Social Networking & The Enterprise: The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge on implementing Social Networking technologies in larger organizations is not the technology; it’s the people and the communications processes they use. We’ve found this in several instances now on consulting projects. Social Technologies are disruptive to current organizational communications. I’ve already posited about the potential decrease in the need for middle management earlier this year.

For most mid-large organizations today, communications is managed in a “top down” or “tall” structure as established well over 50 years ago – and so much of the best practices for organizational workflow and the inherent communications needs that are part of that, leverage older social technologies like the phone, fax, snail mail and email. IT systems are built around these processes. The first evolution of change came from ERP systems like SAP, who has smartly moved into the smaller organization space with ByDesign. Such ERP systems brought better communications and workflow and will likely lead any significant evolution of social networking capabilities in the future.

The primary consideration for senior management will be understanding how communications will change. New social technologies like social networks for business are based on a more natural flow of human social behaviours. But even though they are, organizations today aren’t necessarily built that way. As a result, introducing such social networking solutions for large organizations can be incredibly disruptive if not well-planned at the start.

Since such technologies do bring inherent value to an organization with increased speed of workflow, better inter-departmental communication etc., I have little doubt they’ll be implemented eventually. In the short term however, it is likely to be the smaller businesses that adopt these tools first as they are more flat in structure and can change processes more easily. GoogleWave is an example of an emerging social technology that can have a huge impact on organizational structure and communications.

No doubt businesses will become “flatter” in coming years, but management consultants, ERP solution providers and software developers will have to learn different ways of understanding workflow communications.