Socialtext

Professional Services teams and their clients in market leaders including MWW Group and CoActive Marketing Group implemented the Flexible Client Collaboration solution in partnership with Socialtext. Efficient management of complex projects with geographically distributed teams an engaging directly with clients has been too complex and technologically prohibitive in the past. With Socialtext, engaging with your clients has never been so simple and effective.

Managing projects with internal or external clients typically involves distributed team members and external partners. Today, this activity relies heavily on static websites, email conversations, expensive in-person meetings or conference calls. With wikis and social software, collaboration can occur more quickly, with greater engagement, higher client satisfaction and cycle times can be reduced by more than 25%, since wikis provide a lightweight, shared workspace for secure project collaboration and coordination.

In many industries, and especially professional services, seamless collaboration with clients is critical. Attorneys, consultants, accountants, bankers, and other advisers need to be in constant contact with their clients. They iterate frequently on documentation with multiple versions which need to be managed and vetted. They are constantly answering questions, discussing approach, giving and receiving feedback. All of this needs to be done on tight time-frames with busy professionals who spend a lot of time on the road and in airports.

Most client collaboration today happens through email. Documents are emailed back and forth with titles like "Draft of 2/1", "Draft_Jane_Edits". Comments are posted in reply to all emails which become harder to follow with each new reply. In the middle of it all is the busy partner, drowning in hundreds of emails a day from multiple projects.

Wiki-based client collaboration is different. By setting up private wiki workspaces, shared directly with their clients, professional services teams have a single, easy-to-manage place where they can put all the materials related to a project or client: letters of proposal,
powerpoint documents, legal filings, product designs, to-do lists, meeting notes, etc. Because clients have access to the shared collaboration wiki, they can easily access the latest version of materials, and offer comments, questions, and feedback right in the
wiki. The result is a satisfied client who can always find the latest materials and feels truly integrated with project team.

Ragan Communications Webinar with MWW Group

The Flexible Client Collaboration practice

Socialtext has a unique understanding of the social, cultural, and organizational challenges of launching a Flexible Client Collaboration solution, We have built a comprehensive suite of capabilities to help our customers with all aspects of successful implementation, including strategy-setting, business analysis, training, and impact evaluation. Our Professional Services team works hands-on with customers, leading them through our proprietary SPRING methodology (Structure, Populate, Review, Invite, eNcourage, Garden). Developed over the course of hundreds of customer launches, our methodology and tools ensure the establishment of an active, growing engagement within three months of project start.

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Read recent press coverage from CIO Magazine and ZDNet describing the Flexible Client Collaboration use-case.

For further information about Socialtext Services, please contact us.

Free Article Download from MIT Sloan Management Review
Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

Case study of how German investment bank used Socialtext to fundamentally shift the way knowledge work is done by Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard

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