Enterprise social adoption requires a community effort. The most successful initiatives have a clear purpose from the beginning and strong support from senior management. Discover what else it takes to make enterprise social collaboration a success. Check out these 5 must reads on enterprise social networking for the last month.

10 Ways to get Users on the Social Business Bus

Debra Donston-Miller – informationweek.com Social business technology has the potential to increase revenue, cut costs, improve relationships with customers and enhance internal and external collaboration. If you’re willing to make the commitment to best-practice implementation of social products, there’s just one thing that can get in your way: your employees. In other words, if you build it, they may not come. And if they don’t come — or don’t fully or enthusiastically participate — your social business initiative doesn’t really stand a chance. (continued…)

Improving Sales Enablement with Enterprise Social Networks

Bill Cushard According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), U.S. businesses spend $15 billion per year on sales training and that many sales people find the training ineffective or less than useful. This statistic should drive business leaders crazy because it forces them to ask what they are getting from such a large investment. (continued…)

It’s good practice to map out a strategic direction before moving forward with any business plan, and developing a social business strategy is no exception. Rob Koplowitz, VP of Forrester Research, outlines 10 steps to developing a solid social business strategy below.

Ten Steps To Develop A Social Business Strategy

1. Design a social ecosystem

2. Gain executive support

3. Develop your social capability map

4. Establish a social business council

5. Select from competing social strategies to invest, pilot and support

6. Establish social media policy & employee training

7. Empower employees to solve customer & business challenges

8. Plan social public relations

9. Engage customers in conversations

10. Measure business impact always (continued…)

Have you ever noticed an employee walking down the hall answering an email or text message from their smartphone? The pose—head down, back slightly hunched, eyes focused on a mobile device—is not just pervasive in our personal lives. Over 40% of information workers already use mobile devices. In the U.S., 28% of directors and executives already use tablets at least once a day.

Vice President of Forrester Research Rob Koplowitz presented interesting research on this emerging trend:

Part of the demand for mobile technology goes hand in hand with the use of social technology in the workplace. Referencing information workers, specifically executives and managers, Rob said “They’re depending on information.” And they need this information from their mobile device. It means accessing the new slide deck from your tablet in time for a meeting with a customer; or approving that purchase order so the new equipment is delivered on time, even when you’re waiting to pick up the kids.

As business grows more mobile, social business technology does too. This means accessing critical updates essentially from anywhere.

“The interesting thing about tibbr is the mobile experience,” Rob said, mentioning how it was one of the 3 main components driving tibbr’s ranking as a leader in the Forrester Research Activity Streams Wave (along with tibbr’s “vision around integration” and ability to “deliver cloud verses on premise” offerings). (continued…)

I like the way Charlene Li of Altimeter Group said it: “Most companies approach enterprise social networks as a technology deployment and fail to understand that the new relationships created by enterprise social networks are the source for value creation.” In other words, besides IT considerations, there are other important factors to account for when making the move to a more social business environment.

How will employees interact in the space and what positive outcomes will that activity bring to your business? How will you measure the success of the system and use it to its maximum potential? To answer these questions and more, here are five ways to ensure a successful implementation of your enterprise social network:

1.  Make employee buy-in a priority. Introduce employees and management to the benefits of enterprise social prior to implementation. You could even brainstorm with them on ways to put the network to use. This goes a long way in encouraging employees to use the network and accomplish your business goals.

2.  Understand the opportunity. Companies need to critically examine current forms of collaboration in order to identify opportunities for improvement. tibbr’s Lars Plougmann recently offered his insight. He said, there is a disconnect, where close to 80% of executives believe collaboration is critical to growth, yet only 25% believe their organization collaborates effectively. (continued…)

Executives are realizing the potential of private social networks at an increasing rate; a recent International Data Corporation report shows 67% of the 700 companies surveyed have deployed enterprise social software in 2012. That’s up from 43% in 2011.

Private social networks drive communication and collaboration, breaking down geographic and organizational boundaries. But, to ensure best use of this technology, it helps to have a solid actionable plan consisting of these elements highlighted below:

Bridging the Gap Between C-Level, IT & Employees for Enterprise Social Success. You can’t just install an enterprise social network at your company and expect magic to happen. It helps to have one person in your organization, a dedicated community manager, who can make the transition to a more social business model much smoother. Having a liaison to act as an intermediary resource to IT, management and employees will help inform, guide and drive your enterprise social network’s usability and business value throughout the organization.

