At Talent Analytics, we absolutely love high value, low effort technology innovations, especially when they add value to applications we use in every day business. The Rapportive gmail plug-in could be one of those unique innovations – if it extended its business value by including analytics-driven talent content.

Now part of LinkedIn, Rapportive dynamically aggregates and organizes social networks associated with a specific email address into a handy frame to the right of the gmail interface, in seconds. This offers a unique opportunity to quickly know what a colleague is up to in real-time (via their twitter feed), their professional background & location (LinkedIn), or what their interests are (Facebook, Google+), enabling me to customize my email accordingly. The business value of Rapportive is the various social networks are “baked in” to the gmail interface keeping me from leaving my email, saving time.

However, while knowing my social networks is convenient, it has limited business value when it comes to actually making collaboration happen – a common problem that plagues many “social collaboration” platforms. For example, if you were planning to collaborate or work with me for the first time, as valuable as having my social networking information handy is, you’re still left to guess about the practical and common areas that derail collaboration, such as:

• Decisions: Do I prefer to make decisions collaboratively or independently?
• Details: Should you be more or less detailed with me?
• Data: Do I need more or less data when making decisions?
• Process: Will I prefer a structured approach or want to move quickly?

Now, imagine having collaboration tips about me ahead of time, one click away – in addition to seeing my social networks in Rapportive? Analytics-driven talent content makes this possible today!

Using Analytics to Extend Enterprise Collaboration from ‘What’ to ‘How to’
The image above is an example of what my Rapportive frame would look like with my custom, analytics-driven collaboration tips baked in. Now, you’d be able to not just guess how to collaborate with me based on what I’m saying on social media, but will know specifically how to actually best collaborate with me. Imagine the extended business value of having these tips handy, in aggregate, across your or your clients’ global lattice organization?

Learn More About Analytics-driven Talent Content
This is the value analytics-driven talent content adds to today’s social technology – collaboration tips provide that small bit of insight that can accelerate productivity, driving greater value from the investment. This is especially useful for large, globally dispersed organizations where teams form and break constantly. Using analytics-driven talent content, more work gets done and value is realized faster, which is music to any C-level executive’s ears (see the 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project for more insight).

If you want to accelerate the value of your enterprise collaboration platform and deliver analytics-driven insight, reach out or  visit Booth 323 at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston and ask us how easy content integration is. Or, you can wait for your competitors to ask first.

When it comes to knowing how to collaborate more effectively across your global organization, why guess when you can know?

Mike Kennedy is a Technical Evangelist at Talent Analytics, Corp. He can be reached via mike@talentanalytics.com and @talentanalytics.

Talent Analytics will be exhibiting at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, June 18-21, 2012. Be sure to stop by Booth 323 for more examples of analytics-driven talent content, to meet renowned analytics thought leader Bob Morison, co-author of “Analytics at Work” and much more.