I’d like to share a personal example of social communication to support my blog on why Social communications is the new Black and unified communications is dead.
Salesforce.com acquired Model Metrics late last year. Nearly overnight the company went from a boutique 150-person firm to an 8,000-person software company. A move like that can be scary for some people – especially when you’ve cultivated strong relationships with your current executive team. Some of my peers were worried about how they would get noticed in the new world of Salesforce.com. Without social communications and Chatter it would not have been possible. But with Chatter, our teams quickly gained an understanding of who’s who in the company, direct access to the Salesforce executive teams, awareness of pending opportunities and easy access to HR and policy information.
To further showcase the value of social communications, I’d like to tell you about a recent Chatter happening. On a whim, I posted a disruptive product idea, which quickly snowballed into a series of ideas and concepts all contributed in the form of comments by my “followers.” The post was then re-Chattered by a follower into the Products & Innovations group for more visibility and dialog. The “idea” is now being considered and discussed for future release. From a post to the product roadmap in minutes, that is the power of social communications. Companies not buying into social communications are allowing their employees (investment) to be underutilized.
If you’re still questioning the value of social communications just look at the where the market it going. Microsoft just paid $1.2 BILLION dollars for the social enterprise networking company Yammer to integrate with their software. Wait what?! A Unified Communications vendor buying a social networking company?
YES, because they understand UC is dying off and they need Yammer to build out their social communications suite. Asana, which is aiming to fix enterprise collaboration just, raised $28M at a $280M valuation and the company has very little paying customers. Check out the image below if you need further proof.
Source: Comscore
It’s clear that the social revolution is underway and it being embraced by the population at large.
