The state of social. How to maximize the potential of enterprise social collaboration in today s redesigned workplace. April 2013

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1 The state of social. How to maximize the potential of enterprise social collaboration in today s redesigned workplace April Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1

2 Enterprise social collaboration is more than just a platform. It s a way of transforming business processes and releasing the power of your data and human capital by bringing consumer-like digital experiences to the enterprise. organizational change across your business units. Introduction: Why social? We ve been sold the dream of smoother, flatter corporate hierarchies, enabled by collaborative wonder-technologies. First came the social networking revolution, starring Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and hundreds of millions of consumers. Today, the dust has settled and employees across the globe are accustomed to a new way of working, one of instant status updates, easy-touse interfaces and simple online communication. New technologies and trends are disrupting conventional business norms, challenging traditional processes and changing the way work gets done. As enterprises become more digitized and virtual borders diminish, new approaches are needed within the work place Avanade s name for this change in how enterprises operate is Work Redesigned, and it is shaping the way employees go about their daily work lives, and in turn, changing the way organizations do business. But there remains a barrier in most businesses. The barrier is between your people and the knowledge they need to access. This knowledge could be in digital, analogue or human form. Your people use, modify and manipulate data every day, but unless you are using a social collaboration solution (and using it well), a lot of crucial information could be left unknowable. Here s an example. A law firm s contract expert in Boston needs local advice on In a recent global Avanade survey of 4,000 business people, 98 percent who deployed social collaboration have benefitted from it, but are we missing out on the full potential of what this technology can do? Is our preoccupation with technology getting in the way of seeing social collaboration as something much more important: as a route to redesigning the way we all do business? This whitepaper is a guide to getting the best from social collaboration, but before you read on, leave your preconceptions about social collaboration technology at the door and think instead about your people, your processes and how social collaboration can bring about Telenor picks up the WoW factor Telenor is Norway s largest telecommunications company, with operations across Europe, Scandinavia and Asia. With more than 200 million subscribers it is also one of the world s largest mobile phone networks. Telenor uses an Avanade social collaboration solution known internally as WoW (Way of Work) to help it push down costs, share best practices, reduce its environmental impact and better utilize its resources and time. With 93 percent of all staff fully connected to the WoW solution and an impressive 1.7 million hits in the first six months since launching, Telenor has achieved its goal of fostering a one company culture that connects employees and allows collaboration and open communication. So far, Telenor has achieved: A 20 percent increase in knowledge sharing. A decrease in travel by 20 percent, saving millions of Kroner in costs, 200 days of travel and a 1-ton CO 2 saving per employee per year. Most importantly, Telenor has forged new connections across physical and organizational borders Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

3 corporate regulations in Thailand from a colleague within the same organization they can begin by contacting the relevant local office, but how do they begin their search if there are hundreds or even thousands of potential contacts to search through? Social collaboration provides the best way to leverage the knowledge, ideas and people-power stored up within your organization. The benefits corporate social networking offers smarter, faster and easier internal collaboration would seem to be highly desirable to most businesses. Yet, as we will see, a significant proportion of organizations are yet to adopt social collaboration solutions. Some cite time-wasting, with employee notice boards and messaging systems becoming overwhelmed by opinions and tangential topics, as a principal concern. For others it s a lack of focused and actionable results, or questions over ROI to prove the business case for greater IT investment in collaboration. Looking at the greatest myths of enterprise social collaboration, most are rooted in the technical aspects of deployment. In fact, social collaboration is much less a technological pursuit and far more a people initiative. Ultimately, this technology is a way to get your employees working together better. It s about helping you transform your business processes into something much more effective and, in doing so, harnessing your human capital and transforming your business processes. Adoption: The state of social today Let s look at the current status. In February 2013, Avanade, together with research house Vanson Bourne, asked 4,000 business people from organizations of 500 or more employees about their social collaboration usage and attitudes. The sample included every level of employee, from board members to graduate trainees. One of the immediate findings from the survey is that social collaboration is a popular solution. When asked has your company adopted enterprise social networking technologies? 68 percent revealed they had, while only 32 percent had not. However, when analyzing the data platform by platform, we find one possible reason for this higher-thanexpected adoption rate. Facebook is the most popular social platform used for collaborative purposes. However, the world s most prominent social network lacks many crucial collaboration features including file-sharing and subject matter expert search so it is reasonable to question whether it can truly be classed as an enterprise social collaboration tool. The organizations which solely depend on Facebook (43 percent of those who have adopted social collaboration) could be missing an opportunity to harness the power of their people as effectively as possible. So who is driving social collaboration implementations? Perhaps surprisingly, it s not IT departments. Corporate initiatives (54 percent), marketing-led adoption (41 percent) and user-driven initiatives (32 percent) all ranked ahead of IT department-led pursuits. Of particular interest is the percentage of respondents that indicated demand was driven by users, showing that employees needs are being listened to in certain instances. From Avanade s own experience, the driving force behind many social collaboration solutions is often from the corporate side, with senior executives looking to improve business efficiency and collaborative brainstorming and team working. Those that do use social collaboration are already very happy: the survey found 83 percent of those who use social collaboration want more of it, and 90 percent of C-suite executives think it will help them achieve their business goals. The benefits of social collaboration, highlighted in the next section, are both diverse and marked. Intriguingly, those who do not use social collaboration suffer from the very same problems that are solved by social collaboration. This in itself suggests that, once educated about the potential benefits, more organizations could be interested in social collaboration deployments. Benefits: Faster, more productive, and more enjoyable The headline finding of our survey shows us that 98 percent of respondents have experienced real, tangible benefits from using enterprise social collaboration tools. Most excitingly, our survey has shown that the majority of social collaboration adopters complete their work faster (55 percent of adopters). Fifty-four percent report their employees are more productive, while others say they enjoy work more (51 percent). Finding subject matter experts is something that most businesses need to do regularly and the ability to do it even faster and more easily is a critically important benefit of social collaboration Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3

