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The Enterprise Social Network PrimerUnderstanding the performance benefits of creating a social business within the enterprise.

20 W. Kinzie, Suite 1510

Chicago, IL 60654

312.529.3000

info@a

www.duoconsulting.com

DUOC O N S U L T I N G

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

312.529.3000 www.duoconsult ing .com 2

DUO

Most people who work in today’s enterprise business

environment have better and more efficient tools

to collaborate with their friends (Facebook, Tumblr,

Instagram, Foursquare) and business connections

(LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) than they have to collaborate

with their work colleagues. That, however, is changing.

And it is going to change your business.

Evolving business practices and the maturity level of Enterprise Social

Networking (ESN) technology are redefining how businesses leaders view

social media. In fact, those in the business of identifying and tracking

business trends expect ESNs to make a significant impact

on business processes over the next five years based on their

potential to:

• Become a mainstay replacement for organizational intranets.

• Reduce (if not replace) the clutter of email inboxes.

• Speed innovation by stimulating internal and external

collaboration.

• Archive the knowledge an organization creates and

make it accessible via simple search.

If your organization is looking

for a way to better connect its

people and knowledge, it’s time

to start building a business case

for the adoption of ESN.

Enterprise social networking

tools are driving positive top

and bottom line results for

progressive organizations

globally. But we’re getting

ahead of ourselves.

Let’s start with

the definitions.

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

What is Enterprise Social Networking, anyway?

The Altimeter Group provides research and advice for companies challenged by business disruptions,

enabling them to pursue new opportunities and business models. In 2012, Altimeter Group released

a definitive study on the state of enterprise social networking. To help the audience understand the

practice, the organization defines the Enterprise Social Network — the practical term for an integrated

system of this kind as:

“ A set of technologies that creates business value by

connecting the members of an organization through

profiles, updates, and notifications.”

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

It’s About ProductivityThink of an enterprise social network as a place to apply online social

interaction strategies to work and productivity focused channels. It’s the

reading, sharing and communication power of Facebook applied to the

enterprise. And focus your mind on the positive aspects of Facebook. Don’t

go down the rabbit hole of challenges confronting this one social platform.

Enterprise social networks make categorizing communication as simple as

posting a piece of content to the right group, where you already know the

audience cares. These technologies change the way people interact across

department lines. What’s more, they can act as forums for partners and

clients, extending organized communication with a social bent outside

the virtual walls of the enterprise.

ESNs take everything that’s sticky about social media and apply it to

business interactions. More organizations are adopting this technology

and finding ways to make it successful. Yours could be among them.

Make your enterprise more lithe and more efficient with an enterprise

social network.

I’m sold. How do I build

a business case?

Looking to build a business

case for adding enterprise

social networking tools for

your business?

This eBook is for you.

You’ll learn:

• Why internal email must be leashed

in for the sake of business efficiency

• Enterprise Social’s ability to capture

knowledge and why that’s important

• How Social makes online collaboration

easier and more rewarding

• How silos can (and should) be broken

down with ESNs

• A few examples of how companies are

using enterprise social networking

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

Rumors of Email’s Death Are NOT Greatly Exaggerated

To realize the benefits of an ESN, organizations will be making a significant break

from their current favorite (but ineffective) archival and communication tool -

email. That’s right. This bad boy has got to be reined in.

If you took a guess, what percentage of your time during a given week do

you think you dedicate to managing your email account? McKinsey Global

Institute recently found we spend 28 percent of the workweek on average

reading, writing and responding to email.

Yep, you read that right. A quarter of your workweek. And how many

emails still sit unfiled in your inbox?

That doesn’t imply communication inside of the workplace is a bad thing.

Still, many of us understand the pain of digging through emails, tracking

email chains, figuring out who should and shouldn’t be on a thread and other

time-consuming practices that don’t seem to track with today’s ultra-efficient

business environment. Yet it remains our primary business communication

tool. What gives?

We spend 28 percent of the workweek reading, writing and responding to email.

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

IT research and business advisory firm Gartner, Inc. saw the landscape changing as far back as 2010:

“ By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the

primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent

of business users.”

