6 Ways Social Collaboration Makes IT More Strategic

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1 6 Ways Social Collaboration Makes IT More Strategic

2 6 Ways Social Collaboration Makes IT More Strategic There can be no doubt that today s four big technology trends cloud, big data, mobile, and social are transforming business as we know it. But of the four trends, social is arguably the thread that unites them all. People, after all, use technology to serve their needs, not the other way around and social technology is what connects people as they work together. More than that, social tools are becoming the de facto interface that links people to the information, systems, and data they need to get their work done. Together, the four trends are creating a networked economy with social technology at its heart that will be the foundation on which successful businesses innovate, collaborate, grow, and evolve. Raise the productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25% Cloud lowers IT costs while delivering the reliability, flexibility, and convenience of offering and consuming services in ways never before possible Big data enables people to gather, analyze, and act on large data sets in real time, delivering insight and strategic direction to the business Mobile enables people to be pervasively connected and enables evolving business models Social is the unifying thread that connects people, information, and systems via the cloud and mobile devices IT is at the forefront of these changes, and to remain there, needs to help make strategic technology investments that optimize business results across the enterprise. Enterprise social collaboration technology is emerging as the most powerful way to connect people, information and data in ways previously unimagined. In McKinsey s landmark report about the social economy, they found that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25%. 1 Given this imperative, companies are scrambling to understand the best way to deploy and harness the power of enterprise social collaboration technology. Drive results with business context Enterprise social collaboration technology connects people from down the hall, in different buildings, in networked companies, and around the world in ways that allow them to discuss, collaborate, and drive business results faster. Through the use of enterprise social collaboration, for example, companies can improve the process of onboarding new employees by reducing the time-toproductivity of new employees by greater than 10% 2 by automatically connecting new hires with content and people based on their employee profiles. 1 McKinsey & Company, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, July SAP Jam Benchmarking, 2013, SAP 2

3 Up to this point, most enterprise social collaboration solutions were not attached to, or in the context of, back-end system data, such as employee profiles or sales opportunity data. They were provided as stand-alone solutions and because of this, adoption and usage didn t live up to expectations. The market imperative is to provide social technologies where people work, embedded in the systems and processes they work with every day to increase the speed and efficacy of collaboration. Reduce learning costs by 10% per employee SAP Jam provides rich collaborative capabilities directly integrated with the business applications being used throughout the organization today, such as SAP CRM and SAP Cloud for Customer, providing pre-built work patterns based on best practices and populated with back-end data. SAP Jam customers are seeing outstanding results from this approach: a reduction in learning costs of over 10% per employee an increase in the average sales deal size of over 5% an increase in support first call resolution of over 15% These tangible business results are enabled by integrating SAP Jam enterprise social collaboration technology across the enterprise. Increase collaboration and innovation without restricting access Enterprise social collaboration technology connects people with powerful tools that help them collaborate and innovate. As highlighted in the Harvard Business Review s innovation study, an important key to innovation is to tap as many unique sources of information and ideas as possible. This starts by connecting employees, partners, customers, and interested parties through secure virtual workspaces and communities. Reduce search time by 35% For example, a corporate taskforce can establish a company-wide group to solicit ideas for simplifying execution on everything from technology to workspace configuration. Once ideas are submitted, the group can prioritize and vote on the ideas. As a result, the entire employee community shares ownership in the solutions and their implementation. Connecting people from inside and outside the organization enables the sharing of information, data, and conversations, resulting in transformative collaboration and better business decisions. Groups can easily harness the wisdom of the crowd, gather ideas, and share key information. These workspaces also serve as a record of interaction history, ensuring that best answers and knowledge are preserved and highlighted for future use. Extending these capabilities within companies is critical in the emergent networked economy. In secure virtual workspaces and communities, SAP Jam users can find experts, recommend content and people, and cooperate across networks. SAP Jam customers find that their users are able to connect to the right people and information faster, allowing them to collaborate, innovate, and get work done. McKinsey found a measured reduction in information searching time of as much as 35% per week per information worker when connected with social technology. 3 3 The Innovation Value Chain, Hansen & Birkinshaw, Harvard Business Review,

