It's fitting this week that we are focusing around social collaboration, since the key buzzwords at the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit have been social, mobile, cloud and information. As the event comes to a close, John Brunswick shares his best practices for social collaboration adoption and how you can see the best results when implementing social technologies.
Want to get the most from your social collaboration investments? If you already have or are contemplating investment in this technology, consider the following to boost your social collaboration adoption.
1. Drive Awareness - Your line of business leaders hold the key to success. Ideally they proactively request this type of tooling in support of an existing use case, but that is rare. If you are looking to drive adoption, hold a lunch and learn and using "business speak" share external case studies and focus on capabilities - instead of product functions.
2. Deploy Within an Existing Process - Start viewing social collaboration more along the lines of process management. Identify "unstructured" processes with definitive start and end points that exist today. Social collaboration deployed to resolve challenges with existing unstructured business process are most likely to succeed.
3. Require a Strong "Why" - Ensure that rationale for a given social collaboration use is justified. Address this upfront, as the actual use - or lack of use - of your deployment will objectively confirm if the "why" was compelling enough.
4. Focus on Low Friction Experience - Regardless of the quality of your underlying technology, it needs to be easily accessible for end users. Success occurs when use takes place within existing flows of work, without additional need for login, frequent context and window switching.
5. Avoid "Just Because" - Social collaboration is a spice, not the main dish. Keep in mind that social collaboration is most impactful in the context of business entities and existing work flows. Social collaboration works when it is "purpose driven".