While smartphones, the PC, the company network, and the internet have made employees more productive, these technologies have also contributed to information overload. Employees spend too much time searching for documents, information and experts within their organization. The technologies for finding information behind the firewall—e-mail, enterprise search, file shares, knowledge management systems and employee directories—do not provide employees with fast and easy access to the information they need.
At the same time, web-based social media tools have made it significantly easier for many people to find and share information over the internet:
- LinkedIn and Facebook allow us to identify expertise in our social network
- Wikis, blogs and discussion forums provide relevant information on a wide variety of topics
- Social bookmarking tools permit us to share links
- Twitter and other sites provide status updates to track what other people in our network are doing.
- On-line survey tools allow us to collect data from others
Enterprise social media tools allow organizations to more effectively share information and expertise behind the firewall. The most common enterprise social media tools are:
- Blogs
- Wikis
- Discussion Boards
- Surveys
- MySites (employee pages)
Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) provide organizations with a baseline set of enterprise social media tools. Third party software providers have enhanced the out-of-the-box SharePoint tools facilitating sharing information and expertise with applications such as Newsgator's Social Sites. In addition, SharePoint can be customized to implement tailored social media capabilities.
KMA works with our clients to analyze their requirements for and current use of enterprise social media tools. We then develop a plan for adding tools and integrating them into their existing SharePoint-based intranet. We will assess the fit of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box and third party tools and determine if customization is required. We will then work with our clients to implement an enterprise social media plan.
Employees who use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in their personal lives know the power of social media tools for finding information, sharing expertise and building a strong social network. These employees realize social media tools can improve their effectiveness at work and expect to find them in their organizations.
Organizations that deploy these tools as part of an integrated social media strategy will see increased collaboration, stronger ties among employees, reduced turnover, and improved communication both internally and with customers.