I interviewed Yammer co-founder Adam Pisoni about a month after Yammer's acquisition by Microsoft, and he had a few things to say about collaborative tool winners and losers, and why he thinks 70 percent of IT collaboration projects fail.
David: So we have an old saying that says "he who has the most connections wins."
Adam: I think that's true here and the connections aren't anymore just about people. The people are the most important part. But you are also connecting to systems.
David: Yeah. I mean a tool that adds more features is less useful than a tool that allows you to connect to more different data types.
Adam: That's — you're speaking my language.
David: So with 2000+ collaboration tools, why do you think most of them fail?
Adam: But actually it's great. Your second question was about why some are not successful, why is social is successful in some companies and not others. But not even that, why are so many social tools unsuccessful?
David: Well let's say collaborative tools …
Adam: Yes. And I have a strong opinion on that also. Collaboration tools are fundamentally different than the kinds of tools we've been building for the enterprise for the past couple decades. We build tools for the enterprise that by and large get mandated, even if it's your CRM or if it's your expense system … you always have to use it. Because of that, the enterprise software companies really haven't innovated in how they build software in a long time.
David: They haven't had to.
Adam: They haven't had to, exactly. Meanwhile, the consumer side, we've seen a lot of innovation.
David: Because there's more pressure?
Adam: There's more pressure. So they've had to figure out "how do we build things that people want to use?"
David: Let's use Facebook for example; they are now just over a Billion people.
Adam: It's really — it's crazy. So, what's amazing what you just mentioned about Facebook is you could argue that social networking technologies in the consumers base have been the most successful piece of software ever written. And yet, they have been almost the least successful in the enterprise. Was it the number 70 percent of IT-dominated social initiatives will fail this year, according to Gartner?
David: And why did they say 70 percent will fail?
Adam: You know what the reasons are? I think I know why. It's because they don't think of them like Facebook thinks of social. Facebook thinks of social like people have to want to use it. They think of them in terms of how we used to think about software features and functions. Now, these features and these functions — these are requirements. It's got security, you know. So I think that the majority of collaboration tools have failed because they weren't built to be used. They're built to be mandated and they were built to be chosen.
David: And the other thing is that IT often does what is easiest for them to do …
Continue reading this article:
Source : cmswire[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment