Five Best Practices for Social Collaboration Adoption

Author: John Brunswick, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle WebCenter

Want to get the most from your social collaboration investments? If you already invested in or are contemplating investment in this technology, consider the following to boost your social collaboration adoption.

• Drive awareness. Your line-of-business leaders hold the key to success. Although ideally they request this type of technology adoption in support of an existing use case proactively, that is rarely the case. If you are looking to drive adoption, hold a lunch-and-learn session conducted in their language. In other words, use business speak and share external case studies that focus on capabilities instead of product functionality.
• Deploy within an existing process. Start viewing social collaboration as part of process management. Identify unstructured processes with definitive start and end points that exist today and deploy social collaboration to resolve challenges within those processes. Social collaboration projects deployed to resolve challenges within existing unstructured business process are most likely to succeed.
• Require a strong why. Ensure that the rationale for social collaboration is justified. Address this up front, because the actual use—or lack of use—of the technology will objectively confirm if the why was compelling enough.
• Focus on low-friction experience. Regardless of the quality of your underlying social collaboration solution, it must be easily accessible for end users. Success occurs when users can access the technology from within existing flows of work, without additional login or frequent context and window switching.
• Avoid “just because” reasoning. Social collaboration is a spice, not the main dish. Keep in mind that social collaboration is most effective in the context of business entities and existing work flows—it works best when it is purpose-driven.