Enterprise social collaboration allows for secure teamwork by adding benefits to the enterprise and not distracting employees.
This is the sentiment of Rudi Greyling, Avanade CTO, who sat down with ITWeb to discuss the brand's recent global survey on the adoption of social collaboration technologies.
According to the research, two thirds of companies are using some sort of social collaboration tool, with a similar amount saying these tools enable them to generate ideas and communicate better. "Of these companies, 98% said they have seen benefits as a result of their use of social collaboration tools. But while enterprises are seeing the benefits of social collaboration, there are still lots of issues to overcome."
The findings of the study demonstrate that companies want to allow their employees to collaborate, which Greyling says is a positive step, but if they don't do their research before deciding on what tool to use, things could go wrong.
According to the research, many companies have realised that their employees want to collaborate in the work environment in the same way they collaborate socially, said Greyling. As such, many enterprises have allowed staff to collaborate using consumer tools like Twitter and Facebook.
However, Greyling cautions against this, because enterprises are not able to properly monitor these tools, potentially jeopardising the security of confidential information. According to Greyling, 70% of enterprises using social collaboration in the enterprise are struggling with the fact that consumer collaboration tools are not strong enough for the enterprise. "Overwhelmingly, the research shows that the employees want these tools and the C-level execs want to support them; the only risk is going with the consumer tools initially and then burning your fingers."
Greyling described enterprise social collaboration tools as those that track what happens and offer safeguards, allowing the enterprise to monitor what information is flowing into and out of the business, as well as monitoring who logs onto the tool. Enterprise-class tools hide sensitive information and prevent information leaks by tracking what happens, he said.
"The world is moving away from the belief that one needs to travel somewhere to do something, to the belief that you should be able to get things done where you feel comfortable," he noted, adding that this saves companies a great deal of money and is also far better for the environment.
The research was conducted earlier this year. Some 4 000 end-users and 1 000 business and IT decision-makers in 22 countries took part in the Avanade survey.
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