Earlier this year Avanade released its research on the state of social collaboration in the enterprise.

“Today we announced the findings of our latest global research study that shows how the consumerization of IT plays a huge role in driving perceptions about enterprise social collaboration. More and more organizations are adopting social collaboration tools to connect employees and enable them to more easily work together in a creative fashion. And, in the next 12 months, even more businesses plan to adopt enterprise social collaboration tools, creating a significant opportunity in this emerging market.”

High-level findings:
– 77% of business and IT leaders say their companies are currently using social collaboration tools, and 82% of businesses want to make more use of these in the future
– The most commonly used tools are Facebook (74%) and Twitter (51%). Enterprise tools are used much less – SharePoint (39%), Connections (17%), and Salesforce Chatter (12%)
– 77% of decision makers and 68% of end users are leveraging social technologies at work. 24% of decision makers who have adopted social collaboration tools believe they waste time or distract employees from their core jobs.
– Decision makers want to move from consumer-grade social tools to enterprise-grade social tools over the next 12 months.
– 26% of decision makers say there is a lack of training to explain how to use such tools, and a lack of IT department resources to implement them.
– “While social collaboration is on the rise, the emphasis is still on social, not on collaboration.” (great line – great way of putting it).

Read more: Global Survey: Is enterprise social collaboration living up to its promise (PDF, 6 pages)

A couple of comments:
– It’s a nice piece of research, and worth getting to read / digest / think through, even for those using the term “social business” rather than “social collaboration.”
– On the 77% have adopted, but 24% of those are unhappy with it, and in comparison to “most are using Facebook and Twitter,” those results don’t surprise me. If the purpose the tools are being used – social or otherwise – is not aligned to work, then the value in work terms will be low.
– Why is IBM Connections called “IBM Open Connections” in the report? Am I missing something, or does the research team at Avanade not know the true name of the product (shoddy if so)?