Beyond the Use Case

I work in the Professional Services group at an Enterprise 2.0 software vendor, so I’m well aware that most companies licensing our collaboration platform do so because they have a specific application in mind – a use case.

But lately, I've started to suspect that too much attention is given to the use case throughout the enterprise software deployment process, from RFP through to implementation.

Don't get me wrong, I think use cases are wonderful. Whenever I launch a new customer that’s already thought through and documented their main use cases, I know the implementation process will go more quickly and smoothly.

But I'm increasingly convinced that with Enterprise 2.0 tools, some companies would realize greater economic benefit if they just jumped in and started using them, rather than focusing too closely on a previously defined use case.

Why? Because companies often end up using collaboration software in ways they simply couldn’t have anticipated when it was specified or purchased.

Among the real-life examples I've observed:

• By the time the software license contracts have been signed, the company’s needs or priorities have changed. Sometimes other valid use cases will emerge and get traction; other times the system withers on the vine.
• Within weeks of licensing the software, the project’s internal champion or executive sponsor is moved to another role, or worse yet leaves the organization.
• As the system is rolled out, the original champion or someone else identifies an even higher value or higher priority use case, which ends up taking precedence.
• A company licenses collaboration tools for a specific use case, such as a product development wiki, only to watch it spread across multiple departments until it eventually replaces their existing intranet.

I've also worked with companies that have created hugely successful collaborative systems starting with a use case that read, “Let’s begin using these new E2.0 tools and learn how we might benefit from them.” Without exception the process has involved senior management signaling their support for the new initiative, then nurturing the self-motivated champions who come out of the woodwork with their own applications – yes, their use cases.

So, I'm not arguing against the use case, just trying to keep it in perspective.

As any successful technology comes to market and is purchased by successive waves of customers (from so-called early adopters through the mass market), there is always a point, just before widespread adoption, where companies that haven’t yet deployed it look around and realize it’s only a matter of time.

For Enterprise 2.0 software, that time is now.

Twitterville: My Kind of Town

Shel Israel's new book Twitterville has modest ambitions – providing an overview of how Twitter is currently being used for business. It's a quick read that doesn't attempt the impossible task of cataloging all of Twitter's enterprise possibilities, or spend much time comparing Twitter with other kinds of communications and collaboration tools.

But it's precisely for these reasons that I liked Twitterville; instead of blathering on about theories of social networking, it simply presents anecdotes about how companies large and small are using Twitter to respond to complaints, improve their products, and in a few cases, measurably increase sales.

I appreciated the author being up-front about how the book was written – he tweeted his few thousand followers asking for suggestions for each chapter, then captured and edited the best responses. I'm relatively new to Twitter, and had used a similar process of asking the people I trust for advice when taking my tentative first steps with this new but undeniably powerful communications medium.

Most of Twitterville documents the way Twitter has spurred the growth of different kinds of what the author calls "global neighborhoods":

1. Large consumer-oriented companies: these arguably have the most to lose by ignoring the rise of social media, such as Twitter. There are already many examples of major consumer brands (including Amazon, United Airlines, and Motrin) that have damaged themselves by responding slowly, ineffectively, or not at all to consumer complaints distributed via social networking. At the same time, companies that proactively use Twitter to listen for and respond to customer mentions of their brands are getting disproportionately positive press, just for doing something they should have been doing all along.

2.  Business-to-business: not many B2B companies have leveraged Twitter effectively to date, though some have gone beyond standard sales and marketing tactics and started using Twitter as a recruiting tool. As Twitterville points out, any business seeking to gain a competitive advantage via Twitter, whether globally or locally, needs to look carefully at the issue of identity. For instance, @comcastcares is the Twitter handle for a real human being, Frank Eliason, who has more than 30,000 followers and has tweeted more than 35,000 times. By contrast, @timewarnercares is being followed by more than 500 people, but has yet to issue a single tweet.

3.  Small business: for many small companies, Twitter provides a better ROI for sales and customer service than any comparable expenditure of time and money. Twitterville documents a number of exemplary small businesses, from coffee houses and pizza joints (and a popular San Francisco crème brûlée cart) to Web 2.0 companies such as Seesmic (which makes the Twhirl Twitter client). In particular, it describes how the entrepreneurs behind these companies are breaking the traditional customer / vendor boundaries that until very recently governed business, replacing them with a model in which customers aren't just consumers but are actively courted to co-define a brand and thus have an active stake in its success.

4.  Personal branding: Using Twitter (and comparable internal micro-sharing tools) is the fastest way to build your professional identity, whether you work in a global corporation or as a freelance contractor. But you need to have a very clear career mission in tweeting, focusing on what you're solving for your customers or employer, says Jeremiah Owyang (now of the Altimeter Group, formerly an analyst at Forrester Research). "Don't focus on the minutiae of tools; instead, think of the greater problem and solution you'll provide."

I found the second half of Twitterville especially interesting, as the author goes beyond commerce to look at how Twitter-based communities can be further the growth of philanthropy, government 2.0, and what Israel calls "braided journalism". Of these, journalism is the first to experience gut-wrenching change as a result of the explosion of information sources on the web, a trend that can only get more severe as "the web" evolves to become "the real-time web". Recent examples include the US Airways flight that landed safely in the Hudson River, and the worldwide push-back against corrupt elections in Iran, both most effectively reported via Twitter.

These are early days for the 140-character phenomenon of micro-sharing, but savvy companies and individuals are already staking out turf in the neighborhood.

If you've been tweeting for a while, Twitterville isn't likely to rock your world. But if you're new to Twitter and want a quick overview of the commercial possibilities, a visit to Twitterville is a good place to start.