64
InteractIve SeSSIon: PeoPle Is Social Business Working out?
Many of today’s employees are already well versed
in the basics of public social networking, using
tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Larry Ellison, head of the giant software firm
Oracle, even went so far as to declare that social
networking should be the backbone of business
applications and that Facebook is a good model
for how users should interact with software.
According to Gartner, Inc., by 2016, 50 percent
of large organizations will have internal Facebook-
like social networks, and 30 percent of these will
be considered as essential as email and telephones
are today. Enterprise social networks will become
the primary communications channels for notic-
ing, deciding, or acting on information relevant to
carrying out work. However, Gartner also notes
that through 2015, 80 percent of social business
efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due
to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on
technology.
Social initiatives in a business are different
from other technology deployments. For example,
implementations of enterprise resource planning
or customer relationship management systems are
top-down; workers are trained in the application
and expected to use it. In contrast, social business
tools require a more of a pull approach, one that
engages workers and offers them a significantly
better way to work. In most cases, they can’t be
forced to use social apps.
This means that instead of focusing on the
technology, businesses should first identify how
social initiatives will improve work practices for
employees and managers. They need a detailed
understanding of social networks: how people are
currently working, with whom they are working,
and what their needs are.
A successful social business strategy requires
leadership and behavioral changes. Just sponsor-
ing a social project is not enough—managers need
to demonstrate their commitment to a more open,
transparent work style. Employees who are used
to collaborating and doing business in more tradi-
tional ways need an incentive to use social software.
Changing an organization to work in a differ-
ent way requires enlisting those most engaged and
interested in helping and designing and building
the right workplace environment for using social
technologies.
Management needs to ensure that the inter-
nal and external social networking efforts of
the company are providing genuine value to the
Part i: information systems in the Digital age
business. Content on the networks needs to be
relevant, up to date, and easy to access; users
need to be able to connect to people who have
the information they need and would otherwise
be out of reach or difficult to reach. Social busi-
ness tools should be appropriate for the tasks on
hand and the organization’s business processes,
and users need to understand how and why to
use them.
In summer 2009, NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center launched a custom-built enterprise
social network called Spacebook to help small
teams collaborate without emailing larger groups.
Spacebook featured user profiles, group work-
spaces (wikis, file sharing, discussion forums,
groups), and social bookmarks. Very few users
adopted it, and Spacebook was decommissioned
on June 1, 2012. According to Kevin Jones, a
consulting social and organizational strategist
at NASA’s Marshall and Goddard Space Flight
Centers, Spacebook failed because it didn’t focus
enough on people. It had been designed and devel-
oped without taking into consideration the orga-
nization’s culture and politics. No one knew how
Spacebook would help them do their jobs, as
opposed to an existing method of collaboration
such as email.
Despite the challenges associated with launch-
ing an internal social network, some companies
are using these networks successfully. For exam-
ple, Covestro, formerly Bayer Material Science,
the U.S. $11.8 billion material sciences division
of Bayer, made social collaboration a success by
making the tools more accessible, demonstrating
the value of these tools in pilot projects, employing
a reverse mentoring program for senior executives,
and training employee experts to spread know-
how of the new social tools and approaches within
the company and demonstrate their usefulness.
Covestro chose IBM Connections for its social
business toolset. IBM Connections is a social plat-
form for collaboration, cooperation, and consoli-
dation typically used in a centralized enterprise
social network. Featured are tools for employee
profiles; communities of people with com-
mon interests and expertise; blogs, wikis, view-
ing, organizing, and managing tasks; forums for
exchanging ideas with others; polls and surveys
of customers and fellow employees; and a home
page for each user to see what is happening across
that person’s social network and access important
social data.
chapter 2: global e-business and collaboration 65

A year after the new collaboration tools were
introduced, adoption had plateaued. Working with
company information technology and business
leaders, management established an ambitious set
of goals for growing social business along with
seven key performance indicators (KPIs) to mea-
sure success. The goals included fostering global
collaboration, creating stronger networks across
regions and departments, creating a less hierarchi-
cal culture of sharing, and reducing the confusion
about which tools are intended for which job.
These efforts are now paying off; 50 per-
cent of employees are now routinely active in the
company’s enterprise social network. Although
ROI on social business initiatives has been dif-
ficult to measure, Covestro has benefited from
faster knowledge flows, increased efficiency, and
lower operating costs.
Sources: Dion Hinchcliffe, “In Europe’s Biggest Firms, Social Business Is
All Grown Up,” Enterprise Web 2.0, February 12, 2015; Margaret Jones,
“Top Four Social Collaboration Software Fails,” SearchConsumerization
.com, accessed March 17, 2015; www.ibm.com, accessed March 16,
2015; www.nasa.gov, accessed March 16, 2015; James Niccolai, “Ellison:
Facebook, the New Model for Business Applications,” IDG News
Service, January 30, 2014; Gartner Inc., “Gartner Says 80 Percent of
Social Business Efforts Will Not Achieve Intended Benefits Through
2015,” January 29, 2013; and Michael Healey, “Why Enterprise Social
Networking Falls Short,” Information Week, March 4, 2013.

caSe Study QueStIonS

1. Identify the people, organization, and
technology factors responsible for impeding
adoption of internal corporate social networks.
2. Compare the experiences implementing
internal social networks of the two
organizations Why was one more successful
than the other? What role did management
play in this process?
3. Should all companies implement internal
enterprise social networks? Why or why not?

Bombay, so this makes it difficult to have a video conference. Time is clearly an

obstacle to collaboration on a global scale.
Place (location) also inhibits collaboration in large global or even national and
regional firms. Assembling people for a physical meeting is made difficult by the
physical dispersion of distributed firms (firms with more than one location), the cost
of travel, and the time limitations of managers.
The collaboration technologies described previously are ways of overcoming
the limitations of time and space. Using this time/space framework will help you
choose the most appropriate collaboration and teamwork tools for your firm. Note
that some tools are applicable in more than one time/place scenario. For example,
Internet collaboration suites such as IBM Notes have capabilities for both synchro-
nous (instant messaging, meeting tools) and asynchronous (email, wikis, document
editing) interactions.
Here’s a to-do list to get started. If you follow these six steps, you should be led to
investing in the correct collaboration software for your firm at a price you can afford
and within your risk tolerance.
1. What are the collaboration challenges facing the firm in terms of time and space?
Locate your firm in the time/space matrix. Your firm can occupy more than one
cell in the matrix. Different collaboration tools will be needed for each situation.
2. Within each cell of the matrix where your firm faces challenges, exactly what kinds
of solutions are available? Make a list of vendor products.
3. Analyze each of the products in terms of their cost and benefits to your firm. Be
sure to include the costs of training and the costs of involving the information
systems department in your cost estimates if needed.
4. Identify the risks to security and vulnerability involved with each of the products.
Is your firm willing to put proprietary information into the hands of external
service providers over the Internet? Is your firm willing to risk its important opera-
tions in systems other firms control? What are the financial risks facing your ven-
dors? Will they be here in three to five years? What would be the cost of making a
switch to another vendor in the event the vendor firm fails?