The principles of enterprise social software
Traditional web software enables a select group of people to
produce content for others to consume (a traditional intranet
maintained by several contributors, for example).
Enterprise social software
allows everyone to contribute.
The social approach puts people at the heart of the solution –
Providing them with the ability to create content, build working
relationships and share knowledge and communicate effectively with
each other in intuitive ways.
What’s the business value?
What’s the value in the workplace? Don’t think ‘social’ in terms
of ‘socialising’ or ‘time wasting’. Instead think ‘social
interactions’ – communicating and collaborating to share ideas and
knowledge, negating repetition and duplication of work.
With enterprise social networks, staff can access not just
information but people and knowledge. Tools like wikis and blogs
that started life outside the business world have been adapted for
use within companies so that workers can share expertise with
colleagues, freely exchange ideas and collaborate more effectively,
creating a sense of need and value.
Other social software concepts adapted for enterprise use
include people and expertise based search and discovery, tagging
for linking related knowledge and building organisational
folksonomies, RSS for signalling updates and collaborative software
for project planning and management. They’re all geared towards one
thing: helping people work better together to deliver a more
knowledgeable and efficient organisation.
Focusing on what’s important
When you implement an enterprise social network you give people
a personalised window onto what’s happening in their organisation
that’s relevant to them.
The intranet acts as a portal through which staff can quickly
access important information sources while activity feeds from each
application – like blogs, wikis or project management tools – keep
them in touch with developments in their own individual interest
areas.
Next is: The
business benefits of enterprise social software