Social Collaboration: How we work together determines our success
A new study shows social collaboration as an enabler of digital transformation: companies want to become more innovative through social networking and accelerate their cultural change. Cloud use and tool linking increase efficiency effects, but efficiency and innovation potential are far from being exploited.
Social collaboration has been proven to increase work efficiency and empower employees to tackle current challenges in a targeted manner. In addition, modern collaboration tools support new forms of collaboration and change fundamental behaviors and attitudes of employees - especially by strengthening the innovation orientation and the sense of belonging within the workforce. These are the findings of the recently published German Social Collaboration Study 2017, the second wave of a joint time series study by the Department of Information Systems at Darmstadt University of Technology and the management consultancy Campana & Schott.
Social collaboration aims at digitalization and lived corporate culture
As the current survey shows, social collaboration is becoming increasingly important as a strategic element of digital transformation. "Most study participants use networked forms of collaboration not primarily to save costs, but first and foremost to further develop their corporate culture and drive the digitalization of their business activities," says Dr. Eric Schott, Managing Director of Campana & Schott. Specifically, 57 percent of respondents named cultural change in their company as a key motive for using collaborative technologies. In second place among the most important goals, at 53 percent, was the striving for greater innovativeness among employees. Only in third place, with 47 percent, is the desire to reduce costs and increase work efficiency.
Engine for greater efficiency and innovative strength
According to the study, the efficiency effects of social collaboration have a multi-layered interaction with corporate cultural factors: For example, an enterprise social network (ESN) increases work efficiency the more intensively the workforce uses the network in everyday work. Depending on the usage scenario, ESN users work up to 42 percent more efficiently than non-users. In addition, the intensity of use correlates statistically significantly with the innovation orientation of employees. "Social collaboration promotes network-like collaboration and has a positive effect on innovative strength, agility, technology affinity and corporate culture - all of which is also impressively proven by the second social collaboration study," comments Boris Ovcak, Director Social Collaboration at Campana & Schott and initiator of the study.
Conversely, the existing corporate culture also influences the success of social collaboration projects. The previous year's survey already clearly showed this connection. The current study builds on the results and provides more in-depth insights. And there is another study result from which direct conclusions can be drawn for practical implementation in the company: Wherever collaboration tools are available from the cloud and are used intensively, the efficiency gain is up to 13 percent greater than with conventional tool provision. Even 17 percent more efficiency can be achieved if various social collaboration solutions are optimally coordinated with each other.
Most opportunities are still open
So far, however, much of the potential demonstrated in the study remains largely untapped: On a scale between 0 and 3, the average degree of social collaboration maturity is currently 1.14. The 0 stands for exclusively conventional technologies or analog forms of collaboration, while the 3 indicates the universal use of advanced collaboration solutions. Due to the large increase in the number of participants, valid statements on the progress of adaptation since 2016 can only be derived from the responses of those companies that already took part in the initial survey in the previous year: In this segment, the maturity level increased by four percentage points.
Source and further information: www.collaboration-studie.de
