Over the past three days, numerous folks have asked me whether I use Google Phone or if I ever used Grand Central. Yes and yes. I like Grand Central more, but Google Phone is just as well I suppose. I rarely use it. But it has started me to wonder whether slews of organizations will start to adopt Google Phone for their business needs, just like many organizations are officially hosting their infrastructure with Google, or as employees use Google Calendar despite the fact that the organization has a perfectly good (?!?) Exchange infrastructure in place.
What is nice, though, is having an entire infrastructure in place. Turn key really. And wouldn’t it be cool if someone (perhaps Google, perhaps not) could do the same for us with web governance and social media? It has started to offer some capacities to this extent, of course, as exemplified in Google Docs, Blogs, etc. But I mean, what if as an organization, Google could offer me an out of the box, turn key solution that has everyone using a social media platform throughout the enterprise to folks-tag content, rate pages, and collaborate efficiently. Or if it enabled externally the opportunity to do even more with the organization’s audience? What a cool concept!
So this morning I started brainstorming with a colleague about the turn key infrastructure for organizational web governance. While nothing new (i.e. consultants readily reproduce documents for clients from templates), the reality is that web governance too has a pattern and the permutations are ample but exhaustive. Cultural (i.e. transnational, multinational, local, and organizational) patterns can be segmented and to a great degree aligned with the models that best suit the organization, and with the exception of wanting to tweak things here and there, tends to work across the board.
Certainly, the argument will be that governance is a process not a means to an end, but the reality is that by the time that your organization has decided to use an out-of-the-box governance model, a lot of the buy-in has already taken place. Those who do not want to use the toolset, are likely going to need professional services help beyond governance anyway, so perhaps this idea could work. Could float.
Do you have thoughts? Think this could work or should work? Have a better idea? I am seriously considering using my Google Phone account again, so just call me.