SUMMARY: Summarize the case. Identify the main point (as in "What's your point?"), thesis, or conclusion of this case.
Social Networking Takes Off at Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer is a market-leading global information services and publishing company focused on professionals working in law, taxation, finance, and healthcare. Kluwer provides information, software, and services that deliver vital insights, intelligent tools, and guidance from subject-matter experts. Headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, the company, in 2012, had 19,000 employees, revenue of 3.6 billion Euros (about US $4.8 billion), and operations in 40 different countries across Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.
Although Kluwer has been able to provide professionals in the specialties it served with the up-to-date information they needed to do their jobs efficiently and effectively, it was unable to do so for its own employees. Management believed the company was not making the most of its own internal knowledge resources. So in early 2012, the company initiated a study of its communications channels. The study found that employees were not using Kluwer's existing corporate intranet, and that they were not meeting management goals for collaboration and knowledge sharing. The existing intranet was "static." In other words, it published information about the company for internal use, but the information was not updated quickly enough and the intranet lacked tools to help staff have dialogues, share ideas, and work with other members of the company, including people that they might not know. In addition, it was unclear which department or individual was responsible for maintaining this content, making it more difficult for people to add new information or updates.
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What Kluwer needed was a central resource that would support dynamic knowledge-sharing. The entire staff would be able to easily locate information about the company as well as updates on the latest developments of current initiatives and projects. Tools that would help employees work more closely together-including the ability to locate employees in other parts of the company who were experts in specific subjects-would help streamline operations and speed up key business functions.
Kluwer decided to base its solution on Microsoft Yammer, an enterprise social networking platform used by over 200,000 organizations worldwide. Yammer enables employees to create groups to collaborate on projects and share and edit documents. The service can be accessed through the Web, desktop, and mobile devices and can be integrated with other systems such as Microsoft SharePoint, to make other applications more "social."
Management saw that early adopters of this software tool were indeed sharing information and ideas, and that Yammer could provide the foundation for a dynamic social network linking the entire company. Yammer quickly became Kluwer's central resource for sharing company news and updates. Employees are using Yammer to collaborate on projects, share ideas, and discover people in other departments with useful expertise that could help them in their work. Yammer has even encouraged more employee interaction offline, as employees get to know their fellow workers better from their online experiences.
Management believes Yammer has been hugely successful. Over 80 percent of employees, including managers, regularly log onto Yammer to locate and share information. Staff are creating their own work spaces and groups on their own to further pool their experience and expertise. Kluwer today boasts over 21 active groups, including ones dealing with the legal field, customer experience, and innovation. The social network has been especially helpful as an incubator for new business ideas. And it is obvious that internal social networking has helped transform corporate culture into one that genuinely fosters openness and a strong sense of community. Many more employees feel closely involved with the business as a whole-something that could not have been achieved with the old system.
Sources: "Social Networking Trumps a Static Intranet," www.yammer.com, accessed March 2, 2014 and www.wolterskluwer.com, accessed March 2, 2014.