Forrester Research recently released a case study chronicling the implementation of blogs as an enterprise communication tool at 150-year-old financial services company Northwestern Mutual. The blogs, intended to drive a change to the organization’s culture, instead resulted in increased productivity as most of the employees starting blogs focused them on project management.
The social media platform Northwestern Mutual implemented is from Awareness Networks (formerly iUpload), one of the companies competing in the enterprise social media space.
In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz spoke with David Carter, Awareness’s chief technology officer, about the Northwestern Mutual experience, including the obstacles the company had to overcome for its leadership to get comfortable with the idea of internal social networking.
About our Conversation Partner
David Carter provides the overall technology direction of the company and consults with customers to align their internet strategy with their corporate objectives.
Carter founded WebPartz Inc. which was acquired by iUpload in March of 2003. Before forming WebPartz, he spent 11 years at Microsoft where he had held various positions, including Manager of Internet Strategy, Marketing Manager Knowledge Management, Content Management, and eCommerce products. In each of these roles he worked closely with large corporations rolling out the Microsoft platform and developing a business strategy. His last role was as Internet Strategy Manager where he oversaw sections of microsoft.com and Microsoft Canada’s Intranet.
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Podsafe intro music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.
(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)
