Integrate Enterprise Social Media With Facebook Workplace

Facebook is often considered as personal communication platform which is used to connect to old friends, classmates, or post individual updates, and even today many companies still ban the use of Facebook in office. However Mark Zuckerberg and his company want you to give a second thought about Facebook at work, and aiming to get Facebook Workplace as  prime enterprise social media tool which brings added value to businesses.

Business environment is still formed by people, and people, either employees or clients, are social by nature.

Enterprise social media has been around for quite few years now, some early adopters integrated whole enterprise social media in order to cut cost and lead time in communication processes, and empower the entire organization to be more collaborative and innovative. Customer purchasing records held by customer service could be greatly helpful for supply chain team to analyze and plan for production. Voice of customer received by sales team in the field could be of great value for future product development.

Two of the most popular enterprise social media platforms are Chatter by Salesforce and Yammer by Microsoft. Both referred as “Facebook for business” when initially launched, Yammer is known for its intuitive interface and ease of use, and Chatter gets endorsement on easy of information sharing and customer support, however as a complete business social network solution, both are struggling a bit on delivery overall user adoption rate and engagement.

 

Launched on Oct 10, 2016, Workplace is designed similar to Facebook but not connected to current user accounts and it is AD free.  Julien Codorniou, director of Facebook Workplace indicated:

“We’ve brought the best of Facebook to the workplace — whether it’s basic infrastructure such as News Feed, or the ability to create and share in Groups or via chat, or useful features such as Live, Reactions, Search and Trending posts,” “We combined the things that already exist into a single tool that will allow employees to display a wall of information, like on their private profiles,”

What set Workplace apart from its competitors is the Facebook user base. As mentioned previously, both Yammer and Chatter suffered from user adoption, Facebook seems to find the cure even before launched Workplace. Since Workplace is design similar to Facebook, such strategy allows users make a seamless transition from personal Facebook experience to Workplace.

“Facebook has already trained close to 2 billion people in how to use their product,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box

 

Workplace pricing mode is also interesting and competitive, as Facebook charge by MAUs – monthly active user, who at least log onto and use Workplace once a month. This pricing strategy is dramatically flexible and businesses only pay for what’s used. Seems like profitability is not the top priority for Workplace, at least not in the short term.

“We’re going to grow Workplace like Instagram and Messenger,”  Julien Codorniou said. “Before you even think about monetization, we want to spend the first years growing it. We are obsessed with growth.”

 

Lessons for Others

As Facebook stated on Workplace launch page, the new global and mobile workplace isn’t just about closed-door meetings or keeping people separated by title, department or geography. Organizations become stronger and more productive when everyone comes together.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

---

References