My dear readers out there must have been wondering where we have been? How come Letche blog hasn’t been updated lately? My bad! I had to take a break to work on an important social network and intranet 2.0 project for a banking client in Nigeria. We seem to be at the tail of the project so I’m back on track with what we enjoy doing; “Talking Enterprise 2.0″. While working on the project I realized that a lot of people are getting more enlightened to the benefits of using social tools for business. I also coined a new term which I think will become very popular soon. I call it “Social Banking“. If you hear this term elsewhere know it started from Paulette at Letche. I refer to social banking as the use of social media tools to facilitate banking services.

Social Tools + Banking = Social Banking

Smart one right Jesse Torres is a respected figure when it comes to using social media in banking. I keep track of his updates within the banking industry. I’m not going to be discussing this in detail here for now but I will in my next post. While you await my post think about the positive impact of using social tools in banking. Or better still my new phrase ‘Social Banking’. As usual your comments are welcomed.

So long!

Paulette.

Carabiner Communications, a public relations firm that serves start-up and fast-growth technology companies, today announced a new social media and video service, SocialConnectorSM, to help clients build and integrate social media tools and content into their online communications campaigns.

The firm has named Kathy Cabrera as director of new media to lead the rollout of the new service to clients and account teams…Read more

I’m normally in the habit of writing about my colleague Solofo and his interesting interviews in Europe. But now it seems the Nigerian web space is directing their attention to us. Oops!

Here’s my recent interview with Loy Okezie from Startups Nigeria. Loy sure had interesting questions about E2.0 take up in Africa and Nigeria in particular.  Let me know your thoughts on this. Feel free to drop me a comment.

Interview with Paulette Erijo – Founder, Letche Technologies

Happy reading!

Paulette.

With so much hype on knowledge management, the time has come for KM professionals to gear up and get real or head for the KM grave. The struggle has been on capturing knowledge or managing knowledge workers, but none of these has been 100% efficiently managed. KM will quietly die and social media will win the soul of Enterprise 2.0. It’s time to face the reality that Enterprise 2.0 is quietly sweeping through the industry to clean off all unwanted and boring technologies and standards.

Enterprise 2.0 delivers the platform and tools necessary to reach and attain the goals that KM has sort for years. Although most KM professionals agree to the underlining benefits of Social media, there still seem to be some resistance. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Many KM professionals are embracing social media tools and are seeking best ways to fully integrate them in practice.

My conclusion, those who continue to suppress the new trend will only pass away. Old trends and ideas cannot prevail in this dying need for innovative ideas and the quest for the younger and trendier generation of industry movers to ensure business evolution.  It’s your bet, take the call.

-Paulette

A few days ago I was in one of my groups on Linkedin, and I commented to a group member’s question who was seeking academic materials on Web 2.0 and HR 2.0 as it relates to recruiting for his masters degree project. Unfortunately he only had available to him non-academic materials. Apparently, it is clear that academic materials are yet to be penned down. But how soon will this be? How soon will these never tuning back technologies stay out of the classroom books?  Blogs and Wikis are are growing with thousands of viewers reading articles and white papers on business case studies and more bloggers like you and I will never stop preaching about Web 2.0 until we hear it echo back at us. The enterprise is fast realizing the use of these tools to enhance collaboration and communication and overall improve performance. Like my dear friend at the onset of this post, I think his project will make an impression on his professors. We know Web 2.0 and HR 2.0 were all created outside the classroom but so are many of the technologies we know today, that we learnt while at school. Never the case I expect to see this new trend supported at the academic level pretty soon. I’m sure I’m not alone on this.

-Paulette.

