Interview with Guang Ming Yong – CEO of Socialwok

Socialwok, which is developed by a team led by CEO Guang Ming Yong, aims to provides enterprises the same communication tools that Internet users have become comfortable with when connecting with friends and family. A video overview of SocialWok can be found here. Ming shares with us how SocialWok can benefit businesses, employees and developers below.

Could you share with us what Socialwok is?

Socialwok is an on-demand enterprise social platform for organizations to use rich media feeds to collaborate more effectively within and outside of the organizations business processes and manage their social media interactions with the world better. Think Facebook + Twitter for Business with social media management and collaboration capabilities

Socialwok federates and integrates with various social media networks (Facebook, twitter, linkedin) and popular web services like Google apps, salesforce, scribd, slideshare and youtube. Socialwok includes a REST API and application framework for third party developers to create applications like Wokberry – Socialwok for Blackberry (http://www.socialwok.com/blackberry), a Blackberry mobile clients.

Replacement or complement to existing collaboration and knowledge management systems used by companies? How will integration occur with such existing systems? Will splintering of information across email, wikis, and enterprise social platforms like Socialwok be a problem?

Our target audience of small medium businesses typically don’t have any collaboration or knowledge management system. Socialwok as a social group collaboration and social media management platform is a new category. Hence, we intend to be a new tool with integration with existing systems like LDAP, Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) on the backend and integrate with Microsoft Outlook on the client side. We are more excited about integration with popular web services like Google Apps, Salesforce and etc. Recently, we are quite excited about Google Wave. We intend to incorporate the Google wave APIs and functionalities into Socialwok and extend our platform tremendously from day one launch of Google Wave.

Socialwok is not meant to replace wikis or email. Each of these communication tools have their own pros and cons and serve different purposes. In fact, we leverage email for event based notifications in Socialwok. We see Socialwok as a new way for enterprises to collaborate that will in fact get members of an organization to share information more.

How can companies benefit from using SocialWok?

Socialwok empowers organizations to embed social media into their DNA and adopt community approaches to business processes ranging from online marketing, brand management, knowledge management, customer support to enterprise collaboration. Below are some key value propositions for organizations to use Socialwok

i) Collaborate Faster. Smarter and with More People
Organizations can use Socialwok to share information, discuss ideas and bring products to market faster. With Socialwok, organizations can do this not only within the company but also with their customers and suppliers. No more unread emails and mis-communications

ii) Improve Transparency and Accountability of your business processes
With Socialwok, organizations can collaborate with external parties like customers and suppliers professionally and with peace of mind. All your collaborations on Socialwok with external parties are archived and search-able for regulatory requirements if needed.

iii) No Capex. Pay As You Go Software As A Service
Socialwok is a Software as a Service (SaaS) enterprise social collaboration solution. No software to install. No upfront license fees and no annual maintenance fee. Just pay when you use. It’s always the latest and greatest version.

We are targeting small medium knowledge intensive organizations and businesses globally. Verticals include law, finance, technology software, education and government.