Have a look at this video.
Amazing what you can do with a Wii…

For more info check the guys website.

It looks like almost everyone around me has discovered the Social Networking Game. The Plaxo, Hyves and LinkedIn requests keep pouring in….
More and more companies however deny their employees access to these sites. Not without reason if you look at the hours people would spend on them if allowed. However professional social networking gives a huge boost to collaboration and knowledge sharing if provided in the right format.

Finally today it hit me how companies can have the benefits of a true social network within their own walls (and with limited features outside these walls) and not be depended on the commitment of it’s workforce to join in.
Companies however do need to have written permission from their employees that they are allowed to see the content of their mailbox (only mail headers, agenda & contacts is enough).

The idea is quite simple.

Scenario on Microsoft based environment.

You create a server application that analyzes your contacts/activities on the CRM-system and all content on the mail server like:
- Address books
- Mail headers
- Meetings in Outlook Calendar (if integrated also the netmeeting server meetings)
- Distribution lists
- Call option data (in Outlook)

You throw all this info on one big pile and per person you generate a profile.
This profile is nothing more then the entry in the Global Address List in Exchange.

By creating an algorithm that analyzes the frequency that the person interacts through mail, meetings, use of the call option with the other persons and the distribution lists its a member of it generates a view of the persons informal network.

The person must be able t0 select which non-colleague contacts to show to various type of people depending their status in his/her personal network.

Imagine that all your employees have editor rights on the customer data in your CRM system (of course there needs to be an auditor in place to make sure that the data updated is correct) without having to bother them with learning a new program.

The only Microsoft-program that shows a small resemblance with my idea so far is SNARF.
This counts the number of mails sent to/by people in your mailbox and can analyze mail threads.
With Salesforce.com it’s probably easier to realize. Just create a SN-Portal application in combination with a web based Outlook-like client that interacts with Salesforce.com.

One add-in I found for Salesforce.com is Faceforce.
It’s nice but it still doesn’t give an insight in the internal Social Network.

I know that legislation regarding the use of mail/contact information is a critical issue, but if employees are well informed in combination with enough features that enables them to exclude information, they don’t want to have published, this could be a valuable tool to optimize employee /customer interaction.

Last month the BCG finished their survey on innovation based on the input of over 500 c-level and almost 2,500 senior management participants.

Based on the results the following top 10 of innovating companies was published, for R&D expenses see the 10K-filings:

1. Apple (10K-filing)
2. Google (10K-filing)
3. Toyota (10K - page 44)
4. General Electric (10K-filing - page 24 & Innovator profiles & Innovation Timeline)
5. Microsoft (10K-filing -page 9 & Microsoft Research)
6. Procter & Gamble (10K-filing - Page 67 & P&G R&D)
7. 3M (10K-filing - Page 19)
8. Walt Disney (10K-filing)
9. IBM (10K-filing)
10. Sony (10K-filing - page 48)

Companies who were on the 2006 list but didn’t return in 2007 are:
Nokia (8th place in 2006)
Starbucks (9th place in 2006)

Based on the results on page 9 of the survey it will be interesting to see what the list for 2008 will look like, because the consumer goods industry (contains P&G, Apple, Sony and 3M) is the industry where the trends regarding investments in innovation are showing the least growth (22% significant increse, 34% slighty increase, 34% no significant increase, 10% slightly decrease).

In total 67% of the respondents said their companies will increase investments on innovation in 2007.

For 66% of the respondents, Innovation is in the top 3 of strategic priorities in 2007.

Download the full survey here

Here you can find the 2006 survey

Today I came across a macro-report about businesses in the EU by Grant Thorton International.

Here a list of a few figures in the report.
Figure 1: EU economic growth and turnover (revenue) expectations since 1993
Figure 2: EU business expectations since 1993 (% balance*)
Figure 7: Value of M&A activity by EU businesses 1993-2006
Figure 9: Proportion of companies exporting in EU countries (%)
Figure 10: Export expectations in largest EU economies since 1993 (% balance*)
Figure 13: Businesses in favour of EU enlargement continuing (%)

Click here for the full report

Here a short description about what you can expect in this paper:

This paper provides companies with a fourstepguide for making this decision. It will not make the decision for you, but it offers you a set of tools and insights that will help you understand what your company might gainby a blog, what it will cost you, and whetheror not it’s a good investment in your specific situation. In other words, it will help you understand what is, in fact, the businessvalue of blogging. In addition, it includes the results of the survey mentioned above, as well as the insights of our local experts in each of these 11 markets.

Click here for the full report

Here a funny movie about shopping 2.0-style in the real world

Happy monday,Daan

MarketingSherpa published a nice article on how a company did a very effective campaign to raise revenue.

These are the steps they took to reach their goals:

Step #1. Refine the company’s branding and ad messages
Step #2. Collect user testimonials
Step #3. Postal mail pieces for different participants in the buying decision
Step #4. High-profile trade show presence
Step #5. Follow-up on leads with independent sales rep team

Result: Since launching the campaign last fall, their customer base has more than doubled, delivering 130% revenue growth.

For the full story click here

Kind regards,

Daan

I came across this report the other day.

It gives a nice insight on the development of social networking and the the use of different advertising channels.

Click here to check our the report.

Ciao.

Here are some funny models I found on the web:

Click on the image for the A3-format Pdf-file

The people at Information Architects also added a clickable version. Click here for more.

Click on the image for the Pdf-file.

Goodday

Here a post by Todd Bishop about the new strategy of Microsoft, as it can be found in the 10K-filling.

He compares the 2006 annual report with that of the 2007 version.

Ciao,

Daan