What are Enterprise Social Networking Solutions?

Enterprise social networking solutions have successfully extended the community-oriented dynamic approach of social networking to the corporate environment. Such business applications garner collaboration and cross cultural communication across the organization and enhance employee productivity and efficiency. Generally deployed over corporate Intranet, enterprise social applications ensemble the functionalities of famous social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn with enterprise-standard security, delivery model options and data analysis.

Need for Social Networking Software Solutions

Social media has turned over the communication landscape completely. By using revolutionary tools for creating personal and business networks around the world quickly, social platforms have stitched the world together into a global village. The way of doing business today is tremendously impacted by online conversations and people sharing similar interests like contacts, place of work, interests, beliefs, location, values etc.. Not only communications, social networks have also impacted Information Technology industry by providing reason, revenue and a rapidly growing network.

Organizations across the globe are adopting social media solutions to create a powerful network of users who interact across channels through text, audio and video chats, text and email messages, sharing pictures and files, writing opinions and experiences in blogs, discussing on forums, sharing common interests and affiliations etc. without any geographical barriers. Enterprise social networking platforms are alternative tools for mining useful information from heaps of corporate data produced by employees. It empowers users/employees to access and share data among colleagues regardless of physical distance between them.

Benefits of Enterprise Social Networking Solutions

Enterprise social applications are useful platforms for utilizing staff knowledge across the organization. They replicate the casual virtual online conversations between people with off-hours interaction. However, organizations investing in such solutions get caught in the caveat of focusing on tangible returns in terms of improvements in processes, faster time to market and cost reductions. Enterprise social applications do deliver these benefits, but more than these, the advantages like knowledge sharing and ease of communication are intangible.

Broadly divided into two types- internal and external, social networking solutionsdeliver distinct value to organizations. Internal enterprise social software initiates collaboration amongst users, sense of community with discussion forums and being able to find the right resources and expertise within an organization through active communication and engagement forums.

External social networking solutions address customer service using social CRM, social marketing and many other tools at their disposal. Tools such as blogs, engagement forums, content communities such as YouTube, wikis, microblogs etc. are useful for social conversations.

At TechoStudios, we develop highly scalable offshore social networking solutions to increase our client’s online footprint and networking across the globe. We implement the latest and highly demanded features spanning all aspects of social networking. Our solution provides tailored social networking sites with customized look and feel. Using cutting edge technology, we serve rapid development of social networking solutions tailored to our customer’s demands and requirements. The entire process is personalized in order to develop a social network suited to the organizations culture and strategic needs. Our solution includes features such sharing & uploading of audio and video files, internal messaging, image gallery, interactive blogs, discussion rooms, RSS feeds, community and individual real-time chat etc. Our enterprise social networking tools get easily integrated into our client’s existing communications applications. We cater to both cloud and on-premises demand depending upon the regulatory landscape to which our customers are subject to. Our enterprise social networking solutions can be deployed easily and require little or no customization.

Key features of Enterprise Social Networking Solutions

• Networking connections by establishing links between user profiles
• User profiles based on roles
• Community tools such as discussion forums, blogs, wikis
• Real time Streaming for events
• Analytics such as locating of experts
• Cloud-based and on-premises delivery or via an appliance

A few important use cases for social networking solutions include social networking within a business for the purpose of expert search, collaboration for knowledge exchange, enterprise-wide communication, personal information management and more effective project management

Comparison of Enterprise social networking solutions with traditional collaboration and intranet software

Enterprise social networking platforms have many parallels with traditional collaboration and Intranet-based software packages such as Microsoft SharePoint. Community-based exchanges for collaboration across projects are one such example. However, enterprise social applications improve upon the older static packages that with more holistic and dynamic feature sets. Enterprise social software packages are richer in functionality, easier to use and less customization oriented.

Challenges in adopting enterprise social software

Although enterprise social applications are promising, however, IT organizations need to understand a few challenges before they deploy the technology-

• Resistance to adopting enterprise social applications– While many young and new users may be drawn to social applications by its ease of use, elder and old employees, particularly those who do not consume social networking in their private lives, may find it difficult to use and may not be willing to adopt such tools. A buy-in from the key stakeholders is needed along with enterprise-wide awareness and training session. At TechoStudios, we ensure that these issues are addressed. We provide training sessions and workshops to help our clients embrace our solutions
• Enterprise social software is seen as a distraction than a productivity enhancer by many organizations. Others look at the technology as too risky for their business, expressing concerns about security and privacy. We ensure that our clients understand our solutions in-and-out and drive real outcomes from implementation of our solutions.
• IT has doubts about the technology- its management and implementation. We partner with our clients to ensure the real ROI potential of enterprise social applications.