WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

ISBN: 978-972-8939-25-0 © 2010 IADISAs a matter of fact, we found that the purpose of more than a third of Roland’s discussion areas (no. 3, 6,7) within the forum is to improve social identification and cohesion.At the same time, the other areas pursue both network for exploitation and network for explorationstrategies, supporting in a complementary and synergistic way the creative process. In particular, the areas 1,2, 4, 5 support the sharing of technical knowledge and specialist skills, thus reducing the cognitive distanceamong members and increasing their level of absorptive capacity (“network for exploitation” strategy). Thearea 2, for novel applications of Roland’s existing products, drives toward a self-feeding process that sustainsa continuous creative process based also on external resources and capabilities due to the fact it attractscontinuously new members (“network for exploration” strategy). The voluntary involvement of newmembers is stimulated by social pressure and social status and strengthen by DG Creative Centre 4 in whichare shown the most original and creative applications of Roland’s products emerged in the WC.3.1 Assets and Capabilities for managing a Web CommunityIn order to give some suggestions for managerial practice, in this paragraph we will focus on what are themain assets and capabilities used by Roland for the creation of the Web community according to seveninterviews to Roland’s Community Manager and Communication Manager. Firstly, for Roland themoderation process is a key element: moderators have the purpose of maintaining a non invasive control ondiscussions, though respecting shared rules. Secondly, there must be people that daily work on themanagement of the WC: in Roland there are 3 employees out of 45 and 2 external moderators, not belongingto the firm’s staff, that constantly manage the forum’s discussions without being rewarded. The CommunityManager works on everyday forum management, while the Communication Manager coordinates forum’sactivities, the blog and the website. They report directly to Roland DG Mid Europe CEO. From a strategicpoint of view, an International Marketing Committee declines some communication guidelines but thedefinition of actions about the WC is left to local administrations. A Web agency works on Roland’s websiteoptimization and hosting. However, Roland’s strategy is to internally manage Web application. Neverthelesshaving technical skills is necessary though not sufficient. To resume what is mainly needed to manage a WC:relational skills linked to specific communication channels, technical skills on community topics (in this caseabout visual communication and digital print technology), organizational skills about time management(acting quickly and monitoring the Web everyday). Besides moderators must have informatics skills, passionfor what they done, willingness to share their knowledge and authority because of the lack of hierarchy incommunities. Network management skills are critical factors too. According to Roland, problematic butfundamental is the development of skills linked to the managing of shared knowledge inside the community(knowledge management) and inter-organizational learning.As previously said, Roland aims at having a wide WC. In order to attract new members in its WC, Rolanduses Google AdWords and the Direct Email Marketing. Furthermore, an active involvements in other forumsbrings new members to Roland’s WC.Another key issue, subject to further improvements and deeper analysis, is related to performances on theWeb. Considering the difficulties in defining performance indicators of WC in terms of generated creativity,reputation, improvement of market’s share or sales, indicators on nature and characteristics of access to thewebsite are commonly used in order to improve the size and visibility of the WC. Currently, Roland’sperformances on the Web are actually measured through the tool “Google Analytics” by monitoring elementslike the number and the provenience of logins, the number of coming backs, the average time connection, etc.Nowadays, performance indicators of Web activities in terms of ROI are not used but this lack will be soonpartially fixed through the use of Salesforce, a software as a service for CRM. Investments on the Web arehardly measurable in terms of firm’s performance. Opposite to the huge costs associated with the managingof Web Communities (mainly coming from the human resources involved) there are benefits which, althoughpresent, are difficult to quantify. Notwithstanding the actual difficulty in measuring the economic returnslinked to the WC, Roland Corporation valued positively the experience on the Web deciding to replicate thisproject in France, too. As a matter of fact, though without specific data, from our interviews emerged that,thanks to the WC, in the last years the level of creativity of Roland increased.4 A showroom where, in addition to the availability of all Roland products for testing and evaluation, there are a lot of examples of theirpotential applications, often the result of forum members’ creativity.296