Bruce Upbin, Forbes Staff
Dave Yarnold
Guest post by Dave Yarnold, CEO, ServiceMax.
The mere mention of the word “social” in enterprise technology discussions has historically been met with eye-rolls and sighs. Product names like Yammer, Chatter and Jive certainly haven’t helped overcome initial impressions. Many in higher-level management roles have reacted to it as a gimmick or an employee distraction versus a potentially valuable business tool. But the tide is turning as companies begin to experience the real benefits of social technologies, and sentiment is changing rapidly.
Clay Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation theory states that a disruptive technology starts out as a product whose value the market doesn’t initially understand. But as the product develops and becomes more valuable, adoption begins. The product then quickly surpasses competing technology and becomes the “next big thing.” Think about mobile phones, or high definition television. When they first came out, you didn’t think it was something you would need every day. But now what would you do without them?
It certainly seems the disruptive innovation trajectory is happening in social enterprise technology. We’ve heard about it in keynotes and headlines over the past few years, but now we are seeing and experiencing real examples of how this exciting technology is fundamentally changing how employees and customers communicate with one another.
It has certainly transformed how I run my company.
I use Salesforce.com’s Chatter in a number of ways to keep my finger on the pulse of my entire company. First off, I use Chatter to track the most important elements of my business that we track in Salesforce.com: significant sales opportunities, customers and projects. I see a real-time stream of all changes to those elements — a deal is closed, a project moves to a new phase, a project changes status, etc.
Additionally, our entire company is sharing on a constant basis. Important files, observations, questions answered — all shared in a way that everyone can see and reference. I can jump in and provide feedback and ideas, interacting with all parts of my team in real-time, and so can the rest of the company. We have even included our customers in this line of communication. We recently held a meeting with our largest customers and used a Chatter group to solicit content and planning ideas for the event. It was a fantastic meeting and the agenda was spot on. Chatter and similar technologies facilitate amazing collaboration and visibility.
There are a growing number of examples of social technology making a real impact in all areas of business including marketing, customer support and even human resources.
Atos, a 70,000 employee IT services firm based in France, has committed to eliminating all internal email by 2014 in favor of social technologies. The CEO claims that only 15 percent of their internal email was useful and the rest contributed to lost time.
Even the U.S. government has jumped on board. The U.S. Department of State recently launched the “Tag Challenge” to see how global social networks can help them track and find suspects around the world via crowdsourcing and social collaboration.
It’s no longer about early adoption. The social enterprise is here. You’re now competing with companies that are collaborating on sales opportunities, tracking their brand on Twitter and Facebook and delighting clients through social customer service. They’re also building loyal communities of customers and empowering them as a marketing force. Mobile, social and the cloud are essential business technologies.
The social enterprise is not a burden, it’s an incredible gift to companies that want to rethink their businesses and pull ahead of slower, less innovative companies held back by their own inertia. The social enterprise exists both internally and externally because your customers and your employees are interacting everywhere, all the time. It’s time to harness that. Capture the insights, the intelligence and the value by making it part of the fabric of your business.
Social business is real, it’s here and it’s the next big thing in the enterprise.