4 By the end of 2014, the number of mobileconnected devices will exceed the number of people on the earth Mobilize the workforce By the end of 2014, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on the earth. 4 Certainly IT feels the tremendous impact and urgency of mobilizing both applications and the workforce as quickly as possible. The good news is that all this work is having an impact. IBM & Oxford Economics recently surveyed enterprise executives and found that 81% stated that mobile capabilities are fundamentally changing the way their organizations do business and 73% have seen measurable ROI for their mobile initiatives. 5 The success of a mobile workforce depends on the ability to collaborate without limitations, regardless of location. Mobile workers should be able to participate fully with activity feeds and group access, the ability to post comments, photos, and videos, and enhanced capabilities for finding and contacting employees. When workers are mobile, it is critical that they get real-time alerts that keep them in the loop, regardless of device. When a crisis hits, for instance, enterprise social collaboration solutions ensure that you can quickly connect the right people and content to manage the crisis. By connecting your marketing team with your external public relations teams, executives within your company, and data from internal systems, you allow them to efficiently discuss the crisis and put a plan in place to manage it. If someone is mobile, they need access to the discussions and data and also need to be notified if the situation worsens or their sign-off is needed for action. SAP Jam on SuccessFactors Mobile provides precisely this rich, mobile collaboration experience. It does so using industry-standard encryption, authentication, and data transport protocols. Application data is not stored on the device. Security features are robust and include remote deactivation of any device; the requirement of users to enter PIN codes; a 2-step mobile activation that leverages optional Single-Sign-On configuration of the web application; and the association of each device with an existing user account to enable seamless suspension or disablement. Extend existing IT investments with social collaboration Today s critical business information is stored in existing business systems that are used every day, such as systems for customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and supplier relationship management. One way to extend these existing investments is to incorporate enterprise social collaboration capabilities into them. By doing this, you allow business users to structure their conversations better, make collaborative decisions, and respond faster to business-critical problems. Sales teams using SAP CRM and integrated social collaboration can pull together an effective account team, collaborate on account strategy, and find the right experts in the company when needed. Sales teams using this type of technology are seeing a decrease in deal cycle time of over 20%. 6 Additionally, deep security controls and integration to native SAP single-sign-on avoids requiring expensive and detailed access control supervision. Customization, including branding and personalization, enables the delivery of a secure, tailored, modern social experience. 4 Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update IBM Institute for Business Value, The upwardly mobile enterprise, SAP Jam research 4

5 Reduce service request handling time by over 15% Increase IT responsiveness IT is increasingly being asked to respond faster to changing business needs. In fact, supporting new business needs is the IT priority rated highest by 82% of CIOs in the Deloitte CIO Survey. 7 Enterprise social collaboration technology can help address this priority across the entire enterprise by providing a foundation that enables your IT staff to better connect with business stakeholders. Working together, they can crowd-source innovations and collaborate on planning, project prioritization, and rollouts of technology initiatives. On the operational side, IT departments are always looking for ways to improve their service levels for user support, service requests, incident management, and operational changes. Enterprise social collaboration technologies are being used to enable internal self-supporting communities. These communities share best practices, post questions and answers, and can be moderated by knowledgeable staff, thereby increasing their visibility and credibility. Companies are seeing a reduction in service request handling time of over 15% when using social collaboration for internal support. 8 Lower IT costs by leveraging the existing IT landscape Every new technology trend needs to be evaluated carefully based on how it incorporates into the existing IT landscape. Enterprise social collaboration technologies are no different. Companies should avoid the costs associated with one-off, departmental, or personal solutions that are not integrated with the existing landscape. Solutions should, instead, be delivered across the entire business on a secure, cloud-based foundation one that is tested and reliable and meets enterprise quality standards. SAP Jam is built to meet these requirements and help lower IT costs. It is a single, secure, cloudbased solution that delivers pre-built integration to the SuccessFactors foundation, SAP Learning, SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, the Alfresco One CMIS, and more. For example, integrating Microsoft SharePoint as the central CMIS document repository allows team members to collaborate and innovate around documents without requiring a rework of existing systems. The integration also provides the ability to use the federated search capabilities of SharePoint, allowing users to search for content from within SharePoint, regardless of where the documents are stored. Additionally, SAP Jam enables integration to SAP and home-grown systems by using a social application integration layer to access data from on-premises and cloud-based systems, enriching the critical business processes that run your company today. 7 The Deloitte CIO Survey SAP Jam research 5

6 Summary SAP Jam is the only enterprise social collaboration solution that supports collaboration across systems and organizational boundaries while providing comprehensive support for security and integration within your IT landscape, including systems from both SAP and other vendors. SAP Jam helps you drive business results, increase collaboration and innovation, lower IT costs and workload, and revitalize your existing business-critical investments. To capitalize on the new networked economy, use social technology to tie your investments in mobile, cloud, and big data together, creating a social foundation for your enterprise that connects people, information, and processes and drives business results. 6

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