why today’s businesses need enterprise social

Work Like a Network: Why Today’s Businesses Need Enterprise Social

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Work Like a Network: Why Today’s BusinessesNeed Enterprise Social

Published: September 2014

Visit www.enterprisesocial.com for the latest information.

Estimated reading time:16 minutes

Work like a network.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The world is a giant network 1

Today’s top business challenges 2

Employee disengagement carries a high cost 2

Inefficient collaboration dampens productivity and innovation 3

Sustaining business growth made harder by competition and how customers do business 4

The Solution: Work like a network with enterprise social technologies 5

Listen to what matters most 6

Adapt quickly to change 7

Grow your business 8

Are you ready to work like a network? 9

Sources 10


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Introduction: The world is a giant networkPeople today are more connected than ever before. The growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, combined with the rise of social technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, has turned the world into a global community that gives users instant access to information, makes it easy for them to communicate about everything from products to politics, and facilitates collective action. Technology makes it easier than ever to tap into the human network.

Worldwide, there are now more mobile devices than people,1 and those devices are in constant use. People who own smartphones check them an average of 150 times a day, often to stay connected to some of the 1.8 billion2 other people around the world who are also on social networks. Add in portable computers, tablets, and other mobile devices, and it’s easy to see that the world has become a giant network.

How is your business adapting to this networked world? Chances are your employees are not as connected and informed as your customers—at least not at work—but imagine the possibilities if they were.

What if you could apply the power of social networking to your business? What if you could make the right information instantly available without time-consuming searches, keep your workers connected no matter where they were located, enable productive conversations among your employees, customers, and partners, and empower everyone in your organization to make better decisions faster? What if you and everyone associated with your company could work like a network? How could that help you, as a business leader, address some of your most serious challenges?


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Today’s top business challengesOrganizations today are confronted by an array of serious business challenges, from employee disengagement to inefficient collaboration, that can quickly undermine their ability to keep growing and remain profitable. With the competitive landscape constantly changing and evolving, addressing these challenges effectively is one of the most important jobs currently facing business leaders worldwide.

Employee disengagement carries a high cost

Engaging employees—and keeping them engaged—is one of the biggest challenges that business leaders currently face. According to the Gallup organization,3 companies whose employees are engaged have significantly higher productivity, profitability, and customer ratings. They also experience lower turnover, less absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents. Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their jobs and committed to their work, and they are the ones most likely to drive innovation, growth, and revenue. It is the engaged workers who build most of the new products and services, come up with most of the innovative ideas, and create almost all of their company’s new customers.

Yet according to Gallup, only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, while 63 percent are “not engaged” and 24 percent are “actively disengaged.” Workers who are not engaged have basically checked out. They may devote time to their jobs, but they bring no energy or passion to their work. Actively disengaged workers are negative about their work, potentially hostile toward their organizations, and often oppose what their engaged coworkers are trying to accomplish.

Active employee disengagement is not a small problem. Not only does it undermine the productivity and potential success of individual companies, it also creates a huge drain on economies worldwide. In the United States alone, for example, Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs the nation $450 billion to $550 billion every year.

For companies to thrive, business leaders must find ways to help their employees feel engaged and invested in their work, and then build on their unique strengths to help them reach their full potential.

Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs the nation $450 billion to $550 billion every year.


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Inefficient collaboration dampens productivity and innovation

How important is collaboration to a company’s success? More than two-thirds of chief information officers (CIOs) from top-performing companies see internal collaboration and communication as the keys to innovation, according to a report by IBM.4 Even so, there are many challenges that can make effective collaboration hard to achieve.

Geographic, functional, and information silos within organizations often make it difficult for coworkers to communicate and collaborate efficiently, and for teams to work together to get things done. Employees in one department may not know what is happening in another, and team members may be located in different offices, different cities, or different parts of the world. In addition, functional groups, such as Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, and so on, frequently use different systems or software programs that apply only to their roles in the organization, and data often gets trapped inside those specialized systems and applications.

On average, knowledge workers today spend 20 percent of their time—one entire day every week—searching for information internally.5 If your employees were networked, most of that wasted time could be spent on real work, information would no longer get trapped inside unconnected systems or delayed by broken communication channels, and your employees would be more productive. As a result, decision-making would speed up and exchanging information would become easier and more streamlined, which could sharpen the focus of your business and increase its competitive edge.

