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Special Feature

Social Networking 17

Yammer, Chatter & Jive@Work

India Inc now has its own Facebook or Twitter, minus the personal diaries. New friends are made and colleagues followed, but business always comes first as employees connect within corporate firewalls, reports Shelley Singh

usiness process outsourcing guru Pramod Bhasin is an avid advocate of networking. And who would know better how to do it. He expanded Genpact from one customer to more than 400 and built the countrys largest business services company . The networking he talks about is in no way related to the popular social hangout zones LinkedIN or Facebook but a host of business networking software that companies are now downloading from the cloud or installing on corporate servers. India Inc is staying in the loop, using social networks imaginatively named Yammer, Jive, Socialcast, Quad, Connections, Chatter, SociatText and more (see box). Social networking can be the killer application in corporate strategy but , not the way people do on Facebook, Twitter or the like, adds Bhasin, vice chairman (non-executive), Genpact. He believes its a must-have tool to encourage teamwork and best practices. Bhasin did log on to Facebook and within a week, got off it. I was inundated with friend requests. I didnt want to know what people had for lunch. It was too much to digest! Corporate social networking has added pizzazz to the intranet, without diluting the seriousness of connecting online. If there are friends to be followed or images to be uploaded, there is also The information on best corporate practices and innovasocial tions that can be networking shared. Companies platform organised into sepalooks jazzy, rate regional, productcompared line and functional siwith the los see social staid intranet networking as the tool thats bringing together manufacturing and marketing, as Manish Choksi, chief of corporate strategy & CIO, Asian Paints puts it. Now both are on the same page, he adds. Genpact is doing a toss-up between Yammer and Jive, while Asian Paints and Federal Bank recently got started on IBM's Connections. Bajaj Auto Finance, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro Technologies and a host of others have started off with business social software to help employees follow colleagues beyond their cubicles. Cisco is piloting Quad, launched in India two months ago, at one of the largest public sector banks in the country Ffreedom, a two-and-a-half year old . wealth management company works , out of Chatter, a business social network tool from salesforce.com. Less than half of its 48 employees come to office. We have a mobile application of Chatter. The office is on our hands and we track people and work on the cloud, says CEO, Sumeet Vaid. For the Mumbai-based start-up, it also means saving on expensive real estate. Such a buzz within corporate firewalls may lack the bells and whistles that social networking darlings Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN offer, yet are the new face of business networking. If global trends are any indicator, India Inc too will soon be Yamming, Chattering or Jiving away . A 2010 report from Morgan Stanley says, there are increasingly more social networking users than e-mail users. According to technology research firm Gartner, by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for at least 20% of business

companies bar employees from using public social networks during office time. For example, Genpact bars access to public networks in office hours, citing security and customer concerns. Says Sanjay Shelvankar, CEO, ScaleneWorks People Solutions, Most tier-1 companies block sites. R&D outfits even block chats. Employees cant log in at office time. Shelvankar started ScaleneWorks, an HR consulting firm after quitting MindTree in 2010, where he headed the HR function.
SERIOUS NETWORKING

users. The research firm expects spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide by 2012. Computer networking company Cisco Systems claims a 100 people team of specialists can now do the work of 120, by merely tapping resources within the company That, in . salaries, overheads and so on, translates to a saving of $5 million a year.
FROM CONSUMERS TO BUSINESS

In the larger consumer community, though, the reach of social network-

ing sites is unparalleled. Facebook, with 750 million users (25 million in India), is the largest. LinkedIN, a professional networking site with 100 million users (10 m in India) is the biggest in its niche. But public networks are not where companies want their employees to put out office work on, share office gossip or comment on client engagements. Its hard to justify you are working on Facebook, says Jessie Paul, CEO of marketing consultancy Paul Writer. Yet, companies want to give employees everything that social

networks offer: have fun, follow friends, upload images or scout for subject matter experts. Thats where business social networks fill the gaps. What Facebook is to personal life, Chatter is to business life, says Sarah Patterson, product manager, SMB segments, Salesforce.com, a $1.6-billion provider of customer relationship management software. Salesforce.com launched Chatter in June 2010. Chatter and the band of business networking tools have also to thank corporate policies for their popularity Most .

There are three distinct eras in corporate networking e-mail, instant messaging and now social networking, says Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Unified Communications, Cisco, India & Saarc. Each tool has led to greater collaboration. With social networking the whole company is on the same page at the same time, he says. He advocates any company with 1,000 or more employees must have a business social networking tool. It brings collaboration among people not sitting next to each other, adds Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft business division. Take the case of $2-billion Novozymes, a Denmark headquartered biotech company with 5,400 people in 30 countries including India, at Bangalore. Frank Hatzack, innovation manager at Copenhagen, who was exploring a new idea for food and seed industry was seeking information on a , particular enzyme (a kind of catalyst). He posted his requirement for details on Yammer, seen by all employees. Arnab Guha, from the company's R&D lab in Bangalore had read about food and seed enzymes, and shared the information with Hatzack. Now he has leads to explore the potential of the project. Without social media, Hatzack wouldnt have known which expert to reach out to within the company Instead of . shooting in the dark he got on Yammer to complete the task. Last week, communications solutions provider Polycoms engineer in Sydney Australia posted a query on , Yammer on how to integrate Polycom systems with those from other vendors. Within minutes, he got a dozen replies from colleagues around the world including India to fix the integration challenge. At Asian Paints, the annual budget planning exercise now happens on social media. IT planning takes about three months and now, the 60-people technology team meets on its social media, IBM Connections. Says Choksi, Earlier we were doing it on e-mails. The cumbersome inbox filling has been replaced by social media. Choksi anticipates the tool will speed up work and help employees access knowledge from within, through greater collaboration. Genpact sees the potential of social media unfold in accessing subject matter experts across the company in banking and insurance. The gains are greater collaboration and less duplication, adds Gitanjali Puri, director, marketing, CSC India. CSC uses a Jive-based platform, branded 3C Connect Communicate Collaborate. About 85% of the technology services companys 91,000 employees (20,000 in India) use 3C. Prior to this, e-mail was the mode of communication. Over the past one year that it has been in use, CSC has seen a 20% reduction in email and time to respond to a request

