In a recent report published by Gartner, 80% of the social initiatives will not fulfill their intended targets by 2015. This, by the same Gartner, that said that the future of enterprise depended on social strategy that would effectively tap the “collective genius” of employees and customers. So does the new report mean they are backpedaling? Not really.
The reason most social initiatives will end up in less than projected success is that most enterprises dive headlong into the social projects without taking care of some core issues critical to their success. There are multiple challenges that plague the uptake and success of such endeavors, which if not addressed in the strategy itself, can derail them from the path to success.
Focus on People, Not Tool
When enterprises plan for collaboration enablement, the focus is on the content and the mechanism of supporting it rather than the real players in the arena, the people. Project teams deliberate for moths trying to decide the ‘best’ social platform out there and the teams that will implement it, while no one is really thinking about how to engage the employees in the collaborative efforts. This leaves them with an expensive, well-implemented (if so) tool, which gathers dust as no one uses it.
Team Structure
Unlike external social platforms, which seem take a life of their own, corporate collaboration efforts need to be constantly monitored, advertised, supported, and evolved as time progresses. To address this, they require a defined team that owns and manages them. Roles like a collaboration manager, or an innovation architect should be defined to lead this team into the future. Another important component here is the ranking of the participants based on their contributions.
Training and Enablement
Most enterprise project plans for information management and distribution leave out the most critical part of the exercise – end user training. Give a user, who is unmotivated in the first place, a tool that he does not understand, and you can bid goodbye to its success. There are multiple training options available to the management – classroom based training, computer based live training, computer based recorded sessions, training presentations, and user manuals. Even after this, if the employees do not get trained, there is some problem.
Incentives and Engagement
Most people’s approach towards enterprise social platforms is that they have “better things to do”. The primary reason for this is that they do not feel incented to contribute. Another reason is that the exercise of contribution is not engaging enough, and people who do contribute, stop doing so after a few participations.This is where the team managing the social initiative should come up with creative incentive programs for the contributors. Some examples of the same are giving badges or honors, promoting the users within the tool to hold cool titles, having a physical award ceremony for top contributors, or, if your workforce allows it, associating KRA metrics with it. To make the employees covet participation, the community may be started as ‘by invitation only’. Once this core group reaches a certain critical mass of activity, you can open it up, and add more people.
Technology Does Matter
Finally, even though not the top priority, the importance of choosing the right collaboration platform can’t be denied. The interfaces should be simple and intuitive, the platform secure, and manageable. The cost of implementation, integration and support of the same should not be too high to be prohibitive.
The Verdict
While it is true that the success of the social initiatives in place or being implemented is questionable, it is also true that they are the future. By reworking their strategy, and paying heed to sound advice, companies can prepare for success in the world where collaboration rules that is inevitable.
Copper Mobile is an app development company with headquarters in Dallas. The firm is one of the top iPhone application development firms and mobile application development companies in Dallas
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