As background, Jive addresses two markets: Internal company collaboration (we have a people-centric alternative to Sharepoint) and Online Communities. The Online Community marketplace has been around a long time. It’s mature, has proven value and a budget. Recently, it’s moved a bit higher in the management food-chain as social software has gained in popularity. Now whichever exec is in charge of a company’s online community is supposed to have social media expertise.

The interesting thing is that we see a ton of crossover between markets. Our customers either:

1. Begin searching for an internal collaboration solution and then, once deployed, become interested in extending this value to their out-of-date online community
2. Start with an online community and then become a primary driver/expert for solving the internal collaboration solution

The chart below represents the second scenario, where the Marketing Department can be a gateway into the rest of the company.

Stage One

• Community is isolated and not considered strategic
• The company has bolted together tools over time (forum, knowledge base, etc)
• Manged (often part-time) by a lower-level community manager
• The community manager doesn’t have a way to surface community activity to the rest of the company
• The company is using email and file-trading to collaborate

Stage Two

• Online community part of the Marketing strategy
• The community is powered by a socially-driven, unified solution
• Managed full time by at least one, higher-level person. Often a team is in place.
• Marketing team actively engages on community activity
• Marketing organization regularly brings valuable insight to rest of the company
• The company is using email and file-trading to collaborate

Stage Three

• The company strategy is to unify and work as a whole
• The file-share system is replaced with a socially-driven, unified solution
• Internal collaboration and the online community are managed by exec-level, cross-functional stakeholders
• Collaboration flow stretches crosses departments as well as outside the company to partners and customers
• Visibility to relevant activity and dialogue across the entire corporate landscape

Which stage is your company in?