Emerging African markets are always a target for many high tech companies. In recent times more telecom operators have expanded into countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Kenya, and many more Africa countries. Nigeria has the biggest business environment in Africa. Reports show that the introduction of mobile and wireless technologies has given rise to an increase in the number of internet service users. Most people are becoming more familiar with web services either via their mobile phones or laptops. But how well is Nigeria ready for Enterprise 2.0 ? Letche is set to push Enterprise 2.0 into the Nigeria market. Industries such as Financial Institutions, Telecoms, Sports, Media and Advertisement, Learning Institutions, Oil and Gas, and Consumer Product companies are a few examples of Letche’s target market. Over the years, Nigeria’s response to new technologies goes through a long maturity period.  But lately, the reverse is the case. The drive towards new technologies within the various industries is very welcoming for technology owners. Although Enterprise 2.0 is still young globally, it is not too early for the Nigerian market to start adopting it. Early adopters have many success stories. Companies can engage customers, partners and employees in new ways, and thus facilitate collaboration both within the enterprise and across the internet. We look forward to seeing a good number of companies in Nigeria roll out Enterprise 2.0 in 2009 on our Beezbox Enterprise 2.0 platform.

-Paulette

The adoption of social media applications and technologies within the enterprise is not far behind. The advancement of Web 2.0 has given way to a new generation of collaboration and content sharing tools like blogs, wikis, social networks, tag clouds and many more…. Business trends have continuously focused on searching out inexpensive customer acquisition and retention model. This has eaten deep into the corporate pause because there hasn’t been an effective and less expensive tool for carrying this out successfully. Many organizations are seeking solutions that link their customers and partners with key suppliers and producers and smooth the flow of essential information across the value chain. Marketers are particularly concerned about connecting with customers and are most likely to employ social media tools. Social media tools solve a range of business problems in new and innovative ways. Although recent research shows Web 2.0 applications and services are less widely deployed, these tools are gaining a beachhead among early innovators and early adopters within companies. As with new technologies, adoption of Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 is dependent on time. I don’t see this taking so much time as shown by recent reports. The current impact of social media on the internet and consumers  has raised the need for decision makers to give attention to the board room question: Should we deploy a Social Media?

-Pauelette.

Collaboration tools like emails and net meeting are not uncommon tools used by employees within the enterprise. Large email “CC” to team members and annoying bombardment of the email server with everyone trying to reply to an email while copying everyone on the mailing list. Granted emails are great, but then how much can be done with “Walls” like popular Facebook’s “Super Wall“? 

Profile “Wall” or “Group and Community Walls” have been found to be very effective in social networks to improve conversation and communication among community members. Users have found it easier to post comments and views without having to send either emails or copy everyone on the conversation thread.

Similarly, social tools such as walls as used in Facebook, MySpace or Beetnic can enhance conversation among employees in an internal social network. Employees can post their comments and views on business matters in a more relaxed atmosphere, like they normally will do with public social networks like Facebook. Walls can compliment emails and be used for real-time communication among projects teams or unit team members. In my next post I’ll discuss the pros and cons of implementing Walls. Don’t forget your comments are welcome anytime.

-Paulette.

Congratulation! The bullish companies are taking the the lead. We are proud to see two new clients launch on Beezbox enterprise 2.0 platform.

Mnemos www.mnemos.com is a social network operated by Balthazar a Management Consulting firm. The service is geared towards executives and managers seeking to develop expertise in Management. Balthazar will be using this tool to retain professionals who have been trained in its training methodology (MNEMOS) to develop and purchase additional seminar cycles. Secondly, Mnemos social network will be offering its very large corporate customers( SNCF, EADS, FNAC, SIEMENS, AIR FRANCE,…) a new line of service: a community strategized for employees with online coaching. “What a revenue generator?” you would say. Félicitation Mnemos!
 

Footemotion www.footemotion.com is a multimedia journal (same concept as “La Rue 89″) dedicated to football for children between the 6 to 15 years. Footemotion targets all amateur clubs that commune in France. Assuming that there is a club of 20 kids in common, you imagine the potential of members (players and their parents )…. This is sure a very innovative business model!

Interesting 2.0 enterprise mentors. If you are a CEO, CIO, decision maker, or you think your project team will find an internal social network a handle enterprise-wide business tool, you are not far from making the best business decision. You are just close to giving your organization “Corporate Facebook”. Feel free to drop me a line.

-Paulette.