Training Employees in Private Social Network Use. Employee training is imperative and should take place with each new social network member prior to their using the site. Enterprise social networks create an instant feedback loop across the company, breaking down barriers but also requiring that all employees adhere to acceptable use standards. (continued…)

The way we work will evolve to be social, across boundaries and devices, anywhere and anytime.  Executives are investing in private social networking with these goals in mind. They know their business cannot function productively without the knowledge and insights from the “people that are running the business every day.”

“We’re investing in social technology more than before,” vice president of Forrester Research Rob Koplowitz said at TUCON 2012, Las Vegas. “What’s changed more than anything else is the global economic reality… We’re working across geographic boundaries.” From headquarters to manufacturing plants, engineering teams to sales teams, employees are more spread out and in need of better ways to communicate and interact. Executives are implementing social technology to meet the demand.

• 62% of organizations plan to or have implemented mobile applications.
• 55% of organizations plan to implement video conferencing at work to make communicating even more interactive.
• And, out of US information workers, 56% are investing in enterprise social solutions.

What’s even more interesting is where the demand for social technology at work comes from. According to Rob’s presentation at TUCON, the biggest demand does not come from the millennial generation, but from the baby boomers generation. Of this demographic, 49% are managers, directors or executives, 52% make more than $60K per year and, on average, work more than 40 hours per week. (continued…)

Measuring anything in businesses accurately and understanding what that measurement actually reflects can often be a challenge.  This can especially be true in situations where you have a new technology, software or process in place.  There are success stories and testimonials that clearly show that collaboration software helps businesses communicate more efficiently, but how do you actually prove and maximize its effectiveness?  Here are some areas to focus on and what they most likely reflect:

User activity.  What’s the point of having an enterprise social network if you really don’t know how much employees use it?  Even if you measure the average number of posts people make during the week or month, you may not be receiving an accurate measurement.  After all, sometimes it takes six or seven messages to understand what can be clearly communicated in one. One way to measure effective activity would be to examine your organization’s total costs.  If your total costs decrease significantly during a time period in which you haven’t implemented any other substantial cost-saving meas (continued…)

In my previous post, I promised to elaborate on one of the three pillars of successful adoption – people. Changing people’s behaviour is hard, but not impossible. It just takes more thought than some blunt incentive scheme or gamification strategy. Successful adoption of an enterprise social platform means influencing human behaviour.

Humans behave in certain ways, sometimes illogical ways. This is the result of evolutionary processes, education, cultural norms and tools. For example, in the absence of better suited tools people have come to use email for everything from private communication, team collaboration to audit trails and task lists. Now many people automatically turn to email without giving it a second thought.
For an organization to grow and evolve with their social network, encouraging positive and discouraging negative behaviour is critical. We need to provide certain stimuli. These stimuli vary greatly and depend heavily on the desired behaviour, the audience, their current behaviour, tools, and culture.
Recently, gamification has moved into the limelight as part of a change management initiative. It describes the application of game mechanics in a non-game environment to nudge people to take certain actions. It is an interesting concept and can indeed be helpful in influencing behaviour in the short-term if applied correctly. (continued…)

Enterprise social networks offer a litany of benefits to companies ranging from more efficient internal communications to fostering a stronger workplace communities, but getting maximum ROI from your platform is heavily dependent on one thing: successful employee adoption. While the methods for encouraging employees enterprise social usage and interaction will differ for each company based on employee preferences, industry and work culture, there are some tried and true ways to ‘break the ice’ and ensure successful enterprise social network adoption across your company.

Here are 10 Ways to Break the Ice with Enterprise Social Networks:

1. Develop incentives for discovering best uses.  Tell your teams how much you believe in enterprise social media’s ability to improve customer service, but ask them to determine the best way for doing so.  Give a free prize to the team finding the best solution, like a monetary bonus or extra paid vacation.
2. Introduce new team members.  When you have a new hire, post their professional bio and a few interesting personal facts so that when people meet him or her, they have a great conversation starter.
3. Make new solutions public announcements.  Did someone discover a more effective solution to a common workplace problem?  Post the solution publicly, and coworkers will be motivated to ask this worker how he developed the solution.

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