executive insights into

8/14/2019 Executive Insights Into

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2/14EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS INTO EntErprisE social nEt work stratEgy

ENTERpRISE SOCIAL NETwORk STRATEGy AND CREATING BUSINESS VALUE

Social networks are a reality, a signicant element o todays social andbusiness environment. Employees are already using online social networks in

their personal lives, and increasingly or work. Organisations can ignore thisphenomenon, or they can choose to be proactive in exploiting the potentialvalue and managing the risks. Possible business benets include increasedeciency, greater collaboration, harnessing collective insights, productand strategy innovation, improved talent management, and protable newbusiness models.

The Enterrise Social Netor Strateg Executive Roundtable, hosted b Future

Exloration Netor and IBM, brought together senior executives rom some o Australias

largest organisations. Over lunch the insights and exerience o the articiants ere

brought to bear on e issues and critical questions surrounding this toic.

This reort summarises the conversations at the Executive Roundtable, illustrated ith

quotes rom the articiants.

pARTICIpANTS

Moderator: r D, Chairman, Future Exloration Netor

International Guest:Hed V, program Director, Social Comuting, IBM

Christine Burns CIO Blake Dawson

Stephen Cameron Grou Manager, Business Services Downer EDI

Martin Cassidy Director IT Services NSW Lotteries

Robert Cirbs Global IT Services Manager Aristocrat

Merle ConyerGrou Manager -

knoledge & Inormation ManagementAustrade

Mike Deggs Lotus Sotare, Financial Services IBM

Derek Goh Executive GM - IT Challenger Financial Services

Chris Holmes CIO Allens Arthur Robinson

Chris Kennett Head o IT Mirvac Group

Annalie Killian Catalst or Magic AMP

Sue Klose Director o Cororate Develoment News Digital Media

Chris Lampard Business Technolog Consultant Corporate Express Australia

Shane Martin CIO StocklandJonathan Stern Lotus Regional Executive, Australia/NZ IBM

Barry Simpson CIO Coca-Cola Amatil

Matt Tredinnick Lotus Sotare, Mareting Manager IBM


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Online social networks were rstbroadly recognised as a signicant

business phenomenon when NewsCorporation bought MySpace in July2005 or US$580 million. MySpace,the dating social network Friendsterand Googles social networkOrkut had already attracted many

millions o users, however primarilywithin a technology-savvy youthprole. The extraordinary growtho Facebook ater it broadened itspurview beyond college students,

together with the sustained riseo LinkedIn, have brought manyproessionals into the world osocial networking over the last two

years. Today hundreds o millionso people globally, includingmany proessionals and businessexecutives, use online socialnetworks.

At the same time, the last 5-10 ears

have seen the groth o a variet

o management tools such as

Organisational Netor Analsis that

stud ho ersonal netors suort

organisational erormance. Research has

clearl shon that the efectiveness and

cometitiveness o large organisations

is strongl correlated to ho ell the

ersonal netors ithin the comansuort collaboration, noledge

sharing, and roect execution.

The idesread ersonal use o social

netors toda is orcing organisations

to consider and sometimes set olicies

on ho the can be used b staf. At the

same time, comanies are recognising

that there is an oortunit to use

internal social netors to attract and

retain talented staf, ta the most

relevant exertise, enhance collaboration,

and ultimatel imrove organisational

erormance and business outcomes.

Toda, senior executives around the

orld are considering and imlementing

strategies to create business value rom

the use o social netoring tools.

Lessons rom the ENTERpRISE SOCIAL NETwORk STRATEGy EXECUTIVE ROUNDTABLE | pe 3

SOCIAL NETwORkS AND THE ENTERpRISE



It is clear that every largeorganisation is at some stage

o considering and grappling withthe issues raised by online socialnetworking. Some companiesare ocused on whether to blockexternal social networks, whereasothers are proactively exploring

using these tools or applicationsincluding project collaboration,recruitment, learning anddevelopment, and otherbusiness applications.

Ours is a very customer ocused

company, working in close to 50

locations across the country. Were

currently undertaking a businesstransormation we have grown

through many acquisitions and now

have decentralised processes inherited

rom these companies. We need to

provide conduits or technology and

social networking activity not only

internally but also with our customers

and suppliers.

We needed to put management

at ease. We prepared a white paper

demonstrating the value o making

inormation more reely available

regarding new employees, new

suppliers, new partners. In business

you want to know as much as you

possibly can.

The CEO has expressed a

desire to help grow an external ocus

in an organisation that or most

o its lie has been more internally

ocused. Within the culture there

are still very deep roots o not being

entrepreneurial. The new CEO has

stressed that he is specically and

explicitly looking or a much greaterexternal ocus. When you start

participating actively in networks

beyond your organisation that is when

a true external ocus starts, building a

more entrepreneurial culture.

