There are two sessions left before the final keynote. Tom is presenting on collaboration and ideation at Abbott. Tom is the Senior Director for eMarketing and Marketing Operations.

Key points:
– how to transform communication, collaboration, and ideation in a regulated world.
– there’s a big regulatory process for setting up a collaboration community – corporate (public affairs, branding, ethics and compliance, legal), international, affiliates, the US group, and more. Everything is discoverable. Email gets deleted every 30 days. Everyone has to talk to everyone. It’s a wonder that anyone gets anything done.
– how do you do employee engagement across Abbott? There are many divisions. 100 facilities worldwide, and are in 130 countries. Multiple languages, etc.
– the business case for social at Abbott:
– … foster innovation
– … communicate globally “better” (eg., duplication when multiple affiliates do the same project, and don’t work)
– … collaborate globally on finding a solution
– … sharing ideas, best practices and information
– … build communities – wanted to be able to give a group a collaborative project, not an individual
– how do we sell it?
– … “we need to compete through innovation”
– … “foster an ‘idea’ culture”
– … real time best practice sharing
– … find new areas of growth from within
– … do things smarter and better
– mitigating risk – this is a huge area. Have to sign the employee “code of conduct,” elearning modules on “careful communication,” specific country policies and laws, etc.
– the challenge – current platform did not provide global collaboration tools. There were various siloed collaboration tools across the different Abbott organizations and affiliates.
– the options – outsource the whole thing, or SharePoint with custom social computing, or SharePoint with NewsGator. Chose SharePoint and NewsGator, but it had to integrate seamlessly with IBM WebSphere.
– getting going:
– … did various focus groups on key things, job pains, etc.
– … got a prioritization chart at the end – some key things to focus on initially.
– … ran a pilot with 120 users – trained a group of ambassadors, with daily communications. Then went to a bigger audience, in two phases.
– … people responded to the communications; adoption increased.
– … set up the My Site as a default template – a list of communities, some tags, colleague status.
– … set it up automatically to send email alerts.
– … in a community site – work with the team to set up the community on their needs – calendars, RSS feeds (to their business), etc.
– … developed an ideation space – in NewsGator.
– take-aways:
– … the company was not ready for this.
– … without the advocates in a community, the community died.
– … too much information.
– … too much work
– … communication and collaboration are different functions (“communication is push one-way”)
– … IT cannot drive employee engagement
– … need a “real” business purpose.
– but:
– … some “believers” drive engagement.
– … have to enlist advocates and ambassadors.
– … introduced a business case for a community – you have to write one. This has reduced demand.
– … secure access for every community.
– … evolve with on-going campaigns.
– summary:
– … respects your company’s culture
– … business value drives adoption
– … usability – need to make someone’s work better
– … high-end performance is important
– … security and compliance are key