Whatever I have said before about “social enterprise” zealots, I need to take back now. They obviously saw something these, which many practitioners, like myself, have difficulties to apply to corporate IT initiatives. The Economist published a very interesting article this week “Disgruntled small investors in Canada flex their muscles” that is well worth reading, which describes how asymmetric relationship between large number of small customers and large institutions can unexpectedly be challenged by use of social networking and other tools of Web 2.0.

Following the example of their children and grandchildren, some small investors formed a group on Facebook, a social-networking site, to trade information, provide mutual support and plot strategy. Brian Hunter, the group administrator, says the site turned out to be an “amazing tool”. People who would never have met in real life, from pig farmers and retired loggers to MBA students and pastors, created a formidable interest group.

Campaigners were able to ensure that investors armed with information attended cross-country meetings held in late March and early April by the backers of the restructuring deal. “We had 300 raging grannies show up in Vancouver,” says Mr Hunter. “[The backers] got their heads handed to them at that meeting.”

The efforts of the campaigners paid off on April 9th, when Canaccord Capital, the investment broker that sold the paper to just over 1,400 of the 1,800 small investors, reversed its previous decision and said it would fully reimburse clients holding C$1m or less as long as the broader deal wins acceptance. Other companies have made similar promises and more are expected to do so before the vote.

If institutions are not capable to learn how to play on a more leveled playing field, the financial consequences can be devastating. That will probably apply to politics as well.

You go Grannies!

Sales Force Automation applications are often plagued by low user adoption rates. There are a few reasons for this phenomena, however one stands out - salespeople are expected to do a lot of initial heavy lifting by entering  their contacts’ information into the new application without any apparent value added for them. Traditionally, salespeople have associated great value to their "Rolodex" or list of contacts and still are quite reluctant to share this information with others, perhaps discounting  the value of the relationships they have built with these people, which is not as easily transferable as data. One of the best approaches to solve this adoption riddle is to pre-populate a newly implemented SFA application with a full compliment of relevant contacts for salespeople use.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to talk to Marc Perramond who is the Product Manager for InsideView of San Francisco. The company’s SalesView product is utilizing semantic web tools to harvest critical information the support the sales process. The pro-active, intelligent Contact Management system is one of the most practically valuable applications I have seen so far that is made possible by following the Enterprise 2.0 vision. Contact information is a highly "perishable" commodity with a very short "shelf life" as population and careers are more mobile than ever. SalesView is monitoring, based on business rules, a number of public social networks and private (available by subscription) data sources to keep sales-critical information where and when you need it - "mashed" with your SFA managed pipeline.

Unfortunately I did not have a chance to see a live demonstration of the SalesView yet, but Marc’s explanation of user configurable business rules for people and event alerts and other functionality, has my mind racing with a number of opportunities for meaningful improvements to sales leads qualification processes and "sniper rifle" marketing campaigns.

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Isn’t it wonderful that big, smart companies like Google, offer their fantastic products to people and companies at no charge? Before you toss out your favorite book of Milton “there is no such thing as free lunch”  Friedman, consider a loss of productivity which comes with muddling through half-baked applications which sometimes work. It is certainly hard to complain about things you don’t pay for? But we do pay in a currency of wasted time, aggravation, disruption in our thinking, and errors which we may or may not catch. Here is just a latest example.

The interesting question is exactly how much does it cost to Google applications users to beta test Google products. Until now, an enthusiasm of people who would try anything, as long as it is free, would make this question irrelevant because to them it is largely a “play”. However, as Google starts to move into Enterprise arena and partners with Salesforce.com to support business process is it capable to shake off it’s “free” attitudes and provide truly reliable and fully supported product? I have not tested any of their advanced, i.e. paid, applications myself - personally software testing is my next favorite thing after root canal, but my experiences with “free” offerings like Google Analytics, Documents and Spreadsheets were spotty at best.

I don’t want to single out Google, all “free” software offerings present the same problem - lack of reliability and absence of support, which is not unreasonable - just not “free”.