Why Did We Deploy Social Media Software in our Enterprise?

I was asked this question recently ("why did you deploy social media software in your enterprise?") and thought I would respond in this blog. It's a question many people are facing as they consider whether to implement social business software.

I can't say I was present at creation, so to speak, but I think I can piece together what led us to where we are today (about seven months into our deployment of Jive Clearspace). In one word, we saw potential.

This is not proven technology. The benefits of deploying social business software are not widely acknowledged and accepted (although this is changing rapidly, I believe). We had individuals in our organization who saw potential, took initiative, and made a case for trying this.

But what did we expect would happen? I think that's really what the question is.

We expected at least the following (and we hoped for much more):

• Communication among and within our many divisions would improve. Email would in some ways be replaced with more effective means of communicating (e.g., discussion threads, blogs, posting files in a centrally accessible location).
• Collaboration would be enabled in new and exciting ways, again, both among and within our many divisions.
• Significant financial benefits would result from sharing what our smart and experienced people are doing in silos all over the world with the rest of the enterprise, so we can leverage what works and learn from what doesn't.
• Most ambitiously, I think we expected to develop a more cohesive company culture. We've grown so much through acquisitions that we have a global patchwork of cultures more than one enterprise-wide culture. Without diminishing those independent cultures, we wanted to develop a sense of community that's enterprise-wide.

But I have to come back to the word "potential," again. The most compelling case for deploying social media software was the allure of unknown benefits, and the sense that there were opportunities that we just don't want to miss. And so we leaped, and so far we're soaring along nicely!