To complicate matters further, many companies now employ workers from three generations, each with different work styles and communication preferences. According to Deloitte, baby boomers value person-to-person communication and relationships, while millennials prefer working from home. Millennials like spontaneous, multimedia communication, while gen-Xers prefer email. These generational differences can create disconnects that may contribute to employee and team disengagement. Yet regardless of which generation they’re from, within five years 40 percent of workers will be contingent employees or located outside the office.6

Even the mechanics of collaboration are difficult. According to McKinsey, workers spend 61 percent of their work week reading and replying to email, searching for information, scheduling meetings, communicating with team members and so on.7 Meanwhile, collaborating with partners, suppliers, and other people outside your business poses many of the same difficulties as collaborating internally.

All of these collaboration challenges can have a negative effect on productivity—and on your business. Industry analyst firm IDC estimates that inefficient collaboration accounts for an average loss of 21.3 percent in an organization’s total productivity each year. IDC also points out that for a company with 1,000 employees, eliminating these collaboration challenges would be equivalent to hiring 213 new employees.

Businesses today need to do all they can to enable better team collaboration. They simply can’t afford the barriers between people and systems that lead to inefficiency, miscommunication, and lost productivity.

Within five years 40 percent of workers will be contingent employees or located outside the office.


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Sustaining business growth made harder by competition and how customers do business

Economic recovery has been slow in the years since the global recession that began in December 2007. Attracting new customers and increasing revenue has proved challenging for many organizations, and sustaining business growth is made more difficult by competition from new players who are disrupting traditional markets.

Competitive disruption begins when your customers’ needs exceed what you can deliver. When that happens, your customers will find a company that can meet their needs. Take the case of Blockbuster as an example. Blockbuster had a highly successful video-rental service, with 9,000 stores nationwide where customers would come in, rent two or three VHS cassettes or DVDs, and take them home. But then Netflix came up with the idea of delivering DVDs by mail, and later introduced video streaming, which allowed consumers an inexpensive way to get all of the video entertainment they wanted without leaving home. Blockbuster was slow to respond to the new threat, and within a relatively short time the company was bankrupt and had to close its remaining stores.

With people worldwide becoming more connected through mobile and social technologies, your customers are part of that trend. Increasingly, they depend on the speed and flexibility of their own networks to make decisions on the go. Although 91 percent of mobile users often go online simply to socialize,8 social networking is much more than just another way to keep in touch with friends and family. Today, half of all consumers use a mobile device to research products and reviews9 before making a purchase. They rely heavily on social networks and peer recommendations to inform their buying decisions, and they quickly share their complaints with the world if they have a bad experience.

By the time your customers contact you directly, whether by walking into your physical location or accessing your web site, they are already 57 percent through the buying process.10 What it comes down to is this: Your networked customers expect more from your business. They want faster responses, personalized service, and better experiences.

To avoid competitive disruption or being circumvented by customers who are more connected than they are, companies today must be able to respond more quickly, communicate better, make decisions faster, collaborate more nimbly than their competitors, and provide outstanding customer experiences. And to do that, they need the right tools.

IDC estimates that inefficient collaboration accounts for an average loss of 21.3 percent in an organization’s total productivity each year.


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The Solution: Work like a network with enterprise social technologiesConsidering the many challenges created by today’s competitive landscape, how can companies engage employees, improve communication and collaboration, and grow their business? Enterprise social technologies empower companies to work like a network, connecting individuals to a dynamic network of people and information, and enabling companies to approach their business in new ways. When you work like a network, you’re able to listen to what matters, quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions, and grow your business through better collaboration, faster decision-making, targeted innovation, and personalized experiences for customers.


Listen to what matters most

Important conversations don’t happen exclusively in the office. To keep your finger on the pulse of your business, you need to be where your employees, customers, and partners are, so you can listen to and learn from their changing needs. When you work like a network, you’re able to listen to the conversations that really matter to your business, both inside and outside your organization. Enterprise social enables you to:

• Identify issues and opportunities sooner – With enterprise social technologies, you can identify business opportunities and other important issues outside your organization as soon as they happen—and quickly assess how they may affect your business. Enterprise social lets you embed social insights with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, and track products, brands, competitors, and campaigns in real time to gain a true understanding of your customers and your business across the global social network. The technology will scour social networks, and then analyze the data and present it to you in easy-to-read charts and graphs. These visuals can help you spot emerging trends, respond to service issues before they escalate, gain insights about your competitors, and develop a clearer view of your business.