for proposal is down from an average of 45 days to 30. Thats because business teams are collaborating in real time, Puri adds. Telecom-focused technology services company Aricent sees Yammer assist in crowd sourcing of knowledge. Says CEO Sudip Nandy , If an engineer is stuck on an issue he can discuss the problem on Yammer with 8,000 connected minds. At present, Aricent employees on Yammer are discussing whether they should embrace cloud for its enterprise applications. Besides, social networking is bringing employees from diverse cultures and countries closer. At the $21-billion Xerox Corporation, such benefits are already real. A Yammer post asking people from non-English speaking countries to share where they work and Much of the the language they openness speak got response within from 40 countries, firewalls where it operates. depends on Says Renee Heiser, dihow senior rector, corporate and managements employee communiview the shift cations, Xerox, that to social one conversation connetworks nected employees within and across those countries and languages. This was apart from sharing notes on Lean Six Sigma, customer service and healthy living habits.
GOODBYE TO INTRANET

Critics argue much of such collaboration was already in place through corporate intranets. Its just that social networking is the flavour of the season. Employees have woken up to the idea of following colleagues, much like they follow friends on Facebook. And now the platform looks jazzy compared with , the staid corporate intranet. Intranet is like black & white TV compared with where we are now, says Salesforce.coms Patterson. Where business social networks differ from corporate intranets is the ability to follow colleagues and know whats happening on a real-time basis. Nandy of Aricent points to social softwares ability to follow people, form groups and communities, which intranets lack. He says, On Yammer, we have photography enthusiasts to adventure seekers, from robot fans to coders a mix of discussions taking place. About a tenth of the talk is on lighter topics, the rest is work-related. Saatchi & Saatchi has done away with corporate intranet, now replaced with Chatter. At CSC, intranet has been merged with Jive. At Federal Bank, its chief blogs on IBM Connections, more than he uses the intranet. Ffreedoms CEO Vaid sees social software as an e-mail killer besides impacting intranet. Business social software appeals to companies as it mirrors what public networks offer. Minus the headaches of having employees share office secrets in public. Much of the openness within firewalls, though, depends on how senior managements view the shift. Choksi of Asian Paints says, Everyone can be on the same page but you need senior management to evangelise networking. Nandy sees business social networking driven transparency and accountability will create better leaders. All ears are now on company chatter!

Corporate Facebooks
Yammer
LAUNCH:
September 2008

The Crossword

5021

Chatter
LAUNCH: June 2010 WHAT IT IS: A social networking tool from salesforce.com to help businesses keep better tabs on sales and customer service NO. OF USERS:
About 80,000 worldwide, including Bajaj Auto Finance, GlaxoSmithkline, Dell, Saatchi & Saatchi and Royal Orchid Hotels in India

Quad
LAUNCH:
November 2010 (global), May 2011 (India)

Socialcast
LAUNCH:
November 2005; bought by VMware in May 2011

Jive SBS
LAUNCH:
March 2010

Connections
LAUNCH: July 2007 (global); July 2008 (India) WHAT IT IS: Social
software from IBM that lets you access everyone in your professional network

WHAT IT IS: An
enterprise microblogging and business networking site used for private communication within organisations

WHAT IT IS: A
collaboration platform

WHAT IT IS: A
Twitter-like social collaboration platform

WHAT IT IS: A Java-based collaboration and knowledge management tool NO. OF USERS:

NO. OF USERS:
Not available

NO. OF USERS:
5,000, including Nokia, Philips, Avaya, NASA

HOW IT WORKS:
Cisco calls this the IWE, or Integrated Workforce Experience. At the core are collaborative communities created around job and organisational functions, roles, and topics of interest. Members of a community collaborate to achieve goals, organise and access informational assets and transactional tools, and promote their interests

NO. OF USERS:
80,000 companies worldwide, including Barclays Bank, Diageo, Cargill, Adobe, AMD, Aricent, Intuit, LG Electronics, Xerox and Honeywell

3,000 worldwide including CSC, Nike, Swiss Re, Toshiba and Yum

NO. OF USERS: 18
new since January 2011, includes Federal Bank and Asian Paints

HOW IT WORKS:
Existing enterprise applications, a microblogging tool and a discussion forum are brought together in a single collaborative application Also available on iPhone and Blackberry

HOW IT WORKS:
Online communities, microblogging, social networking, discussion forums, blogs, wikis, and instant messaging are in one user interface

HOW IT WORKS:
Chatter works with Salesforces core customer relationship management software, used by sales teams to track leads and deals. The product displays profiles of employees and posts about projects theyre working on or the customers theyve visited

HOW IT WORKS:
Yammer offers a basic free service and a premium version at $5 a month for every user. The premium service includes administrative controls and enhanced security tools, among other features

HOW IT WORKS: It has 10 components: homepage, profiles, communities, blogs, bookmarks, activities, files, wikis, forums and search. Users can find experts, form communities or blog. IBM Connections supports mobile browser access from Apple iPhone, Apple iPads, Nokia S60, and Android 2.x devices

Dilbert

by S Adams