The Rise of the Enterprise Social Consultant

Deloitte predicted that by the end of 2013 90% of Fortune 500 companies will have partially or fully deployed an enterprise social network, a 70% increase over 2011. Here we are at the end of 2013, and I think that number has been nailed many times over, literally.

In fact, one year after the acquisition of Yammer, Microsoft announced in a press release June 2013 that they are in 85% of Fortune 500 companies and for that matter, so is SharePoint. A press release around Tibbr and Hubble joining forces reveals that 80% of Fortune 500 also use that software. IBM also reveals more than half have licensing for their social software. A 2012 press release from Salesforce Chatter reveals that they are in over 50% of the Fortune 500.

The penetration of social software in business has been exponential. I would suggest that these same Fortune 500 companies have multiple competing enterprise social networking efforts. With multiple efforts from enterprise social networks (ESNs) such as, SharePoint, Yammer, Chatter and more, there’s confusion about what should be used, how it should be used and what benefits will anyone get out of a platform not endorsed by executives competing for the attention of users.

A common problem with social has been a tactic deemed “Provide and Pray” by Gartner, which they suggest has a 10% success rate. Both business and IT departments have simply gone the route of grass-roots efforts to enable social networking without purpose. Without the purpose, these efforts are doomed for failure. We’ve definitely seen in the past both Lotus Notes and SharePoint environments riddled with compliance and permissions issues seen as “the Wild West” by business users. Governance continues to be one of the biggest challenges in collaboration and social.

There are plenty of statistics to back up the transformation that can happen with collaboration and communication across the business and enterprise social and this transformation is poised to deliver the holy grail of a social infrastructure to provide for cultural change. Engaged employees are 37% more likely to stay with their employer. In addition “engaged employees deliver a 5X higher shareholder return,” (Constellation Research). The challenge is that those tasked with deploying enterprise social don’t know how to execute (Kenexa). So, what they do is task with IT in setting up a social platform and then just hope the “build it and they will come” theory will be good enough, if I can borrow the Field of Dreams, often-used quote.

I am setting you up for this new position of the enterprise social consultant. This amazing new position is one that helps bridge the business departments and helps the IT department including security understand how to support the organic “bottoms up” enterprise social network. There are really seven major areas on which this new consultant will be focused. You may be surprised by how small of a technical role this is:

• Work with the executive sponsors to understand the key metrics to watch for understanding adoption, influence and case studies, which will help justify the platform over time. REJ (rapid economic justification) is more important, as ROI (return on investment) isn’t something to focus on in this first visit, as it will become apparent over time. They will also gather support for future participation in tactics to help users understand support of the platform. Removing roadblocks and gaining endorsement for enterprise social initiative is step one.
• Community manager(s) empowered – The business ultimately needs to own the platform, and this is best done with extremely passionate individuals who know the business and have strong relationships across many departments. It’s their role to foster an environment of shared outcomes and a common vision of the community. This evangelist of community promotes platform success and helps drive adoption through campaigns and programs designed to educate and connect the business. They will also be responsible for working with influencers from the various lines of business to capture tacit knowledge into archives through tagging, tracking and linking. The consultant will partner with these community managers and people to ensure process and knowledge capture for artifacts. Enterprise social platform knowledge is important, but building relationships and passion are critical. Community must become a discipline within the organization, and the community managers will drive this.
• Policy and compliance – Work with legal and human resources on social networking communication policies that are simple and clear. The consultant will help provide guidance for user acceptance agreement that will help protect the company. This must be coordinated with corporate security and the enterprise social team or community manager(s) with additional enforcement and reporting through monitoring tool(s) and processes. Control will stifle innovation and adoption.
• Marketing and corporate communication alignment – Corporate communication may want to lead efforts, but particular attention must be paid to understand that this platform is first an employee hub and not designed specifically as another platform for corporate communication. It will require some training and working with them to help them understand how to work with the community. Community is not a one-way communication.
• Departments and lines of business – After a pilot or existing deployment is underway with sales, engineering, or support or any department that is poised to bring purpose to the platform, analytics will be gathered by the consultant, bringing data from the platform together with business data to help show impact and drive business adoption. Working side by side with the department will move existing business processes into the platform. While sales may find a lot of success, the ultimate success is when many departments can take advantage of the platform to promote cross-department and cross-group collaboration. As a matter of platform scope, external partner collaboration and even customer collaboration may be on the social roadmap.
• Influencers – Build a community from the influencers of the platform itself. These influencers will be the key to gaining key insights into business success and sharing in best practices, as well as correcting misuse of the platform. These are not people who want to be influencers and shouldn’t think of this as a panel position. These are movers and shakers who are have a passion to communicate and are willing to represent their departments or lines of business.
• IT Integration – They will help the IT department set up profile integration and single sign-on for making it simple and secure. They will also work with IT to determine how to integrate with existing service offerings, including intranet or extranet partner platforms and educating development teams around APIs, or more likely providing guidance on where to get this information. In addition, corporate security teams may need monitoring or insights with tools.

Building this social architecture is not easy. There are technical components, but the biggest challenge is orchestrating organizational change that is required to ensure success while managing and limiting risks.

Practice managers’ heads-up: Enterprise consulting companies will be driving programs that are not just driven out of the IT departments to tackle this.

We need transformation consultants who want to deploy social business strategy and can help educate the business. There are special skills required to go beyond simply “provide and pray” that will help transform the organization with ESNs and produce engaging employees, increase productivity, and ultimately, deliver results.