1. Introduction

This article discusses implications behind the adoption of a “2.0″ approach to corporate management. This article is built on and extends the introductory discussion of an FPT HR representative on their application of 2.0 to internal communications. It seeks an equivalent position of the 2.0 characteristics within an organization. Basing on this finding, recommendations are given to FPT.

Hi TaiTran,
Ko hiểu youtube có lỗi hay do mạng lởm nên tôi ko trả lời bạn trực tiếp được tại video trên youtube. Quản trị 2.0.
Quản trị 2.0 là khái niệm được FPT nhắc tới bắt đầu từ 2008, đơn giản là ứng dụng 2.0 vào công việc quản trị. Các bạn chắc biết rõ hơn tôi về web 1.0 và 2.0 và biết sự khác biệt giữa 1.0 – tiếp nhận thông tin 1 chiều và 2.0 tăng tính tương tác.
Quản trị 2.0 tương tự:
- Đưa ứng dụng web 2.0 vào việc quản trị. Ví dụ mở các kênh tiếp nhận thông tin từ nhân viên qua blog công ty để lãnh đạo lắng nghe ý kiến nhân viên tốt hơn. Các lãnh đạo tự mở blog cá nhân để chia sẻ về suy nghĩ bản thân, truyền tải thông điệp lãnh đạo (ko nhất thiết trong công việc) để gần hơn với nhân viên và tiếp thu thông tin.
Hiện FPT đang có kênh 2.0 đặc trưng là: Chợ Dưa FSoft – chodua.com và FLI Blog: fli.fpt20.com, là kênh internet có thể truy cập. Còn các forum, mạng nội bộ khác chỉ dành cho nhân viên FPT. Đặc điểm ẩn danh cho phép nhiều người được nói thẳng nói thật ý kiến và cả các bức xúc của mình trong công việc hay comment thoải mái về các chính sách công ty mà ko sợ lộ mặt.
Những cái này có thể nhiều công ty đã áp dụng như “học thuật” hóa thì được gọi là quản trị 2.0.
Những thông tin khác bạn có thể đọc tại fli.fpt20.com hoặc chodua.com. Mời bạn vào trao đổi! Tks!

vanbich, FPT HR representative

Ông Trương Gia Bình nói về Visky 2.0

2. The position of the 2.0 characteristics

2a. Web 2.0 is about Communication. Is Enterprise 2.0 about Communication?

Basing on the comment from vanbich, the idea of FPT 2.0 is to provide channels and facilities for their employees to communicate with one another and with leaders.

At first, it seems sensible given light that a Web 2.0 product provides platforms for its users to communicate and share information with one another. And users do this with purposes.

Some examples of Web 2.0 products:

Product	Effective communication channels	Purpose of product creators	Main purpose of users
WordPress	Entries Comments	Provide a collaborative blogging platform	Share & aggregate knowledge
Facebook	Walls Media Comments on most items B2C: Public Profiles …a few others…	Provide means for people to explore one another’s activities Provide technical platform	Explore connections’ activities
MySpace	Verbal comments Non-verbal expression through media and page styling	Provide means for people, especially artists, to show off their interests	Express their ego
Twitter	Short messages	Provide viral platform Provide technical platform	Viralize their contents Quickly update their activities

How are “2.0 communication” and FPT’s explanation linked together?

It’s useful to map the idea:

Figure 1 – trying mapping web 2.0 product and enterprise 2.0: incorrect

While we see that the total scale of a Web 2.0 product is allow Communication, the total scale of an Enterprise is much larger than that. We want to revise the ‘conventional’ enterprise:

Figure 2 – simplified model of a conventional enterprise

That is the full scale of an Enterprise. Communication plays an important role, but does not take up entirely its operations.

So how do we map it more precisely?

2b. Here is what I visual it: mapping between two 2.0 entities

Firstly, as we know that communication is the main activity of a Web 2.0 product, it is important to find out what is the main activity of an Enterprise. As from figure 2, the main activity of an enterprise is Production and/or Providing Services.

Secondly, it is important to characterize the style of communication in Web 2.0 products so that we can do the same on the style of production of an enterprise.

What best describes “multi-directional” and “decentralized”? It is autonomous. People in the 2.0 sphere communicate autonomously and are responsible for their behaviors.

Combining these two findings, here is what I propose the mapping between a Web 2.0 product and an Enterprise:

Figure 3 – mapping web 2.0 product and enterprise 2.0

At full scale, the applied 2.0 characteristics does not only involve open and partially anonymous communication, but reach the level of autonomy in production.

3. Some considerations

1. It’s easier for startups than for an established company.
   Think about Google. It had been famous for its anti-corporate culture at the first days. As the company becomes mature, corporate issues start to emerge.
2. Does the structure of the company make it reasonable to build autonomous teams/divisions?
3. Does the culture of the company and the culture of the society make it reasonable to build autonomous teams/divisions?
4. How ready are the employees, in terms of capability and mentality, to be autonomous?
5. Autonomous, together with self-directed communication is not new. It traces back to 1970s and Motorola, Xerox, AT&T and so on. However, it might be new to Vietnam.

4. Some recommendations for FPT toward 2.0

1. Select mature teams to build autonomy
2. Delayer these teams
3. Allow (sometimes dramatic) changes in structure, culture and mentality
4. Allow (sometimes dramatic) changes in personnel management and resource allocation
5. Treat this as on-going experiment

Benefits:

1. Bring the “2.0 spirit” to the company as leaders desire
2. Increase innovation
3. Reduce cost, especially management overhead
4. Reduce absenteeism
5. Identify unofficial leaders of the teams in addition to the existing leadership training program

5. Summary

Changes in production characteristics, rather than sheerly in communication, reflect the full-scale shift within an Enterprise. Analyzing Web 2.0 characteristics leads us to autonomy. Whether and how FPT will implement it is interesting to observe. The implications of recommendations in this article go beyond social media, product management and technology companies to leadership generally.

6. Reflection

It has been challenging and exciting to write this. The excitement was how I can link seemingly scattered parts of my knowledge to form a cohesion piece of consultation – something I love doing. The great challenge lies in the idea of evaluating a big, established, known and loved company. Nevertheless, if I want to learn, first thing first, I must dare the keyboard discussion.

Abstract

This article gives a guide on how to make profits from an enterprise’s Customer Supports function. Two advanced business opportunities are discussed. It also describes the impact of technology, process and strategy in the business renovation.

Customer Support: From the traditionally cost sector…

Customer Support function has long been considered a cost to business, as it rarely brings more values.

Well, is it the case? If it is accused to not bring values, is it possible that they did not attempt to get value from it?

…To getting golds back from the star-fruits quezacotl

“Vietnamese folklore goes that once upon a time, a man was very annoyed by a strange large bird eating the star-fruits in his garden. He tried to trap the creature and when he succeeded, the bird offered to carry him to a gold island to be released. The man became prosperous with the gold he picked from the isle after then.”

You can get a high Return on your Investment into Customer Support.

Many entrepreneurs know that good customer support is what makes customer happy and thus more willing to buy more and/or spread the good words. Customer Support has been recognized as a PR tool rather than.

Customer Support can be exploited to:

• Increase customer satisfaction
• Develop customer loyalty
• Make the current customers spread the good word: the famous word-of-mouth marketing technique
• Build a community of customers
• Enhance the brand of the enterprise

Now, let’s push it further than that.

(1) Customer Support to increase employee satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is an intangible value of any enterprise. In real life, business development and employee growth is generally mutual exclusive. A way to solve the dilemma will be discussed.

(2) Customer Support as competing Strategy

Becoming the first in the industry requires good Strategies. Maintaining the position requires better Strategies. With the rapid flourishment of the knowledge economy, technology has come in place to revolutionize strategic planning. More on strategies coming next…

How? The five steps

1. Just read

Before actually doing it, it’s advisable that you explore what need done in order to achieve your goal. This article’s got it all for you from a very high level view.

2. Automate it

Employees who do the Customer Supports are agents with specific customer management and troubleshooting skills.

Agents’ tasks are repetitive and require a high level of concentration and accuracy. On the other side, managers want to be updated periodically and recurrently without having to micro-manage. This can put a lot of pressure both employees and team leaders.

