Disqus - Latest Comments for BillOdell

Re: Silencing the Bells and Whistles

BillOdell — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:11:26 -0000

Great post Andrew. As a Silicon Valley vet of 20 years I can attest to the Bells and Whistles mentality that persists despite the well known fact that most customers use 20% of the functionality of our products at best. I think there is a bit of "keeping up with the Jone's" psychology at work here as companies feel they must keep pace with competitors Bells and Whistles for fear of losing prospects who will do check-the-box feature comparisons even though they might never care about the boxes they check.

I was fortunate to work of a company, Latitude Communications (now part of Cisco) who hired seniors to come in and test our UI. We figured if a senior citizen could not use the product, we had to keep simplifying it. I also will say I often remark about the success of 37 Signals - whose approach was get the product out with minimum features and let the market tell you what they want. Great approach and they got large without alot of VC funding either - something to think about....

Re: Release the Enterprise 2!

BillOdell — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:51:18 -0000

Well I hate to bring up a potentially tired topic, but I am very curious to hear your thoughts on ROI. It seems that there was a bit of a stir caused at the E2.0 conference in Boston about ROI that left many wondering if it was important at all. I think Stowe Body posited that nobody needed an ROI for the telephone. I wonder is that is indeed true from the practitioners perspective. Having been in enterprise software for over 20 years, I don't see a decline in the need for a business justification. Why would we think E2.0 is beyond that? Is this perhaps an affliction of general purpose social collaboration platforms versus social business applications with a defined purpose? Love to hear your thoughts.

Re: 2009 is the year of Enterprise 2.0? Hold your horses…

BillOdell — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:28:30 -0000

Sameer,

As always a very provocative post - and frankly an honest look at the adoption data and issues. The adoption of E2.0 feels erily similar to the early days of Unified Communications, which is now coming more into the mainstream from what I can tell. I think you touch on one of the most critical issues facing adoption, which is an integration into business processes, which users understand and can translate into value. As you know, that is the core of our approach at Helpstream.

Keep the posts coming.

Bill

Re: http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=833

BillOdell — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:00:10 -0000

Great post Dion. There is too much hype on "social enterprise" these days. And companies are not looking for hype, they are looking for help. It is a big hurdle to break through the barriers of traditional thinking and behavior patterns established over many, many years. But with tips like these, continued discussions about what really needs to happen and stories about companies who have successfully crossed over the boundaries, we will get there.

Re: From Email Culture To Stream Culture: Out Of The Inbox

BillOdell — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:05:52 -0000

Nice post as usual Stowe. Glad to see your making progress on your study. We posted on a similar topic highlighting the move from email to Facebook on our blog today. http://corpblog.helpstream.... Impeccable timing.