• Increase visibility into other internal teams and departments – Enterprise social technologies also give individuals in your organization greater visibility into other teams, departments and locations inside your business by breaking down internal barriers to communication and collaboration. According to Yammer, workers who use enterprise social technologies experience 76 percent more visibility into other company departments or locations, and 80 percent are more informed about what is happening inside their organization.11

• Give employees a voice – Enterprise social also increases employee engagement by giving everyone in your organization a voice and enabling them to participate in cross-company conversations where they can offer opinions and share ideas.

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80% of workers who use enterprise social technologies are moreinformed about what is happening inside their organization.


Adapt quickly to change

As important as it is for business leaders to be able to listen to the relevant conversations taking place inside and outside their organizations, it’s even more important that they adapt quickly and make smarter decisions based on what they learn about the changing needs of their customers, partners, suppliers, and employees. With enterprise social technologies, you can:

• Empower teams to self-organize, focus and collaborate more efficiently – Enterprise social technologies increase team alignment, enabling teams to self-organize and focus through collaborative workspaces and groups. A key benefit of enterprise social is that it brings together people from different teams and backgrounds to solve problems together. Cross-functional collaboration isn’t impeded by organizational boundaries or physical distance. Enterprise social unifies people, conversations and content, so team members can collaborate seamlessly, participating in the same conversations and working with the same files, even if they are working in different applications. The results are impressive: Companies that use enterprise social technologies report a 37 percent increase in project collaboration.12

• Enable teams to make informed decisions and quickly respond to changes – Enterprise social technologies also enable team members to collaborate on documents in real time, no matter which applications they are in. And those conversations take place within the context of what you’re working on, such as a document or presentation, so you always have the latest, most relevant information and can adapt quickly as changes occur. According to McKinsey, 71 percent of business leaders report that enterprise social tools increase the speed of knowledge access.13 And it is only by connecting and engaging all of the people, knowledge, and content in their networks that organizations can realize the full potential of social collaboration.

• Improve employee, partner and customer satisfaction – Enterprise social also includes external networks that allow you to get feedback from partners, suppliers, and customers – in real time. Being more connected to people outside your company means you can respond quickly to changes. And just as efficient internal collaboration provides enhanced experiences for your employees, better external collaboration helps you build stronger relationships with the people who support your business. In fact, a Yammer survey14 found that networked companies—those that use enterprise social—experienced a 20 percent improvement in supplier, partner, and customer satisfaction.

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Grow your business

As a business leader, the effective use of enterprise social technologies can enable you to help grow your company’s business in three key ways:

• Deliver customer experiences that increase demand and loyalty – Enterprise social helps you deliver better customer experiences that increase demand for your products and services and strengthen customer loyalty for your brand. With enterprise social, you can deliver outstanding customer experiences by monitoring brand presence and tracking strategic initiatives across marketing, sales, and customer service.

• Spark innovation across your organization – Enterprise social can break down communication barriers across cultures, geographies, and organizational levels to accelerate innovation. Ninety-three percent of business leaders agree that enterprise social tools stimulate innovation within their companies.15

• Develop better products and services, and get to market faster – Along with increasing innovation, better communication and collaboration also will inspire your employees to think more creatively, which can help your business take those new ideas to market faster. On average, enterprise social enables companies to cut their launch schedules by 20 percent.16

The end result of all that innovation, faster times to market, and improved customer experiences is that enterprise social can help you grow your business significantly. According to McKinsey, enterprise social networks currently have the potential to unleash $1.3 trillion in annual global business value.17

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Are you ready to work like a network? At Microsoft, we believe that enterprise social technologies have the power to transform the way companies do business and to deliver real value—from providing better communication and collaboration to sparking innovation and improving customer experiences.

The comprehensive approach that Microsoft takes to enterprise social is unmatched, providing seamless social experiences across the familiar applications that people already use – all delivered on an enterprise-grade platform. Put more simply, our vision for enterprise social is to empower companies to work like a network.

Learn more about how Microsoft can help your company work like a network at www.enterprisesocial.com.


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Sources1 Cisco, 2013

2 eMarketer, 2013

3 The State of the Global Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for Business Leaders Worldwide, Gallup, 2013

4 2011 Global CIO Study, IBM, 2011

5 Interact, 2013

6 Intuit, 2013

7 The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute, 2012

8 Ruder Finn, 2011

9 ATG Web Commerce, 2011

10 Chief Marketer, 2012

11 Business Insights, Yammer, 2013

12 Inside Communication, 2012

13 McKinsey & Company, 2013

14 Yammer Business Trends Customer Survey, 2013

15 Red River, 2013

16 McKinsey & Company, 2014

17 McKinsey Global Institute, 2013

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