Like email, enterprise social networks archive useful interactions and knowledge exchange.

But that’s where the similarities end.

Enterprise social tools offer new ways to interact within public and private environments. ESN members

have a single identity, rather than both a name and an email address. Communicating with more than

one person becomes more intuitive, eliminating much of the hassle involved in managing chains.

Does it make sense that the people who work in your enterprise have better and more efficient tools to collaborate with their friends and business connections than they have to collaborate with their work colleagues?

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

The best part is that you’re organizing and archiving as you go.

Wondering how this happens? Most ESNs are configured in “groups.”

These groups represent what’s relevant to members of the group, and

only group members see the content you post. You don’t have to think

about who should receive the communication; all you need is to consider

the topic of the content. Another way of thinking about it is that the

content creator “pushes” the content into the group environment.

The content lives there, not in your inbox (although that is still an option).

Then members of the group interested in the content “consume” it.

No email queue. No routing. No reply all.

It’s simpler to break through the noise of an amorphous email platform

and make sure your information gets to the people who need it most.

Each group is already categorized, and ESNs typically include robust

search functionality. You don’t have to rely on each person to organize

his own “inbox.” Think of the newsfeed as the next generation of

the inbox.

How does a social approach impact how

organizations archive and search for information?

Think of an enterprise social network as a place to apply online social interaction strategies to work and productivity focused channels.

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

How Knowledge Capture Makes the Enterprise More Efficient

Communication is an important part of enterprise social networking.

The flip side to that coin is recording that communication — creating

an environment that automatically captures data and making it more

practical to use that data.

Knowledge capture through enterprise social networking functions from

real-time and long-term perspectives.

• Real time: Capturing knowledge in real-time through a public forum

can help departments or teams avoid duplicating the work of another

team. Also, identifying the expertise or position of a team member is

quick and simple through user profiles.

• Long term: ESNs offer a searchable database that makes it easier to

form best practices around internal processes. When team members

move up, over or out, you have simple access to their content track

record and the knowledge they’ve shared over their time with your

group, team or organization.

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The Enterprise Social Network Primer

312.529.3000 www.duoconsult ing .com 9

DUO

The most unique part of how enterprise social networks capture knowledge is making this knowledge

actionable. An ESN has the ability to do this in two ways:

• Making knowledge public and searchable: An enterprise social network doubles as a central

repository for knowledge. The “central” part means it’s much easier to find pieces of data, creating

a library of sorts from which your entire organization can benefit.

• Simpler analysis: With the rise of big data, enterprise organizations are finding more ways to use

data to their advantage. An ESN is a great place to apply data layers, offering you insights into how

your organization works.

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The Enterprise Social Network Primer

312.529.3000 www.duoconsult ing .com 10

DUO

Social Media Makes Collaboration More Intuitive, Rewarding

Humankind is a social animal. Yet human resources software firm SilkRoad

says 57 percent of recent survey respondents reported they aren’t allowed

to access social media at work. So why do we fight sociability in the

workplace?

The popular thought process holds that social media like Facebook,

Twitter and Tumblr distract employees from doing their jobs. OK, we’ll

buy that. But what is also true is that you can wrestle some of that social-

oriented mindshare away from sites that are unproductive for business and

redistribute it to tasks that are. In sum, capture our social nature and put it

to good productive use.

What? You have an opportunity to take advantage of a technology that is so

compelling, so engrossing that employees can’t tear themselves away from

it — and you aren’t interested in finding a way to use that behavior to your

advantage?

Humankind is a social animal. So why do we fight sociability in the workplace?

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

Think about enterprise social networking as a way to make work more engaging for employees

at your organization. From a high-level perspective, enterprise social networking:

• Takes advantage of intuitive technology:

Professionals understand how to use websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. As social networks,

these websites are intuitive in their own right. As places where people kill 18 percent of their time

online (on average), they are clearly designed in a way that makes them simple to manipulate.

