WebEx: Ideas in Motion

The Psychology of the Mobile Workforce

An interesting study commissioned by our parent company, Cisco, takes a look at the psychology of the mobile worker.  The study was actually done in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America, but the results can surely be interpreted globally. 

It is of course especially important considering the forecast from IDC that shows that mobile workers will account for a full one quarter of the world’s working population by 2009 – just around the corner.

The study, entitled “Understanding and Managing the Mobile Workforce” points to the importance of recruiting the right kinds of personalities, managing them appropriately, and providing them with the best communication resources. Under and over communication can both have a negative impact, mismanagement in general being a major threat to worker productivity and job satisfaction.

The study was carried out by British occupational psychology specialists, and identifies the types of workers that can be most successful in mobile roles. They generally fit these personality profiles:

•  Stimulation Seeker - extroverted, motivated by contact with people
•  Tough Survivors - emotionally stable, low levels of neuroticism, resilient under pressure
•  Curious Explorers - creative, open to new ideas, enjoys variety of experience
•  Independent Decision-Makers - maintain independent mindset, appreciates being trusted to work without supervision
•  Disciplined Achievers - conscientious and self-motivated.

There were also some noteworthy cultural observations, especially in terms of developing nations.  Some Middle-Eastern and African countries were capitalizing on the work-life balance of mobile working, while several Latin American countries have a strong preference for face-to-face communications and have been slower to adapt to mobile working.

Tools like instant-messaging and video were cited for their important role in building a sense of inclusion and reducing any feelings of isolation.

And for anyone considering either finding a more mobile position, or making a proposal to their current employee – there’s even a quiz you can take to see how well suited your personality is to the change.

Colin Smith, Dir Corporate Communications, WebEx

Making Real-Time Collaboration Mindnumbingly Simple

One of the programs that I run here at WebEx is "Samantha", the virtual meeting assistant. So what is a virtual meeting assistant and why do you need one?

I've been in this space for almost five years, first at PlaceWare and now WebEx, and frankly, I could not imagine working without real-time collaboration tools. In fact, without my range of devices and services, cellphone, blackberry, IM and WebEx, I think my life would be even more complex. With them I can work wherever I have an Internet connection and phone reception. My team knows my presence info and how to contact me, and I am available to answer questions, escalate issues and jump into a meeting, regardless if I am at the office, working from home or on the road.

As we all know, once someone takes their first step forward, they'll be running in no time. But how do you get people to take their first web 2.0 step?

That's where Samantha comes in. She is a virtual meeting assistant who helps the user with their first web conferencing steps. I've developed several versions of Samantha and in the first six months of the program, we've seen some very impressive results. So feel free to let Samantha take you on a tour of WebEx. We've even localized her for the Latin American and Spanish market; Bienvenidos Claudia!

  and

If you believe Samantha has helped you become a better WebEx presenter, leave a comment to this blog

Jan Sysmans, Director Marketing, WebEx

What is Sales 2.0?

My last post (and lots of people offering their own thoughts as well!) on some of the interesting things going on in “Sales 2.0” got me thinking: What is “Sales 2.0?” Defining it, as you can tell from the discussion out there already (on the Sales 2.0 Conference blog and others), has a way to go and may never be quite complete, but I think it goes far beyond the technology and “synchronization” with the customer. So I would like to offer some ideas on how we can start to think about the evolution of sales:

- Selling how the customer buys: Realizing that your prospective customers come to you far more educated about you than ever before (from your website, referrals, and other sources), and knowing that your prospective customer doesn’t care if they are a “contact” or a “lead,” only that they want their entire relationship with you to be consistent and logical (read:integrated) forces your organization to adapt. Sales people must be prepared to help a knowledgeable customer buy (as opposed to push-selling before the competition can “educate” them). Marketing and sales must become more tightly integrated (one single funnel) to handle contacts from before the initial contact through post-sale.

- Managing productivity and efficiency: Sales executives are now using new tools to identify the best prospects in their funnels, understand which steps in their selling process are most important to closing a deal and making revenue forecasting more predictable. The ability to measure these is allowing organizations to create incredibly efficient sales processes and learn to apply quality metrics to the sales process. We’re only seeing the beginning of this today, but all indications point to great leaps in sales productivity and dramatic drops in the cost of selling

- Technology works for you: Ask a sales rep about using technology (especially CRM systems), and you’re likely to get either an ugly look or a rant about how much time gets wasted engaging with technology. We are now seeing a new generation of technology tools (including WebEx and many of our partners) creating the ability to let technology help sales reps engage with their prospects (and not with the technology).

