IT FOR E-BUSINESS –

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
& COLLABORATION
PLATFORMS
Content
 Virtual communities
 Collaboration platforms
 Conclusion
 Ressources
 Questions and answers
Virtual Communities
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who
interact through specific media […] in order to pursue mutual
interests or goals.

 Provides support, information, friendship and acceptance between

strangers
 Used for a variety of social and professional groups
Typology
 Internet message boards

 Online chat rooms

 Virtual worlds

 Social network services

Impacts
 On health
 On civic participation
 …

The technology isn’t bad, the important thing is

how we use it…
Collaboration platforms

Collaboration platforms are unified electronic

platforms that support synchronous and
asynchronous communication through a variety of
devices and channels.
Issues
 Knowledge is difficult to reach (tacit…)
 Based on proximity, people are not likely to
collaborate
Traditional ways to collaborate
 Phone, Meetings, letters… and E-mails !
 E-mails has many good sides:
- Easy to access
- Easy to use
- Universal
 But bad sides as well:
- Difficult research
- Mistakes
- Omissions
- Spam
- People leaving the organization
- Weight
Collaboration spaces
 A Virtual workspace
 Centralize all tools needed to conduct a
project
 Sharing knowledge
 Related to the concept of Organization 2.0

“Knowledge Is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves,

or we know where we can find information upon it”.
Collaboration tools
 Online storage (ftp, dropbox…)
 Instant messaging
 Real-Time Web
 VOIP
 Mail
 Wiki
 Blogs
 Profiles
 Discussions and conversations spaces (forums)
 FAQs
 Voting or scoring system
 News feed (paper.li, netvibes…)
 To do lists
 Calendars
 Events/tasks/projects management
 Tag clouds
 …
A case study

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ_HXPtwQTI
The benefits of online communities
and collaboration platforms
 Develop exchanges between different people in an
organization
 Encourage a cross services organization
 Create communities of interest online, supports the
various projects within an organization.
Achieve convergence of digital
applications to:
 Have a single point of access to different services
of the organization
 Simplify procedures (online payment, booking
events ...)
 Better inform themselves (cultural and sporting
life, important dates ...)
Supporting mobility
 Through mobile application to access the services
of the organization.
 By producing short contents (podcasts, micro
learning ...) quickly and easily searchable.
 Take advantage of off-site organization (mobile
learning, training ...)
Develop e-learning and new learning
methods for:
 Integrate new behaviors (eg, asynchronous work,
outside of meetings)
 Access to more interactive content (social learning,
serious games, ...)
 Being able to continue to form continually (life
long learning ...)
 Be trained in the use of new tools
Spaces of capitalization
 Learning from the past experiences (internships,
experiences abroad, projects...)
 Better transfer knowledge from one individual to
another (e.g. retirement)
 Share good practices (working methods, tips ...)
Examples of platform
 Microsoft SharePoint
 IBM Lotus Connections
 Facebook
 Zepppelin
 Cisco WebEx Connect
 Google Apps (gmail, calendar, docs, Google +…)
 Zoho Apps
 Adobe
 MindTouch
 Socialtect
 Jive Software
 Zimbra Collaboration Suite
Conclusion
 Organization capture knowledge, organize and
share it more efficiently
 New management principles:
- Conversation (vs diffusion)
- Bottom up (vs Top Down)
- Emergence (vs structure)
- Agile (vs Process)
- Transparence (vs security)
- Open networks (vs Solos)
- Trust (vs control)
 Innovation
 References
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_platform
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software
 http://socialenterprisetoday.com/blog/posts/Making-collaborative-work-work
 http://lecercle.lesechos.fr/entreprises-marches/management/organisation/221145467/entreprise-futur-collaborative-et-confron
tee-a
 http://www.collaboratif-info.fr/edito/communautes-larbre-qui-cache-le-reseau-social
 http://www.collaboratif-info.fr/chronique/eh-oui-productivite-et-social-font-bon-menage
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging
 http://www.slideshare.net/sameerpatel/21st-century-collaborative-enterprises-the-business-case
 http://www.slideshare.net/marknadsstod/enterprise-20-efficient-collaboration-and-knowledge-exchange-slideshare
 http://www.slideshare.net/ceciiil/blah-blah-2219353
 http://www.slideshare.net/VirginieK/dployer-une-plateforme-collaborative-pourquoi-comment
 http://www.jade-rs.com/solutions/definition/communication.php
 http://www.collaboratif-info.fr/edito/la-dsi-lagilite-et-la-main-tendue-collaborative
 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/collaboration/title/621
 http://poncier.org/blog/?p=4395
 http://www.journaldunet.com/solutions/intranet-extranet/etude-collaboratif-kelton-research-avanade/en-savoir-plus.shtml
 http://www.journaldunet.com/solutions/intranet-extranet/etude-collaboratif-kelton-research-avanade/evolution-des-usages-
en-2011.shtml
 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travail_collaboratif
 http://www.collaboratif-info.fr/tags/communautes
Thank you for your attention!