Enterprise 2.0 : An interview With MindTouch's Mark Fidelman - Part II
In
Part 2 of the Interview with Mark,I discuss specifics like how E2.0 can impact
business in real life and the prospects it holds for India.
Click the title to read Part 2 as well of this very informative interview.
Q.)Let
me now ask you a question about E2.0 in action. Let’s say I’m a businessman in
Mumbai or Bangalore. Let’s say I sell cars. I get to know about your company in
California.
Now
if I come to you and say I need an Enterprise 2.0 solution to help me get me
more buyers. I also need to meet similar store owners in the US so that I can
negotiate a potential dealership for my cars.
What’s
the E2.0 solution to my needs and how is it different from a conventional
approach to the same?
A.]Great Question. In my
opinion E2.0 is more about improving internal corporate efficiencies and less
about directly selling a product or service.
That said, in the scenario you’ve presented above, an E2.0 solution by
an organization like MindTouch will help your company identify the employee
with the best connections in the US to dealers.
It can also connect your Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
solution with your internal MindTouch Knowledge Base to follow daily sales
updates and for anyone in the company to add their input to the sales process.
In the end, E2.0 tools provide increased visibility and encourage all employees to actively participate in whatever problem is at hand.
Q.)Can
you tell us a bit about your own company, MindTouch?
A.] MindTouch is a business platform for developers and
non-programmers to quickly build best-in-class Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Think of it as the open source version of
SharePoint but more flexible and much easier to use.
MindTouch has also created their own solution frameworks for
Intranets, Innovation Portals, Knowledge Bases and Enterprise Dashboards that
are built to work the way you do.
Finally, MindTouch has a Cloud offering for business users that can be set up in less than 5
minutes. We intend to allow developers
to build their own SaaS/Cloud solutions and offer them to their customers in
the near future. Stay tuned for that
announcement.
Q.)As
the Executive Vice President of Sales at MindTouch and as an industry insider
do you face a problem wherein you are not only selling a solution to a customer
but also the whole idea of E2.0?
A.]The logic is that if we create a bigger pie, there is more for
all of us including MindTouch. We feel
that we are strongly positioned in the space and stand up well to all of our
competitors. Therefore it makes sense
from a strategic point of view to promote the industry as a whole.
Q.)Coming
to specifics, we’ve gone through the methodology and the means. I want to now
ask you about sustainability of E2.0.Let’s take the case of MindTouch itself,
you’re a newly formed company just like so many others in the same field.
Ultimately it’s going to be your solutions that determine whether you make
money, succeed or fail as in the case of any other business.
As
we discussed earlier, a lot of time now is spent in trying to establish E2.0 as
a valid movement. In three years time or in the future let’s say MindTouch
becomes a much bigger and profitable company but the others around you go bust.
Will
you then still refer to yourself as an E2.0 company or a company that provides
everyday business solutions?
A.] I like the question. If you look at Web 2.0 and draw parallels from how the space has developed, you’ll see the term Web 2.0 is less used and specific terminology like social networking, social media, blogs and wiki’s are used instead. I expect the same to occur in Enterprise 2.0. In fact, our CEO, Aaron Fulkerson has already promoted the term Collaborative Networks to describe networks of people and data that form to solve business issues.
Q.)What’s
the future of E2.0 in India? Do you think it will pick up here as well.Do you
see Indian businesses using E2.0 and Indian companies themselves providing E2.0
solutions like MindTouch?
A.]They already are. One of
our newest customers is CDC Software who will be using MindTouch to build an Enterprise 2.0
solution. They are well ahead of their
competitors in terms of strategic vision.
Q.)How
is MindTouch viewing India? In your early tenure have you helped any Indian
corporations take advantage of E2.0?
A.] It’s still early, but India is on our roadmap for investment
and development. We are actively seeking
Value Added Resellers and developers in India to resell MindTouch solutions and
build on our platform.
Q.)What
does the future hold for E2.0?
A.]My best assessment is that Enterprise 2.0 will be a de rigueur in the Global 3000 in three years. It will fundamentally change the way we work and provide untold efficiencies and innovations. It will help to solve India’s innovation problem for which I wrote about on Seeking Alpha.
That’s it for now. On behalf of TIS a big Thank You to Mark. We hope
you had fun reading this as well!