The recent McKinsey report 'How social technologies are extending the organization' gives many excellent insights in how social tools improve companies' procsses and performance. We picked out a few for you who consider collaborating with your eco-system:

1. The benefits are HERE AND NOW for companies to use technology for collaboration.

2. Companies who leverage social tools to network with their external partners report clear competitive advantage

3. Future organizations will need networking more and more; the boundaries between colleagues, customers and suppliers will blurr, and teams will become more and more self-organized.

4. Moving to a networked organization requires support to really capture the benefits and not sliding back

Benefits

For the 3rd time in a row in the surveys of 2009, 2010 and 2011, users of social tools increasingly report

• better satisfaction of customers, suppliers and partners
• more effective communication
• better access to knowledge and experts in their eco-system

In the 2010 report, the autors give more detail on the benefits of using social software to collaborate. Other benefits in the top 6 are: reduced travel costs, reduced speed to market of new products & improvements and reduced operational costs for both manaign customers (support) as well as suppliers. 

Competitive Advantage

According to McKinsey in the 2011 report, "Executives say that their companies are using them (ed.: social technologies) to increase their agility and to manage organizational complexity. Many believe that if organizational barriers to the use of social technologies diminish, they could form the core of entirely new business processes that may radically improve performance."

We couldn't agree more, and that is exactly why we have chosen elimination of the barriers to collaboration as our key mission.

Future trends

McKinsey sees social communication technology playing an ever increasing role in the next 5 years; it will support many of the current processes and help to disciver new processes (re.: new value!?). Key trends in leading organizations expected:

• boundaries among employees, vendors, and customers will blur
• more teams will be able to organize themselves
• decision making will be based more on data than on influence or opinion, and data will be collected through experiments

​We agree 100%, and therefore we developed a collaboration process that is very flexible to support collaboration across many actors in the eco-system, to suit various business processes with predefined or self-organizing teams.

Support & Guidance

While McKinsey's survey showed that not all companies have realized the potential. Some have seen the adoption fall back after initial use. In order to ensure the benefits the report suggests to incorporate the social technology into the daily workflow, and to provide enough support for the organization making the transition.

Again, we agree! That is why we integrate project and process capabilities with social collaboration features, AND we offer guidance and support both embedded in the technology and in additional services.

Recommendation: Don’t rest on your laurels!

McKinsey's advice: "Companies should prepare for more substantial disruptions. Since many executives believe that significant changes will occur as (or if) constraints on social tools and technologies are lifted, companies that can create change themselves — instead of reacting to it — are likely to benefit the most.

Do we agree? Let's get started!