The Social Network Roadmap(SM) (SNR) is a modular yet global approach to determining how your organization might best adopt social business, social networks and Web 3.0. The Roadmap is useful to companies that seek a way to explore the potential of social networking while minimizing its risks. It’s a structured approach to assessing, testing, scaling and integrating social networks and Web 3.0 into mature business processes.

Today companies are in a similar position as they were in 1998 with dawning of the graphical Internet (“Web 1.0″): the technologies and concomitant behaviors seem alternately trivial, bothersome, surprising, even bizarre, and are only of interest to those who have too much time on their hands.  They certainly can’t be appropriate for “real” business.  As websites became mission-critical and pervasive during the late 90s and early 2000s, so will social networks and Web 3.0 during the next five years.  Today, executives have a choice on how and when to adopt. Applying social networks to business processes is “social business.”

The Social Network Roadmap(SM) Blog shares “stories from the front lines” to enable executives to learn from CSRA’s insights while working with clients in the early stages of adoption.  Posts are typically short and informal; think of this blog as a white board delivered in small chunks.

The Roadmap applies equally to B2B and B2C businesses.

History

CSRA beta launched the Social Network Roadmap(SM) at the Social Networking Conference in San Francisco on July 11, 2008. You can use it to discover what your customers, partners and competitors are doing in emerging venues like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Second Life and others. You also determine what the adoption rate is in your industry and how you can apply these new technologies and behaviors to your business. For more, see The Web 2.0 Investment Strategy.

CSRA Managing Director Christopher Rollyson is the chief architect of the SNR. He has been working with technology adoption since the early 1990s. The Roadmap draws from Rollyson’s experience with e-business strategy and transformation at PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting Services during Web 1.0 in which he was a subject matter expert involved with building the firm’s roadmap and services framework while serving industry teams and clients in automotive, energy, consumer products and high tech.

The Roadmap also borrows from Rollyson’s exposure to fast-cycle software development.  It manages risk by identifying, creating process for and testing the riskiest parts of a proposition prior to extensive investment.  As Vice President as nVISIA, he led the development of the firm’s Enterprise Service-oriented Architecture roadmap that detailed the path and key milestones for enterprise adoption of SOA.

When enterprises consider disruptive technology, they are faced with understanding the disruption and how it applies to their business. They must consider the problem of how to apply it to their business processes in a way that delivers value while minimizing interruption to their existing business. One of the key challenges is gaining mindshare with people in various parts of the organization so that the assessment and application of the disruptive technology can be effective.

Roadmaps are invaluable tools for companies that are adopting significant change. By articulating the adoption path, a roadmap helps educate people about how the novel technology affects their company and what they can do about it. It aligns them around orchestrated plans for action, and it gives them a vocabulary to talk about the change process.