Enterprise Social Notworking...

Dr. Ian Malcolm:

“I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you've patented it, and packaged it, you've slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it.”

Enterprise Social Networking, can you believe it, not only has the term been around for a while, it’s actually been around long enough to say, it’s not doing as well as they thought, hah!  Well for those of us that need a refresher, Enterprise Social Networking essentially takes those popular social software applications used on the Internet and apply them in "enterprise" in a (business/commercial) contexts. It encompasses modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication, collaboration and other aspects of their intranets.

Specific social software tools which have been patented, packaged, and slapped on a plastic lunchbox, oh, I mean adapted for enterprise use include, and are not limited to:

§  hypertext and unstructured search tools	§  wikis	§  Microblogging
§  Blogs/Weblogs for storytelling and sharing personal knowledge and experiences	§  enterprise social bookmarking for tagging and building organizational knowledge	§  RSS and Activity Streams for signaling
§  collaborative planning software for peer-based project planning and management	§  ideas banks for ideation (idea generation)	§  social networking tools
§  mashups for visualization	§  prediction markets for forecasting and identifying risks.	§  Social Profile for displaying user's Social Graph (Following / Following) and Activity Stream (micro-blog). Profiles may optionally display user's interests and expertise for expertise search
§  Social Search	§	§

A recent publication by Forrester Research, "The Enterprise 2.0 User Profile: 2011” depicted Enterprise Social Software, though gaining momentum is still in its infancy.  The report denotes that the keys to widespread /success are in understanding who is using them now, how they're using them, and what policies the business needs to put into place to support them.

The three types of people currently using social software monthly include early adopters, the busiest people within a company, and the younger employees. This is no surprise, for early adopters are generally open to new technologies; the busiest people at companies are just trying to work more efficiently; and the younger members are familiar with the technology.

The report reveals that 39 percent of people who use social software say they use it because it's easy to use and relevant with the top reason(s) being the low learning curve and they solve their business problems.

Enterprise Social Notworking

However, more than half of those surveyed (55 percent), say they are only using one social software tool, which is interesting because vendors tend to offer inclusive social platforms that consist of many social apps.

This means that public social networks—specifically LinkedIn and Facebook—are still the defacto enterprise tool that employees turn to for business.  So, although provided with a plethora of apps for their corporate enterprise, most employees’ find that the real value of social tools for business, is not behind the corporate firewall, but through interacting with colleagues and clients in the public social sphere.

Well duh… The whole idea and fascination with the social network, IS the diversity of the mix.  To reach out to those that we normally don’t encounter, to boldly go where no employee has gone before… or is that some SCI-FI show I’m thinking of…  Nevertheless, the key word here is “social networking”; it’s not so social if you restrict it to your specific clan, so of course no one is using it.

So how do we solve this?  We want the efficiencies of the approach to permeate and encourage interaction among our employees, how do we get them to embrace it within the Enterprise?  Here is what Forrester says…

•  Evaluate corporate policies. While many businesses still impose restrictions on employees accessing public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, that won't necessarily stop employees from using their personal computers and Smartphone’s to access them, the report says. Forrester recommends generating policies that encourage responsible use of social technologies. This may include tweaking current policies that describe acceptable and unacceptable behavior, as well as creating incentives for compliance. 

• Encourage and engage early adopters. Forrester says that while you can't replicate the network effect of millions of engaged users on public social networks, you can create similar value if you enlist early, social-networking-savvy employees to build out their internal social profile page as they did their personal LinkedIn or Facebook pages.

• Partner with your socially active employees. Start by identifying your most socially active employees both for internal and external social networks. Conduct in-depth interviews with them on how they use social tools and why. Forrester says these combined findings should provide the foundation for how your business plans to effectively use social technologies.

• Enlist management. In order to make social software valuable to the majority of workers, Forrester says management needs to be involved in order to invest time and resources for creating and pushing the strategy. This may mean enlisting your CMO and CEO to help pick the platform, act as a liaison in communicating expectations, as well as actively using the technology to set an example.

•  With vendors, more is sometimes less. Forrester says that while it's good to provide a range of social tools that give workers flexibility, it's more important to find the tools that best address the needs of your workforce. Be sure to evaluate vendors based on how well their technologies address these issues instead of the size of their offering.

Source: http://www.cio.com/article/693110/Enterprise_Social_Software_What_Businesses_Need_to_Do_Next?page=1&taxonomyId=3017

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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About Rick Ricker

And IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689