the top of the website.  This will make it easy for readers to consume the content on the site.  I am also going have “featured posts” for each one of these topics, which you can find in the sidebar.  Here I will include what I believe to be the most important or crucial articles on these respective topics.

I also wanted to make the content more consumable so in addition to including the usual social icons for each blog I’m also making it easier for the posts to be printed, emailed, or viewed on a kindle device.  The site has also been optimized for mobile.  All of this means that the content can be consumed on any device and easily shared with anyone, even if it’s printed on a sheet of paper. The email newsletter is also more prominently featured.

The next major thing is the focus on three key area which are prominent on the homepage: working together, speaking at events and conferences, and my book.  I wanted to make it very easy for visitors to explore potential ways for us to collaborate and I think this does the job nicely.

Other things include:

Complete new look, feel, brand, and design
Inclusion of my Forbes column in the sidebar
Featured a few recent resources in the sidebar

I’m very excited for the new site.  There might be a few bugs that show up over the next few days so if you see anything that doesn’t work properly or looks a bit wonky then please let me know so that I can get it fixed ASAP.  Thanks for reading and for your continued support, it’s very much appreciated!

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