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Social Media: Is IT at war with SM?
IT is often portrayed as one of the villains in the clashes against employees who demand more social and web 2.0 capabilities in their enterprise software. There are thorny issues around security, compliance, data backups, and others. IT and executive management are viewed as a conservative lot who are risk-adverse and slow to make changes.
But the stereotype may not be true, at least not totally true. It turns out that IT may be just as fascinated with social media as the non-IT employee. Or at least, IT may have as much to gain from using social media as any other group in the enterprise. A Forrester report by Nigel Fenwick finds that IT productivity can be boosted by using Social Media. The report recommends that “CIOs should enthusiastically embrace social media as a means for boosting IT productivity while also giving IT staff the experience needed to support Social Computing initiatives across the enterprise.”
When IT users of social media tools were polled about how useful they found those tools, as many as 70 percent said they thought that using them improved their productivity, and most of the remaining 30 percent were neutral in their attitude towards the tools. 80 percent thought that social media improved innovation. 78 percent thought that social media was a positive relative to providing good customer service. Another result is that social media seems to promote better group dialog. People are more apt to ask and answer questions using social media that they would be in a meeting attended by a large number of people. 92 percent say that social media has helped them get answers to their questions.
That’s all good news, and it’s likely a good strategy to turn IT onto the benefits of social media. Doing that ensures that IT, as implementers of the technology, are also believers of the usefulness of it.
