SMEs More Open To External Social Tools For Workplace Collaboration: Survey

Large companies and SMEs use business social tools — defined as technologies that enable business collaboration and communication, such as intranets, video conferencing and social networks — in dramatically different ways, leading to very different selling motions and partner opportunities, according to a new research released by Microsoft Corp. at its annual partner conference at Houston, USA .

The study, conducted by the research firm Ipsos among nearly 10,000 end users at SMEs and large companies in 32 countries, found that, in addition to using solutions such as intranets and instant messaging services, SMEs are more likely to utilise multiple external social tools for professional purposes. Large companies, on the other hand, are more likely to deploy fewer, more prevalent collaboration tools.

“Social collaboration technologies represent a growing opportunity for both large companies and SMEs to fully realise the benefits of cloud computing through and all-inclusive approach to productivity,” said Ramkumar Pichai, GM - Microsoft Office Division at Microsoft. “The new Office is more social than ever. With SharePoint, Lync and Yammer, Microsoft alone has the expertise, portfolio, capabilities, vision and insight to make the future for workplace collaboration a reality.”

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Other unique differences called out in the study include the following:

• Although the top use for social tools in both large companies and SMEs is communicating with colleagues (selected by seven in 10 of all end users surveyed), those at smaller companies use social tools for a broader range of tasks, including communicating with customers, clients or vendors and researching customers, clients and competitors. In contrast, end users at large companies are more likely to use social tools for finding an expert of information within their company.

• Barriers to adoption still exist across large companies and SMEs. For both groups, security concerns (71 percent of end users at large companies vs. 60 percent of SME end users) and productivity losses (58 percent at large companies vs. 59 percent at SMEs) were identified as the top risks.

• End users at large companies are more likely to say their IT department can be a barrier to using social tools (41 percent at large companies vs. 36 percent at SMEs).

• Those at large companies are also more likely to say social tools are restricted at their workplace because of concerns about the company image (27 percent vs. 21 percent at SMEs) or data loss (25 percent at large companies vs. 22 at SMEs).

“The consumerisation of IT has changed the fundamental way in which businesses communicate, with enterprise social tools now following a ‘bring your own device’ model into the workplace,” said Rebecca Sizelove, associate vice president, Ipsos Public Affairs. “However, there are distinct differences between how SMEs and large companies adopt these tools, and technology decision-makers still require a certain amount of education around the benefits social tools can provide. This creates opportunities for technology vendors to educate and sell to businesses of all sizes.”