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Driving social business adoption: Bring it to the people
Given my background in document and records management, I understand the pain of getting good user adoption. I’ve been reflecting on the challenges I’ve faced when implementing numerous electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS) into various organisations and how my learnings could be relevant to implementing social tools within an organisation.
So, I was reading a blog from Laurie Buczek The biggest failure of Enterprise 2.0 Social Business and one of her key messages was: “The big failure of social business is a lack of integration of social tools into the collaborative workflow.” I completely agree. One doesn’t want yet another siloed application for users to deal with. The social tools out there need to be able to embed themselves into existing enterprise tools (e.g. collaborative platform, document management systems, email systems, CRM systems) to promote strong user uptake. Users are busy enough in their day to day jobs without having to go to yet another system.
Another blog by Dion Hinchcliffe called Putting Social Business to Work depicted really nicely how social business should be integrated into the business.
Start where the users are already
Studies indicate the average employee spends approximately 50% of their time dealing with emails. If workers are spending lots of their day using an email application, doesn’t it make sense that an entry point to the social business tool should be there too? They need to have the ability to write a status update, pose a question (crowdsource) and review activity streams from within their email application. I’m not advocating that email becomes the only launch pad for social, in fact, quite the opposite. What I mean is that users work in different domains, and unless the tool is accessible across those domains, they won’t engage as deeply.
Similarly, an information worker will spend a lot of time on their team site, reviewing and updating team documentation. If the tool makes it easy to share, comment and “like” content from within the team site, they are much more likely to do just that. This would provide enormous benefit to the rest the team as they are able to easily keep tabs on what other team members are working on, even if they are not co-located.
It must be mobile
Many users have jobs where they are not at their desks all the time, but are mainly are out and about. Remote access from mobile devices is absolutely vital to ensure they have the ability to engage and gain the benefit of social networking. The ability to review activity streams and write a status update while being mobile is essential. More and more users are expecting this sort of functionality in their workplace.
Pre-requisites for social media tools
I believe therefore, that when selecting a social media tool you should ensure the following:
- It has capabilities to plug into your existing enterprise tools e.g. email, CMS, instant messaging
- It has multiple access points e.g. email, team sites, project sites, intranet and CRM systems
- It is easy and intuitive to use
- It can be accessed via multiple devices e.g. mobiles and tablets
Realistically, this ‘bring it to the people’ approach is the only way I can see social tools becoming ubiquitous across the organisation. I’d be interested to hear what do you consider a crucial ingredient for achieving great social business uptake and therefore a more efficient way to work.
Want to learn more about building a social business strategy? Come along to our Social Business breakfast event in Melbourne, June 13. We’d love to talk social with you. And it’s FREE!
How social is SharePoint 2013? – Unique World says:
[...] mentioned in my earlier blog, for social business to work – you need to bring it to the people! That is, in order for Social business to become ubiquitous part of an organisation’s culture, [...]
July 24th, 2012 at 12:05 am