Collaboration Advice #9: Tap Technology

Andrew Dietz is Founder and President of Creative Growth Group, Inc., a business development firm that exclusively helps professional service organizations sharpen growth strategies, enhance client development capabilities, and implement marketing and business development initiatives.

“The idea of using technology to organize a team around a shared purpose is really what social collaboration enterprise is all about,” Bret Tushaus, Product Director at Deltek said.  “The difference between enterprise social collaboration technologies and consumer social media is that, for instance, Facebook is a branding mechanism for companies and a personal socializing environment.  Compare that to something a tool like Kona that was intentionally built to organize a team around a shared purpose. 

IDC did a study recently showing that, by the end of 2013, 75% of small and mid-size enterprises will have some sort of social collaboration tool in place and by the year 2016 social collaboration enterprise software will be a $6.4 billion industry.  That’s 42% annual growth over the next three years.  Confirming that social business collaboration is a real thing, look at the technology industry acquisitions over the last 18 to 24 months.  SAP, Oracle and Microsoft all purchased some sort of social collaboration platform.  So it’s a real and meaningful phenomenon that warrants the attention of professional firms.”

This post is part of a series recapping the event, Creating Collaborative Advantage: How To Get Fiercely Independent Professionals To Collaborate For The Benefit Of Each Other, Their Firm and Their Clients hosted by SilverEdge, along with its partners Deltek and Creative Growth Group. Stay tuned for more advice from the event.