Enterprise social network success: Evidences from a multinational corporation

Abstract

In a globalized world, where companies operate across different locations and work becomes increasingly complex, collaboration in a diversity of ways is required among employees to perform tasks more effectively. Following a case study methodology that involved six interviews across three different country locations, this research addresses the phenomenon of Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) in a multinational corporation with a focus on the assessment of ESN success. The findings show that the company, while trying to assess the success of Yammer, the freemium social networking service at use, has mainly relied on analytics tools to measure usage through indicators such as the total number of users. However, the extent to which ESN is used does not provide a complete picture of ESN success. Business value from that ESN usage is another dimension to be considered to assess success. Therefore, the study of specific ESN usage scenarios that are perceived to have a trackable impact on business results can be used to assess ESN business value on top of ESN usage to fully understand ESN success.