Kleinere bedrijven leggen grotere nadruk op sociale marketing

Kleinere bedrijven leggen grotere nadruk op sociale marketing

Survey Says E-Mail Rocks; Social Networking Used by Some, Rejected by Few, Investigated by Most

Survey Says E-Mail Rocks; Social Networking Used by Some, Rejected by Few, Investigated by Most

Isolement door sociale media is een mythe

Ondanks alle mythes, maken sociale media de gebruiker niet minder sociaal. Dat is de conclusie van een onderzoek van de bureaus ExactTarget en CoTweet. De onderzoekers merken op dat actieve gebruikers van websites zoals Facebook en Twitter ook in het offline sociale leven actiever worden. Volgens het rapport zijn intensievere gebruikers van Facebook 27 procent meer geneigd om vrienden persoonlijk te ontmoeten. Er wordt aan toegevoegd dat deze groep ook 19 procent meer geneigd is om telefonisch contact te onderhouden met vrienden. Slechts bij 13 procent wordt een daling in de persoonlijke ontmoetingen opgetekend. Ook blijkt 19 procent minder met vrienden te telefoneren. Bij Twitter zijn de cijfers volgens het rapport nog duidelijker. Daar zou 46 procent meer geneigd zijn om vrienden te ontmoeten, terwijl 33 procent meer telefonisch contact onderhoudt. Slechts 7 procent maakt gewag van minder ontmoetingen, terwijl 13 procent minder telefoneert. (MH)

Source: www.express.be Go to source >>

Microsoft Office 365

Vorige week maakte Microsoft bekend dat de Office-suite op de cloud geplaatst wordt. Office 365 combineert de gekende Office-suite met  clouddiensten zoals Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online en Lync Online. Office 365 is ‘een verzameling van alle opgedane kennis van productiviteit samengevoegd in één dienst’.

Met de komst van Office 365 lijkt Microsoft de diensten, applicaties en programma’s die al op de cloud geplaatst waren, te verbinden met elkaar. Productiviteit op de cloud dus. De suite is bedoeld voor bedrijven van alle groottes. Er wordt dus geen onderscheid meer gemaakt tussen verschillende suites voor verschillende bedrijven (BPOS, Live@edu, Microsoft Office Live Smal Business).

Met Office 365 wil Microsoft een alternatief bieden voor de concurrerende suite Google Apps. Met de komst van Google Apps heeft Microsoft namelijk aan marktaandeel moeten inboeten op vlak van online producten. Volgens Microsoft zelfs is de betrouwbaarheid van hun servers hun sterkste USP. Volgens Google zijn hun producten dan weer veel betrouwbaarder qua veiligheid. Een titanenstrijd in wording waarbij geen van beide partijen toe zal geven. Deze strijd is iets waar wij als consumenten en/of bedrijven alleen maar van kunnen profiteren. Beide bedrijven  zullen hun producten continu verbeteren en mogelijk zullen er ook nog andere concurrenten op de markt komen.

Microsoft richt zich dus op alle bedrijven maar gaat zich nu op een andere manier dan voorheen richten op kleinere bedrijven. Voor een bedrijf met minder dan 25 werknemers, zal Microsoft maandelijks $6 aanrekenen per gebruiker.   Voor grotere bedrijven bedraagt de minimumbijdrage $2 maar kan de prijs oplopen tot $27 voor de uitgebreide versie met (onder andere) 24/7 telefoonondersteuning. BPOS werd voorheen verkocht voor $120/gebruiker op jaarbasis. Google Apps daarentegen wordt momenteel verkocht voor $50/gebruiker op jaarbasis. De nieuwe prijsstellingen van Office 365 zijn dus iets competitiever dan die van Google Apps.

Door het combineren van alle clouddiensten helpt Microsoft bedrijven bij het beheren van hun infrastructuur. Voorheen verkochten ze enkel software. Met Office 365 breiden ze dus de potentiële markt uit en kunnen ze zich op een groter deel van de budgetten van bedrijven richten. Voordien was dat maar 15% van het budget . Microsoft heeft nu al een grote vis binnengehaald; het zal clouddiensten leveren aan de 100.000+ werknemers van de stad New York.