Weve augmented our intranet

site so that now we have social

bookmarking on the side o the screen.

It takes into account not only the topic

youre searching or but the people

associated with the inormation.

Its done with tagging. The power o

tagging is really important because

when you search or inormation

you nd and learn about the expert

and youll ollow that person. Youll

be surprised at the amount o

quality content that is shared in that

environment.

Our trial o social networks is

going exceptionally well there is very

positive eedback rom employees.

They see it as a personal touch that

improves their enjoyment o the work

environment.

In our line o business we

live in Wiki and Blogland. From the

technology side, we love all this stu.

But Im yet to put my business hat onand see how this provides value back

into the organisation.

wHAT ARE yOU DOING NOw?

1


5/14Lessons rom the ENTERpRISE SOCIAL NETwORk STRATEGy EXECUTIVE ROUNDTABLE | pe 5

One o the rst and possiblymost important responses o

organisations to social networks isto implement or clariy policies ontheir use. These policies seek toaddress issues such as potentialloss o productivity and security riskwhile recognising that sta expect

to have some leeway in how theyspend their time, and that therecan be valid business reasonsto use social networks.

We are trialling a policy o

access or 30 mins a day, using

content ltering to control it which

enables it or personal use during

business hours but limits people romusing it all day. The trial has been

overwhelmingly positive.

Weve pretty much taken the

view that most people come to work

to do a good job. Were not going to be

police. Our code o conduct species

a reasonable amount o personal

use. Lawyers are yet to test what is a

reasonable amount.

We announced that we were

looking at who was doing what

even though we werent and the

usage started coming down. Now we

actually do monitor usage person by

person. We dont have a hard and ast

rule senior managers can make their

own call.

SOCIAL NETwORkING pOLICIES

Weve no problem with our

employees being on Facebook. We

need them to think about whats out

there and understand what it can do;

we want them to be out there.

When we were looking at

opening up sites there was discussionabout how we should do it - during

lunchtime, should we do it during

working hours, or or 30 minutes?

Whats lunch to me is not lunch to

someone else.

There seems to be a concern

about control. Our organisation is still

airly conservative and yet on this we

seem to be pretty liberal. We dont try to

control what people do or where theydo it we have a couple o lters or

pornography and games sites. But we

dont get reports on whos doing what.

We dont want to be too

dogmatic about how we use this.

What i I have one o my best

perormers spending an hour a day

on Facebook - do I really want to stop

them? I they are hitting their metrics

is it really that bad? We have wireless

everywhere. Most o our employees

have some sort o mobile device to

access the internet. I we say they cant

use their PC they can just nd an easy

alternative.

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Social networking may be thedomain o Generation Y but it is

quickly inltrating boardroomsstill heavily populated by BabyBoomers or Gen-Xers. There is anovert lack o understanding romsenior executives about why socialnetworks are compelling to younger

people. The social and culturaldivide is impossible to miss yetorganisations need to bridge thegap i they want to tap the valuerom a better connected rm.

They just dont understand

what is behind social networking;

management asks, Why does

someone want to record their entirelie and publicise it? They just dont

get it.

Our business objective is to

capture the 18-35 market. We want to

look at social networking as a possible

way o doing that. Yet most o our

IT people are in their late 40s.

We dont have a singleemployee that is not highly computer

literate. Everyone is on Facebook. Most

o those who have been late to get on

were rom our management team

very revealing. Were now on.

For Gen Y, social networking

is much more open than traditional

computing. Look at gaming. They

have a collective mindset achieving

common goals is more important to

them. They either win together or they

dont win.

In World o Warcrat people

create guilds and syndicates to build

their battle strategies. They recruit

people they have never met to execute

that, they operate in an environment

o trust, and together they execute

collab orative tasks. We think this may

be a uture business model or the

enterprise. We want to learn rom how

these people are operating, because

these may be the leadership skills we

need to develop or the uture.

One o the biggest initial

challenges I dealt with was with the

person in HR. He was a much older

person who didnt really get what the

availability o what these tools could

provide, even or the HR unction.

One o the reasons why people

dont give this a lot o thought is that

typically management sits in the Gen

X group, a bit older, just a bit beyond

the brie, and they dont understand

why people have iPhones, why people

are doing this. They ask Whats all this

Web 2.0 stu, how does it all work?

A NEw GENERATION

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SpEAkING THE SAME LANGUAGE

The value o collaboration withinan organisation seems clear but

language and cultural dierencesmay present obstacles to beovercome i social networks areto fourish.

Everyone seems to strugglewith there being so many sets o users

within an organisation. A one-size-

ts-all approach is not going to work.

