In the modern business world e-mail is not the best way of communication inside a company. Collaboration software, serves as an effective replacement for e-mail. When you intorduce this workplace tool, you will see how it effectively repleace e-mail. Some of the following ways a collaboration tool might replace e-mail at your workplace include:

• Streamlining conversations.  Let’s imagine you work with a team of 6 people, you have to reach each other multiple times per day. Which one is easier? To send them dozens of e-mails or to have a common conversation, where all updates would be posted and every comment would be connected to the topic – this is what a social collaboration software offers to you.
• Consolidation of information.  In conjunction with streamlined conversations, information regarding a particular workplace topic is all kept in one area. Workplace topic, such as a procedure, customer, or product test etc. In fact, to replace e-mail in the respect that e-mail is very open-ended, and it’s so much easier to lose important information. You just have to stay updated on each, so  you need to subscribe to each separate subject. What is more, your workflow is improved since if you search for a certain information than you do not need to dig through a large inbox to locate what is needed.
• Information is organized better. A Social Collaboration Software can naturally organize information by topic, instead of sorting through many e-mails. It is a very useful for those who have a difficult time keeping since,  it is well organized, nothing is lost or out of place. Furthermore, the individual who struggles with organization will also receive real-time updates with a social collaboration software, ensuring they never miss a beat regarding each project of which they are a part.

“Social Collaboration” is not just a buzzword – in fact it helps us to solve big problems faster, connect with others, what’s more, it is generating more revenue, and last but not least, it makes customers happier. So why is social business is better business?

1. Social Collaboration Benefit – Less email

Actually, it takes too much time to manage our emails. Email passes the buck, creates a lot of frustration, and what is the most annoying, it’s full of spam and other irrelevant stuff.

Social business collaboration technology provides us a space where we can do real work, instead of the closed world of our inboxes.

2. Social Collaboration Benefit – Getting real work done

Team efficiency! Social collaboration enables people to share their expertise, and get to a solution faster. It is innovation, it results satisfied costumers! In its maturation, social business is proving to have large payoffs for collaborative efficiency.

3. Social Collaboration Benefit – Human connections

Social business software is not just a technology between people – it is more important that this software brings them together. It supports experties to solve costumer services problems faster since they can share their knowledge and ideas with each other. Moreover, it builds a deeper relationships between them.

4. Social Collaboration Benefit – Smarter decisions

Social collaboration can improve our business decision with a lot of process like collaborative input, knowledge sharing, and access to more data. To solve big problems and provide better and better experiences, social media gives us a little insight into critical information about behaviors, opinions, and habits.

5. Social Collaboration Benefit – Happy customers are satisfied costumers

Costumers use social web to share their opinions and remarks about your product, whether you are on the line or not. Social business brings us closer to our customers and helps us predict what they need before they realize they need it. (Or, at the very least, it helps us find and solve problems faster  and maybe even make more revenue. So anyway we win!)

After employees overcome their fear of change, most of the time they will not adopt new technology because it doesnt fit into their original work flow. In fact, if you want to use a social collaboration software in your organization, it is important that this new software surely integrates with your current technology. So employers need to choose their new technology wisely.

Employees want an application that can be integrated with the HR, ERP, or CMR applications they are familiar with. So they do not need a stand alone application which does not fit in their original mix.  Actually, having these applications integrated simply makes it easier for employees to get work done. Think about that knowledge from different places and people can be collected in a central location to have a real-time conversation about it. This makes easier to find the right answer for each task you have since, the emlpoyees can share their ideas with each other throught this software.

In one hand, you have to caught up to the technology, if your business processes have remained the same for years. On the other hand, your leadership team need to think that social solution is an integral part of the work flow, not just an another application that employees can use. If that happens, social make a real impact on your business.

However, you have to keep in mind that adding a new technology should not add more work or stress to your employees’ days. To make easier for your employees to adopt the new technology and realise why is it good for your organisation and for them. First of all, you have to think about how the new solution will help them to work more efficently, how easily it will integrate with the existing applications, and how it will help and raise your business.

In the past years we saw some great development in the segment of Enterprise Social Collaboration Software. The IPO of Facebook in the month of May 2012 was considered to be the biggest in the history of any internet company. The future is social collaboration.

According to leading research firms like Gartner, IDC, Mckinsey, Forrester it will be important to companies to leverage the social aspect of business. In fact, IDC predicted that year-by-year this segment is going to get bigger and bigger. But unfortunately, many buisness keep aloof  from adopting social collaboration tools at their work-place. However many analysts are hoping this fact will change in the near future.

Companies will have more confidence to adopt enterprise collaboration software and they will make a strategy to integrate it into their work process without any difficulties. IBM and Jive are some good examples of the advantages of enterprise collaboration. These companies have implemented this platform – they’ve created their own – and there are visible difference in their productivity and profitability.

Although, it needs time though the results are not imminent but it does give you long-term ROI. One of the main reasons why many CIO shy away from this technology is because of security reasons. Despite the fact, that many research have confirmed that cloud technology is indeed safe and form a long-term solutions. But the coming years  will see some hybrid cloud solutions for enterprise collaboration software segment. Many CIOs misunderstand the Enterprise collaboration software. They think it is just a “Facebook inside the office”, which is incorrect, just having an activity stream like feature, along with image and video upload or profile creation does not mean it is a Facebook kind of think or time-wasting tool. But with proper traning where CIOs get knowledge about this software can solve this problems.