Momenteel wordt Microsoft Office 365 nog volop getest en zijn er enkel bèta roll-outs. Volgend jaar zou de suite beschikbaar moeten zijn voor het grote publiek. De suite zou dan toegankelijk moeten zijn op desktop applicaties, populaire browsers en smartphones. Op Office365.com kan je meer te weten komen over de suite. Het filmpje hieronder toont de werking van de suite.

We geven ook nog enkele voordelen mee van de Office 365 suite:

• Overal toegang tot e-mail, documenten, contacten en kalenders op bijna alle toestellen (voor mobiele toestellen is uiteraard Wi-Fi vereist)
• De Businessklasse voorziet IT-level telefoonondersteuning, een gegarandeerde uptime van 99,9%, geo-redundancy en disaster recovery
• De laatste versie van BPOS

Bent u klaar voor de cloud? - Business Tips - Bizz.be - Bizzmagazine

Bent u klaar voor de cloud?

Veel bedrijven overwegen om de stap te zetten naar cloudcomputing. Hun software en gegevens staan dan niet op de eigen server, maar zijn overal en altijd beschikbaar via het internet. Hoe maakt u de overgang?


Zorg voor een duidelijk gedefinieerde strategie. Uw strategie moet gericht zijn op het verbeteren van zakelijke processen en relaties. Vervolgens kan de informatica-afdeling de diensten en applicaties selecteren die deze strategie ondersteunen en ze naar de cloud verhuizen.

Onderzoek de kosten. Vergelijk de kosten van interne systemen met die van clouddiensten. Daaruit kunt u afleiden welke zaken het best intern beheerd worden en wat klaar is om naar de cloud verplaatst te worden.

Werk met een roadmap. Bepaal de richting die nodig is om de bedrijfsdoelstellingen te behalen. Beoordeel de producten en platforms die hiervoor de basis moeten zijn.

Bereid een migratiepad voor. Voor de migratie en integratie van uw oude systemen zijn soms meer resources nodig. Is externe ondersteuning noodzakelijk, overweeg dan samen te werken met betrouwbare partijen die veel ervaring hebben met technische migraties.

Zorg voor een pilot. Begin met een aangepaste applicatie die goed gebruik maakt van de schaalmogelijkheden, hoge rekenkracht en bandbreedte die cloudcomputing biedt. Zo kunt gefundeerd beslissen welke elementen u naar de cloud verhuist.

Bron: Avanade

Bent u klaar voor de cloud? - Business Tips - Bizz.be - Bizzmagazine

Bedrijven vergeten vaak sociale aspect van sociale media

Bedrijven vergeten vaak sociale aspect van sociale mediadinsdag 10 aug 2010 Technologie-bedrijven vergeten vaak het sociale aspect van sociale media. Dat is de conclusie van een onderzoek van het Britse marketingbureau Wildfire. Opgemerkt wordt dat de overgrote meerderheid van de technologie-bedrijven aanwezig is op minstens twee sociale netwerken, maar de mogelijkheden van het kanaal slechts in beperkte mate benutten. Wildfire stelt dat juist de sociale mogelijkheden van deze platformen worden genegeerd. Engagement en dialoog behoren volgens de onderzoekers tot de kernbegrippen van marketing in sociale media, maar die komen in de benadering van de bedrijven niet aan bod. Sociale media worden bijna uitsluitend gebruikt als verlengstuk van traditionele campagnes.

