What was the motivating factor behind your business's move to the cloud?
We needed a solution where we could focus on our core competency without burdening IT staff with the day to day requirements of hardware and software, let alone the capital costs. Secondly, we wanted to be sure we invested in a solution that could span other areas of our business beyond CRM and grow with us.
What does the term social enterprise mean to you?
A social enterprise is a company that embraces collaboration. It’s typical for manager in a company to have a tendency to not share information in their area. There’s a mental check that has to occur before a company realizes the value of sharing interactions on a regular and open basis. It’s an “ah hah” moment that doesn’t come easily.
In other words, being a social enterprise doesn’t mean you simply use social tools; rather, it’s a moment when management realizes the value of sharing between departments and promotes that value to the entire company.
How is your business social today?
We embrace social media, but I wouldn’t consider us a true social enterprise yet. We recognize the value, we participate, and we contribute to social media with our customers (patient referral sources, physicians, patient families, etc.).
The ability of a company to move from being social externally to being social internally happens at a different pace. If you were to create a readiness curve with the left side being a company that is not social, and the right side a social enterprise, a company that embraces social media externally is just one step away from becoming a full social enterprise.
A lot of companies are still listening to the vision and beginning to test the waters. It is the future, but it’s a difficult adjustment because it has to be consistent across the board.
Where do you envision it being a year from now, five years?
People have to get more comfortable using social in their own lives before we can be successful with social technology in the enterprise. The demographic of many colleagues in our organization is a bit older so not everyone is embracing social media in their personal lives. So what we do is promote it with those that are already comfortable with it.
The pace by which a company can make the transition to a social enterprise is somewhat tied to what’s promoted from the top, and how comfortable people are with it on a personal level.
For example, many of us are conditioned to check email every day, all day long. Recently, I gave my daughters new phones with email addresses and they couldn’t understand what they would need email for. Why wouldn’t we just texting? So the lesson here is that our generation needs to become conditioned to look to social media much the same way as we value email communications today. Certainly the next generation will be a different animal in this regard.
What has mobility meant to your business?
Mobility means quick and effective communication. When you put people on smart phones and tablets, the ability to always access info and be notified in real time is far easier.
For Tidewell, it’s about being connected. We have employees in the field all day. We can’t really set a schedule for nurses and expect them to keep to it with people constantly calling them with additional patients. Now we know their status at any given time – are they available, admitting patients, etc. It’s allowed us to be more effective and improve the turnaround time to see a patient from when they call us.
What hurdles do companies need to overcome to become mobile and social enterprises?
To becoming a social enterprise, the biggest hurdle is employee comfort level. There needs to be a sense of comfort and confidence that the info you’re sharing is beneficial to someone else downstream in the process.
With mobility, cost is still an issue depending on the organization and depending on the devices. We’re starting to see that change where the carriers subsidize device costs at corporate level. Some progressive companies allow people to bring their own devices. But the biggest hurdle is still data security.
What would you tell someone getting into IT today?
Don’t just go to school in IT and say I will have an IT career. Pick an industry where you can make an impact from technology and use that to help solve real life industry issues.
Many industries, healthcare in particular, need technologists that understand the industry in order to use technology to solve its problems. In healthcare, you need to have a certain degree of understanding of CMS promoting electronic medical records, health info exchanges, coupled with hospitals and hospital networks with large imaging data bases. It’s an industry that needs tech folks to solve problems.
Who do you most admire in the tech/business world today?
Steve Jobs. He was bent on changing the world and always saw the bigger picture.
When I was developing and teaching Mac and, later, iOS development, I used to have a saying: "The best code is the code you don't have to write." Reuse as much as possible, leveraging libraries and open source and if there is a simpler, more manageable solution to a problem, it will be easier to maintain and provide an overall better solution.
This saying has new meaning to me when user interfaces and user experience is concerned: ”The best UI is the one that the user does not notice.”
UI should be there when you need it and disappear when you don’t. It should be intuitive, expected, and most important, subtle.
