Social media has become an important tool in today's digital environment. Understandably, digital communication and social skills have become more important than ever. The world is indeed becoming more social, and so are businesses. In that respect, corporate social networks are increasingly present in the workplace and are replacing traditional corporate intranets and acting as collaboration centres.
The analysis of your needs and goal alignment
Needs are the bane of any technology embracing. More often than not, organisations are so eager to implement technology that they sometimes fail to properly and accurately define their business needs. As a result, they come short of meeting user expectations and business needs. But when this happens, it is often too late. Once end-user confidence is lost, it is very difficult to regain.
Needs analysis can be quite a complex step, but the successful alignment of business objectives, measurable use cases and key performance indicators are crucial phases to ensure the long-term success of your corporate social network.
Connecting and relocating content
Social collaboration without context is just chatter. Indeed, much of the ideas of corporate social networks and collaboration are content-centric, meaning that any new social implementation must take into account existing document repositories and collaboration tools. Therefore, plans must include careful consideration of how you move your content and how to preserve that all-important context during and after the move.
You may also need to integrate user data sources. New technology integrations and data migration can provide an opportunity to clean up many of these areas.
Formal corporate social networks adoption strategy
Even if you think the technology will be instinctive, you will need a formal adoption strategy. Beyond initial training, the plan you put up can be a great way to improve collaboration, communication and employee engagement across the business, helping to instil good practices in your corporate culture. In a nutshell, these social networks are an easy way for people to connect and share content and ideas.
Keep up the conversation with your end-users to identify the best ways to keep them involved. as corporate social collaboration is all about the users. Indeed, if they don't feel committed to your enterprise, your system will fail.