4 The contract law expert in New York, the editor in Sao Paulo, the wholesale manager in Singapore how do you find them? How do you even know they exist? Avanade s social collaboration solutions hold the answers. Take a look at the box opposite to find out how Avanade can help you take advantage of these benefits. Enterprise search is also a vital part of most social collaboration solutions. It s the tool your employees need to find the information and skills to complete their tasks quickly and efficiently. As such, social collaboration is more than just search; it is the place to go to get things done. Brainstorming, ideation, innovation whatever the term, creating ideas is a global currency bankable in any business. Social collaboration makes the process of generating ideas easier: 39 percent of those who have adopted social collaboration say it helps teams and departments foster ideas in a directed and positive way no treading water or lack of decision-making. 45 percent of those who have adopted social collaboration say it enabled them to locate subject matter experts faster, allowing them to obtain the information necessary to innovate. 55 percent of those who have adopted social collaboration say it allowed them to work on a range of projects, large or small, with external partners, vendors and customers using slick and professional workflows. Redesigning collaboration So what exactly is Avanade s social collaboration offer, and what does it do so well? We use three powerful and complementary pieces of software Microsoft SharePoint, NewsGator and Yammer to create one cohesive ecosystem. SharePoint is the de facto collaboration and sharing tool for the enterprise, in fact it s likely you already use it in your business or have purchased licenses. NewsGator was born in 2004 and has grown to be a leader in knowledge sharing, collaboration, and enterprise-class social business software, with more than four million paying users across the world. Finally, Yammer, the popular internal microblogging service for corporations, adds the social side of the equation. Together, these powerful tools provide everything an organization needs to harness the power of social collaboration. Why Avanade? Why choose Avanade for your enterprise social collaboration project? We have a unique viewpoint on social enterprise technology and implementations, formed through our proven expertise with all Microsoft products and our deep understanding of business processes. Together they take us a clear step ahead of our competitors. We have industry-leading change enablement skills, helping companies through the complex process of transformation and re-adjustment. We can confidently call ourselves experts because we have more than just IT technology knowledge, we have the business acumen to understand what makes organizations tick. Our experience design and user interface teams then bring the all-important usability element to help social collaboration systems work for your people. It s clear our clients love what we do: we ve earned a 97 percent customer satisfaction score. Find information faster Easier collaboration Generate ideas collaborately Find subject matter experts faster Foster innovation between departments 62% 55% 47% 45% 39% Benefits seen by those who have adopted enterprise social networking 2013 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4

5 With two-thirds of all Internet users connected to social networking platforms, expectations and demands from employees have dramatically changed. Dull intranets and stale collaborative tools only serve to create unproductive noise, which is often ignored. In this new social world, employees want immediacy and usability. Take onboarding as an example: helping new hires get up to speed is a balancing act. Introduce people too quickly and they ll be overwhelmed, too slowly and you ll be losing productivity. Thanks to social networking tools, 36 percent of survey respondents said they were able to help new employees get up to speed in their role more effectively. That s just another example of how social collaboration helps keep the balance inside the enterprise. Barriers: Non-adopters and the collaboration contradictions As has been identified earlier, 32 percent of survey respondents have yet to adopt any type of social collaboration. It s true that adoption of relatively young technologies is rarely straightforward, but why are these organizations yet to embrace enterprise social networking? Thirty-seven percent of non-adopters say they have overlooked social collaboration until now because they do not understand how it would help them do their jobs, lending weight to the idea that education may help increase uptake (or at the very least raise awareness of the potential benefits). Furthermore, 52 percent say it does not fit their corporate need. When we consider the impact greater awareness could have (around Lack of training to explain how to use the tools Lack of support from senior management Lack of IT department resources to implement Resistance from employees to adopt how social collaboration can help companies achieve business goals and enable individuals to perform more effectively) it is feasible that many nonadopters could be persuaded to reconsider social collaboration. It might be tempting to suggest that fears over security are preventing many organizations from considering social collaboration deployments. However, when it comes to enterprise social environments security is very much a balancing act: organizations must weigh up the need to govern with the demand for an open, democratic space. Indeed, governance is just one of the many challenges holding back the use of social collaboration tools. Our survey found lack of budget, lack of training and an absence of support from senior management to be the biggest barriers, while resistance from employees to adopt sits in fourth place. Lack of budget Industry specific regulations Has adopted enterprise social networking 28% 23% 22% 21% 19% 19% The framework to steer your company to social success 1. Decide what success looks like. What problems are you looking to solve? 2. This isn t social, this is business. Get buy-in from your board level and C-suite executives. 3. C-level support can only take you so far. Plan a company-wide campaign of education and awareness. 4. Understand your company s demographics. One size does not fit all. Notice anything about these four steps? None focus on technology Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5

