Social media can benefit companies in many ways: it can be used as a tool for innovating, it makes knowledge sharing easier, it can increase productivity and it can connect people into virtual workplaces. These are the key things which can enable the transition to the future office.
As people are used to social media tools and willing to use them, companies should take advantage of them in everyday work processes instead of banning them. It is not useful for the company to have many social media tools at the same time as it would be expensive, create complexity to knowledge management and be confusing for the employees. Instead the company should try to build one tool which combines elements from existing tools. It should also be easily accessed and seen and thus, it should be integrated to e.g. the side of the e-mail application or web-browser.
The proposed tool links together features of microblogging- and Wiki-type of applications and thus, is easy to create. In microblogging every employee has their own account. Microblogging is a fast way to express one’s opinions and thoughts, share knowledge (especially tacit one), people can comment easily and get to know each others, they can share files (reduces e-mail traffic), they can follow the most read-blogs or different people/groups (groups are easy to form and can be e.g. customer/project/function/department specific ones) and above all, it can be used as an innovation tool. There are innovation groups/forums where people can post innovations and/or give “points” and comments to others’ innovation suggestions. When the innovation suggestion receives enough points and attention, an automatic notification is sent to the CIO of the company (good ideas and innovations are rewarded). The tool can also be used for brainstorming-sessions which connect the company, customers and e.g. students to work on innovations and ideas. Postings are accessible 24/7 and saved to the history where people can search for them later on.
What combines Wiki-functionality in this tool is that certain bloggings can be modified by different people that have access to it. For example, in project-based companies it is important to have a common place where all the project-related material can be added, ideas posted and information flows between functions built without e-mail floods.
It is vital to get the customers to use the tool as well because it can make communication easier and create synergies between the companies. The parts of this wiki/microblog –tool which are essential for the information exchange between the company and the customer should be accessed through a portal (reduces the use of e-mail). A shared social media tool would also help with service co-creation, which is very important in today’s fast changing world.
