UPDATED 07:08 EDT / SEPTEMBER 11 2012

Measurement is the Key to Unlocking the Value of the Social Enterprise

Today’s employees are using social technologies in their personal life, and aren’t expecting anything less in their professional life. This bottom-up approach is pushing organizations to revisit their internal collaboration systems and policies. At the top, the C-suite sees the move towards a social enterprise as an opportunity to increase innovation and improve efficiencies.

As companies revisit their intranet and collaboration tools, we are beginning to see the emergence of the social enterprise. It’s the evolution of yesterday’s intranet into a dynamic, user-centric environment for employees to easily access information, people and experts. Regardless of the new tools available in the market, these strategies and systems continue to struggle with the same difficulties of early intranet systems. The most prevalent issue is how to measure adoption and engagement to demonstrate ROI and business value.

Simply adding new social technologies, however, will not create a social enterprise. A successful program requires a well-designed strategy for content, design, adoption promotion and measurement to capture business metrics. Establishing best practices and implementing a measurement strategy around critical success factors will set organizations up for success as they embark on the next wave of internal communication.

Siemen’s is a good example of a company who used a measurement strategy to understand why their engagement and readership waned on their intranet.  They decided to track internal content and campaigns to measure user downloads, uploads, edits, PDFs, PowerPoints, videos and other documents.  They captured data at the aggregate level for each document in line with their corporate privacy policy.  Siemens used the data to create a more community-centered site and readership grew 162%.

Opportunities to drive business value occur when organizations understand who uses their intranet and collaboration tools—and how they are used—and then leverage this information to drive adoption and incorporate new technologies that provide value to the users.  Measurement is a cornerstone to this strategy and the foundation for actualizing the benefits of a social enterprise. For years, organizations have been tracking customer content consumption and behavior on their websites in order to fine-tune marketing initiatives and generate revenue. Now, organizations are finally recognizing the value of understanding their employee behaviors and leveraging it to increase innovation and improve efficiencies.

The social enterprise builds on the promise of the intranet. While a measurement strategy can help organizations evaluate success and areas for improvement, adoption, power usage and cultural shifts don’t happen overnight. It is an evolution designed to get the organization working better together. The intranet is not just about sharing documents; the intent is to break down walls between people, groups and departments in order to leverage the wisdom of the crowd.

How an organization defines its measurement strategy should be aligned with their business objectives. The first step is recognizing that a measurement strategy is important to the overall success of your project. By measuring adoption you can improve adoption.  Understanding who is using what and how by department, geography and measuring content usage by factors such as downloads, shares and rating systems, and measuring behavior you’ll be capturing critical intelligence that can be mapped back to support the business process and opportunity.

Without a measurement strategy and measurement tools, organizations are flying blind on intranet value. At the end of the day, it is about an organization’s level of commitment to their internal knowledge center and the resource that can power their workforce.  Incorporate a measurement strategy to unlock the value of your intranet and help you make that move toward a social enterprise.

About the Author

Jeff Seacrist is VP, Partner Solutions.  Currently on his second stint at Webtrends, Jeff is one of the early innovators in the web analytics industry.  In 2000, he created and built the SaaS business at Webtrends, and was also instrumental in shifting the web analytics industry from its early IT-oriented approach to the business-focused solution that it is today.   Jeff has also led new product development initiatives for Dex Online – spearheading early online advertising solutions for local businesses, and led marketing and product management at Aisle7, developing technology-based shopper marketing programs for retailers.  Jeff holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and 2 sons.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU