POST 4: Best Place To Work In Australia

Hi all, in this week I will be talking about an Financial service and Insurance Firm which is declared as the best place to work in Australia i.e. OPTIVER...

OPTIVER is a global Market Making company, who is trading on all major financial markets around the world. The core business of OPTIVER is making market in financial products. The company does this by putting only its own capital at risk. Its an 25 year old company with almost 220 staff from over 35 nationalities. The company has well established teams in Trading, Information Technology and Business operations. 

The things that make this company stand out from others is the they have one IT developer for every single trader. One strange thing i found about this company is inactiveness on Facebook. The company does has a Facebook page but none of the staff uses it. Also inspite of it being an multi-national company, it just has 30 likes and 40 visit...!!!!

This company uses only three social networking websites: Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.  Out of its 220 employees,  its 127 employees  are on LinkedIn. Much of the credit of winning the title of Best Place To Work In Australia goes to the involvement between staff and company through social technology. 

Out of the 10 Social Technology Value Levers discussed by McKinskey, Twitter and LinkedIn is helping this company to benefit from this social technology by using following levers:

• Marketing and Sales
• Business Support
• Enterprise wide Levers (using social as organisational technology)

LinkedIn and Twitter not only helps this company to develop its brand digitally but also improves its internal communication and their working efficiency. 

Following video gives you an idea that because of the great minds of employees, OPTIVER has been the best place to work in Australia.

Another thing that make this company great work place is shown below:

One question that arises in my mind is why this company isn't active on Facebook?? Will there be any specific reason? Is it like the company who develop market doesn't get much social?? If so then why everything on Twitter and LinkedIn?? If any of you guys can clear my doubts on this matter, I will be really pleased...

POST 3: Enterprise 2.0 in our routine transport service...

In this rainy days, all I wish is to reach my home quickly without getting wet and walking minimum in rain. Hence I called yellow cab and was just talking to the cab driver and suddenly my eyes rolled to the sticker about yellow cab mobile app. And an idea strike in my mind about yellow cab using Enterprise 2.0. Hence I researched a bit about it and now sharing with you guys. 

Yellow cabs Pty Ltd  was started in 1924 in Queensland, Australia and after seeing lots of struggle, today its the leading cab service provider through out Australia. Yellow cab service is available in multiple cities of Australia and also overseas. Yellow cabs provides various services like yellow cab, maxi taxi, silver service and MPT (Multiple Passenger Taxi).

Out of the 10 social technology levers discussed by McKinsey, I will be concentrating on how Yellow Cabs implemented E2.0 in their business for increasing their marketing and Sales and provide best customer service. Yellow cabs has implemented social media strategy for attracting more customers to use and rate their service.

One can book Yellow cab by either calling 13 1924 or via SMS or via booking ONLINE. Hence Yellow Cab has been very flexible to their booking service. Also they have their Facebook page for regular updates, for posting their key events and giving responses to customer feedback. Yellow cab also has a smartphone app which makes it very convenient to order a taxi. Also they have been leading in using new technology an services since last two decades by introducing EFTPOS and GPS dispatch system. Yellow Cabs is moving ahead to create history by introducing the latest computer dispatch system by Australian company i.e. MT Data and the latest Avaya IP based PBX which will see the companies customer service visions realized into the future....

Yellow cab also has its commercial Ad to attract the customer (marketing strategy). I have shared it below:

Guys I researched a bit about black and white cabs too. By comparing both yellow cabs and Black and white cabs, I felt that Black and white cabs have less market and customers in comparison to Yellow cabs. One reason i felt is still they lack in using social strategy in their business...What you guys think???

See you in next post... :) :)

POST 2: Implementing ENTERPRISE 2.0 at INTUIT

Hi guys..

       Today I am gonna share about how INTUIT climbed the stairs of success using ENTERPRISE 2.0 in their company. INTUIT is a multinational American software company with 8,200 employees providing service to small businesses, financial institutions, health-care organizations and individuals by developing tax and financial solutions software.

                           

INTUIT started playing with few things in E2.0 space around 2005, not because of any need in business but because of curiosity. 

Earlier in 2005 INTUIT was using WordPress within the company that interested employees to do personal blogging. At the same time Mediawiki was also set-up mainly for managing projects. However, in the long run INTUIT started facing problem around innovation; which was their core motivation for E2.0. The actual challenge for the company was how to transform their ideas into outcomes?? Also company urged to see a much higher success rate for projects undertaken along with making innovations more efficient  and visible within the organisation. So actually company didn't needed an idea collection tool but an idea action and management tool. INTUIT needed a way to connect ideas to the right people who can best shape those ideas, help them overcome inertia, and capture value with them.