De onderzoekers merken op dat 90 procent van de technologie-bedrijven aanwezig is op minstens twee sociale netwerken. De microbloggingsite Twitter is daarbij het meest populair (74 procent), gevolgd door Linkedin (72 procent) en Facebook (20 procent). Verder blijkt 48 procent van de technologie-bedrijven een blog te onderhouden. Maar er wordt aan toegevoegd dat bij bedrijven met een aanwezigheid op Facebook 60 procent daarvan alleen gebruik maakt voor de verspreiding van zijn marketing-informatie. Bovendien blijkt slechts 25 procent te reageren op commentaren die op hun Facebook-pagina's verschijnen. Ook geeft 43 procent van de bedrijven met een Twitter-account toe nog nooit op een bericht te hebben gereageerd.

"Sociale mediamarketing is nochtans geen zwarte magie die een grote ervaring of kennis vereist," voert Debby Penton, managing director bij Wildfire, op. "Bijna iedereen maakt immers al geregeld gebruik van sociale platformen bij het chatten met vrienden of het netwerken met collega's. Toch blijken heel wat bedrijven compleet onvoorbereid in sociale media-marketing te zijn gestapt. Met een goede strategische overweging en een correcte planning, kunnen sociale media nochtans een bijzonder efficiënte en goedkope manier worden om een relatie te ontwikkelen met de eindgebruiker en de winstmarges te verhogen. Een verkeerd gebruik van sociale media zou daarentegen mogelijk meer kwaad dan goed kunnen doen." (MH)

Source: express.be

The Microsoft Office Blog - Connect your Inbox to Facebook and Windows Live with the Outlook Social Connector

The Microsoft Office Blog - Connect your Inbox to Facebook and Windows Live with the Outlook Social Connector
Starting today, you can plug Facebook and Windows Live right into Microsoft Outlook through the Outlook Social Connector. You can view your social network as you look through your email to stay connected with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Up to Speed with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - Microsoft Office

Up to Speed with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - Microsoft Office

PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is a tool that you can use to create powerful, dynamic dashboards that are hosted in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This video series is designed to help you learn how you can use Dashboard Designer to create dashboards in your organization.

Social Media Revolution 2

How to Ride -- Not Fight -- the Social Media Wave

How to Ride -- Not Fight -- the Social Media Wave
The boundary between where social networking for an employer stops, and personal networking begins keeps getting fuzzier and fuzzier.

To Block or Not to Block (Social Media Sites): That is the Question

To Block or Not to Block (Social Media Sites): That is the Question

Enterprise Social Computing

Enterprise Social Computing
Collaboration trends are changing the way people work together. Social tools are essential to the daily lives of many people. The proliferation of social software demonstrates that users find value in this new generation of tools. Employees are now demanding this same value be delivered from their organizations. They want to engage socially with the people they work with and build stronger relationships within their companies. Traditional content management and collaboration solutions are incorporating new features to satisfy the social and information sharing demands of the enterprise. Microsoft’s latest release of SharePoint delivers a platform with an integrated approach to social computing.

If You Build It, They Will Come: Driving End User Adoption

Presenter: Scott Jamison – Managing Partner – Jornata

The Challenge of Adoption

Scott started with the analogy of VHS vs. Beta and how VHS was adopted over Beta and achieved the critical mass.

SharePoint Adoption can be hard…even Steve Ballmer indicated in his keynote address that he still gets asked “What is SharePoint?”…the problem is, it is EVERYTHING.  Another reason that the adoption of SharePoint can be difficult is that users do not necessarily “have” to use SharePoint (i.e. they can use file shares and email instead).

Some of the new functionality in SharePoint 2010 (for example Social Computing) will most likely take 18-36 months, as it is something new to the organization.  The Adoption Curve of Awareness, Trial and Adoption was discussed.

User Enlightenment Stages  - Based on Perceived Value and Conquered Skills and Confidence

• Clueless
• Skeptic
• Aware
• Productive
• Advocate – These users are required to tell everyone else in the organization how great SharePoint is.  Advocates must be identified and “championed” to speak to the organization.
• Inventor

What Users Want

• The ability to Connect and Understand SharePoint’s ability to Solve Business Goals – Outcomes not requirements
• Elegant Solution Design – Don’t make users go through five screens to do one task
• WIIFM – What’s in it for me? – Users need to understand how they benefit from what they are entering into the system (e.g. metadata entry, records, document management, etc.)

Must-Have Elements in Your Adoption Strategy

The following items MUST be on your Project Plan for implementing SharePoint

• Communication Plan
  • Identify and Leverage Experts and Champions – Perform a Pilot, spread the word via peers
  • CEO Memos – Someone in the organization understands and agrees with the vision
  • Town Hall Meetings
  • Break Room Posters – One example of a company was mentioned that put the posters on the back of doors in the bathroom…your results may vary
  • Online Scavenger Hunts
  • “Birth” Announcements
  • Launch Parties

NOTE: Make sure you have an ongoing plan for continuous communication (it’s not a one-time event).  Especially since most organizations roll-out separate pieces of functionality over time.

• Training Plan
  • Not just for Developers and IT
  • Power Users / Site Owners – Maybe even establish an internal “certification” program where the developers walk the end users on what to DO and what NOT to do.  This could also be a video to save time.  Also, there is a Microsoft “Buzz” kit that can be accessed and downloaded online.
  • Visitors
  • Members
  • Web Content Contributors
  • Workflow Approvers
  • Remember: “Just-in-time and just enough”

• Content Conversion Plan
  • It’s critical that important information gets moved to the new system, there are basically three options:
  • 1. Clean and Migrate everything
  • 2. Migrate nothing; Index the old content – New content only in the new system
  • 3. Clean and migrate recent content only
  • Remember: Don’t Migrate without Cleaning!

• User Support Plan
  • Have a “Contact Person” for every page
  • Establish Internal Site Owner User Groups – empower users to help each other
  • Get the IT Help Desk on board
  • End-User Feedback Loop – Metrics Based (number of users, rating scale, etc.) or Anecdotes Evidence (gather good/bad experiences and get quotes and self promote the site)
  • Provide End-User Resources (guides, training tools, help, etc.)
    
• Incentives and Reward Plan
  • Answer the WIIFM question – show (with their real data) why something will work
  • Make it fun!
  • Provide Recognition for Content Contribution – Money Talks; so do Titles & Certificates
  • Have a Fantastic User Experience – Invest in an Information Architecture

SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning and Implementation

Presenter(s): Scott Jamison and Susan Hanley

In addition to just implementing SharePoint correctly (technically), you must make sure that you are solving the right problems, and that you incorporate / respect the company culture.

 

Why do you need a Governance Plan?

• Scott indicated that 20% of a successful solution implementation is about Technology, but about 95% of the Governance documentation is about Technology.  We need to be prepared for the other 80%.
• Users need to be trained appropriately before being empowered with the control of the system.
  • People do not treat SharePoint like an Enterprise Application
  • Letting users add unlimited items to a list – can kill the server
  • Not Planning for scale and growth
  • Users can do a lot – we give them “great power” and need to ensure they accept their “great responsibility”
  • Many of SharePoint’s capabilities are not required or mandated, so if you mess it up, there is a work around for them (e.g. they will collaborate through email if you don’t get SharePoint collaboration correct).

What Does Governance mean in the context of SharePoint?

• Your Governance Plan defines people roles, technology and policy guidelines and process to resolve ambiguity.
  • People – Define clear roles and responsibilities
  • Technology – Define policies for service levels and appropriate use
  • Policy – Articulate design and usage principles
    • In 2010, how will people feel if they give someone a rating of 1 (out of 5) for someone else’s document
• Process – For example provisioning a site

Define a Vision – Don’t think about requirements from the start, but instead, talk about the “outcomes” (what are you trying to achieve).  Requirements can be derived from the desired outcome.  The Governance Plan will help support the Vision

 

People Roles

• Get the right people in place (MOSS introduced many new roles that were required, but most organizations didn’t assign people to these roles.  Take the rollout of SharePoint 2010 as an opportunity to get people assigned to these roles. Most of these roles are NOT full time, and one person can fill more than one role.)
  • Executive Sponsor
  • Governance Board / Steering Committee
  • Business Owner
  • Solution Administrator
  • Technology Support Team
  • Site Sponsor / Owner
  • Site Steward
  • User
  • The management of Enterprise Corporate Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010 will need to have an owner (even though other may be allowed to update the data).