We operate one o Australias

most global networks and

collaboration is the nature o what

we do. We have a very culturally

challenging environment, dealing

with technology dierences, language

dierences and cultural dierences.

We have seen cultural issues

with people in some parts o the world.

In Asia, people dont eel comortable

to openly disagree, so i someone puts

up a comment they are less likely to

disagree with that comment. We have

language issues in South America;

collaboration between languages is

an ongoing challenge. Its not solvedas yet were open to new ideas.

We have a large number o

non-computer users and also a lack

o technology at a lot o sites. There

are lots o non-technicians in the

organisation as well.

We have been using Wikis but

people use them dierently, andsometimes not at all. For example

we have ound that lawyers will

readily comment on something that

someone else has posted but seem

unwilling to make the rst post. There

is subtlety required in knowing how

to make these tools work within an

organisation.

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There is a spectrum o values

within an organisation there are a

whole bunch o people who are very

transactional but others who can see

that this is an interesting vehicle or

learning. People have always been

social creatures the technology is

just making it easier. Allowing people

to play in the spaces is contributingto the organisations learning agenda

because were getting an insight into

new trends as they emerge. These

trends will shape our business in times

to come.

Weve implemented extranet

technologies to help with some o

our transactions but weve also been

looking at how we can get external

people together. Were getting peopletogether or peer review in a small

pilot, weve probably saved about 15

business class ares to Perth a air

hunk o cash. We use collaboration

tools, whiteboarding, and similar tools.

Trends such as social

networking will eventually lead to new

business models and new product

and service delivery. Over the next veyears the way products and services

are sold in our industry will be vastly

dierent to how it is done today.

Anything the organisationdoes must support its objectives.

Sometimes the link betweenprotability and the use o socialnetworks is not evident, eventhough executives may intuitivelyeel that there is one. In the longerterm there is the expectation that

the rise o social networks andsimilar tools will have a signicantimpact on the way business isconducted, including onbusiness models.

We want to use tools to

make money. What is the payback?

Capturing knowledge and ocusing

on engaging people. We are seriousabout nding ways to engage people.

We have to compete or talent.

The power o social networking is

real. One characteristic is collaboration.

The second characteristic that

enterprises can take advantage o is

user-generated content. I we dont

capitalise on that we are missing out

on something important.

BUSINESS OBjECTIVES AND BENEFITS

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IMpLEMENTATION

6Creating business value requirestaking action. Most o the

organisations that are activelyengaged in initiatives in the socialnetworking space indicated that theirattitude is one o experimentation,with the intention o reocusing orshutting down trials that are not

working, and building on successes.

One o the things that has

been really good has been the ability

o these tools to capture hearts and

minds in asking people to contribute

knowledge and take time or the good

o the enterprise rather than or their

own personal objectives and social

networks. The easier you can make that

process the easier it is or people to seethe benets and to get on board.

IBMs Blue Pages which gives

access to sta proles is the most

used application in the organisation.

It builds proles o expertise and what

people have worked on, what they

know, what they have done. This helps

you connect with the person who can

help you with your particular issue it breaks down geographical and

departmental boundaries.

I you want to use it as a tool

or talent management or social

collaboration thats great. But I look at

the cultural aspects o the organisation

rst to make sure we have all the

elements in place. These tools can

enhance the culture, but without the

basics then all the tools will just allaway.

We have an evolving strategy.

Fail ast and cheap. Were nding

thats the best strategy. Lets put a wiki

around this and see it i works. I no

one wants to clean it up then we kill it.

We now have a journalist

writing a blog or us its our

innovation exchange she gets

inormation rom inside and outside

the organisation and posts it so that

we understand whats going on.

One o the big challenges I have

aced is working out which aspects

o consumer Web 2.0 will work in our

organisation. There is a quite a big

dierence in the economies o scale

and the applications o those tools which aspects o Web 2.0 translate to

working within the enterprise.

I people want to have their own

Facebook page terric. I they want

to develop their own product or tool to

enable collaboration terric. I they

are chatting thats interesting but

lets capture knowledge and engage

talented people in worthwhile tasks.

One o the positives is that it is

reasonably cheap and easy to get a

pilot up and running to evaluate how

successul a new technology will be.

Fail ast, ail cheap. Set things up as

pilots and pick up the lessons.



CHANGING ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

Shits in communication patternsimpact organisations structure,

not least by enabling greatercommunication across establishedhierarchies. Companies areincreasingly looking at proactivelyadapting their organisationalstructures as social attitudes and

business processes change.

A transormation has

occurred between people working

in hierarchical worlds to one in

which people are gaining credibility

and social rewards through social

networking, publishing, producing

content, becoming experts. It is easier

to nd people within the organisation,

breaking down the traditionalhierarchy. There is a now a at

management model it has shrunk

the organisation to ocus attention

and eorts to solve particular

problems rather than on teams or

departments or job titles.

