It may come as no surprise to you that the greater distance between employees, the less employees collaborate. What’s astonishing is that once there’s about 30 meters (160 feet) of distance in between employees, collaboration drops completely (according to a study by T.J. Allen, the author of Managing the Flow of Technology). Two people could be working in the same building for years, and still have no idea who the other person is or what they’re working on.

Organizations face the challenge of improving collaboration across employees, especially when they are remotely dispersed. This, as principal of Chess Media Group Jacob Morgan puts it, is exactly why enterprise social networking platforms are becoming so valuable to organizations.

It’s the people around you and on your team, who quickly bring you up to speed within an organization. But, when it comes to expanding outside of your nearby network and having more insight into what’s going on in your organization, your email system won’t do the trick because it’s limited to the conversations with people you already know. Enterprise social networking helps employees quickly figure out who’s whom within their organization, what employees are talking about, their ideas, and the projects they’re initiating. It allows you to interact and build relationships with people to help move projects forward.

As organizations continue to grow and expand, teams become more dispersed. Enterprise social networking connects dispersed teams by streamlining collaboration so your teammates always know what’s going on, from wherever they work. And because enterprise social networks are accessible via mobile devices, employees who are out in field or on the road can stay connected to all recent changes, new collateral and more, from their mobile device.