Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 3)
by Matthew Lees
The first post in this series laid out the question and noted some important similarities between internally facing and externally facing communities. The second post discussed key differences between such communities.
This third piece looks at employee and customer communities from the perspective of the vendors that provide tools, technologies, and services to organizations that sponsor online communities.
The Vendor Perspective
In one of my semi-annual industry reports (“Online Community Platform Company and Product Update – 1H 2008”), I wrote the following:
“2. Blurring of External vs. Internal Communities. Our focus at the Patricia Seybold Group is on enabling those who engage with companies from the “outside,” so we tend to be more interested in systems that support external communities of customers and/or business partners. This is not a clear delineation, though, as Web 2.0—social networking in particular—hits the enterprise. But as advocates of customer-centric approaches to business, we are sanguine on the trend that is moving away from the “us vs. them” mentality (with employees as “us” and everyone else as “them”), and toward a more group- or stakeholder-based approach, with customers and partners simply being another group of stakeholders. It’s happening slowly, but internal systems are being opened up to allow appropriate access to customers and partners. And community platform vendors are leading this trend; half of the companies we cover have products specifically developed for combined internal and external collaboration.”
That was written in August 2008. Many of the vendors I cover still offer products to support both employee and customer communities. Here’s a breakdown of some of the companies:
Technology Solutions for External Communities
• Awareness
• Lithium Technologies – Social CRM
• LiveWorld – Community Center
• Pluck
• Powered – Social Marketing Platform
• RightNow – RightNow Social Experience
Technology Solutions for Internal and External Communities
• Blogtronix – Blogtronix Enterprise, Blogtronix Community
• Ingeniux – Cartella
• Jive Software – Social Business Software (SBS)
• KickApps
• Leverage Software
• Mzinga – OmniSocial
• Small World Labs
• Telligent – Telligent Enterprise, Telligent Community
(There are a great many technology vendors that provide tools and services for supporting internal communities only. My fluency with these platforms is more limited, although some well known products are Atlassian Confluence, IBM/Lotus Connections, and Socialtext.)
One Foot in Both Camps
The vendors that provide solutions for internal and external communities have a foot in both camps. That gives them a larger potential customer base, but it also hampers their ability to excel in one area. So, while I am still “sanguine on the trend that is moving away from the ‘us vs. them’ mentality,” I’m not convinced this is the best long-term approach. I see three main reasons as to why:
• Corporate Bandwidth. None of these vendors is in the Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 range. They’re all relatively small companies doing cutting edge stuff, mind you, but they don’t have the deep pockets to be able to do everything they want to…and do them all well.
• Marketing and Sales Strategies. In a nutshell, they’re selling to different people in different business units. Convincing the CIO and the head of HR to sign with you takes different materials, case studies, and ROI analysis than selling to the CMO, the head of customer service, or the chief of R&D.
• Development Efforts. Developing software for different use cases is a challenge. These vendors no doubt receive feature requests from customers of their internal and external products; many of these requests likely overlap, but many likely don’t. Desired integrations have similarities and differences, too; integrating with social Web applications (e.g., Twitter and blogs) may be wanted by both camps, but those managing internal communities may ask for integrations with ERP, accounting, and scheduling systems, while those managing external communities may need integrations with CMS and CRM systems. Deciding on the direction of developmental efforts is a tough enough call when you’re serving just one market, let alone two.
To some degree, online communities are online communities. But vendors with one foot in the internal community camp and one foot in the external community camp have more challenging strategic decisions than those focusing in one area. Things are pretty good now for all vendors, as the world of social technology continues to blossom. Within the next year or two, though, I expect to see some changes, such as re-jiggering product lines, acquisitions, and consolidation.
Next
The final post in this series looks at Internal/Employee and External/Customer communities from the perspective of the people charged with managing and ensuring their success.
Back to the blog
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Community Moderation, Social Media Industry, Social Media Trends. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
5 Responses to “Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 3)”
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matthew Lees. Matthew Lees said: 3rd post in the series "Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?" This time, a look at vendors – http://bit.ly/b3Wvon [...]
Hi Matthew: Great insights. I enjoyed this post. Curious about your thoughts about 1 mega-vendor not mentioned. Microsoft (SharePoint). Microsoft hasn’t marketed this capability like the ones above and I believe they’ve also been unable to display real int-ext scenarios. Just wonder if you see or expect them also trying to accomplish this feat. -Dan
MatthewLees says: Thanks, Dan. I definitely thought about where Microsoft and its SharePoint line fits into the picture, but since it didn’t pigeonhole neatly into my admittedly simple and rigid Internal/External construct, I decided to punt.
I guess you called me out on that…
SharePoint is really a different animal, though. I’d call it more of a community connector/enabler than a community platform in and of itself. Many of the platform vendors listed above (particularly the ones whose systems are based the .NET framework) have built SharePoint integrations, so that their systems work hand-in-hand with Microsoft’s. So on one hand, Microsoft (via SharePoint) has a foot in both the Internal and External camps. But that doesn’t really tell the whole story, since Microsoft has a foot in *all* camps. Plus, it’s strength is more in connecting people to information rather than connecting people to people.
I think this all speaks to the point you make about the “mega-vendor’s” lack of marketing specificity. When a product is pitched as something that *can* do or support anything, it makes it tough for prospects to see how it applies to their specific use case. Of course, they’ve converted a lot of prospects, as there are a gazillion SharePoint implementations out there (most of which are supporting Internal use cases). But I don’t see Microsoft and SharePoint themselves as direct competitors of the companies mentioned above.
I don’t know, though, how long they’ll remain satisfied supporting SharePoint implementations that integrate with Awareness, Jive, Telligent, and other. Microsoft’s history certainly shows it’s not acquisition averse.
Matt: That certainly all makes sense and clear why Microsoft was omitted from your summary. Sounds like you have thought and researched them quite a bit. Perhaps enough for a future story… Again, thanks for the info. -Dan
[...] What? In the upcoming Part 3 — yes, there’s a Part 3 — we’ll explore what this means for both technology [...]