Social Collaboration tools in the past were much less widespread in companies. Now, they are revolutionizing the usual method we worked with until a few years ago. In fact, Social Collaboration has introduced the intuitive and smart practice typical of social media within business processes, making communication and information exchange faster. Confirming a change that we could define as epochal, we can mention the Global Human Capital Trends 2019 report edited by Deloitte which explicitly speaks of “social enterprise”. The “social” enterprise (not to be confused with non-profit organizations) is a new organization paradigm in which the turnover attention must go hand in hand with environment and stakeholders attention, primarily employees. The 84% of respondents recognized, for example, the need to rethink the workforce experience to increase productivity. An afterthought in which Social Collaboration is proving to have a central role.
The link between Social Collaboration and Smart Working
To understand the link between productivity and the adoption of Social Collaboration platforms, it’s necessary to start from some statistical evidence that, around the world, record high satisfaction percentages among Smart Workers. In particular, these percentages are justified by the improvement of the work-life balance and the growth of elements such as employee motivation and employee involvement. However, it is good to remember that without tools capable of supporting Social Collaboration, Smart Working would not be a harbinger of greater efficiency. In practice, the distance from your office is not a sufficient condition to make you more productive if it is not accompanied at the same time by technologies that enable you to carry out your tasks in a fluid manner. What Social Collaboration therefore adds to the messaging apps that we use privately every day is the native integration of unified communication and collaboration systems or UCC (Unified Communication & Collaboration).
From Social Collaboration tools to Digital Workplace
The second point that differentiates corporate Social Collaboration applications from similar ones available on the market for non-professional purposes is the security and stability they guarantee. The increase in flexibility, in fact, cannot take place at the expense of compliance with the requirements that make access to data in mobility protected from violations that are unexpected downtime proof. These risks, if such access is not managed using suitable Social Collaboration tools, would become a counterproductive factor of vulnerability. For this reason, more and more often, companies today rely on system integrators who not only offer adequate Social Collaboration platforms, but they are also part of a composite offer of Digital Workplace that includes endpoint security, device management, management of network and infrastructure, maintenance and updating. An offer that, due to its complexity, usually takes place in as a Service mode so as to relieve the organization that uses it from all the inherent design and technical problems.
Why you need a partner for companies productivity
The need to rely on system integrators or companies specialized in the provision of Workplace as a Service, inside which the Social Collaboration systems are located, is even more urgent in this period. If you think of the explosion in demand for a suite like Cisco Webex which, due to the coronavirus, marked the record number of 324 million users in March, or that in April the calls and meetings made with Microsoft Teams increased by 775%, we can see the importance that the governance of these collaboration models and related technologies assumes. In fact, the big vendors themselves certify the partners who can accompany companies in the optimal adoption of Social Collaboration solutions. Precisely because productivity does not depend only on the chosen technology, but on its correct implementation in light of those security and resilience criteria that every business communication and sharing process must ensure.