What rather piqued my interest at today's TCS analyst event was the session led by Ashosh Krish, head of TCS' Web 2.0 Innovation Labs. Krish is the architect behind TCS' company social media platform, Knome (silent 'k').
Knome is not the first home-built social media platform that TCS has tried to introduce. An earlier incarnation encouraged employee interactions using virtual currency but was withdrawn once it was realised that, as Krish put it, "no one over the age of 28 wanted to use it"! Knome has been designed to appeal to 'oldies' too.
Employees (or 'associates' as TCS prefers to call them) are encouraged to set up profiles on Knome and are awarded 'Karma Points' based (amongst other things) on the interactions they have with other TCS employees. Employees can also win Knome 'badges' for achieving certain objectives (I guess a bit like Boy Scout badges).
OK, it's easy to take the mick but there is a noble cause here. And that's to build interfaces between Knome and TCS' internal business processes with the aim of 'socialising' as much of its business as it can. One of the expected (indeed desired) by-products from using Knome is the reduction of internal emails. This makes more sense to me than making 'zero emails' the core objective of the exercise as is the case, for example, with Atos (see Atos aims to be email free in 3 years).
In truth I am not entirely sold on how well Knome will be received outside of India. There are elements of the 'cultural interface' which I think may jar in other countries (to put it mildly). But TCS is treating Knome as 'work in progress' and recognises there may be a few more iterations to go before the company really is 'socialised'.