Businesses today understand the power of getting employees to work together efficiently
That’s why ‘social business’ is a market mega-trend. Companies are investing heavily
in social and collaboration tools.
According to a recent Forrester Research study, companies are investing in an average
of five social business/collaboration tools.
It is well known that changing user behavior is the most difficult part of an IT-related project
As companies roll out these tools, they are finding it harder than expected to reap
the expected benefits. Research shows that adoption rates of social/collaboration tools is quite low; in
fact, a recent CapGemini/MIT study found that primary obstacles to the adoption
of social/collaboration tools are people-related.
Even if you have the best tools, you won’t see benefits if you can’t get people to use them
Companies most often roll out a set of disparate tools, one for unified communication,
a different one for email, a third for document management, and fourth for social
networking.
Context switching is known to create user stress and lower adoption rates even further
Since social tools are not integrated, users must toggle between multiple windows
and applications, switching contexts each time, to complete simple business tasks.
Context switching is known to create user stress and lower adoption rates even further.
SharePoint and the Social Business
New social capabilities in SharePoint 2010 enhance the social business experience
of office workers.
These powerful features help workers find relevant content within the organization in order to make better use of existing resources and expertise.
But getting people to use these features is a ‘chicken and egg’ problem. For example, if users don’t rate documents, then searching for popular documents is not going to produce useful results.
harmon.ie delivers on SharePoint social potential
harmon.ie promotes the adoption of SharePoint 2010 social features by making them
easily accessible in the email window where typical business users spend their day.
Specifically, harmon.ie creates ‘social documents’ by allowing people to rate, tag,
and post notes directly within the context of the document itself. Furthermore,
workers can then track document editing progress by receiving real-time document
and social updates. harmon.ie also suggests colleagues based on all communication
patterns, email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and document co-authoring
partners.
harmon.ie social capabilities in SharePoint
Document Rating
Rate SharePoint documents directly from your Outlook or Notes window. No new interface or navigation required.
Tags and Social Tags
Assign tags and search tags directly from your Outlook or Notes window. No new interface or navigation required.
Note Board
Post notes about documents while you are looking at the document in the harmon.ie window; No need to change context or toggle to another window.
My Sites
My Sites are immediately available within the context of viewing who last edited a document. My Sites become accessible because you don’t need to navigate to find them.
My Profile
Search for expertise, skills, and interests and then view co-worker’s profiles right from email.
Presence
View a document or colleague, see if they are online and connect with them directly via instant message, video conference, or email from MS Lync/OCS. No need to navigate to another window or context.
Suggested Colleagues
Colleagues are suggested by harmon.ie based upon existing communication patterns; e.g. email correspondents, IM or VOIP partners, or colleagues with whom you have shared a document. harmon.ie's "Suggested Colleague" capability jump starts your network and gets people communicating.
