by As digital technologies continue to evolve at a rapid pace, they are fundamentally changing how people connect and work together. Enterprise social networks have emerged as powerful platforms for driving collaboration both within and across organizational boundaries. By facilitating sharing, engagement and dialogue online, these internal social networks are transforming the ways enterprises operate and deliver value.
Rise of the Enterprise Social Network
Over the past decade, enterprise social networks have risen to prominence in the business world. Several leading software vendors now offer specialized social networking platforms tailored for corporate use. These internal social networks allow employees to connect, share updates and documents, ask questions, and work together on projects from anywhere. Some Key Benefits Of Adopting An Enterprise Social Networks And Online Communities Network Include:
Improved Knowledge Sharing – By enabling the open exchange of files, ideas, best practices and expertise, social networks accelerate knowledge transfer across departmental silos. Resources are more discoverable and reusable.
Enhanced Communication and Collaboration – Discussion forums, activity streams and groups foster collaboration beyond email. Employees can work together seamlessly on documents, spreadsheets and other content.
Stronger Communities and Connections – Profiles, shared interests and follower features help individuals strengthen professional relationships and virtual communities form around projects, disciplines and business units.
Streamlined Workflow – Integration with business applications and processes brings conversations, documents and tasks together in one place for better teamwork and decision making.
Deeper Insights – Analytics and metrics on network participation, content engagement and knowledge flows provide visibility into organizational skills, influences and areas for improvement.
While open communication platforms require an adjustment, organizations leveraging enterprise social tools report higher productivity, innovation and employee engagement. By tackling information overload and enabling always-on virtual teams, social is changing how work gets done.
Extending Social Beyond the Enterprise
With the continuing evolution of digital and mobile technologies, enterprise social networks and online communities are breaking through organizational barriers. Many enterprises are now outwardly focused, actively engaging customers, partners and even competitors through online communities. External communities foster valuable two-way dialog, co-creation and relationships that drive business impact.
Customer Communities – Branded online forums, user groups and support communities powered by enterprise social deliver transparency, feedback opportunities and valuable peer-to-peer support. Employees gain direct insights while strengthening customer advocacy.
Partner Ecosystems – Joint ideation platforms and partner portals with social features facilitate collaboration, resource sharing and build stronger networks among suppliers, developers and other strategic partners.
Cross-Industry Dialog – Initiatives bringing together competitors and industry stakeholders through social media discuss pressing challenges, exchange best practices and can help shape standards and regulations through open collaboration.
While community governance requires nuanced policies, outwardly directed social platforms are transforming how enterprises engage constituents, crowdsource ideas and incubate open innovation. When successfully scaled, they become a vital extension of the business.
As businesses increasingly rely on a complex web of internal and external relationships, technology has an important role linking all the moving pieces together. The enterprise social landscape will continue its rapid evolution driven by emerging technical capabilities:
Augmented Workflows – Advances in machine learning are powering intelligent assistants, predictive search and automated workflow based on social graph data to streamline processes.
Immersive Experiences – Virtual reality, augmented reality and other spatial computing platforms will bring new dimensions to virtual collaboration, training and idea generation.
Integrated Ecosystems – Deeper platform integration will dissolve boundaries between all constituent engagement systems, bringing together internal and external communities seamlessly.
Conversational Interfaces – Chatbots, messaging apps and voice assistants are primed to redefine how people interact within and between organizations through conversational social experiences.
As these trends unfold, enterprises adept at architecting highly personalized, context-aware enterprise social networks and online communities will gain significant advantages in cultivating the relationships that power tomorrow’s businesses. When thoughtfully designed and scaled to maximize participation across departments and through external networks, social technology promises to revolutionize how organizations operate and create value for years to come.