 

Guiding Principles

• Publish Once, Link Many
• No Email attachments – Send links
• In 2007 Use Metadata not folders – In 2010 Use Folders to inherit metadata.
  • NOTE The concept of using folders in SharePoint 2010 is a paradigm shift that IT and end users will need to understand and utilize.
  • Content management is everyone’s responsibility but site owners are accountable

Tactics for Successful Roll-out and Strategy

• Fun and engaging launch event
  • Example, Birth announcement of SharePoint, Scavenger Hunt for content within the site
  • Lunch-n-learns
  • Power Users Community of Practice – Power users teach others

Content Management Plan – Is changing a column on a list code or content?  Who is allowed to make these changes?  Is SharePoint Designer workflow code or content?  There will be even more decisions like this to be made with the rollout of SharePoint 2010.

 

Governance Plan Document

• Break documents into chunks
  • Vision
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Guiding Principles
  • Policies
  • Guidelines/Best Practices
  • Procedures
  • Do not include
    • Implementation Details
    • Network Requirements
    • Feature Requirements

Tip: The actual “process” of creating the document is more important than the actual document itself.  Make sure to include Human Resources (e.g. what can people post on blogs, put on their MySite, etc.).  Everyone wants SharePoint, but no one wants to take responsibility for it.  So the actual process, of arriving at decisions is the most important part.

 

Governance Details for SharePoint 2010

• Social Computing Implications
  • Rating of documents (especially a low rating) may cause people to shy away from loading documents.  Note that changing the wording of the rankings may be able to help in this regard.
  • MySites – Posting information that people will judge you on within the organization, or you may shy away
• Managed Metadata
• • Managed Keyword vs. Managed Term
    • Managed Keywords – Allow users to key in phrases or key words (that have edit rights) on an item – they can type in whatever they want. 
    • Managed Terms – Based off of the master hierarchy/taxonomy values
    • Social Tags – Even though you do not have edit rights to this content, anyone can “socially tag” this content
    • NOTE: The distinction of these terms is confusing and will need to be better understood by the SharePoint owners, so that it can be explained to end users, and what access an end user will be able to utilize.
• Records Management
  • In-Place Records vs. Records Archive
    • Organizations will probably use both
• Resource Governor
  • More than 5,000 items in list, SharePoint won’t return
  • Need to communicate / educate users about this
• Content Organizer
  • Used to partition/route documents based on metadata
  • Need to communicate / educate users where their documents are going
• SharePoint Customizations
  • SharePoint Designer – On or Off
  • SODA – SharePoint On-Demand Applications
  • Excel and Access Solutions – Turn this on or off?
  • Sandbox Solutions

Source: SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning and Implementation

Office 2010: The Movie

10 SharePoint deployment challenges

SharePoint is one of the most flexible server applications available today. But because of its highly dynamic nature, a SharePoint deployment can quickly get out of hand. Here are some of the most common challenges in managing a SharePoint deployment.

1: Enabling Office integration

SharePoint 2007 is designed to interoperate with Office 2007 to a high degree. If you have users in your organization who are still using older versions of Office, you may find that those legacy versions become a barrier to productivity. So you may want to consider deploying the latest version of Office to all SharePoint users.

2: Preventing site sprawl

One of your primary goals must be to prevent site sprawl. You can use several techniques for this. One of the most effective is to limit the number of people who allowed to create SharePoint sites. Experience has shown that if you allow users to create new SharePoint sites on a whim, some users will create sites they don’t even need, just because they can or because they’re curious. It’s better if site creation is handled by a dedicated group of people within the IT department. I also recommend establishing clear guidelines as to who is allowed to request a new SharePoint site, and under what circumstances.

