Corporate Networking, Sales, and Collaboration

John Turnbow  February 15 2009 12:22:01 PM

A new frontier? What do I mean.  The affect of Web 2.0 social tools are having a profound effect on networking relationships, sales, and collaboration with our partners. Underestimate the possibilities, don't,  see the last election?  It was masterful how the democratic party and President Obama used the Web 2.0 tools and made everyone feel as if they were partners in the election, as if there was a personal connection. Corporations  need to master the same in this new era of shrinking corporate budgets, to get more done with less and still maintain those all important relationships and collaborate with our partners. These tools are for large and small companies and make a small company appear and work as effectively as a large corporation.

These new social tools in a corporation move the traditional firewall outside in  a place that can only be controlled through guidelines and corporate policies. Corporate HR and management need to develop new monitoring tools to see that employees, partners, and competitors are all working in a way that is positive for all of us. These new tools bring new possibilities and problems as well. When an employee posts something on the internet, it is now on the internet forever, for everyone to see, which is why guidelines, monitoring and training are so important.

I believe the corporate Information Technology group needs to be the group that promotes and helps our internal and external customers with these new tools in a positive manner so our companies are highly successful and flourish without exposing sensitive information to the internet.

This means the development of the following:

• Monitoring Tools – to scan the internet
• Policies and Procedures
• Development of an intake process for approved “external” applications – the best and most trusted in the industry
• Development of “outside firewall” applications that integrate internally but primarily used externally by partners and customers
• Integration into corporate applications where possible

A new specialist appears in this frontier, one that helps to create and manage these new tool relationships internally and externally, assists to create these new policies, training users and make us all successful in this new world with these tools.  

What do you think IT's role should be?

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