Is it the topic matter that makes these sites sticky? Or is it the user experience itself? Surely

constant social validation is a reason why social networkers keep coming back for more, and that’s

why enterprise social networking also…

• Incentivizes collaboration:

Social validation (through ‘likes,’ comments, etc.) is a huge factor in making social networking sites

sticky. It shouldn’t be surprising to think that an enterprise social network would encourage the

same type of social validation. In essence, that validation incentivizes the collaborative process.

As result, enterprise workers are actually rewarded for interacting with their coworkers.

You can imagine this could have a huge impact on how employees use enterprise communication tools.

Clearly, something about social media keeps people interacting (and doing it often). And ‘often’ might be

an understatement: Recently, researchers found that social media was as tempting as cigarettes or sex.

So, you know, don’t worry about making your pitch to your CEO ‘sexy.’ It already is.

Clearly, we can’t resist social media.

How do we turn it to our advantage on the business side of the equation?

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

Break Down Silos to Collaborate, Innovate & Build Camaraderie

Enterprise organizations spend countless hours attempting to break down the walls between

departments. Many people believe these walls are obstacles to collaboration.

Enhanced collaboration drives more innovation. And why would you build fences between friends?

Enterprise social networking tools break down those walls, opening an organization up to

collaboration across borders — departmental, geographical and hierarchical. Here’s a great

explanation by management and business expert Marcel Côté of how organizational silos

work against an enterprise.

“The symptoms of the silo effect are easy to recognize: lack of

cooperation, internal competition and breakdown in communication.

The result is that one division gets pitted against another — head

office against operations, one department against another.”

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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How can enterprise social networking address these issues?

• Cooperation between departments online:

An enterprise social network creates a forum where members

of disparate departments can reach across the aisle. These new

interactions open the door wide for innovation.

• Validation and constructive criticism, not competition:

Yes, social media can have a negative side. But employees are

familiar enough with business networks like LinkedIn to understand

appropriate, professional conduct. With enterprise social networking,

interaction typically takes on a constructive bent.

• Engaging public and private communication options:

Communication gets much more interactive through social

channels. Retain the ability to communicate privately while opening

other conversations to more people.

These benefits, coupled with the nature of interaction over social media,

create a great foundation for teambuilding. A strong, happy team is

essential to effective internal communication.

Researchers have found that social media was as tempting as cigarettes or sex.

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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DUO

Enterprise Social Networking Tastes Success

ESNs aren’t brand new. A few courageous early adopters have been testing the waters over the past

few years, making sure it’s safe for us to swim. That’s part of why we have so much confidence in

enterprise social networking as a practice.

Here are a few great examples of how enterprise organizations currently use enterprise social networking tools.

• Wells Fargo:

The financial giant recently spoke to InformationWeek about its various experiences with

enterprise social networking pilot programs. The company has run into its fair share of

obstacles — but says ESN tools have had a positive impact on sales. While the company

is sold on the concept, it hasn’t found the right software vendor just yet. (Might we

suggest a custom implementation through Drupal?)

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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• SAS:

The Hub is an ESN for SAS employees launched in 2011. Former Chief Knowledge Officer Frank

Leistner called it “one of the key communication tools within SAS, citing widespread adoption

and direct increases in collaboration.

• GE:

This well known engineering brand uses Salesforce Chatter to power its social networking

internally. GE CMO Beth Comstock cites reductions in time investment for certain processes

dropping from a week to mere minutes.

These are just a handful of examples of how enterprise organizations are applying enterprise social

networking tools.

There’s a whole rich world of potential in your enterprise, just waiting

to be tapped. Is 2013 the year you’ll make it happen?

The Enterprise Social Network Primer

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Duo is building Enterprise Social Networks

Duo has been involved in the strategy, design, development and

deployment of several enterprise social networks and business community

sites. Based on our experience, our clients’ successes and the evident social

business momentum, we continue to focus our efforts building custom

enterprise social tools for organizations like yours.

If you’re looking to cultivate a happy, healthy internal culture that spurs

innovation and saves your organization time and money, talk to Duo

about your next initiative.

Call 312.529.3000 or email to chat about how Duo Consulting can make

your enterprise more social.