3: Site lifecycle management

Unlike typical Web sites, many SharePoint sites have a limited useful shelf life. For example, it’s common for users to create SharePoint sites that are dedicated to a specific project. When the project is complete, the site is no longer needed. So it’s important to have a procedure in place for determining which sites are still in use. When a user requests that a new site be created, you should document the name and contact information of the person making the request, as well as the URL of the resulting site. This allows you to contact site owners on a periodic basis to find out whether the site is still needed.

4: Locating documents

After deploying SharePoint, some organizations eventually begin replacing file servers with SharePoint document libraries. The idea behind this move is that SharePoint contains powerful indexing features that can make documents easier to locate than they would be if they were located on a file server. Although SharePoint has a decent search engine, document libraries can and do become overloaded. It can therefore be tough for users to find the information they need within a large document library.

One way to make it easier for users to locate SharePoint documents is to enforce the use of metadata. SharePoint contains options that allow you to define individual content types and to create custom metadata fields for each one. You can require users to enter relevant metadata for each document they create. This metadata goes a long way toward helping SharePoint return relevant search results.

5: Information overload

Providing good metadata for the documents stored in a document library improves the relevancy of search results, but it will get you only so far. Another thing you can do to improve search results is to implement a policy for document lifecycle management.

While some business documents may need to be retained indefinitely, other types probably have limited usefulness. For example, the odds are good that nobody in your organization cares about a marketing proposal from 10 years ago. By working with the managers in your company, you can find out which documents are really important and come up with a plan for automatically purging other documents after a specific length of time. Doing so reduces resource consumption and helps to de-clutter search results.

6: Governance

The subject of governance seems to come up more often in regard to SharePoint than just about any other application. There is a reason for this. Without proper governance policies, a SharePoint deployment can quickly spiral out of control and evolve into something that doesn’t even remotely resemble the organization’s original SharePoint vision.

The only way to prevent your SharePoint deployment from getting out of hand is to make some tough decisions up front about how the deployment should be used and who has permission to do what. In other words, you need to decide things such as who has the authority to create a site, what types of data are allowed to be stored within SharePoint libraries, and what types of customizations you want to allow.

7: Disk space management

Disk space management is something of an art form. Most network administrators are used to dealing with file servers that store data on dedicated volumes. SharePoint, on the other hand, stores its data within a SQL database. While you can use quota management to ensure that users don’t consume an excessive amount of disk space, it is important to realize that multiple lists or libraries can be linked to a common database. Therefore, you must design your quota structure to take into account possible growth of other lists or libraries that may exist.

8: Web part management

SharePoint sites are built around the use of Web parts. This approach make site creation easier, but it also means that any changes to Web parts result in changes to every site that uses them. You’ll want to take measures to prevent Web part customizations from being made in a haphazard manner. A modification that enhances a Web part’s functionality on one site may wreck havoc on other sites that are using that Web part.

9: Service level agreements

Many organizations discover that it doesn’t take long for a SharePoint deployment to grow from being something of a novelty to becoming a mission-critical application. As with other mission-critical applications, administrators are often pressured into accepting service level agreements for SharePoint deployments.

My recommendation has always been to use the quest for service level agreements as a bargaining chip. For example, you could explain to the managers in your company that for you to be able to deliver the level of service they are requiring, you need additional server hardware or other IT resources.

10: Disaster recovery planning

I have seen a few real-world situations in which administrators verified that their backup software supported SharePoint but never really looked at what was required to perform a restoration. Unless you’re going to be performing a total restoration, most backup applications require SharePoint data to be restored to a recovery farm.

A recovery farm is a separate, dedicated SharePoint farm. Although a recovery farm does not require the same hardware resources as your production SharePoint servers, it does have to be configured with the same features, templates, patches, and software versions as your production farm. That being the case, a recovery farm isn’t really something you can just throw together at the last minute when you have to perform a restoration. You will need to have it in place in advance.

Source: TechRepublic.com 10 SharePoint deployment challenges