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Angela Ashenden

Principal Analyst, MWD Advisors

Biography

Angela Ashenden

Angela Ashenden is Principal Analyst at MWD Advisors. Joining MWD in 2007, Angela brought nearly 10 years’ industry experience and as such is a primary authority on collaboration technologies and effective working practices in business today. Angela is a highly accomplished IT industry analyst, acting as advisor to large IT user organisations about technology and management strategies for implementing collaboration, as well as advising software vendors on product and marketing strategy.

“There is a real excitement around the collaboration market at the moment. It’s such a broad topic – depending on who you speak to, it could be one or thirty technologies! This means that it is confusing for organizations looking at collaboration and gives me a reason to understand what’s going on and share that with businesses. While many analysts just look at comparing features and functions of the collaboration tools themselves, I balance that with integration and interoperability issues – which is what ultimately decides how successful an initiative will be, how it becomes a vital part of the process rather than just a neat utility.”

Angela is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on information management and markets. She is quoted frequently in mainstream and IT specialist media, including Computer World, Computerwoche, the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and ZDNet. Articles written by Angela have been published in AIIM E-DOC magazine, Computer Weekly, Document Manager, ebizQ, KMWorld, Consultants Advisory and Inside Knowledge.

MWD Advisors

MWD Advisors is a specialist IT advisory firm which combines actionable industry research and analysis with tailored consulting services, focused exclusively on issues surrounding IT-business alignment.

Founded in 2005 by two high profile UK-based industry analysts, MWD provides advice to enterprise IT organisations and suppliers of IT technologies and services in order to help senior decision-makers make better business decisions, and to maximise the business value received from IT investments.

MWD's analysts bring over 60 years' experience working with senior IT decision makers worldwide from a range of industries including retail, financial services, oil and gas, travel and leisure, utilities, manufacturing, public sector, healthcare and telecoms. Over 2600 subscribers currently benefit from MWD's research.

Presentation

The social intranet: online communities for enterprise collaboration

Track: Collaboration
Conference Day #2, Thursday November 4th, 13.00-14.00

The intranet is moving away from being a static information source to becoming a central hub for interaction between employees.

To make the intranet more relevant and useful, many organisations are starting to add social capabilities such as discussions, blogs and user profiles. This introduces a set of challenges however.

How do you:

  • Get management to see the see the benefits of a more collaborative, interactive culture?
  • Explain that "improving collaboration" is not so much about a major additional activity for people to carry out, but rather about being more productive and effective?
  • Justify the long-term investment in this approach? Can you build a business case?
  • Encourage employees to use the technology?

Angela will address these questions, and give you a roadmap for:

  • Identifying strong pilot projects
  • Combining top-down with bottom-up adoption strategies
  • Helping people discover the benefits for themselves, rather than simply telling them what they are

See slides online