Imagine that you walk into your favorite restaurant (and lets assume that your favorite place is not a pub or night club), would you rather hear quiet, subtle music or a loud orchestra? Now, suppose you went to a pub or a night club. Would you expect to hear classical music? In both cases, the music should fit the mood and your expectations. UIs should do the same – fit the mood of the issue the app tries to solve.
When we look at history, we see that simpler, more focused, well done solutions win. Take the iPod for example and its simplicity at doing one thing. Competitors tried to compete with more features, but the iPad still won out for its style and ease of use.
Today, look at the apps that get traction on the App Store such as Clear and Paper. What do these apps have in common? Their focus, elegance, and lack of features. Wait, shouldn’t an app with more features be more valuable to a customer? It turns out that iPod story still holds true. It is about simplicity, elegance, and the ability to do one thing so well that is natural to people and they just use it. The lesson? Say no to extra features, say no to that extra button, say no… just say no.
We are working in an enterprise setting where customers usually have tons of features in mind. I know in reality it is hard to say no to the customer, but sometimes it’s worth taking a step back together and asking, do we really need this feature? What could simplify this? It could make a huge difference in the success and adoption of the app.
Is it an easy process? Of course not. Will it work right the first time? Perhaps not. But if you can just take one feature off the table, it will likely get you one step closer to perfection, one step closer to making your app or solution ambiguous, your technology an extension of the solution instead of set of features. Eventually your UI, your app will disappear and become the UI that customers do not see, but feel.
Over the past year, there’s no denying that we, as a company, have gone through some major changes. It was bound to happen since we’re in the business of helping our customers make the transition to social enterprises; but it’s happened to us too, and we’re not so sure it’s a good fit.
Honestly, we miss the old ways – cozying up to our desks to read email all day and sitting in back to back meetings rather than having to do any actual work. Plus it’s kind of nice having a little bit of mystery about what’s going on with our customers – and especially with our employees.
So we’ve decided to take a step back and make the following changes to un-socialize our business:
Less is more: We know way too much about our customers’ needs. Once we became a social enterprise, we were able to truly understand our customer and get a complete picture of who they are so we knew what they wanted and expected. But where's the fun in that? We like a good surprise!
Everyone needs a good challenge: Our employees eagerly adopted Chatter once they learned how it helped them find and share great ideas and work more productively. But after further consideration, we are concerned that it is making their jobs too easy. We want our employees to feel more challenged!
Some things are best left unknown: As we developed our own social network, we were overwhelmed by the level of knowledge and feedback we were receiving. We’ve decided it would be better not to know. The truth is people’s opinions on Facebook and Twitter don’t really matter after all.
Work is best done at the office: Mobilizing our employeeswas a major mistake. Sure, we’ve built some pretty slick iPad apps, but we’re doing way too much business on the go. It’s more important that our employees are here working together rather than spending time face to face with our customers.
These changes go into effect today, in honor of April Fool’s Day!
Here in Chicago, we don’t take St. Patrick’s Day lightly. After all, we go so far as to dye our river green and have some of the best Irish pubs outside of the green island itself.
Before we go out and start celebrating with the rest of the city this weekend, we couldn’t pass up putting a St. Patty’s Day spin on what we do every day – make the social enterprise a reality for our clients.
Some of you might think that becoming a social enterprise is as elusive as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but we’re here to tell you what it’s all about so you can find your way.
Trick #1: You must be social inside and out It’s likely you have a social media strategy in place. By establishing a persona on public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, you’re managing your brand where consumers are spending most of their time.
You also need to have an internal social network strategy. Internal social networks revolutionize internal communication and collaboration by facilitating conversations and idea sharing, and by providing a forum for asking and answering questions. Unlike email, questions and ideas can be posed to a broader audience so that responses are invited from and available to an entire group.
We use Salesforce Chatter internally and it’s had a huge impact on how we share information and collaborate on client projects (and it was super helpful in helping coordinate our St. Patty’s Day plans!)
