Social Networking: How IBM Does It
IBM launched its humble website Developer Works in September 1999 following the vision of one its Technology strategist Dirk Nicol. Dirk Nicol realized the importance of developers and came up with this idea of providing a technical resource to developers which enable them to improve their technical skills, get answers to the technical questions and to try out different IBM products.
Nicol Dirk in order to make his vision a realistic one, gave a chance to IBM programmers, web UI experts, editors, and artists explaining his idea of bringing all the technical subject matter experts and developers to one place which will allow them to share their code and ideas with other developers. Initially at the time of its launch Developer Works covered seven open source technologies which covered Java and web architecture too.
It added some of the key IBM technologies such as middleware, data management etc. also to its coverage list in 2003. Developer Works being a unique technical source among all the others that are available on web attracts about 4 million unique users while includes students, professionals and developers each month.
Developer Works in 2000 managed a library of 30,000 articles, demos and tutorials and is available in eight different languages including Russian, Spanish and Chinese which is facilitating all the professionals from almost all parts of the world. IBM also states that 70% of its DeveloperWorks website visitors are from outside IBM.
In 2009 IBM conducted a survey to find out how people use online resources to improve their existing technical skills, and to start acquiring new skills. Its survey included hundreds of software development professionals and 65 % of them answered it as through forums, blogs, wikis, online news sites and social networking sites. The survey results has led to the development of social networking functionality also in MyDeveloperWorks site which allowed the developers to connect, communicate and collaborate on projects and to also answer the questions from peers. With this social networking functionality IBM saved $100 million which is otherwise spent on IBM’s call centers whose job is to answer questions which are posed by all the development professionals. Number of visitors to IBM’s Developer Works also increased from 4 million to 6 million after introducing this networking functionality.
Why do you think Alice Chou carefully monitors the MyDeveloperWorks site? What would be an example of an insight she would gain from the data she’s collecting? IBM’s technology strategist Dirk Nicol found a problem that software professionals are facing and had a vision of facilitating them with a technical resource that would solve the above-mentioned problem. Developing this vision in reality not only solved the problem but also brought the company a huge return on investment of $100 million which led the management of IBM to look deeper into the associated opportunities of the business that they can build and expand.
IBM Developer Works site got it’s fame as a established technical resource from the year 2000 and was recognized with many awards from different organizations. It is designed and dedicated to IT professionals across the world to provide all kinds of technical resources at a single place. It attracted 4 million unique users mainly because of the quality of the technical content that it is delivering to its users. With the outcome of survey that was made to know the needs of Developer Works site users, IBM could find out the emerging needs of the potential users (Software Development professionals). IBM then came up with a mission of helping its users in connecting and doing project collaboratively on top of previously developed mission which states that to find the smartest technical expertise irrespective of their location to connect and share their ideas. As a result of implementing this mission in the organization MyDeveloperWorks site was evolved which is built entirely on MyConnections platform in the year 2009 with a motive to satisfy all the emerging needs of social networking to its users.
There are 6 million unique users by 2011 who have created profiles on MyDeveloperWorks, along with huge number of forums and blog that were created. Most of the MyDeveloperWorks users i.e 70% of them are from outside IBM. On researching more on the profiles of these users they are either the software professionals who use the technology in day to day of their work life or the academia group who research and develop the emerging technologies. The key reason behind growing network of users on My Developerworks site as mentioned by Alice Chou the Director of My DeveloperWorks is the content reliability and the volume of it, which she got to know with the feedback of the major portion of its user community. Chou continued to monitor and track the profiles, and the behavior they show on the platform, as the realistic and reliable content is one of the key contributors to this successful site. Chou is also interested in collecting information about volume of traffic, uniqueness in the user profiles, and the type of technical support questions and answers they deliver to the site. As implementing and catching up on evolving technologies often with the emerging needs of the users is the key contributor for the successful ecosystems Chou is tracking the user data to make use of it in the rewards and recognition system. This tracking will also help her to avoid duplicate user profiles.
In order to put initial mission of finding the smartest technology practitioners who bring value to the technology ecosystem Chou came up with a innovative program called IBM champion program. In order to implement this technology where all the internal employee community and outside community are continuosly engaged, Chou wanted to implement the Technology Acceptance Model to make MyDeveloperWorks even more acceptable among software professionals’ community. Even though the change that is required to accept My Developer Works seems to be easy as it works as a social platform and also can avoid the call center contacting, the change needs to come from each individual. On the other hand to overcome this barrier of driving all the users to its social Platform without taking the help of call centers Chou has implemented this IBM champion program. Rewards can make the people to go an extra mile and contribute as they have magic of generating passion and hungriness towards the work. In my perspective Alice Chou have taken a ingenious step of introducing Rewards and Recognition program not only to grab the generous time and contributions from the experts in that area but also to encourage more users to create profiles on the site to improve their visibility. I agree with the strategy that Chou has followed to take this MyDeveloperWorks site to the next level.
IBM should continue to keep tracking user profiles and conduct surveys among the user community as it may find new opportunities and concerned threats according to which the organization can make proper changes according to the emerging needs. With the introduction of MyDeveloperWorks, IBM is trying to emerge as a social business globally which requires lot of attention on security, privacy and Governance concerns as different countries have different regulations in accepting social business platforms. So taking care of these regulations will be a great business opportunity. It almost have taken a decade for IBM to fully emerge as a social business platform and to get the large user database on board, so it is always advisable to search for new opportunity and implement it before any competitor takes over the market share.
Along with IBM competitive advantage program it can add multiple other reward programs to its rewards and recognition framework as rewards can churn increased motivation in employees. Planning ahead on any major Technological changes to bring the Technology Acceptance model in place as it completely relies on behavioral intention of individual is important for any organization to succeed.
So IBM can plan on building strategies that smoothens the transition to evolving changes. In future IBM can plan on harnessing available internal intelligence and resources before even inviting public, as this may even increase the motivation levels in the internal employee community.
References
- Erin Traudt, Richard Vancil, January 2011, “Becoming a Social Business : A IBM Story”, retrieved from ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/hk/socialbiz/226706-IDC-Whitepaper-Becoming-a-Social-Business-IBM-Story.pdf (accessed on 24th January, 2019).
- Lala Fador, Gianina, 2014, “The Emergence and Acceptance of Technology Acceptance Model” from The Proceedings of the International Conference 'Marketing - from Information to Decision'; Cluj-Napoca : 149-160. Cluj-Napoca: Babes Bolyai University. (2014)
- Keri E. Pearlson, Carol S. Saunders, Fifth edition, 2012, “Managing and using information systems: A strategic approach”.
- Scott Laningham(April 18, 2011), “Alice Chou on the IBM champion program” Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/alicechouchampion-pdf.pdf.(accessed on 24th January, 2019).
- Ernie Capobianco, (Oct 9, 2014), “Rewards and Recognition: two highly effective ways to motivate your employees” retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/10/09/recognizing-your-employees/ (accessed on 24th January, 2019).
- IBM.com,(n.a), “About developerWorks” retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aboutdw/index.html (accessed on 24th Jan,2019)
