Why is Enterprise Social Collaboration So Necessary?

Enterprise social collaboration has now come to be recognized as an effective mode of communication for corporate employees and encompasses collaboration platforms and other tools for social networking.  We often hear of corporate intranet systems that have of late become popular in most business enterprises with a global outlook. With the advent of globalization and the subsequent increase in global competition, the concept of enterprise social collaboration is fast gaining ground. This is because the current business environment the world over has led to a situation where there is a perpetual pressure for constant innovation and the need for adaptation to ever changing conditions.

Enterprise Social Collaboration in fundamental terms, is a mix of processes, technologies and services that boost mutual collaboration in any given working environment. It uses social media primarily as also state-of-the-art communications technologies such as mobile, integrated voice, instant messaging/chat, video and presence that results in promotion of teamwork and sharing of knowledge and ideas specifically to increase the quality and quantity of eventual business outcomes. The vendors of this concept often resort to the use of soft metrics like enhanced teamwork that leads to more productivity.

It needs to be borne in mind, however, that business benefits arising from social collaboration in an enterprise may not be seen in companies that resort to the laissez-faire principle of operations or simply an ad hoc policy to collaboration at the workplace. Collaboration by laissez-faire happens when an IT group allows its departments and employees to self-provision collaboration environments specific to their needs or situation. Research has shown time and again that one gets the best returns on their investments on ESC when a well formulated ESC plan is executed and endorsed by proper executive leadership.

A well-designed collaborative system simplifies any communication process, which otherwise tends to grow complex for many employees spread out in different companies due to an expanded and often remote working environment, fast paced business operations and rapidly growing data that is required for any technical assignment or project. This collaborative system will be created and implemented to ensure that its users can freely trade knowledge, exchange and store files, jointly modify and create new documents and mutually interact in a perfectly collaborative workspace. However, effective collaboration will only happen when the tools are easily accessible and usable regularly. In other words, it’s just not implementing a revolutionary technology only but also getting your employees to make effective use of it. Which is why user buy-in becomes mandatory during the implementation of a collaborative tool and its success will depend on how regularly an organization’s employees use it.

In sum, the concept of ESR becomes successful only when there’s an organizational culture which truly encourages collaboration and inter-personal communication; it ties its collaborative policy appropriately and ties social media and collaboration to specific and strategic business goals. 

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