This is part two in a multi-part series on how Océ is implementing Enterprise 2.0 within their organization.  This post will cover how Océ made the push to implement Enterprise 2.0 within their organization.

If you missed it, part one covered the business drivers of Enterprise 2.0, which discussed why E2.0 was the solution to the challenges that Océ was faced with.  Today we are going to focus on change management.

In Part One of this series, I promised that we would talk about what tools and platforms Océ is using.  Here is the full list:

  • Wiki implemented in 2006
  • Internal blogs started in 2008
  • Océ TV launched in 2008
  • Microblogging (Yammer) began at end of 2008
  • Social bookmarking initiated in 2009

Clearly Océ has a lot going, but where did the push for all of this come from?

The push actually came from the bottom up; in fact there was hardly any push from the top down.  Océ as a company is a very bottom up organization.  The good news though is that Océ employees are allowed to try things and to experiment (starting in the R&D department).  Jan and Samuel started playing around with wikis to manage project information.  However, they found that the wiki platform was not really a good fit to manage project information.  It was much better at handling business process and methods and currently, that is exactly what the wiki does.  It’s also important to note that Océ doesn’t use the wiki much to manage any type of documents since it’s not good at it.  Again, this all started from their R&D department which is where people get to try new things.  The R&D department helped lead the push for many of the E2.0 initiatives and at the end of the day the wiki (media wiki) was also free, so that certainly helped eliminate any cost barriers.

Océ believes that it’s always important to justify the business case for everything that you do.  In the case of their wiki, Océ had a problem which was housing and organizing project information.  The wiki didn’t solved that problem, but it did solve another problem of managing process information which became the use case and that was the catalyst for getting the wiki created.

Despite all of this, there still needed to some sort of force of influence to really propel all of these efforts within Océ. Thankfully, Jan and Samuel had two key areas of influence and for lack of a better phrase, they “worked the system.”  It’s actually quite an interesting strategy that Jan and Samuel used (and should be commended for doing so).  Their two key areas of influence were:

1.  Steering committee for the intranet

  • Both Samuel and Jan are on the committee
  • They already had a vision and idea of where they wanted to go
  • Budget disappeared due to the recession so they went with free tools instead

2.  Jan works within the corporate communications department

  • He developed the communications plan
  • He selected the tools: “these are the tools corporate communications is going to use”
  • Department managers approved

Eventually the organization let Samuel and Jan take off with their ideas as they started to see things working.  It was very difficult to work between IT departments and business units but they were able to manage it.  With Samuel working in the IT department and Jan in corporate communications, they are able to work together to make it happen.  When Jan ran into IT issues, he brought in Samuel to support him and vice versa.  Security has also been an issue with IT and although there is a specific process to get IT projects done, it’s rarely followed in social media implementations (and I suspect this is true for many large companies).  Samuel and Jan oftentimes get grilled on their ideas but together they make a perfect team, bringing together both IT and corporate communications.

Key Takeaways
  • Océ’s efforts were a result of IT and a business unit (corporate communications) working together
  • The push came from the bottom up
  • Samuel and Jan had considerable influence in the right areas (IT and Communications)
  • Océ encourages employees to test and try things out (in the R&D department)
  • The business case had to be justified to get started
  • Although Samuel and Jan are in very different roles, they both support each other to really make things happen

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