Posts Tagged ‘Groups’

Save time by making it easy for users to contribute

January 5, 2009

One of the advantages of my position at GroupSwim is I help lots of customers plan and roll-out their sites. I get to observe what works and what doesn’t work. I’ve noticed an easy strategy that helps people collaborate effectively – using very specific group names to guide people on where to post discussions, documents or wikis.

I know this sounds simple but it isn’t. For example, if I’m creating a collaboration site for a professional services project, I might use these groups:

  1. Project Management Meeting Notes
  2. Executive Interview Results
  3. Technical Infrastructure Issues
  4. Gruntmaster 2000 Training Documents

Instead of:

  1. Project Planning
  2. Technical
  3. Training

I see this over and over again where customers using specific groups like the first list see significantly higher volume and more value than those using groups like the second list. There is a psychological barrier that people need to overcome when using a collaboration tool like GroupSwim. It is so easy to fall back into the habits of using email or nothing at all. What I’m observing is if you are proscriptive in how you want employees or customers to collaborate, they will respond. I’m not saying limit their options. If they want to create additional groups and collaborate more, by all means turn them loose. However, when getting things started, the more specific you can be, the better results you will achieve.

The first list is a good example of internal collaboration; it is the same thing with external customer collaboration. One of our clients created an external community and the groups they use are very detailed. They don’t just go by products, but have different groups for specific modules. They also have groups for roles and technologies. What this does is make it very easy for users to see where they should post content. EVERYTHING we do to encourage collaboration should remove friction from the process. This is one very easy way to do it. It reminds me of a golf swing; if you set-up correctly over the ball with the proper grip and alignment, you have a higher probability of hitting a great shot. The same thing holds true for collaboration. If you structure your groups and tools correctly, you have a higher probability of achieving great results.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in CMC, Community, Methodology, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

Another Key to a Vibrant Community

July 31, 2008

It is important to structure group sites that correspond with how people work and what they think about.  In a previous post, I discussed making things very clear for users on where to collaborate on topics.  I’m taking it one step farther and providing a very specific example of how this could work for a common situation.

This site is an internal collaboration site for a software company.  The site started with the sales and marketing teams, and other teams have joined along the way.  The site utilizes SSL and Active Directory integration for extra security.  It has the following groups and permissions inside the site:

  1. Competition – this is a private group for the sales and marketing team to gather information and field stories about the competition.  People can add discussions, emails, and competitive documentation so the team has one place to go for information on the competition.  They could also create a wiki page that lists the most effective points to make against specific competitors that can change over time.
    1. If there are one or two main competitors, you could create separate groups for each one to provide even more focus.
  2. Demonstration Best Practices and Scripts – this is a private group for sales engineers to swap best practices, scripts and other deliverables associated with providing demos during the sales process.  Other groups like Professional Services and/or Support might participate in this group to answer questions to help improve or troubleshoot demos.
  3. Feature Requests – this is an auto-join group where anyone in the site (all company employees) can log and discuss feature requests.  This way, everyone can see what others have suggested and lend their opinion as well.  It also gives the product marketing team an effective way to communicate with requestors and company employees about upcoming features.  It is a great feeder to a more formal product management process.
  4. Healthcare Vertical – this is a public group that anyone can join who either works or is interested in the healthcare industry.
    1. You can have as many of these as you want, depending on your company or products.  You could also have geographic and/or regional groups.
  5. Marketing Newsletters – this is an auto-join group with manager only posting. It can serve as a repository for all newsletters that only marketing can add.  You can post the newsletters as HTML so they will look and read exactly like the customers received.
  6. RFI (Request for Information) Q&A – this is a private group for the sales and marketing teams to contribute RFIs and RFPs they’ve received and submitted.  It is an excellent way to create an easy-to-use repository and add specific questions and discussions.  You can also add a wiki page with the standard company answers for the most common questions, and then adapt and modify them over time as the market or competition evolves.
  7. Sales Administration – this is a private group for the sales team.  It contains policies, procedures and administrative announcements that are relevant to the sales team.
  8. Sales Tools and Collateral – this is a public group for sales and marketing, but other employees can join if they are interested.  It is a manager posting only group so only named sales and marketing personnel can add content to the group.  However, the group is configured so others can reply and ask questions about the content posted.  This group might include presentation templates, white papers, datasheets, etc..
  9. Win-Loss Reports – this is a private group for the sales team to post win-loss reports and discuss them as a team.  It is an excellent repository so people can look for similar customers and situations and learn from their colleagues.

There can be other groups like Company Watercooler, Announcements, Knowledge Base, etc. that are auto-join groups and apply to the whole company or team.

The list above list represents groups closely associated with a sales and marketing team.  You can easily imagine similar kinds of groups if the group were Professional Services (Best Practices, Integration Materials, etc.), Customer Support (Product Bugs, Scripts, Training, etc.) or other knowledge-based teams.  I hope this helps you visualize how using specific groups within a site can help teams and companies collaborate more effectively.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Enterprise, Methodology, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

One Key to a Vibrant Collaboration Site

July 10, 2008

One of the advantages of my position at GroupSwim is I get to see lots of customers and their sites.  It affords me the opportunity to observe what works and what doesn’t work.  I’ve concluded that there is one thing that is very effective in getting people to collaborate effectively – using very specific groups to guide people on where to post discussions, documents or wikis.

I know this sounds simple but it isn’t.  For example, if I’m creating a collaboration site for a professional services project, I might use these groups:

  1. Project Management Meeting Notes
  2. Executive Interview Results
  3. Technical Infrastructure Issues
  4. Gruntmaster 2000 Training Documents

Instead of:

  1. Project Planning
  2. Technical
  3. Training

I see this over and over again where customers using specific groups like the first list see significantly higher volume and more value than those using groups like the second list.  There is a psychological barrier that people need to overcome when using a collaboration tool like GroupSwim.  As I’ve discussed in previous blog posts, it is so easy to fall back into the habits of using email or nothing at all.  What I’m observing is if you are very proscriptive in how you want employees or customers to collaborate, they will respond.  I’m not saying limit their options.  If they want to create additional groups and collaborate more, by all means turn them loose. However, when getting things started, the more specific you can be, the better results you will achieve.

The first list is a good example of internal collaboration; it is the same thing with external customer collaboration.  One of our clients created an external community and the groups they use are very detailed.  They don’t just go by products, but have different groups for specific modules.  They also have groups for roles and technologies.  What this does is make it very easy for users to see where they should post content.  EVERYTHING we do to encourage collaboration should remove friction from the process.  This is one very easy way to do it.  It reminds me of a golf swing; if you set-up correctly over the ball with the proper grip and alignment, you have a higher probability of hitting a great shot.  The same thing holds true for collaboration.  If you structure your groups and tools correctly, you have a higher probability of achieving great results.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Methodology, Strategy | 3 Comments »