by Microsoft
The world has become a giant network, transformed by the growth of mobile devices and social technologies. In fact, there are now more devices than people. 1
This networked world is clearly
evident in our personal lives: We keep in touch with our friends and family on Facebook or Instagram, use Twitter to get the latest news from people around the globe, and often find our next career opportunity with LinkedIn. In this networked world, people connect with each other easily, information and knowledge move faster, and we are able to accomplish more by working together.
Yet despite these network advances, employees at most companies continue to work as they have for the past decade. Reply All is the standard for team communication, document version control is often unwieldy, and employees constantly seek troubleshooting and technology support from the help desk.
In addition to these cumbersome processes, information at most companies still comes from the top down, often getting trapped behind internal barriers created by geography, organizational function, broken communications channels, and unconnected systems used by different departments.
Such information silos hamper employee communication, block collaboration, and slow decision-making - and it's easy to see why. On average, knowledge workers spend 20 percent of their time - an entire day every week - searching for information internally. 2
Meanwhile, many other workplace and work-style trends reinforce these silos. Workers today are far more mobile and widely distributed than ever before, frequently working from remote locations and on multiple devices. Work styles are also changing, as employees from different generations-;often three generations within the same company - diverge in how they choose to collaborate and communicate.
Employee disengagement: a growing problem
According to Gallup, only one in eight employees worldwide (13 percent) are truly engaged at work, while 63 percent are "not engaged" and one in four (24 percent) are "actively disengaged." 3
This is a big problem for businesses, because workers who are not engaged are just killing time at work, while those who are actively disengaged are negative about their work and hostile toward their employers. In the United States alone, Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs companies $450 billion to $550 billion every year.
By contrast, companies whose employees are engaged have significantly higher productivity, profitability, and customer ratings as well as lower turnover, less absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents. Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their jobs and are the ones most likely to drive innovation, growth, and revenue.
These broader workplace trends combine to make companies, and the employees who work for them, more fragmented, while the rest of the world is networked and breaking down barriers in unprecedented ways. The result at work is often a loss of focus and competitive edge for the business - and a support backlog for IT professionals.
Top IT benefits of enterprise social
- Listen to what matters. Enterprise Social makes it easy for IT leaders to listen to users-;employees, partners, and suppliers-;and to connect them regardless of their location, work style, or the type of devices they use. Such connection and collaboration are vital to a company's success. More than two-thirds of chief information officers (CIOs) from top-performing companies see internal collaboration and communication as the keys to innovation. 4
- Adapt quickly to changing priorities and opportunities. Enterprise social technologies increase team alignment, enable teams to self-organize and focus through collaborative workspaces, and ensure that team members can make informed decisions and quickly respond to changes.
- Grow your IT impact on the business. By enabling greater innovation, faster times to market, and improved customer experiences, Microsoft Enterprise Social can help you grow your business significantly, which is why more and more businesses are starting to view enterprise social technologies as strategic investments. 5 Yammer, for example, has a potential return on investment (ROI) of 365 percent. 6 According to McKinsey, enterprise social networks currently have the potential to unleash $1.3 trillion in annual global business value. 7
Conclusion
Enterprise Social technologies have the power to transform the way companies do business and to deliver real value from providing better communication and collaboration to sparking innovation and improving customer experiences. And by implementing these technologies across your business, you can also solve many of today's most challenging IT problems.
Excerpted from the white paper, "The Benefits of Enterprise Social for IT Professionals." To view the full white paper, download it here.
source:http://www.inc.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment