Is Social Business Working Out?

Many of todays employees are already well versed in the basics of public social networking, using tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Larry Ellison, head of the giant software firm Oracle, even went so far as to declare that social networking should be the backbone of business applications and that Facebook is a good model for how users should interact with software. According to Gartner, Inc., by 2016, 50 percent of large organizations will have internal Facebooklike social networks, and 30 percent of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today. Enterprise social networks will become the primary communications channels for noticing, deciding, or acting on information relevant to carrying out work. However, Gartner also notes that through 2015, 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology. Social initiatives in a business are different from other technology deployments. For example, implementations of enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management systems are top-down; workers are trained in the application and expected to use it. In contrast, social business tools require a more of a pull approach, one that engages workers and offers them a significantly better way to work. In most cases, they cant be forced to use social apps. This means that instead of focusing on the technology, businesses should first identify how social initiatives will improve work practices for employees and managers. They need a detailed understanding of social networks: how people are currently working, with whom they are working, and what their needs are. A successful social business strategy requires leadership and behavioral changes. Just sponsoring a social project is not enoughmanagers need to demonstrate their commitment to a more open, transparent work style. Employees who are used to collaborating and doing business in more traditional ways need an incentive to use social software. Changing an organization to work in a different way requires enlisting those most engaged and interested in helping and designing and building the right workplace environment for using social technologies. Management needs to ensure that the internal and external social networking efforts of the company are providing genuine value to the business. Content on the networks needs to be relevant, up to date, and easy to access; users need to be able to connect to people who have the information they need and would otherwise be out of reach or difficult to reach. Social business tools should be appropriate for the tasks on hand and the organizations business processes, and users need to understand how and why to use them. In summer 2009, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center launched a custom-built enterprise social network called Spacebook to help small teams collaborate without emailing larger groups. Spacebook featured user profiles, group workspaces (wikis, file sharing, discussion forums, groups), and social bookmarks. Very few users adopted it, and Spacebook was decommissioned on June 1, 2012. According to Kevin Jones, a consulting social and organizational strategist at NASAs Marshall and Goddard Space Flight Centers, Spacebook failed because it didnt focus enough on people. It had been designed and developed without taking into consideration the organizations culture and politics. No one knew how Spacebook would help them do their jobs, as opposed to an existing method of collaboration such as email. Despite the challenges associated with launching an internal social network, some companies are using these networks successfully. For example, Covestro, formerly Bayer Material Science, the U.S. $11.8 billion material sciences division of Bayer, made social collaboration a success by making the tools more accessible, demonstrating the value of these tools in pilot projects, employing a reverse mentoring program for senior executives, and training employee experts to spread knowhow of the new social tools and approaches within the company and demonstrate their usefulness. Covestro chose IBM Connec tions for its social business toolset. IBM Con nections is a social platform for collaboration, cooperation, and consolidation typically used in a centralized enterprise social network. Featured are tools for employee profiles; communities of people with common interests and expertise; blogs, wikis, viewing, organizing, and managing tasks; forums for exchanging ideas with others; polls and surveys of customers and fellow employees; and a home page for each user to see what is happening across that persons social network and access important social data. A year after the new collaboration tools were introduced, adoption had plateaued. Working with company information technology and business leaders, management established an ambitious set of goals for growing social business along with seven key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success. The goals included fostering global collaboration, creating stronger networks across regions and departments, creating a less hierarchical culture of sharing, and reducing the confusion about which tools are intended for which job. These efforts are now paying off; 50 percent of employees are now routinely active in the companys enterprise social network. Although ROI on social business initiatives has been difficult to measure, Covestro has benefited from faster knowledge flows, increased efficiency, and lower operating costs.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1. Identify the people, organization, and technology factors responsible for impeding adoption of internal corporate social networks.

2. Compare the experiences implementing internal social networks of the two organizations Why was one more successful than the other? What role did management play in this process?

3. Should all companies implement internal enterprise social networks? Why or why not?