This was one of the conclusions in Mike Gotta’s Burton Group Field Research Study: Social Networking Within the Enterprise. It is available for free after registration. The report also found that organization generally implement social networking for one or more of the following: expertise location, community building, and talent management.

In some cases, IT viewed social networking as a technology endeavor, especially when social networking functions were already part of existing collaboration platforms. In this case, IT organizations felt it was sufficient to simply “turn on” those features rather than look at vendor alternatives. However, the report found that even in cases where strategists had identified business and IT drivers for social networking projects, many organizations were still uncertain regarding the business case and return-on-investment.

There is a lot of useful detail in the report and I will comment on some it in this post but first there is a larger issue here. Social networking is only one component of enterprise 2.0. It can be seen as an isolated utility. I feel that this is a mistake. It can be aligned with business drivers and that would be useful. However, I feel it will best work as part of an overall enterprise 2.0 strategy that contains this business alignment. It is not surprising that firms are not developing such strategies for social networking but they need to go beyond this to create overall enterprise 2.0 strategies that include social networking.

It was interesting to read that many organizations feel they are behind their competitors in social networking efforts when the report found that most organizations are in the same boat. To continue the metaphor, they all lack a compass.  Even companies that have initiated social networking, the efforts are mostly in the pilot stage. In addition, they are struggling with many non-technical issues such as metrics, policies and controls, roles and responsibilities, employee participation models, and cultural issues. The report suggests that these issues need to be addressed upfront.

After reading this report, I had lunch with Barry Camson who has many years experience in organizational design and related business transformation and culture issues. He wants to get more involved with helping firms with their enterprise 2.0 efforts. I said to him that you are exactly the type of person that these organizations need. They just need to wake up to the fact.  A person with your experience is much more valuable than someone who simply knows the latest features on a few social media tools or how to do the technical bits.

None of the findings in the report will be surprising to anyone who has been implementing technologies that touch the social side such as knowledge management.  I keep getting a massive déjà vu when I see reports like this. However, the report is very useful as it documents the status of social networking and offers some excellent suggestions to enable initiatives to be more successful. As report states, there is a need for clarity amid the hype.

There is much more and I will comment on the details in one or two more posts but I wanted to share with you the headlines and recommend taking a look yourself.