Let’s be really clear about why you have an enterprise social network in the first place. Quite simply, this makes it easier for you to achieve business objectives. Therefore, defining these objectives is the logical place to start if you want to maximize the ROI from your network

Creating the Enterprise Social Networking Movement

A multi-million retail conglomerate with hundreds of stores around the country.

1. Identify a business area with a challenge or an opportunity
   Ask yourself what are your most pressing challenges? Which business units have the greatest obstacles or opportunities? As an example, let’s assume that you have launched a new product that is proving to be a slow starter.
2. Identify one or more processes that will positively impact the situation
   How can you increase sales? One possibility is to cross-sell more to your existing customers. Sure, your sales team for the new product has access to your customer database, but qualifying leads and then addressing and converting prospects is proving to be a slow and expensive process. Now you have a clear use case for your enterprise social network — you want it to help in improving the cross-selling process.
3. Have clarity on how your enterprise social network will impact the selected process
   Make sure you have got the right people on the network and also ensure that they know what their role is. An effective roll-out requires that the initial content is seeded by the right teams. In our example, you would need the sales team for the new product as well as for the other products on the network. You would need to set up a structure where the sales team can share knowledge and customer insights to help the new product team to qualify leads faster. This is one of the most powerful and unique features of the enterprise social network – the ability to accelerate the process of identifying people with the required knowledge and expertise and connecting them to each other.
4. Monitor and track – but do it with the right metrics Conventional ‘web’ metrics can be misleading when it comes to evaluating your enterprise social network. Number of log-ins, page views and other activity levels constitute important data but they only indicate whether the roll-out has been correctly planned. Low levels of activity typically mean that you need to relook at the teams on the platform and their understanding of the role they are playing. The best way to evaluate the ROI on your enterprise social network is the long-term view of business metrics – in our example, the increase in new product sales as a result of cross-selling.