Trick #2: You have to get personal with your customers Thanks to social media, every consumer now has a voice, and sometimes a pretty influential one. As you tap into your company’s external social networks, you get a clearer picture of your customers and can begin to create customer social profiles. By listening to them, you can identify and fix issues, mine information to enhance your products and services, and identify macro trends in consumer sentiment, industry conditions and brand strength. This is incredibly powerful and completely changes customer engagement as we know it.
Trick #3: You have to provide customers with the context they need A large component of being a social enterprise is providing contextual social interaction. What we mean by that is building customer social networks so that consumers, partners and employees can converse, answer questions and field suggestions on the topics that are meaningful within the context of what they are doing.
This creates a sense of relevance for both employees and customers. Customers feel valued and important when their voices are heard, they experience assistance, or they have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by helping someone else in the community. This interaction resonates deeply and facilitates loyalty.
Trick #4: It has to be mobile Social interactions cannot realistically be limited to people sitting at desks. The prevalence of smartphones and tablets will only continue to grow. Social enterprises are embracing mobility and establishing a strategy for mobile devices, but they are also revolutionizing the way we work with them.
If you follow these four tricks, you’re well on your way to finding that pot of social enterprise gold. Now off to have that Guinness!
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d take a moment to profess what we love about the cloud. After all, if it wasn’t for the cloud, we wouldn’t be here!Here’s why we think you should love the cloud too… Reason #1 – Upfront costs are about the same as a box of chocolates (and don't impact the waistline) Ok, maybe not exactly, but with cloud computing, companies are able to save thousands of dollars in long term costs with a pay-as-you-go model depending on the size of the organization and business need. Reason #2 – Flowers die, but mobility is here to stay Because of cloud computing, we are freed from our desks. We can take the cloud with us and access business information anywhere we go – on our mobile phone, iPad or laptop. No need to plant ourselves any longer. Reason #3 – “Ahappy customer equals a happy business” The old saying “a happy wife equals a happy life” translates to business customers. With information now shared instantly across an enterprise and the ability to connect with customers on social networks via the cloud, companies are able to deliver an entirely new level of customer service. Reason #4 – Love letters have gone social While a love letter is always a nice touch, regular communication via Facebook is what keeps you truly connected, right? The cloud enables us to bring the power of social networks to our businesses, improving our ability to collaborate internally and to listen and connect with our customers. Reason #5 – No baggage The cloud comes baggage free, as compared to some people you’ve surely dated. With no hardware or software bogging a business down, companies can focus on innovation rather than server updates.
As 2011 comes to a close, we at Model Metrics are very proud of our accomplishments over the last 12 months, including, but not limited to the introduction of Model FX, the first cloud design lab, and our rapidly growing Social Enterprise and Mobile practices. But what we continue to be most proud of are the people and company culture at Model Metrics and we were thrilled to receive the Chicago Tribune Top Workplace award for the second year in a row.
With Model FX, we launched the first creative design lab focused specifically on cloud technologies. This arm of Model Metrics takes cloud computing one step further and truly incorporates our customers’ brands from ideation to development. The Model FX team works to deliver innovative social and mobile cloud solutions with customized user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) baked into the overall design. We know that the optimal representation of a company’s brand is just as critical as functionality to encourage adoption and ongoing usage. The Model FX design lab now enables us to bring enhanced consultation and custom cloud design services to our customer base.
2011 also brought about a significant IT paradigm shift toward the social enterprise with companies looking to transform community engagement into business value. Model Metrics embraced this shift by introducing an expanded set of services designed to mobilize the workforce and improve employee collaboration.
None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the talent of each of our team members and since inception, we have made it a priority to create a different kind of work environment that truly embodies our core values, which include collaboration, innovation, honesty, responsiveness, philanthropy and passion.