With Gen Y there will be more

turnover in people. The idea o managing

PCs internally its just like what we didwith company cars 20 years ago. What

do we do now with company cars? Well

we package a lease and the guy drives

wherever he wants. Thats how Gen Y is

using social networking It leads to a

view that we need to treat people more

like contractors to the organisation.

Rather than trying to control how people

use these technologies we need to

architect how we connect the existing

tools to the enterprise.

The whole organisation is

about collaboration. So the area o

social networks is really critical or us,

particularly i we want to provide a

seamless service delivery to the client.

We have a multitide o high-

prole brands. Our business is aboutdealing with lots o people in lots o

places our customers range rom being

very small to major grocery entities and

we have a ar-ung service and sales

team so we are always looking or new

ways to communicate with our people

and with our customers.

The credit crunch has been a

good thing. In good times it takes

organisations a long time to look atnew things but in times o difcult

business we are more ready to see that

we need to consider change. The way

we market our products is going to be

dierent.

Where are we going to end up?

People will change jobs increasingly

rapidly. We are shiting to a ar more

exible stafng model in which I can

engage people as and when I need

those particular skill sets. Take the

contracting model, which is oten

more collaborative than work inside

the organisation.

7



COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGIES

Everyone acknowledges thevalue o collaboration and many

o the organisations representedare already using collaborativetechnologies. Social networkingapplications are seen to be anatural extension o existing toolsand perhaps the next step in key

unctions such as expertise locationand managing talent, change andknowledge.

Collaboration and

communication is a huge issue or

a company o our size which is as

distributed as we are, and Im sure it is

or a lot o other companies.

Its a new way o working and

a new thought process to take the

models o industry and building a

network o people you want to keep

contact with. You need to maintain

the relationships you have with people

because thats potentially how youre

going to get another job or another

employee. You can mentor each

other etc to capture this inside the

organisation.

What are the tools that

will make this easy? Wiki, cloud

computing, create tagging, drive

content and search or data. Get an

entry point to create an open avenue

where people can start to contribute

content and then use things like

tagging and searching to benet an

organisation.

We are using wikis or ormal

work instructions. Wikis allow people

to see changes over time, with more

up-to-date inormation leading to

better work outcomes.

Look at tenders, responses

to inormation, there is going to be

much more o a requirement orcollaboration in the uture, to have

that interactivity, to have people

working on the same inormation in

the same context. As I see it you want

to know as much as you possibly can.

8



LIFE / wORk BALANCE

Throughout the discussionsthere was a recurring theme

o the need to value the people,and recognise that changing workpractices have seen the blurringo the division between publicand private, between personaland corporate worlds. People

receive and transmit personalinormation using corporate assets.At the same time employees alsooten use their personal tools,networks and time to contribute

knowledge and ideas tothe enterprise.

Social networks open us all

up to a dierent degree o exposure.What is the boundary o personal

and proessional?

We are aware o the ethical

consideration the boundary between

public and private. I get alarmed when

I hear about organisations trying to

exploit personal networks or nancial

gain. The essential nature o Facebook

is about social connection and thethings that dene who people are

in the world as a human being. The

leveraging o that or the enterprise

online raises some substantial issues

around ethics and exploitation.

We have a lot o people using

Facebook to track alumni and so

on, and as a source o connection.

Every now and again we close it down

because it swamps our network.

Typically its when someone in the

organisation gets married and they

are uploading their videos

We now have mixed personal

lives and work lives. Individuals dont

make a strong distinction between 9-5

and employers dont have to ocus on

a resource being used just within those

hours. The rules o contributing are

much looser now.

Some o our people use

Facebook or the work they do, such asnding developers in their network to

make new applications or come in and

help create our site.

Organisations will succeed i

they help their employees succeed.

Individuals success and their

contribution to their organisations is

highly correlated to the strength and

diversity o their personal networks.

Supporting individuals in developing

their personal networks will help them

contribute to the company.

9



web 2.0 ge w

Dve v d h hweb 2.0 ehe

Organisations want to take advantage o open,

fexible Web 2.0 technologies. They want to usesocial sotware and mash-ups to add a newdimension o imagination and innovation. IBMsWeb 2.0 Goes to Work initiative is already helpingbusinesses apply Web 2.0 technologies across

the globe to gain a competitive advantage.

www.ibm.com/web20

ce ee f deh d he

Future Exploration Network assists major

organisations worldwide to build eectivestrategies or the long-term uture and to createnew business opportunities. Services includestrategy development, scenario planning,research, custom events and creating thoughtleadership content.

www.futureexploration.net


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