Experience with corporate social networks?

[Don Plumley]

I'm contemplating brining a corporate social network platform into our company. We already have a very large proprietary knowledge base and internal project management system, etc., so this is about improving the human connection and teamwork. I'm thinking chat and profile pages would be useful since our workforce is 100% home office, and distributed around the globe.

Do any of you have experience either using or deploying Yammer, Ning, SocialCast, or another platform? Curious about your experiences.

TIA,

Don

[widebody911]

We're "using" one based on Jive; I qualify the word "using" because while it's been installed and configured, and everyone has been told to use it, the only ones doing so are the sales and marketing droids, who are using it to parrot corporate propaganda to each other.

The interface is "meh" and it's another one of those POS's that was coded around IE, so you'll get unexpected behavior if you use FireFox or anything else, but the official support line is "best if used with Internet Explorer 6" or something retarded like that.

[s_wilwerding]

My job at my workplace is to evaluate and install collaboration products, including social software. Because of NDAs, I can't be specific.

To add to widebody's point - first, make sure you have a solid business case. There is a lot of social software out there that answers questions no one is asking.

Second, there a lot of products out there in the space. Be sure to evaluate a lot of them, including from some of the small players - don't assume the big players do a better job. As widebody says, usability is VERY important - there are a lot of products with whiz bang features that have poor interfaces, and therefore no one uses them.

Finally, know what you're looking for - most of the big suites do a lot of things, and often each individual piece is not the greatest in the marketplace. It's better to find software that does one or two things well, rather than five or six poorly.

[id10t]

Between using an instant messenger client (there is one for MS Exchange servers for internal only, but a lot of us use ICQ and have since the late 90s), email, and the occasional google docs document, we get a lot done with folks all over campus

[Don Plumley]

Thanks!

I'm torn between pulling one or two applications (chat/profile) and a more comprehensive suite. The downside of the suite is there's a lot of stuff I think is not necessary/distracting/could pull information away from existing systems. The upside of course is the integration, only one app to run, administration.

I rolled salesforce chatter out as an experiment with my sales team, but I don't think we have great traction/use.

Our biggest challenge/opportunity is to build more of a sense of community out of a group of people that have never met f2f. My latest employee survey shows we have a really happy workforce (it's self-selecting, people that don't want to work remotely/home-office couldn't work here) but there is interest in trying to feel less alone at times and better connect with their colleagues.

Keep it coming!

[911boost]

I agree with Steve and Thom. We have one, and I tend to use it some, but not very regularily.

I do see the Europeans in our company using it waaaay more.

Bill

[911Freak]

AIM? Wife's company (ISP w/outside sales force/home offices) uses that exclusively for their non email communication. They have strings of user IDs that include all staff and/or sales staff, provisioning etc.

[porsche4life]

We are using lync 2010 for chat, etc. very cool with the conference call features etc... Worth a look IMHO

[biosurfer1]

They installed Yammer at my work...its ok, I don't really see any use for it and maybe check on it once every couple weeks.

I bet IT loves it because it cuts down on stupid forwarded emails since everyone just posts their lovable cat pictures up there now

[stealthn]

It REALLY depends on what you want to get out of it. We use Yammer a little because it has the ability to have an external network to let our clients know what we are up to. Microsoftnbouht them and I'm sure it will be integrated into Sharepoint. For IM/Chat/meetings we use Jabber and Webex, been involved in Lync but don't really like their product. If you want something more tied into finding documents and SME's then Cisco's Quad (or what ever it's called now) is a very slick product, again it goes to what you are trying to achieve.

[widebody911]

We use Lync for chat and simple phone conferencing, and it's fine for that. I have yet to see any real use for the Jive-based solution. I think someone higher up played golf with/had sex with someone at Jive and now that's our "solution." Management is pushing us hard to use it, but we're looking at it like a dead fish asking "For what?"

[legion]

We have just about everything installed where I work.

