Next-generation communities—Part 1 Designing flexible communities that fulfill business needs

Business needs still drive community programs

Accenture and Nalco Water have created space for more informal social communities, but their overall community programs are still driven by business objectives. At Accenture, for example, communities are expected to directly enable the business model by supporting priorities such as sales and revenue, delivery excellence and team communication and engagement.

Stephen Kaukonen, a strategic adviser for the organization’s digital practice and the lead for its innovation and discipline team in the social collaboration and social learning space, explained the centrality of knowledge sharing and collaboration to the overall business model. “Accenture doesn’t make stuff. We have our knowledge. So how we can take that knowledge and package it up and deliver work to our clients is critical to who we are,” he said.

Accenture’s most formal communities—professional communities—have rigorous requirements that ensure alignment with business needs. Professional communities are required to have a sponsor, champion, lead (typically a senior director or upper-management individual), formal performance objectives and a defined set of goals. Both professional communities and communities of practice have traditional responsibilities at Accenture, including process documentation, best practices identification, knowledge transfer facilitation and sales material support. The primary focus of both professional communities and communities of practice is content creation, curation, dissemination and innovation—all in support of delivering client work.

At Nalco Water, around 10 percent of communities are social communities, whereas the remaining 90 percent are business-centered. Business-centered communities focus on topics such as technical support, safety information, product launch support and technical support in local languages.

Nalco Water has formalized governance and vetting for the business-centric groups. Each community must develop a business plan that defines its target audience, sponsors, core group team members, a community vision and measures for success. The community leader must also develop a value proposition that clearly articulates expected community outcomes. “It doesn’t have to be terribly detailed, but it causes you to sit down and think about your objectives,” said Daniel Flynn, Nalco Water’s KM manager.

Another way Nalco Water and Accenture ensure the business relevance of their community programs is through active management of their community portfolios. Both organizations have set processes to review the communities on their rosters, consolidate redundant groups and retire those that are no longer active. For example, Nalco Water’s KM manager reviews the community portfolio annually and typically eliminates 10 to 15 percent due to low activity levels. That allows the organization to balance out the new communities that are added each year and maintain a stable number of active communities. Accenture similarly archives inactive groups and folds smaller communities into larger domain areas.