Our continued efforts to foster a collaborative company culture and standout team were validated once again when Model Metrics took home, for the second year in a row, the Chicago Tribune Top Workplace award. This prestigious accolade recognizes Chicago’s best employers with a special emphasis on dynamic, supportive and inclusive company cultures. We’re excited to close out the year on such a high note and can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!
Model Metrics’ 2011 Accolades include:
Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces 2011 Award Model Metrics took home second place in the Top 5 small companies category for best places to work in Chicago. This recognition is followed by a first place win in 2010.
CRN 2011 Fast Growth 100 Model Metrics was ranked as #27 in a list of 100 companies recognized for impressive, exponential growth over the last few years.
CRN’s Next-Gen 250 Model Metrics was recognized for innovation in cloud computing services.
2011 Red Herring Top 100 North America Model Metrics was chosen as a winner from a pool of hundreds of companies across North America based on financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy and market integration.
CIO 100 Awards Model Metrics’ customer, Ingram Micro, honored based on the innovation and success of the Ingram Micro Cloud website that Model Metrics helped to design, develop and deploy.
The Forrester Wave: Salesforce.com Implementation, Q2 2011 (May 13, 2011) Forrester Cites Model Metrics as “Strong Performer” in salesforce.com implementation and received highest scores for client satisfaction, implementation life cycle, vertical expertise, key partnerships and go-to-market strategy.
Check out two new case studies from AH Holdings and Standard Register on Chatter deployments we recently completed. They are great examples of using social enterprise technology to improve your business.
AH Holdings, a growing conglomerate of healthcare support solutions companies, worked with Model Metrics to deploy Chatter for better knowledge sharing among its highly dispersed workforce serving hospitals across the country and internationally.
Just two months after going live, its transformation into a social and agile enterprise is gaining momentum. Sixty-six percent of employees are collaborating on Chatter and more than 112 groups have been created by associates’ initiative. As a result, they can provide better service to hospitals and clinics and drive business efficiencies.
We also recently completed a Chatter deployment for Standard Register, a leading provider of critical communications management, who wanted to deploy social enterprise technology as part of a transformation in the solutions and services it delivers. Together we underwent a methodical deployment designed to ensure business value. Today Chatter is used to better manage its sales efforts, enable closer collaboration between employees, and drive overall efficiencies.
Today's gamers include millions of Americans of all ages and backgrounds (72% of all American households play computer or video games according to the Entertainment Software Association) and the number is skyrocketing. Why should you care? Because gamification is making its way into enterprise solutions such as Salesforce CRM, and the aforementioned gamers are your employees and customers.
As the term gamification becomes more mainstream, it’s bringing in an influx of questions from organizations we work with, so we were thrilled to have TJ Keitt, a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research Inc., join us for a Webinar on Gaming in the Enterprise to answer those questions. TJ walked us through the evolution of gamification, what a gamified business application looks like and how companies can begin to gamify their businesses. If you missed the webinar, you can catch the replay here. Watch Video
It is with great sadness that our team at Model Metrics recognizes the passing of a true innovator in the technology world, Steve Jobs. Merriam-Webster defines genius as possessing "extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity," and we certainly couldn't say it better than that.
Mr. Jobs started Apple Computer in 1976 in his garage, and his visions over time became some of the most beautiful consumer electronic devices ever created. His ability to not just create devices, but define markets is unparalleled in this industry. Think about just the last 10 years:
iPod
iTunes
iPhone
iPad
MacBook Air
All of these either defined a category, or created one from thin air. Despite Mr. Jobs' many serious health concerns, he never stopped striving for what he saw as perfection, and encouraged everyone around him to behave in a similar fashion. He illustrates that will for excellence perfectly below in his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005:
Zimmer is a worldwide leader in providing medical devices that improve the quality of life for people worldwide. To that end, they wanted to arm their sales team with the latest sales materials such as videos, powerpoints, pdf documents, and make them available on iPads. Watch this powerful presentation from the 2011 Dreamforce conference and learn from Zimmer how they accomplished this.
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