Is Social Collaboration in the Enterprise doomed to fail?

"It's critical to define how the new tools will help each group of employees do their jobs better."

So, for example, telling a salesperson that they can use social tools to find the right product expert or be alerted when an invoice is paid, straight to their mobile device, is far more likely to get them to use the new tools than a nebulous statement like better collaboration.

Unless IT engages the lines of business to determine how a social business solution will add value it will ultimately lead to failure.

Gartner suggests that when it comes to the actually planning and implementation of a social media strategy within the enterprise, this is something best left to an enterprise architect with the necessary cross-disciplinary experience to oversee.

Richard Edwards, a principal analyst at fellow analyst firm Ovum, couldn't disagree more. "Social change programs should not be led by architects, IT managers, or any other technical profile," Edwards told IT Pro.

"The internal communications team is a good place to start, but any team put together for such an initiative must be comprised of Gladwell's Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen in order to start a social epidemic."

In his book 'The Tipping Point' Malcolm Gladwell describes the three agents of change, or the law of the few which determine the success of any kind of social epidemic, as being: Connectors - the people who know large numbers of other people, and are best placed to make introductions; the social equivalent of a computer network hub. Mavens - the information specialists whom we all rely upon to connect us with new information, who accumulate knowledge and understand how to share it. Salesmen - the charismatic persuaders that couple powerful negotiating skills with an inherent and indefinable trait that makes others want to agree with them.

Bluewolf's managing director Vera Loftis has plenty of experience in consulting on these issues with thousands of companies large and small. She reveals that responsibility for planning and implementing social media strategies generally lies with the marketing or IT functions, although in some cases (such as Vodafone in Australia) customer service can take a leading role.

"Regardless of designated ownership, a social media strategy must be a shared responsibility across the enterprise," Loftis warns. "Every employee must be enabled to interact with customers using social, and to identify and capture opportunities for improved customer engagement based on these interactions."

All of this leads us to think that Freegard has got it about right when he talks of a social media strategy in terms of it being a series of business processes enabling engagement with stakeholders inside and outside the organisation.

"As the potential impact of social media is so widespread throughout a company" Freegard told IT Pro. "You need to think beyond the traditional organisational hierarchies and create a 'Digital Office' to oversee the business-centric elements that social media provide. While marketing, IT, HR and corporate communications clearly all have a role to play when it comes to the strategy and execution, you need a single owner, such as a Chief Digital Officer, who has visibility across the whole organisational to drive the initiative."

Davey Winder

Davey is a three-decade veteran technology journalist specialising in cybersecurity and privacy matters and has been a Contributing Editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue was published in 1994. He's also a Senior Contributor at Forbes, and co-founder of the Forbes Straight Talking Cyber video project that won the ‘Most Educational Content’ category at the 2021 European Cybersecurity Blogger Awards.

Davey has also picked up many other awards over the years, including the Security Serious ‘Cyber Writer of the Year’ title in 2020. As well as being the only three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) Davey was also named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro Magazine called ‘Threats to the Internet.’ In 2011 he was honoured with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism which, thankfully, didn’t end his ongoing contributions - or his life for that matter.

You can follow Davey on Twitter @happygeek, or email him at davey@happygeek.com.