Is Social Business Good Business? Case Study
As companies become more dispersed in the global marketplace, businesses are turning increasingly to
workplace collaboration technology, including tools for internal social networking. These tools can
promote employee collaboration and knowledge sharing, and help employees make faster decisions,
develop more innovative ideas for products and services, and become more engaged in their work and
their companies.
Adoption of internal enterprise social networking is also being driven by the flood of email that
employees typically receive each day and are increasingly unable to handle. Hundreds of email
messages must be opened, read, answered, forwarded, or deleted. For example, Winnipeg, Manitoba–
based Duha Group, which produces color paint samples and color systems for paint companies across
the globe, was able to eliminate 125,000 excess emails per year by adopting Salesforce Chatter social
collaboration tools. Managing Director Emeric Duha, who used to receive 50 emails each morning from
Asia, Europe, and Australia, now has a Chatter feed of everything going on in the company.
Another driver of enterprise social networking is “app fatigue.” In order to collaborate, many employees
have to log on to numerous apps, creating additional work. Contemporary enterprise social networking
systems often integrate multiple capabilities in one place.
Recent studies have found that collaboration tools could be effective in boosting efficiency and
productivity, while enabling users to make better business decisions. The products also expanded the
potential for innovation. Not all companies, however, are successfully using them. Implementation and
adoption of enterprise social networking depends not only on the capabilities of the technology but on
the organization’s culture and the compatibility of these tools with the firm’s business processes. The
technologies won’t provide benefits if they are applied to flawed business processes and organizational
behaviors. Digital collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Chatter, Yammer, Zoom, and WebEx
added to email, texting, and messaging may enmesh employees in too many interactions, leaving even
less time for in-depth individual thinking and problem-solving.
When firms introduce new social media technology (as well as other technologies), a sizable number of
employees resist the new tools, clinging to old ways of working, including email, because they are more
familiar and comfortable. There are companies where employees have duplicated communication on
both social media and email, increasing the time and cost of performing their jobs. BASF, the world’s
largest chemical producer with subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries, prohibited
some project teams from using email to encourage employees to use new social media tools.
Social business requires a change in thinking, including the ability to view the organization more
democratically in a flatter and more horizontal way. A social business is much more open to everyone’s
ideas. A secretary, assembly line worker, or sales clerk might be the source of the next big idea. As a
result, getting people to espouse social business tools requires 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.
Enterprise capabilities for managing social networks and sharing digital content can help or hurt an
organization. Social networks can provide rich and diverse sources of information that enhance
organizational productivity, efficiency, and innovation, or they can be used to support preexisting groups
of like-minded people that are reluctant to communicate and exchange knowledge with outsiders.
Productivity and morale will fall if employees use internal social networks to criticize others or pursue
personal agendas.
Social business applications modeled on consumer-facing platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will
not necessarily work well in an organization or organizational department that has incompatible
objectives. Will the firm use social business for operations, human resources, or innovation? The social
media platform that will work best depends on its specific business purpose. Additionally employees
who have actively used Facebook and Twitter in their personal lives are often hesitant to use similar
social tools for work purposes because they see social media primarily as an informal, personal means of
self-expression and communication with friends and family. Most managers want employees to use
internal social tools to communicate informally about work, but not to discuss personal matters.
Employees accustomed to Facebook and Twitter may have trouble imagining how they could use social
tools without getting personal.
This means that instead of focusing on the technology, businesses should first identify how social
initiatives will actually 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, what
their needs are, and measures for overcoming employee biases and resistance.
A successful social business strategy requires leadership and behavioral changes. Just sponsoring 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 traditional ways need
an incentive to use social software. Changing an organization to work in a different 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 internal and external social networking efforts of the company
are providing genuine value to the 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 business 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.
For example, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center had to abandon a custom-built enterprise social
network called Spacebook because no one knew how its social tools would help people do their jobs.
Spacebook had been designed and developed without taking into consideration the organization’s
culture and politics. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Dimension Data found that one-fourth of the
900 enterprises it surveyed focused more on the successful implementation of collaboration technology,
rather than how it’s used and adopted.
Despite the challenges associated with launching an internal social network, there are companies using
these networks successfully. One company that has made social business work is Standard Bank, Africa’s
largest financial services provider, which operates in 33 countries (including 19 in Africa). Standard Bank
has embraced social business to keep up with the pace of twenty-first-century business. The bank is
using Microsoft Yammer to help it become a more dynamic organization.
Use of Yammer at Standard Bank started to take off in 2013, when the bank staged an important
conference for its executives around the world and was looking for a collaborative platform for
communicating conference logistics and posting content such as PowerPoint presentations. Many
agencies and consultants who worked for the bank used Yammer and liked the tool. Once conference
participants saw how intuitive and useful Yammer was, they wanted to use it in their own operations.
Usage exploded, and the Yammer social network grew to over 20,000 users just six months after
Standard Bank adopted the Enterprise version. Belinda Carreira, Standard Bank’s Executive Head of
Interactive Marketing, is also reaching out to departments most likely to benefit from enterprise social
networking.
Standard Bank has over 400 Yammer social groups. Many are organized around projects and problem-
solving, such as finding credit card solutions that work well in African countries. Yammer has become a
platform for listening, where employees can easily share their concerns and insights. Yammer is also
used for internal education. Yammer enables trainers to present more visual and varied material than in
the past, including videos from the Internet. In some locations, the Internet may be down for half the
day, but Standard’s employees are still able to access Yammer on their mobile phones.
Carreira notes that successful adoption and use of a social tool such as Yammer will hit roadblocks
without proper planning and organizational buy-in. Many factors must be considered. Carreira
recommends that Yammer implementors work closely with their organization’s IT department, risk and
compliance teams, human resources, communications department, and executive leadership across the
organization. In addition to internal resources, Standard Bank drew on expertise provided by Yammer
and Microsoft.
Northwards Housing, a nonprofit organization providing affordable housing services in Manchester,
England, has an open organizational culture, which encourages two-way communication and
information transparency. Northwards has 340 employees, who do everything from rent collection to
scheduling repairs and cleaning maintenance. The organization wanted a way of exchanging information
internally and with its customers that was easy to use and did not require much time for technical
updates. Northwards introduced Yammer in 2012 and now has 85 percent of employees engaged with
the network.
Steve Finegan, Northward’s Head of Business Effectiveness and Communication, believes executive
support was critical to the network’s growth. The Northwards CEO regularly participates in discussions,
posts links to news stories of interest, and publishes a blog. The organization’s executive directors, who
were initially skeptical about Yammer’s benefits, now actively post content on the network and answer
questions.
