I’ve worked for companies with various ranges of accessibility to “The Internet”, but my recent tenure in the uber-locked-down-enterprise-financial-services realm has been a real eye-opener. And if you’re working with people (customers, clients, or even friends/family) who are in the enterprise realm, here are a few things to consider:
1. Not everyone has webmail.
If you’re working with your client on a project for their organization, then by all means, use their business email. These centralized systems are often setup and maintained for a variety of regulatory purposes, so use them. For side projects or personal communication, stick to personal email addresses just realize that it may take longer to get a response.
One more thought on this… For all of you with a “contact us” form that generates an email from the user (as opposed to a fill-in form), not everyone can or is able to use work email systems for non-work purposes. So, when that blank email pops up, you may have just lost that customer. Better to give multiple options for contact, even if they eventually lead to the same place (contact form goes to jane@janedoe.com, or email to jane@janedoe.com).
2. Not everyone has Google.
<gasp>
Ok, I don’t actually know anyone who doesn’t have access to Google’s search functionality, but many people may not have access to Google’s services such as Gmail (see webmail note above), Gcal, Reader, etc. Keep this in mind when creating “shared” calendars or project files that involve enterprise workers. You may have the best “Church picnic planning list” in history, but if you’re sharing it on Google Docs, not everyone will be able to see it as quickly as they might have if you used a different service.
3. Not everyone has an RSS feed reader.
I know, there are lots of enterprise services out there – some you might even be able to install without going through tech support hell – but who wants to maintain two (or more) sets of readers? Google Reader for home, Attensa for work? Nah, too confusing and too time consuming to keep them in sync. This means that, for those of you who blog, add an email subscription option for your feed! It’s free and easy.
4. Not everyone has an easy way to share non-work info.
As far as I can tell, delicious.com still works behind the firewall and it’s a great option for maintaining your own bookmarks or sharing with other users who are actually using delicious.com. Twitter’s another great option for sharing with users who are actually using Twitter. Same with Digg, FriendFeed, Tumblr, etc. How are you enabling users to share your content? Can they email as well as using the common social services to share info?
Coming soon: Enterprise-friendly applications for those in lock-down