6 To remedy many of these obstacles, Avanade has created its own framework to help engage employees and build awareness of any potential new enterprise social collaboration system. Take a look at the four points on the previous page. We believe in the transformative and business benefits of social collaboration, and that s why we use it ourselves here at Avanade. As a company of some 17,000 professionals located across multiple countries and continents, we implemented our very own social collaboration system, called the Avanade Fabric. We ve learned from our own experience and we want to pass on this knowledge to help you make the most of your new or existing social collaboration implementation, from day-to-day use to company-wide adoption and winning hearts and minds of your key stakeholders. Demand: The future of enterprise collaboration Up to this point, we ve established that almost seven out of ten businesses use social collaboration, and of this group nearly all of them benefit from the technology. But what does the future hold for this new way of working? Have we reached saturation point or is there still demand for social collaboration? The answer, as you d expect, is a resounding yes, there s more to come from enterprise social collaboration. Eighty-three percent of social collaboration users want more of it, rising to 93 percent among C-suite executives The redesigned workplace Where Avanade s enterprise social collaboration solutions really excel: Customer & Partner Collaboration We integrate customers and partners directly into business processes and value chains through customer-driven support portals and integrated communications streams. Knowledge Management We help capture knowledge wherever it is hiding within an organization; making it easy to find, use and qualify. Innovation Lifecycle Let s get social, let s get ideas flowing. Wherever your people are located, our social solutions lead to more creativity and better decision making. Expertise Locator It is the best way to find the right resources for a new project, and identify and reward experts across your organization. Employee Engagement From executive blogs aligning employees with organizational cultures and goals to communities for employees to share thoughts with others, get your new people on board quickly and easily. Social Learning Avanade helps you integrate information with community interaction to provide better knowledge transfer and teamwork. there can be fewer more powerful endorsements than this. This section of the survey also makes a clear case for further education of users on the benefits, as demand for more social collaboration decreases at the lower ends of the business hierarchy: the C-suite want it most, recent graduates least. This need for better understanding is further supported by the 38 percent (the largest single group of respondents) who don t know if they would like to adopt social collaboration tools or not. When asked do you think social networking technologies will improve how you work in the future?, 74 percent of all respondents and 90 percent of board level and C-suite respondents said yes. Furthermore, three-quarters believe social collaboration technology will improve how they achieve their business 2013 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6

7 goals in the future, nine out of ten among the C-suite. Prioritize your business objectives The figures reveal potential demand for social collaboration from those who don t use the technology. Our survey suggests that approximately half of the 32 percent who don t use social collaboration appear to be considering the move. The story of social collaboration is far from over. The key takeaways: Driving-off into the sunset Social collaboration brings benefits that are best measured not by decontextualized statistics, but instead by the invaluable social impact of helping your employees work together in a simple, immediate and fun way further closing the gap between personal social networks and professional ways of working. Set a benchmark; constantly evaluate Measure and Adjust Assess Develop guidelines; align leadership Align for Design The implications of enterprise social collaboration run deeper than knowledge sharing or quick communication. For Avanade, we believe that the whole foundation of how work is conducted is in flux, driven by a perfect storm of smartphone adoption, tablet uptake and the prevalence of social networks. Remember that today, people and technology go hand-in-hand. Ensure Sustainability Implement enterprisewide training Implement Identify & deploy the right tools for you About Avanade Avanade provides business technology solutions and managed services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft technologies to help customers realize results. Our people have helped thousands of organizations in all industries improve business agility, employee productivity and customer loyalty. Additional information can be found at Avanade Inc. All rights reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. North America Seattle Phone America@avanade.com South America Sao Paulo Phone +55 (11) latinamerica@avanade.com Africa Pretoria Phone SouthAfrica@avanade.com Asia-Pacific Singapore Phone AsiaPac@avanade.com Europe London Phone Europe@avanade.com