Burton Group Survey: Enterprise not quite grasping Social Networking

In a recent report published by the Burton Group, analysts’ found that attempts to replicate social networking (facebook) and their associated tools (twitter) aren’t really taking off within the corporate structure.

The report, social networking in the enterprise is based on detailed interviews with 21 companies spanning a wide variety of industries including utilities, consumer goods, technology, and finance.

With the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston bearing down on us, this report from Burton couldn’t have come at a better time, as businesses are struggling to not only understand, but utilize and maximize the technologies potential.  The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is a gathering of tech vendors that create social applications similar to facebook, twitter, etc., but specifically tailored for business usage.  In addition to the old standbys such as IBM (Lotus Connections) and Microsoft (SharePoint), new players including Socialtext, Jive, and Six Apart are slated to be in attendance.

But according to Mike Gotta, a principal analyst with the Burton Group, it’s not a problem with vendors’ product offerings that are the stumbling stone, but rather the corporate culture itself.  Gotta says that the challenge is in addressing specific generational differences, and getting them all on the same page.  Specifically Baby Boomers have demonstrated that they’re not inclined to embrace social technologies in the workplace (although they’re flocking to them from a consumer perspective).

According the Burton survey, the problem may not lie with the Boomers, but rather in how their employer presenting the tools to them.  Many companies have used social networking tools to share expertise, collaborate, and connect with others, especially in multi-location global enterprises.

“Some vendors are saying employees will go in and naturally fill these enterprise social networking profiles out, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” Gotta says. “If you’re an employee, you have questions. Why should you maintain it? What are you going to do with it? Those questions still need to answered.”

What else does Gotta see holding corporation adoption back?

• Creating a business case is difficult for people who don’t understand the technologies or have rigid ways of defining their success. Your CFO might want hard ROI, which social tools have a difficult time showing because they aren’t necessarily replacement tools. So, for instance, if people begin trading information on a wiki, that maintains a document’s changes in real-time. This is generally better than sending around reply-all e-mails with messy attachments. But while you know the wiki has helped your collaboration efforts, it might be hard to figure an exact dollar amount in savings since e-mail isn’t being replaced. “For that person that who wants blood on paper ROI , it’s a hard conversation,” Gotta says.

• Getting the proper players involved. Gotta says it’s essential to have a presence from HR in getting these technologies off the ground. If, for instance, you want to turn your corporate intranet into a social network with employee profile pages, you need to help people feel comfortable to share and know the ground rules. If people feel awkward about inputting information, it’s as good as dead. In addition, stakeholders (often department heads) must show they believe in the adoption of the technology by using it themselves and encouraging adoption. If they use it, it’s not guaranteed their employees will use it, but it’s more likely.

• Traditional corporate communications structures and etiquette. More old, conservative organizations communicate in a top-down fashion, which runs counter to social networks, where people collectively weigh in and discuss issues. Burton quoted one participant who noted the following: “We have a classic company — we communicate ‘at’ people rather than ‘with’ them.” On the upside, the proponents of enterprise social networking say that the technologies, if used effectively, can uproot that type of communications model.