Ultimately, now that we are setting the business objective very high (remember all the items covered above?), it would be next to chaos if all things are done manually.

The work must be automated. It is then agents are provided with tools to complete their works, checklists so as not to miss any item and instant support when they need it. Managers receive reports, statistics and figures to analyze and make decisions. Furthermore, automation saves man-hours so the firm may concentrate on developing the most talented workers. Eventually, automation frees all levels from tedious and repetitive works to spend more time on thinking how to improve the process.

A system should be in place to do the harder works so that people can work smarter.

3. Establish a process to support it

For any system or workflow to work properly, the process must be modified to support it.

Process has to be defined so as to gradually switching from paper works to entering and obtaining information from the systems installed.

Re-defining the process is the next investment an enterprise has to spend. However, the Return on Investment shall be well worth it. With automation in place, costs of some processes themselves will be cut down significantly.

For example, it used to take at least 15 minutes to search for a file of a customer in a heap of documents. Now it takes maximum 15 seconds to get all information of that customer by searching in database. That makes it 32 times faster!

So far, Statement (2) has been explained.

4. Mean to really support it

When the system and the process has been in place is the time for training and changing the habit of users. Training effectively has been difficult enough, making a change is even more.

It requires high commitment and strong confidence from Board of Management to request, encourage and motivate employees into the new environment.

Eventually, only if the change is seen as the key strategy to compete will all of its potentials be unlocked. Nothing is more powerful than union between all attending parties, strategies, processes and the product.

5. Let the whole world know

Just what are you waiting for? Let the whole world know
that you’re different,
that you have leaped ahead of all your competitors,
that your customers will be served the best way possible.

Life Business prospect has never been as bright.

Case Study

Suppose you’re the owner of an electronics retailing chain.

You may want to know the level of satisfaction of your customer. You will conduct a survey using Customer Relationship Management System (CRM). Since most of your market segments use the Internet regularly, it is easier to release the survey in electronic format.

To ensure that the survey is done correctly, you may want to arrange your agents to help/guide your (potential) customers through the survey. How do you know if your agents are doing well? Start the Quality Monitoring (QM) System. It will track the interaction between you agents and customers, be the media text chats, audio or video. After saving the interaction, you can always review and remark the performance of any specific agents.

Oh! Some agents are not doing as well as you expected. What will you do? It’s suggested that you review their skill set and portfolio in the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) to make judgment on how to grow them to the required level.

After obtaining the information on the agents, you may want to send them to Training. Today, training doesn’t have to be formal classes with costly instructors from outside. For your information, thousands – I mean hundreds of thousands – training courses, from business to technical, from soft skills to customer management, have been packaged in the form of e-Learning, delivered to your PC, and always ready to launch.

After the training, expect “Wow!” expressions from your beloved customers!

Now that your employees receive adequate feedback of their performance and personalized training addressing their gaps. Their productivity and loyalty will increase proportionally. Happier agents, happier customers too. By the way, has this solved the problem (1) listed above?

The whole process covered above should always be put under supervision. Thank goodness, software can do the micro-tracking for you. With information collected, it is time for Information Analytics power to shine. You can ‘teach’ the software to ‘know’ your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and it will compare the actual performance against your goals to produce conclusion, warnings and predictions.

At the very end of the process, Reports only need to be generated for You to know everything you want, with as few key hits as you want.

Notes

Please note that while I described this scenario for Customer Support only, similar approach can be used on a wide range of business functions: sales to production management, delivery to marketing. Software can be much more powerful if you know how to exploit them.

The case above involves several systems/modules. Theoretically, CRM and HRM systems are typical of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems; Quality Monitoring, Training, KPI are typical of Workforce Optimization Systems.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that from my analysis, Customer Support should no longer be considered a cost. Instead, it brings more opportunities if it is used the right way, is supported with functional systems and appropriate processes and is lead by a clear strategy.

Acknowledgment

with special thanks to:

Gideon Schipper, Business Analyst Manager, First Consulting Group Vietnam

Minh Nguyen, Business Analyst, First Consulting Group Vietnam

Phuc Nguyen, ASEAN System Manager, Procter & Gamble