I was with a customer the other day who very succinctly described their business motivation for delivering an Enterprise 2.0 intranet. “We’re looking to expand, but without increasing management costs”.
Employees who are efficiently networked don’t need management making sure that they’re talking to the right people, or introducing them to other members of the organisation.
They don’t need to attend team meetings with the “enforced networking” sessions that invariably happen afterward.
They don’t need to ask their manager who they need to ask about abc, or where they can find information about xyz.
They find that information from the flow that social software generates – their personal radar enables them to know who to ask and where to look.
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March 2nd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
In an economic climate when cash is tight and resources are cut thin, an investment in your best asset, people, cannot be overlooked. Leveraging people means giving them the tools that, as you say efficiently networks them. Social software helps people connect over content, get work done and leverage the expertise that otherwise sits latently all around the organization.
My recent post on Why Software is a Good Investment contrasts an investment in social software vs. hard goods or other resources: http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog969