Case Study: Enterprise Social Network @ Pfizer – Pfizer World intranet & My World

Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies in terms of revenues, with employees of around 1, 00,000 and operations across 150 countries in the world had implemented an enterprise social network styled intranet within the company for their employees to communicate and collaborate across the globe. Pfizer World intranet is built on Microsoft SharePoint platform and the company prior to this had more than 400 intranet sites. Bob Libbey, Head of Digital and Social Communications at Pfizer, Inc., likes to think of PfizerWorld – the company’s singular internal channel - as an online town square. “People come to get their news and information about the enterprise - about the various pieces of Pfizer - that’s a big part of what’s made the project a success. Obviously we use email a lot; we distribute a promotional newsletter twice a week to show what’s upcoming in PfizerWorld. We need to be careful not to overload people. We’re always looking for ways to help people sort their information. That to me is the biggest challenge right now - helping people prioritize all the news and information that we’re sending to them,” Libbey explains.

In 2008, the site had 1.4 million article views; in 2009, the number jumped to 3 million article views, along with 10 million site visits on the whole. For 2010, article views topped 5.2 million and visits reached 55 million. In its third year, PfizerWorld generated 5.3 million article views and 61 million page views, up 279 percent and more than 1,000 percent respectively over the predecessor site. And the project yielded $20 million in maintenance, support, and development savings over the four years. The news crawl runs along the bottom of people’s desktops and includes the top stories of the day from PfizerWorld, top news clips of the day disseminated by the Media Relations team and breaking news as needed.  Pfizer also launched a social networking hub called My World,  a personalized intranet page to increase employee engagement, enable information sharing and facilitate collaboration; and a colleague message board called Moving Pfizer Forward to encourage candid discussion about company issues and employee engagement  and introduced as part of our PfizerWorld intranet platform back in 2010. That first year this internal networking hub drew 41,000 unique users who generated 800,000 page views. The second year it rose to approximately 60,000 users driving 1.6 million page views. Pfizer expanded its Social Media Policy to reflect the rise in usage of internal and external social media channels across the company. 

Internally, Pfizer created new employee channels, including the only pharmaceutical-company sponsored blog for Pfizer scientists, Think Science Now, on Pfizer.com; a personalized intranet page for employees; and a colleague message board. Pfizer also made content easier for visitors to share through Facebook, RSS etc. Many of the blog postings from Think Science Now appear on Pfizer’s Facebook page, for instance. Pfizer had been able to implement and integrate social network styled tools and platform internally so that employees can actively use it, collaborate and communicate with colleagues across the globe and work together to achieve the organization goals.

Case Study: Enterprise Social Networks @ Toyota – Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration

Toyota uses Salesforce.com enterprise social network platform called Chatter that facilitates internal communication between hundreds of thousands of Toyota employees across the world to interact, share and collaborate with each other on a day to day basis and work for the organizational growth. Employees have to login to access the intranet, join groups and participated in discussions of their interests and can post updates, comments, opinions, questions and get answers and suggestions from coworkers based in 170 countries around the world.  With Chatter platform allowing collaboration and sharing of information and documents employees can actively collaborate and work together to resolve critical issues. “People have only 24 hours a day,” says Toyoda. “But through social we can connect with many people at once.” Enterprise social networking platforms are critical tools for knowledge management as organizations need to document and share the knowledge within the organizations effectively for growth. "Most of the knowledge is tacit. It is walking around in the heads of our employees," said Steve Kang, social enterprise manager for Toyota. "The question is how do you get that knowledge? How do you extract that knowledge? Because it's not written down anywhere. This provides us with a way to do that."

Toyota started using the Chatter based intranet since 2012 and employees can access the intranet not only through desktops but also using the mobile devices like iPad, Android and BlackBerry applications. Employees can create topic centered groups and engage with others on this platform and interactions should be mostly work related and one of the popular group is the "ask all Toyota" for employees to pose questions to other Toyota workers around the globe. Another important usage of Chatter in Toyota is the cross-departmental task forces that collaborate across different departments located across the globe and they prefer chatter rather than the traditional email as Chatter allows easy flow of information between collaborators.  Even the senior management in Toyota actively use intranet to communicate with employees and employees keep track of the posts by the senior management. Toyota even implemented a translation service within the chatter so as there will be seamless interaction between Japanese and Non-Japanese employees that enhanced communication among Toyota employees around the world, leading to quicker decision-making and information-sharing as enhanced communication ultimately help to make products and services best suited to consumers. Along with digital modes of communications Toyota also uses face-to-face contact where in Senior management regularly walk around and talk to employees and also regularly hold roundtable discussions. Employees are critical part of organizational success and organizations need to implement platforms that allow communication, collaboration and sharing of information and knowledge between employees and also with senior management so that they can also work together for achieving the organization goals and objectives. Enterprise Social Networks also allow employee engagement with customers and also allow engagement on external social networking platforms too. 

Social Media @ Intel – Planet Blue internal social network for Employees

Intel, the world's largest and highest valued semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue has an internal social media platform called Planet Blue that was launched in 2009, which is company controlled Facebook styled intranet, where more than 1,00,000 employees can connect with each other, collaborate and share knowledge. Planet blue includes blogs, wikis, status updates, discussion forums and employees can also form groups based on their interests, hobbies, etc. Employees not only communicate and create groups but also use the platform to ideate and innovate which is essential for Intel as there is constant pressure on the company to develop new products. Intel earlier had a wiki based platform for collaboration, called Intelpedia, "the Intel encyclopedia that anyone can edit," was launched in 2006, which employees can edit freely  and had millions of pages and thousands of contributors. Intel had a culture of technology-based information-sharing since early 2003, when employee blogging started predominantly included self-maintained servers under desks and these internal employee blogs gained popularity. Intel CEO Paul Otellini launched his employee blog in 2004 and other top execs and leaders followed throughout 2005 culminating in a fully IT-supported platform that same year. Intel also started its popular developer blogs and wikis for software collaboration called Intel Software Network back in May 2006. In April 2007, Intel created Blogs@Intel as a new business tool for customers and employees to directly communicate and collaborate. In June 2008, Intel added the Digital IQ training program for employees that contained around 60 programs online with certification on how to use these social media tools to increase innovation, communication and collaboration at work.

According to a post titled “How successful is your Enterprise 2.0 strategy?” on Intel communities, “some of the metrics Intel track are related to adoption – such as active users (creators, synthesizers, consumers) and “unique visitors”. However, these indicators may not accurately represent the success indicators of the platform. Quality of discussions, impact of these discussions on the users, problem resolutions, agility in solving issues, ability to find subject matters experts quickly could be different parameters which can really show how successful the platform is.” This highlights that Intel closely monitors its social media styled intranet and hopes that the intranet will fuel social learning among employees and also use it for their career development where they can look for positions and chat about their career progression. Intel created a comprehensive set of social media policies called the Intel Social Media Guidelines that are available in over 35 languages designed to help employees to understand how to manage their social media presence. Intel also created Social Media Center of Excellence, which is a cross functional body of experts from Marketing, PR, legal and Digital Communications, who collaborated to create guidelines, processes, strategies, and skill-building courses for how Intel employees can use social media tools like blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, and social networks around the world. Intel is further looking to improve its Planet Blue and is looking to add voice control features to the content so that employees can use it effectively for their collaboration, communication, learning and knowledge sharing initiatives. 

Social Media @ eBay – Intranet Hub for employees

eBay initially rejected its employees request for an enterprise social network and employees were forced to set up their own network on Yammer, a private company that provides the platform for employees of a business to easily setup a free enterprise social network with limited features and functions for that business. The businesses have the option of take over the Yammer network being used by their employees by paying the necessary fees and upgrading their accounts. When eBay management realized that there are significant numbers of employees (around 3,000 employees) are actively engaging on the Yammer network they too considered to take over the network and upgrade by paying the necessary fees but decided not to do so as the Yammer did not have many features and functions that eBay wanted. eBay then decided to develop its own official enterprise social network using NewsGator, an add-on to Microsoft SharePoint and which will be a state of the art platform that will not only accelerate the platform usage by employees but also helps in improving the productivity and performance of the employees. Before finalizing the platform eBay also evaluated other platforms like Jive, Ning, and Chatter but finalized the NewsGator and SharePoint as SharePoint is easy to be integrated with other tools and platforms within the organization IT infrastructure.

With more than 16,000 employees across the globe, eBay created an intranet called the Hub that not only helps employees to perform their jobs in better way but also engages employees with an simple, friendly design and consistent with company identity.  The intranet is also a hub for meetings and company wide events like corporate news, videos, messages, analyst presentations, executive presentations etc and also plays a key role in internal communications with employees that feature blogs, forums, video/photo sharing and discussion boards. Each employee in the company has their own profile page which they can personalize with personal information, upload their photos, engage with other employees who share similar interests and create their own blog and other media. The intranet platform also allows employees to post and receive updates from intranet to multiple internal or external networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc at the push of a button. iChannel is You Tube styled video sharing platform that runs on the eBay intranet and works as a discussion board and communication channel between the employees and management ( Ask a Leader) and recently this channel is used by the CEO to clarify the employee concerns about Skype sale. eBay adopted a test and learn methodology which will help in refining and developing an effective platform that will be easy to use for the employees.

This intranet platform was initially tested with 1000 employees and in November 2011 went live for all the eBay employees. But the intranet is of no use without employees having their profiles uploaded and their active participation and with an aim to encourage the employee participation eBay started a contest called “Hubgrade” that gave eBay employees a chance to win Starbucks gift cards or the grand prize an Xbox. This helped in increasing the employee profiles by more than six times and employees started actively participating in the intranet and build communities, search for information, and even post status updates to the corporate network, LinkedIn, Twitter , etc simultaneously. With rise in participation by the employees’ eBay also launched a innovative mobile application through which the employees can access the intranet Hub away from office which allows to employee directory, meeting schedules, locations and other information access to the information. eBay is using various promotional initiatives like contests, virtual screen savers, training, etc to further increase the employee engagement on the intranet Hub. More active employees with complete profiles will help in the employee’s communication with one another for work, knowledge sharing, common interests/hobbies, collaborate for work and other projects and also improve the overall organizational performance along with their individual performance.

eBay is world’s largest online market place that connects millions of buyers and sellers and company has more than 100million active users globally. Other businesses in the portfolio include PayPal, StubHub, Shopping.com and others where millions of people to buy, sell, and pay online.  The company actively participates on various social networking sites for engaging with their customers and also wanted to provide their employees the similar social networking styled platform internally for increasing employee engagement, collaboration and effectiveness. eBay wanted a platform that will enhance employee performance and also help them in actively improving the organizational performance. Even though the company initially had apprehensions about the effectiveness of the social media styled intranet but the employees convinced the management and started working on the development of the intranet in September 2010. eBay believes that this social intranet initiative will improve collaboration and communication and plays a crucial role in employee retention as the company has to invest significant amounts of time, money and resources in training and inducting employees into the company. The company is hoping to use the social media and networks more effectively for both the employee and organizational benefits. 

Social Media @ Infosys – Infy Bubble Social Networking Platform for employees

Infosys is a global technology services company and the company has 146,000 employees with 64 offices across over 29 countries and generates revenues of around US$ 7 billion. North America is the dominant geography followed by Europe in terms of revenue contribution. BFSI, Manufacturing, Retail & CPG, Telecom, Energy & Utilities are the major verticals. Infosys believes that in today’s dynamic business world, success is significantly determined by the collective intelligence and actions of company’s employees. Infosys built an internal communication system that helps its employees collaborate and share knowledge. Employees need to communicate with one another for project related activities and also for understanding each other personally and culturally. These interactions are essential for the global organizations to run smoothly, knowledge management, innovation and operational efficiencies. Infosys also has formulated a social media policy for its employees that provide guidelines in terms how to be active on the various social networking sites without causing any damage to company and its brand reputation. Employee engagement and satisfaction levels have increased after the adoption of the internal social networking tools/platforms in the organization.

Infosys had launched InfyBubble in June 2011, internally developed social network for employees and there are 82,000 employees registered on the platform, with 392,051 connections established across the world and 102,572 average page views a day. The site looks like a Facebook page and Infosys employees can share moods, blogs, videos, photographs and other stuff. The site does not allow employees to post any personal comments on their managers or superiors but negative feedback in terms of performance and work related are invited and expects discipline to be maintained on the social platform. Employees can collaborate with colleagues not only for work but also based on the interest and hobbies. Infosys also launched InfyRadio in August 2011, an in-house radio station for employees across all development centers in India through which employees are informed about happenings in the organization and also ensures they are motivated and engaged with some fun at work. The station runs for six hours a day, five days a week and is accessible via a link on the employee’s computer and on an average it receives 10,000 hits per day.

Infosys intranet Sparsh, the information intranet of Infosys, allows every single member of Infosys to be connected at all times and was rated among the world’s top 10.  It serves as an internal social network, and members can exchange ideas by email, bulletin boards and also hold discussions. Sparsh has helped Infosys in reducing operating costs and meeting clients’ needs even more efficiently, and increase in operating margins. Sparsh is coupled with KShop; a knowledge database where Infosys has book reviews, case studies, even materials, FAQs, tutorials, downloadable software etc for every employee. Infosys in the recent years have been facing significant attrition levels and the company with an intention to regain its best employer status launched these social media initiative in the last few years. Also through the social networking platform and other collaborative tools Infosys is expecting to retain the employees and actively engage them with the management and also involve them in the organization strategy and future policy initiatives.