I just caught a great session here at SharePoint Conference 2012 where the good folks at Kroger (a large retail grocer in the central/eastern US) laid out what was basically a case study of how deploying Yammer has energized and enabled their workforce.
What interested me about this session was the uniqueness of it– prior to the Yammer acquisition, a presentation like this would not have made the SPC agenda. Why? Because even though Kroger is a Microsoft shop, they made a conscious choice to deploy Yammer for social networking internally– and deployed it well before Microsoft’s acquisition was announced.
There were a couple compelling points shared here that I think pertain to any enterprise social deployment. I often mention use of the same lines of advice with my clients, and I think these are worth reiterating for the broader audience (please note– while I agree with them, these points are Kroger’s, not mine)
- Teams being enabled via communities should first assess how they communicate today, and identify their pain points
- Always identify resources and champions who can help move the effort forward
- Don’t assume everyone “gets it”
- Communicate often
These segued into several Myths of Enterprise Social– and I’m in complete agreement with the falsity of these assumptions:
- Generations define readiness for social– you know, “millenials get it” and “baby boomers won’t”
- All people will do is waste time and chat about lunch
- Brilliant IT people will understand the business drivers and value of enterprise social
- This is easy.
In addition, we learned that Kroger used SAML to federate identity between Yammer and their Active Directory environment– a very helpful little nugget to those of us concerned with bringing Yammer networks into a SharePoint world.
Big thanks to Kroger for sharing a fantastic case study!