- Leveraging the power of the network: Selling has always been, and likely always will be, about connecting with the right people, engaging in conversation, and closing business deals. Leveraging the incredible visibility the internet and all that the information and networking tools offer, finding and connecting with the right people has never been easier. Making connections, interacting and collaborating now happens at the click of a mouse. The friction is leaving the system, letting sales organizations and people at all levels focus on the human aspects of selling: knowing who your buyer is, why they are buying, and making sure that you can deliver not just the best product, but whatever it is that will make your customer successful.

What do you think? Join the conversation in the WebEx community on the “Breakthrough Collaboration” blog.

 Jeff Weinberger, Product Marketing Manager, Sales Solutions, WebEx

McKinsey reviews SaaS

Abhijit Dubey, an associate principal, and Dilip Wagle, a principal, with McKinsey & Company have written a Web-exclusive report on the SaaS market that appears in the May 2007 McKinsey Quarterly. The report is mainly focused on the developer of software and the need to pay attention to SaaS as a means of selling the software but the research provides some interesting insight on the types of applications buyers are looking to purchase through SaaS.

The report, Delivering Software as a Service (registration required), has some interesting background on the business of delivering software as a service, and how SaaS company financial performance stacks up against software companies selling on-premise licenses. They break down P&L as a percent of top-line revenue of SaaS versus on-premise or traditional software companies. Anyone evaluating SaaS should take a look at this information to get a sense of how the business works. A slightly different version of this article, minus the sidebar articles and infographics, was published on the Computerworld Web site back at the end of April.

CIOs looking at SaaS will find some insight on costs beyond the basic licensing. Consultant Kishore Kanakamedala and principal Roger Roberts detail total cost of ownership information for CRM applications. A sidebar article, What's on CIO agendas in 2007: a McKinsey Survey (registration required),  details how SaaS and virtualization continue to top the agenda for CIOs from 2006.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

“2.0” Comes to Sales

There’s been a lot of talk recently about “Sales 2.0” and how companies can benefit from adopting “Web 2.0” concepts and technologies in sales – from an interesting post on BubbleGeneration to the launch of the Sales 2.0 Conference (and its own blog and comments on other blogs) of which WebEx is proud to be a founding sponsor.

You won’t be surprised to hear that we at WebEx are strong advocates. Not only do we put this into practice every day (using our own and other “Web 2.0” technology, plus advanced process and management practices, has put us on Forbes’ top-25 fastest-growing technology companies five years running!), but I get to hear great stories about how our customers are creating huge competitive advantage using WebEx and other “Sales 2.0” tools.

Some of the more interesting tools that we’ve seen sales organizations adopting to help move to 21st-Century selling are:

• Live Collaboration: Selling is still about building relationships and helping customers meet their needs. Leveraging the power of the internet to engage prospects, using WebEx of course, extends your reach to anywhere you need to be.

• Personalized contact and tracking: Tools like those from Genius.com (blog) let direct contact e-mails be more personal, and let reps know how individual prospects respond

• Social Networking: Tools like the classic LinkedIn (blog) and the sales-focused Visible Path (blog) are helping sales reps find the right people at their target companies, and build strong webs of connections.

• CRM: Yes, even CRM companies are moving away from the old ERP model and working hard to make it easy for sales reps to use technology to their advantage. The current leader, SalesForce.com (blog) and very exciting up-and-comer, Landslide are changing the way sales organizations use CRM.

And there’s more. I think when we talk about “Sales 2.0” we have to talk about technology, but we also have to talk about community - How does collaboration with a community work in selling? How do you develop opportunities in a community? – and also about process, organization and measurement – how does your organization adapt to this new model? what do you measure? How do you manage?

I’ve seen estimates of around 7% of companies in the technology industry have adopted “Sales 2.0” methodology and technology so far. The evidence is showing that these companies are quickly becoming much more efficient, drastically lowering their cost of selling, handling and closing far more deals faster than ever. The end result? They are eating their competition for lunch.

Are you adopting “Sales 2.0”? How’s it going? We’re continuing the conversation next week at the WebEx Sales Showdown and on-going on the WebEx Community “Breakthrough Collaboration” blog. Join us.

Jeff Weinberger, Product Marketing Manager, Sales Solutions, WebEx

Under the Sea with WebEx

We all know WebEx helps us get our jobs done, but when was the last time we talked about the classroom applications…not to mention the fun factor?

