Communities Insights with Telligent's Lawrence Liu and George Dearing

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Apr 28, 2009

When you start thinking about whether or not you need a community, there are likely a dozen questions running through your mind — at least there should be. If you haven't taken the time to think about what a community will achieve for your organization, then don't go buying the technology to create one.

If you need a little guidance along your path, CMSWire talked with two community evangelists: Lawrence Liu, Director of Platform Strategy at Telligent (news, site) and George Dearing, Telligent Evangelist about how to tell if you need one, how to approach a community strategy and what are some key features in community solutions.

Whether you choose to go the path of Telligent Community Server or not, there's some solid information to take home and think about.

To Build or Not to Build a Community

So how do you know if you need a community or not? Dearing says that organizations are striving to be more efficient in communicating inside and outside the firewall. It's critical that you sit back and ask yourself what exactly you are trying to do? What do you think a community will achieve for you?

With many community software vendors trying to push you into a toolset mindset, you may find yourself attempting to engage your business around a technology approach and be warned now — it doesn't work.

Even analyst firm Gartner stresses the importance of having a purpose when deploying any type of social software solution, hence the term "purpose-driven communities".

Liu agreed saying that customers often come for a solution "end" when they ask for a community. What they are really looking for is maybe a way to provide cross group collaboration, or a better way to connect with customers or partners, maybe they are trying to change a mindset to be more open and sharing.

You have to think about the problem you are trying to solve — that will tell you if you need a community and what kind it needs to be.

Do You Need a Community Strategy?

There has been an increase in demand for strategy services according to Dearing. Organizations are looking for someone to facilitate the conversation and help them get "down into the weeds" to understand what the business drivers really are.

When you are trying to think about who to involve from your company to help develop your strategy, think about people at the line of business level. These are the people involved in the day to day workflow — the knowledge worker. The solution you are looking for is usually aimed at making things easier and more flexible for them, so it only makes sense that they be involved at the beginning.

In Telligent's case, they partner with consulting partners to get help organizations develop their community strategies. It's these partners who help organizations define the business drivers and develop the scenarios needed to move forward.

As Liu indicates, organizational alignment is required and how you implement a community will depend on the alignment of those business objectives defined in your strategy. There are, Liu says, five natural segments of alignment:

Marketing & Sales - Internet Facing
Support and Services - Customer Support
Research and Development
Partners and Alumni - Alumni is a small niche that many don't consider even though they hold a vast amount of knowledge about your organization
Employees and Stakeholders - Intranet focused

IT is Stepping Up to the Plate

Another positive trend Liu has seen is that the IT divisions within organizations are stepping up and helping to get communities implemented. Without centralized support, many community implementations have been silos and that kind of defeats their purpose.

HR Can Be A Driver Too

Another organization that is starting to pay attention to the value of a community is HR. This is one division that spans the entire organization and has the ability to make an impact, encouraging enterprise wide adoption of a community.