User groups of future; IBM

Abstract

It has been a rich experience to have been a summer intern at Rational software, IBM. This being the first industry interaction I have had, it has given me a clear idea of what actually happens at the work place. For the internship period, I was assigned a project manager, and he in turn assigned me a mentor, who overlooked the daily progress I made during the course of the project. The culture of the department was such that, whenever I got any query regarding my work everybody in the department was ready to help me. It was my pleasure to work under one of the senior employee of IBM; Director, Growth markets for Rational Software. Communication is mostly done through the phone and conference calls, rather than direct face to face communications. The project was related to the User Groups of Rational software and Mr. Vijesh. K of lIM Bangalore was the other team member on this project. Considering the importance of change in business dynamics in this era of evolving business world, our project aims at studying the existing User Communities of IBM and how to make those communities a better place to the existing and incoming Users. Though the use of word "User communities" for B2B & B2C are seen at the same context, there are some underlying differences that differentiate both of them as mentioned in the report The project mentions about the objectives of the project & the methodology used during the course of project. A detailed study of current status of Rational User Groups & competitors User Groups were carried out. The study revealed that the large User base, company support, recognitions & awards to community users plays a positive role in building an active online user community. While performing the competitor's analysis & study of most popular user groups; many things comes into light such as web content, frequency of web updates, flexibility of use, presence of company top officials in user forums etc. are the unique things in many user communities which are driving them at a full speed. At last project suggests the recommendations on how to make Rational User Groups more active and sustainable for the future. Due to the low awareness of RUG, it is suggested that the user base of these groups must be increases by promoting these groups with the help of sales team as well as by the existing group members. Recognition can also improve the activity level which can be main tool for user groups for their sustainable growth in future. These recommendations are easily implementable and will require very low budget. Project also discusses about the "Perfect User Group" which will be around SPSM. These recommendations are purely based on the study of the present & future aspects of User Groups. A User community around all these recommendation will surely be an active community. DeveloperWorks is already having large resource base which can be utilized by RUG and other IBM Brands User Communities. The important thing which can be interpreted from all the recommendations is that all these recommendations works around the Users, so the Users are the prime target of these communities and will be in centre of all activities of User Communities.