India Internet News
New Social Networking Tool Hits The Workplace
03 August 2011
Pramod Bhasin, well-known for his business process outsourcing, is a passionate expert of networking and also knows better how to do it. He outspread Genpact from one client to over 400 and made the topmost business services company of the country. The networking that he speaks off is in no way connected to the popular social hangout zones such as LinkedIN or Facebook but a large number of business networking software that companies are being downloaded from the cloud or install on corporate servers.
India Inc remains in the loop to utilize social networks visionary names Yammer, Jive, Socialcast, Quad, Connections, Chatter, SociatText and more. Genpact vice chairman, Bhasin said "Social networking can be the killer application in corporate strategy, but not the way people do on Facebook, Twitter or the like." He thinks that it is a necessary tool to promote teamwork and best practices. Bhasin did log on to Facebook and in one week, left it. "I was inundated with friend requests. I didn't want to know what people had for lunch. It was too much to digest!"
Corporate social networking has included pizzazz to the Intranet, in spite of dissolving the severity of online connection. If there are friends to follow or photos to upload, there is also data on best practices and innovations that can be shared.
Companies organized in different regional, productline and functional 'silos' view social networking as the tool that's "bringing together manufacturing and marketing," according to Manish Choksi, the head of corporate strategy & CIO of Asian Paints. "Now both are on the same page," he stated. Genpact is performing a toss-up among Yammer and Jive, whereas Asian Paints and Federal Bank just now began with IBM's Connections. Bajaj Auto Finance, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro Technologies and a host of others began with social enterprise software to support employees 'follow' colleagues apart from their desks.
Cisco is driving Quad, introduced in India before 2 months, at one of the biggest public sector banks in the country. Ffreedom, a 2 years and 6 months old wealth management company, works beyond the Chatter, a social enterprise network utility from salesforce.com. Less than half of its 48 employees come to 'office'.
The CEO of Ffreedom, Sumeet Vaid said, "We have a mobile application of Chatter. The office is 'on our hands' and we track people and work on the cloud." Regarding the Mumbai-based startup, it also refers to saving on costly real estate. This kind of murmur in the corporate world may not have the bells and whistles as social networking websites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN provides, still are the new ways of business networking. If global trends are any indicator, India Inc too will soon be Yamming, Chattering or Jiving away.
A 2010 report by Morgan Stanley suggests there are gradually more social networking users than e-mail users. Based on the technology research company Gartner, by 2014, social networking services will substitute e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for at least 20% of business users.
The research company thinks investing on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will go beyond $1 billion globally by 2012. Computer networking company Cisco Systems said a team of 100 specialists can now do the work of 120, by simply knocking resources inside the company. Thus, with respect to salaries, overheads and so on, converts to be a saving of $5 million a year.