This is part four in a multi-part series on how Océ is implementing Enterprise 2.0 within their organization. Part one covered the Business Drivers of Enterprise 2.0, part two covered Making the Push for Enterprise 2.0, and part three covered Change Management for Enterprise 2.0. In this post, we are going to look at the operational and financial impacts of the Enterprise 2.0 implementation.
Let’s first re-cap what tools Océ has been using and why:
- Yammer (which is the most widely adopted tool used with around 1200 users and 35-50 groups)
- Used for company updates, asking questions, sharing interesting internal and external content, and sharing information for project groups
- Wiki
- Used as a tool to process information and mainly used within the R&D department
- Internal blogs (3,000 visits/month for blogs, higher traffic blogs gets 600 visits/month, lower traffic blogs get 1-2 visits/day)
- Used for expertise blogs and product blogs. Approximately 30 internal blogs currently exist. There is a small but dedicated audience.
- Social bookmarking
- Not yet widely adopted and currently “low” priority but there are people that do find interesting information that they bookmark to share and reference later on. Team members agreed to add a tag to every link they share.
- Océ TV
- Internal video platform used to share news, information, announcements and updates.
Operational impact of E2.0
The most visible change was that Océ suddenly saw horizontal communications lines open up across various silos. Within these new communications lines, Océ witnessed idea sharing, collaboration, and employees talking and working with one another more efficiently. Overall, employees at Océ were surprised with the ease of use of the E2.0 tools that were deployed. The traditional model required that the IT department get involved with new tool or technology deployment. However, this has changed and it’s now quite easy (and quick) for employees to do something such as set up a blog in around two minutes without the involvement of IT. Employee usage of Yammer was actually the biggest shock at Océ. Through the tool, employees that have never met were now helping each other out in a meaningful way..
From a communications standpoint, employees became much less dependent on the corporate communications department to communicate with one another. Employees could now do things on their own and didn’t need to rely as much on the IT department to facilitate communication. There was also far more company feedback than there used to be. People were now sharing information and receiving feedback. This again was a result of employees supporting their own communications needs.
Financial impact of E2.0
Océ has some very interesting and meaningful numbers around the financial impact of their E2.0 efforts and I appreciate them being candid about sharing this (and encourage more companies to do so).
Océ had a annual intranet deployment budget of around 350,000 Euros, which they were able to reduce to approximately 5,000 -10,000 Euros (yes, it’s true), which is an absolutely massive cost savings. Océ realized that the intranet was not a critical business tool and were able to replace a lot of what the intranet did and stored with free tools. Due to the recession, Océ had to look at where they could cut costs and the intranet was one identified cost cutting area. Océ stopped all intranet change requests and all halted any external hires required to support the intranet. It’s also interesting to note that Océ also cut back on travel costs and replaced travel with WebEx meetings and e-training.
The current intranet still exists, it’s just going to stay as it is. The support team for the intranet platform used to include a program manager, a roll-out manager, a project leader, and a technical team; all of these roles were eliminated since the intranet was now in “maintenance” only mode. Instead Océ stuck to free tools which required less people to manage and very low (if any) development costs. The intranet still gets around 1.5-2 million page views a month, but it is no longer seen as a critical tool. Instead,the budget goes towards projects such as ERP.
Océ is a great example how an enterprise company can reduce costs by implementing an E2.0 strategy within the organization. However here’s my favorite financial impact story:
The CFO at Océ had his own ideation blog where employees contributed around 60 ideas overtime. One of the ideas involved incentivising delivery employees driving leased cars to use gas stations in local towns instead of filling up on the highway. The idea behind this was that gas was cheaper in local towns than it was at gas stations near the highways. The idea was implemented and employees who filled up at local gas stations were incentivsed and rewarded. The financial impact of this idea? A cost savings of over 800,000 Euros a year. Océ TV saved the company approximately 40,000 Euros annually because employees could now make their own videos (with simple cameras) and upload them, instead of incurring professional video development costs.
Key Takeaways
- Business units no longer need the support of IT to deploy and implement new tools to improve collaboration
- New horizontal communication lines were opened, ones that did not previously exist
- Employees were surprised by the ease of use of new E2.0/Web 2.0 tools
- Employees became less dependent on the corporate communications department
- Océ cut an annual intranet budget of 350,000 euros to 5,000-10,000 euros, saving approximately 340,000 Euros
- Océ realized a cost savings of over 800,000 Euros/year by implementing an idea that was recommended on the CFOs blog