Also too much emails were sent between the teams in INTUIT which was second reason behind adoption of WP blog by the company. Another hindrance from innovation was being on the front line of the company and not able to move ideas forward. Ideas were there all the time but then what to do next? Hence INTUIT feels the need to build a platform named INTUIT Brainstorm to support innovation. Once the platform was built INTUIT started inviting their staff on their innovation mailing list. Within 4 months senior leaders shut down the old database and pointed it to Brainstorm. The #1 thing that allowed E2.0 happen at INTUIT was introducing a culture of innovation and experimentation. But the company faced lots of hurdles in accepting the change as there was strong dependency on IT group for technical issues. There was a list of obstacles being faced by the staff where they were getting stuck during any process/project which helped the innovation leader to set agenda and prioritize project.

   Before implementing E2.0, INTUIT  took 13 months to transform their idea into the product for user. After E2.0 INTUIT did that in 5 months, a 60% decrease. Within 6 months of Brainstorm, the rate of ideation went up by 1000% and the participation by employee raised by 500%. INTUIT also developed several solution that was result of internal ideas amongst which many of the products are generating revenue for INTUIT and solving real world customer problem.

Employees are now helping one another and reaching out to people that they have never met before. In present INTUIT is using following tools along with Brainstorm :

1. YAMMER
2. IM OR GCHAT
3. BRAINSTORM, FOR IDEATION
4. MEDIAWIKI
5. WORDPRESS BLOGS
6. ETHERPAD
7. INTERNAL VIDEOS
8. LOTUS CONNECTIONS
9. QUICKBASE

Key results after implementing E2.0 in INTUIT:

• Time required to get one product ready decreased by 60%
• Employees started feeling as they are part of company whether they are in office or not.
• Rate of ideation raised by 1000% and participation of employees increased by 500%
• Employees started helping each other, no matter they have moet ever or not.

Question for you guys:  Can you give an example of an company that failed after implementing E2.0???

POST 1: The Journey to blogging begins...!!!!

Hello Fellas....

Myself Hardika and I am pursuing my second Masters of Information technology with Enterprise System as major from QUT.

First of all I m heartily sorry for being sooo late for posting my first blog..But because of health problem and some work related issues I was unable to attend the lecture and be active in our google+ community... But finally I am heading ahead towards the journey of blogging...

Being very honest, I was never interested to write a blog in my life until i had gone through the first week lecture of my favourite unit this semester i.e. ENTERPRISE 2.0 ( wasn't favorite initially when i was sick because of pressure to write a blog..lol). The strange thing that I came across is I was just signing up my blog account in wordpress.com and i came to know that I already have an account it in...!!!

                         

I seriously had this expression.. :) After going through the lecture slides, through the blogs of other fellow mates and the video shown below, I was really interested to start writing. Hence i undertook a research on this, got bit familiar with it and now i am live with the blog...!!

 

How To Be Successful Blogger

• Setting up a blog : Initially I had an impression that the toughest part of being a successful blogger is actually getting started but then i realised hard part is setting up a blog in such a way that we can keep it updated regularly. The other thing is to be creative, visionary and inspired enough to be able to keep our blog active.

•  Deciding a theme for blog :  This is obvious but still some people ignores it. I find the theme should be simple, creative and attractive enough to make others feel like reading your post.

• Selecting appropriate topic : One of most important thing is choosing a topic about which you will be discussing in the blog. This definitely doesn't mean that you can wander around just one topic in your blog but you should be clever enough to decide what fits in and what not. Fourth thing is deciding where you want to host and share your blog. There are more than 40+ blog platforms where you can enjoy free blog postings.

• Start writing and keep on doing it : you might have great expectations of writing an awesome piece of art by playing with words and your thoughts as your first writing piece but its better to keep it short and simple. For the first few posts you gotta enjoy and celebrate for each and every post to keep your morale up until you make yourself comfortable with blogging. Then you can give a try to long posts. But your main motto should be "JUST KEEP WRITING". Maintaining patience to keep on writing is the must have quality for blogger to be successful.

• Sharing your blog with friends and colleagues: It is very important to share your blog once it's live to increase the readership. Initially it will be just your friends who's gonna read your post, which is obviously a sad part but you need to acquire more audience like family members, friends, classmates, co-workers, who-so-ever you can to support and promote your blog.

• Embracing social media-channels: For becoming a successful blogger, it is important to be present on social media sites like facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. Once you post something in your blog you should always share to expose it to more audience. One valuable hint is to look for an #tag on both facebook and twitter. Its easy for other people to find something of same interest.

• Engage with your readers and other bloggers: Its a good practice to look for other bloggers on social sites, who talk about similar stuff of your interest and comment and share on their stuff. Give your ideas, thoughts and opinions freely and eventually people will get engaged with your blog by commenting back.

• Concentrate on content : In spite of everything else, mainly concentrate on writing good and valuable content than can engage and interest readers. It doesn't mean you shouldn't share or promote your blog but without good content everything else doesn't matter much.

By integrating this suggestions into your practice when you initialize your journey to blogging, you will naturally increases the chances of you becoming a successful blogger.

I seriously wonder is it really true that only the blog about blogging, marketing and social media be successful?? What do you guys think??

That's all for this post guys. I am happy to hear your suggestions for my writing and also your opinions about my question...See you soon..