Social Network Analysis for Improved Collaboration

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I was reading Mike Gotta’s blog today and came across his post on a new prototype tool that SAP has been implementing internally for SNA (social network analysis). For those of you unfamiliar with SNA it’s not a new concept. In fact, it has been around for quite some time now. The basic concept of SNA is to explore how people interact with one another and collaborate and share information. You can imagine that for Enterprise 2.0 the idea of SNA is quite relevant.

Before going forward let’s remember that the whole point of collaboration is not just to collaborate but to actually drive some sort of business result.

When designing collaboration strategies there are several key pieces of information that we want to know, among them are:

  • Which departments are the most active collaborators (again driving business results) internally and within other departments
  • Which specific employees are the most active collaborators internally and with other departments
  • Who are the communication or collaboration bridges between departments (perhaps someone that has been at the company for a while that knows everyone)
  • Who are employees collaborating with the most/least (individuals and departments)

Being able to understand how individuals and departments are collaborating and sharing information with one another is crucial for developing a successful Enterprise 2.0 strategy. What’s interesting is that you can do a SNA before and after you implement a strategy to see how the changes are taking shape.

What SAP has done is create an internal tool that essentially maps individuals and groups within the Enterprise. Large organizations such as SAP have pretty complex internal structures (as Mike pointed out in his post) so it’s important to really understand how individuals and departments work together and collaborate within those structures. According to SAP:

“The purpose of this technology is to deliver an environment where people can easily and quickly analyze corporate network relationships and find the information they are looking for in their daily jobs. The social network analyzer prototype lets you import and aggregate all the business network relationships between people that are already recorded in your business applications, such as:

  • Management hierarchies from your human resources system
  • Data on who worked on which deals, from your sales force automation system
  • Partner, customer, and partner supplier contacts along your supply chain system
  • People who work on similar transactions or projects within your operational systems”

This new tool is available for anyone to use, there is a live demo you can play around with or you can download the actual tool and input your own company data.

Here are a few screenshots from the SAP tool:

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jacob Morgan
I'm a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and futurist who explores what the future of work is going to look like and how to create great experiences so that employees actually want to show up to work. I've written three best-selling books which are: The Employee Experience Advantage (2017), The Future of Work (2014), and The Collaborative Organization (2012).

2 COMMENTS

  1. Jacob: Thanks for this analysis. I’d like to suggest an additional key piece of information to learn about social networks: which collaborative ties carry the greatest value for an organization?

    Author Rob Cross (The Hidden Power of Social Networks, and Driving Value Through Social Networks) suggests they’re ties that enable best practice knowledge transfer, innovation, and revenue generation. Does that mean others aren’t valuable? I’m not sure. But I haven’t found a better summary than Rob provided. I keep looking, and would love to hear some different perspectives.

    Uncovering high-value collaborative ties has profound importance for salespeople, as these connections often underpin the conversations and processes that drive business decisions–and subsequently, purchase orders.

    Related blogs I wrote on this topic: Is There White Space in Your Customer Relationships?, and What Makes a Social Network Valuable? The Answer Might Surprise You

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