Here’s a great example.

The Marine Resources Development Foundation (MRDF), www.mrdf.org, is a non profit located in Key Largo, Florida. They’ve been around for 25 years, and their mission is to help improve the quality of life on earth through education and the responsible use of marine resources for food, fresh water, energy, minerals, and medicine. MRDF has an Undersea Marine Lab where they can drive a remotely operated submarine (ROV) out in the ocean. The MRDF is getting more and more involved in the classroom, and that is where WebEx steps in. From their Lab, Lab Director Chris Olstad launches a WebEx session and invites classes to join him online. Then using application share, he allows the students to drive the ROV. The students have a blast, sitting in their classrooms d riving a submarine in Key Largo with their mouse and keyboard using WebEx!

Check out these pictures of a class using WebEx to drive the sub.

Colin Smith, Dir. Corporate Communications, WebEx

Senate Bill Focused on Telecommuting for SMBs

The U. S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship has introduced legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Olympia Snow, to help small business improve energy efficiency through the SBA (Small Business Administration). The bill includes a number of programs designed to help small business operate with greater energy efficiency or transition to renewable energy sources. There's also a program for the SBA to create an outreach program as well as help educate small business on the energy saving benefits of telecommuting.

Web Worker Daily has a brief blog post about the bill and a follow up posting on the Telework Exchange Online Eligibility Gizmo. The Gizmo is a questionnaire (registration required for results) is designed to help U. S. government workers determine if their jobs are suited to telework. The questionnaire can be broadly applicable though for any company, for example the question about working with classified information may as well be asking about working with intellectual property.

Of course, at WebEx we are big proponents of telecommuting as a way to save energy, save money and make workers more productive while eliminate commuting stress. Get a sense of the costs of commuting using our Carbon Calculator, it tallies time, CO2 emissions and fuel costs.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

Profy covers WebEx WebOffice

Phil Butler wrote a positive review of WebOffice on Profy.com, posted today. Profy is a multi-author blog community that focuses on Web 2.0 technology, including reporting and analysis of breaking industry news, as well as looking at new products and services. The focus of coverage is broad, from social networking to productivity and collaboration tools and strong growth in page views is strong, 30% per month.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

 

Pick on e-mail week

Apparently last week was the unofficial berate e-mail week. In part this was sparked by Om Malik's Business 2.0 column, which references venture capitalists declaration of e-mail bankruptcy. While I agree e-mail overload is a problem, it's a manageable one. I've been at jobs in which I've received 200-400 messages a day, there are a number techniques for dealing with that level of traffic.

Check your inbox only a few times a day. In fact, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, the more email you get, the less often you should check it. There's a simple reason, discussions play out in a day. You can quickly scan contributions to a thread and only respond to the last message, reducing the clutter in everyone else's email. In fact, I'm a strong believer in discouraging the use of email for organizing discussions and collecting feedback. Using group chat, discussion forums, and document management tools are more appropriate for this kind of collaboration, but sometimes co-workers insist on using the hammer instead of the screw driver, just swing it judiciously. 

Try a different vector of response. It's easy to see when a message is going to lead down the rabbit hole of 10 more messages back and forth. Hop on instant messaging or the phone to resolve the question quickly. This is particularly helpful for scheduling meetings with people that can't see your calendar.

Mike Gunderloy at Web Worker Daily has some useful tips for turning messages into tasks and filing. When I can't immediately respond to an email, I turn it into tasks (or flag it) for follow-up, however, I don't believe in keeping email unless it's clearly valuable. I recommend saving attachments and deleting the message. If the message doesn't require action, what's the point of keeping it? Does posterity really need the detailed discussion used to win deal or arrive at some minor conclusion or wording for a slide deck?

Anne Zelenka, also at Web Worker Daily, makes the argument for brevity in email, essentially eschewing politeness for expediency. I don't worry too much about being verbose in email, after all we can read faster than we can speak, but keep it short, simple is always good. There's good news cited in the Boston Globe for those of you that are grammatically challenged when it comes to email: Boston University lecturer Sarah B. Campbell has written a grammar guide specifically for email.

Email is like mold, left unchecked in the right conditions it propagates to its limits. Reaching that limit then creates a headache in the form of an alert that the mailbox size has been reached. If you archive locally, the archive slowly consumes the entire hard drive. In either case, there comes a time you have to frantically delete messages to get back online.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx