S'pore firms top social media adoption
A new survey released Tuesday revealed that Singapore enterprises are leading in enterprise-oriented social media adoption as interest in leveraging social media for enterprise collaboration increases worldwide.
In a survey commissioned by Avanade, 20 percent of respondents from Singapore reported their companies already have in place strategies to integrate social media into the workplace. This is almost three times greater than the worldwide average of 7 percent.
The study, conducted in February by Kelton Research, surveyed 500 C-level executives, business unit leaders and IT decision makers. Among the respondents, 90 were from three Asia-Pacific markets: Australia, Japan and Singapore.
The survey aimed to find out enterprises' attitudes toward the adoption of collaboration technologies. More than 80 percent of the respondents believed that enterprise-wide collaboration is the key to success.
In an e-mail interview, Craig Dower, president of Avanade Asia-Pacific, said collaboration technologies are changing the business culture. "In an age of real-time collaboration and instant expectations, meaningful collaboration can mean the difference between success and failure." he said.
"Reducing the delay involved in connecting, sharing, understanding and making business use of information becomes increasingly important in today's fast-paced world," he added.
Other factors are also causing businesses to take a closer look at fostering collaboration in the corporate environment. For instance, the "millennial" generation or younger workforce expect to use the same communication and collaboration tools that they use in their personal lives, he pointed out.
Having the right enterprise collaboration tools will thus improve employee morale, said Dower.
Collaborative tools breed irresponsibility
Despite the optimism in collaboration technologies, survey respondents reported that the use of collaboration technologies has brought in new business issues. They indicated employees appear to be dodging responsibility of certain tasks because of readily available collaboration options to ask other people, Avanade said in a statement.
In addition, among the Asia-Pacific respondents, 37 percent said fewer people were solving problems on their own, relying instead on collaboration technologies to ask others.
Current tools have also led some employees to dread collaboration, especially collaboration across employee levels and company departments. One in four Singapore respondents cited the wastage of time and energy as a push factor.
Dower noted that while collaboration technology is an enabler, successful collaboration requires a strategy for both the use of technology and the people using it. "Companies need to create a culture conducive to collaboration in order to achieve business results enabled by various collaboration technologies," he said.
Shift from cost savings to innovation and growth
The study also noted that companies are embracing new technologies for innovation and growth, rather than to reap cost savings. Dower pointed out that in Avanade's global market survey last year, only 18 percent of respondents reported the pressure to innovate; in contrast, the number this year has increased to 28 percent.
In the survey, 87 percent of Singapore respondents view collaboration software and tools as crucial to company innovation and 93 percent said they will deploy more collaboration technologies over the next year.
"Today's business realities force companies to radically change the way they operate on a global scale," said Dower. "Geographically dispersed organizations need to foster innovation while being efficient."
"They must move into markets faster than the competition. Systems that help people do their job make people more positive, more efficient and more productive."