Is Social Business Working Out?

Justin Gainer

“Is Social Business Working Out?”

MBA 625

July 3, 2017

“Is Social Business Working Out?”

        According to ComScore social networking is at its most popular point at 20% of all online activity (Laudon).  Now while most employees are knowledgeable about the different social media sites, actually integrating them into the internal workings of business have had mixed results so far.  It’s difficult integrating in social media into their businesses due to traditionalists who are set in their ways and don’t have the incentive to have to learn new software.  They also need to be able to show genuine value is being given by adding social media platforms to their businesses, proving to their employees that it’s not a waste of time.  There are various management, organizational, and technological factors that get in the way of adopting social networks in businesses.

        The management factors that come into play are very extensive.  The biggest issue will be managing your more traditional employees who will be most resistant to changing how they do work.  Having to adjust to learning how to use social media in place of traditional methods they have in work such as emails will be a big change in how they do work.  Management will have to come up with incentive to get employees to adapt and use the new software because as our textbook says only 22% of employees find that the technology is necessary to their jobs (Laudon).  There are also organizational factors at play that they also have to take into consideration as well.  They will have to overcome the way the internal business organization does work already by implanting the new systems.  Currently, most businesses don’t use social networks at all so they have little impact on organization issues in the business such as keeping employees, decision making, or meetings.  Since, these networks are not at the core of how businesses do their work they will have to overcome this to implement social media successfully.  Lastly, going forward they have many technological issues they have to work against and overcome to be able to implement social media successfully into businesses.  The biggest issue will be to stop the peer pressure employees have on each other to retain the status quo because social media provides an ease of use increasing job efficiency in the workplace.  Being able to use social media will let information travel faster when needed compared to the current methods that are in use.  As our textbook says only 18% of people have faith that their social networking programs are successful so they have to adapt the platforms in an easy way for success in the business.

        As stated earlier, using social media in business has had very mixed results so far in businesses in their implementation.  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center launched a social network called Spacebook to help teams be able to collaborate without having to email large groups.  However, this didn’t work out and the site was decommissioned on June 1, 2012.  The main reason for the failure is they didn’t consider the culture and politics of the job.  Due to this, no one knew how to utilize Spacebook to do their jobs or improve their efficiency making the site completely useless.  Not all businesses have such bad luck however when trying to use social media in their business practices.  Red Robin found success using the social platform “Yammer,” which is referred to the Facebook for business.  An example of how Red Robin utilized the software successfully was in April 2012 when they introduced their Tavern Burger product line.  The process was supposed to take anywhere from 6 to 18 months to refine their recipes.  By using the site guests were able to give feedback to servers in the restaurants who could then relay the information to their managers who could all get together on Yammer and compile their information.  This cut their time down to 4 weeks, way sooner than expected, to refine their recipes for the new product line.