This is the future of buisness world and companies which do not be able to leverage it for their benefit will be left behind in the competitive race of the gaining market share.

Despite the fact, that enterprise social collaboration tools are quickly catching up with today’s modern and high growth businesses the overall demand is not so encouraging. In 2016 IDC predicted enterprise collaboration segment will be increasing and the sales will be more than US $4 billion.

There is  encouraging oulook but the companies still resisted from it. Actually, they have got different reasons why are they do not use this software. Nevertheless, we could suggest solutions to overcome their fear about these amazing collaborative tools.

 Why business resist using collaborative tools;

1. Enterprise Social Collaboration resistance –  Other priorities

What is more important for a company than to increase productivity and profitability? Mostly because of the lack of knowldege about collaborative tools  managers and senior IT executive are not understand the importance of collaborative platforms. Is not sharing knowledge, connecting with each other and communicating a priority? Company’s top management team and IT managers have to come together to discuss the effects of this kind of platform. This will help them to boost their confidence and both will have common points to work on. In fact,  most of the CIOs and VIPs in a company do not know how can a platform like this can help them. So they will need to get training and knowledge.

2. Enterprise Social Collaboration resistance – Online security

Though security threats are legitimate issues. However, it could be addressed through proper security measures. First of all, company’s top management or CIOs should review the product and check out the vendor’s authenticity. As per the present data no serious damage has been done to company with the implementation of enterprise social collaboration software. Anything that is offered online will always have an element of security threat. But with proper use of firewall and latest security technology the problem can be solved. Unfortunatelly, IT team sin the companies are more concerned with architecture, integration, support of the product rather than security. So that is why  giving security as a reason for not using enterprise social collaboration is not justified. Rather than offering excuses company can draw out their objectives that they need to achieve and engage with a couple of vendors and use their free version before finalizing on it.

 3. Enterprise Social Collaboration resistance – Budget

Most of the businesses have this problem that they can not aford it but that should not be a reason to lose the opportunity of  enterprise collaboration tools can offer. Intranet system what  most of the companies use has limited features and functionality. The usage of enterprise collaboration tool can greatly save money, increase productivity and profitability of the company. Many vendors offer free versions of their enterprise collaboration software. In fact, it has limited set of features, but companies can test how efficient it so then they can anytime opt for paid version. This way companies can find the right solution that fit into their budget. Furthermore, company can use subscription based enterprise collaboration software and save money on the cost of hardware and server.

Social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has become successful since these sites help people to stay in touch, get connected, share knowledge and do lot of more stuffs. But even after their enormous success, some firms are still afraid to use similar, social collaboration technologies at the workplace because of the fear of losing control and promoting social culture in the company.

But time has changed and also he behaviour of the people have changed due to the use of social networking websites. Eventually, business started using this enterprise social network at workplace. There are a lot of success stories of enterprise social network include Yammer, Bitrix24, Jive, IMB and many many more. All these products have basic premises of connecting, sharing and communicating to colleagues, customers and partners at the workplace.

Social collaborative platforms have many advantages:

• it helps to find information quickly,
• engage with others over useful discussion,
• create groups
• share and consume information.

Actually, the traditional ways of buisness will disappear soon. People want to change it to create an open platform which will help them to easily connect with the professionals  and get information regarding specific subjects. The recent Mckinsey report says that the productivity of the emlpyees can improve by 20-25% with the usage of social collaboration technology at workplace.

It also says that the communication among employees have improved by 200% when compared to the use of other technologies. It can be used to carry out many business importan application because this social collaboration platform can be integrated with custom built applications . More and more companies will adopt  in the next few years social collaboration technologies at their workplace. Currently companies are offering this as a SAAS and on-premise offering business can chose as per their requirements.

Since this platform is available for mobile and tablet devices and also one can access it through mobile apps  this technology will help employees on the go the move.

The impact of this tools int he use of  HR, R&D, Sales, and Marketing is huge – increase of speed to access knowledge, seamless communication, and improved collaboration among employees.

The modern business life is very dynamic and competitive, to survive and flourish in tihis world we need constant innovation and the ability to change as how the market requires it. Though it is easy to talk, but it is very difficult to accomplish these needs.

As the technology landscape changes so does the human behavior. So today companies have to spend money on innovative technologies instead of the traditional tools of productivity. Working in silos is so 20th century kind of thing, today mobility commands immediate attention for the business. The ability to do your job from anywhere and anytime is the key to be int he competition. The consumerization of IT is seeing a lot of penetration in the Global IT space, Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) and Enterprise Social Network (ESN) are currently wisely used aspect of consumerization of IT phenomena.

Nowadays, employees can use their personal devices in their work-place since companies have started implementing BYOD policies. Moreover, many businesses are deploying the enterprise social network for their employees to connect, share and collaborate. Which helps them to do their job better. An Enterprise Social Network has business productivity tools integrated into it which can help get things done faster. Since employees have alredy learned how to use social networking platforms (like facebook, twitter and linkedin) in their personal lives it is giving them a similar platform in the business environment for official purpose, so their performance will dramatically improve.

Furthermore, it helps in  many other ways like knowledge capturing, retaining and sharing which is very important for innovations of new products and services. An ESN platform can be used to promote collaboration across different project through constant communications. Globally businesses have adopted this new social technologies to counter the increasing competition. It is inevitable to use this social technologies in business. Companies will have to use new technologies in the near future to facilitate greater freedom to their employees and improve their bottom-line.