I use Lync for talking with software testers, because they can't be bothered to walk the 20 feet to where I sit. I use e-mail for everyone else. We have Sharepoint and RedVine for knowledge management. I store a lot of documentation on my secure (can only be accessed by my team) site, but almost nothing on my public site as in my experience it just leads to awkward meetings with people who picked out a few buzzwords but otherwise completely misunderstand my technology.

We also have access to Facebook and YouTube (after agreeing to a strict work-use policy) and we have some sort of internal social network software. I use none of these things. At best, I could see being active on them as building a case for how much free time one has. I occasionally get a boss that tells me to create a site on the internal social network, and I ask them to help prioritize my workload so that I can ensure I have time to get it done. Inevitably, the boss decide that this particular task should be at the bottom of my list of priorities, which I explain means that it won't happen unless I run out of other things to do.

I find that one of the reasons I am able to complete so much more work than my peers is that when I get an e-mail, IM, or other communication that requires some follow-up, my first instinct is to walk down and talk to the person, I call them if that doesn't work, and I only send an e-mail as a last resort. Most of the time people completely misunderstand written communications, so by talking to them in person I can assess their mood and urgency, and tailor my response on the spot to get them the information they need instead of carrying on two mutually exclusive conversations that just so happen to be on the same e-mail/IM/etc.. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people carry on long electronic communications (weeks...months....years....) over issues that could be solved in seconds in person.

[Brando]

Originally Posted by widebody911

We use Lync for chat and simple phone conferencing, and it's fine for that. I have yet to see any real use for the Jive-based solution. I think someone higher up played golf with/had sex with someone at Jive and now that's our "solution." Management is pushing us hard to use it, but we're looking at it like a dead fish asking "For what?"

We use Lync 2010 for internal chat, Skype for external with our Vendors' support groups. It seems to be very common with other providers in our industry. 99.9% of our staff uses Faceplant anyways so that has become our "Social Media" solution. Hell, we base 2 of our main profitable products around social media networking so there is wide adoption within our side of the business. Being a "Microsoft Shop" we have the top-tier of Office 365 products at our disposal. maybe 11% get used by all branches of the company. SharePoint has been a blessing for versioning documents and internal account management.

The only place we're not using SM is within our CRM. I've been pushing to get us rolled over to SalesForce Servicecloud because of the inter-connectivity and Social Media aspect that everyone loves to "stay in touch" on internal and client items. I've been bringing it up at every operations meet because of the monumental advantages it will have. I hate to sound like a SF salesperson but it really is an awesome service for my branch of the business.

If you're looking for a solution to implement I first suggest identifying the communication problem - or if there even is a problem. Is the problem based on technology, or people? If technology, do you want to adopt a service already in place, or build one yourself? If people, is it skill related, or behavioral?

[porsche4life]

Originally Posted by legion

I find that one of the reasons I am able to complete so much more work than my peers is that when I get an e-mail, IM, or other communication that requires some follow-up, my first instinct is to walk down and talk to the person, I call them if that doesn't work, and I only send an e-mail as a last resort. Most of the time people completely misunderstand written communications, so by talking to them in person I can assess their mood and urgency, and tailor my response on the spot to get them the information they need instead of carrying on two mutually exclusive conversations that just so happen to be on the same e-mail/IM/etc.. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people carry on long electronic communications (weeks...months....years....) over issues that could be solved in seconds in person.

My company has 400 engineers on staff... In a sales roll there are times I am very dependent on the engineers to talk and tell me yay or nay on whether or not we can do something. I'm finding they are terrible about just sending and email and waiting for a response, instead of walking two cubes over and getting my answer. Meanwhile I'm 1k miles away in the field waiting on a price or an answer for a customer.....

[slakjaw]

I worked for a large telecom and they did this. The kids who work at the stores made it all gangster and started posting photos of their bad ass tats and chased the engineer types away. It was a disaster. They used to go on there and call out the CFO, challenge him to fights even. If you think parf is bad. You should have seen this.