Managing the Digital Knowledge Work with the Social Media Business Value Compass

Companies are increasingly adopting social platforms for supporting their digital workforce, which is more and more virtual or dispersed in cross-functional teams across different locations. Supporting the social processes (communication and collaboration between employees) become an essential task associated with the future of the work.

Organizations need reliable measures to understand social platform usage, their effect on knowledge work and ultimately to increase the derived business value. Understanding how to assess the perceived business value would help managers to optimize the usage and increase the impact of digital social platforms at work.

This paper proposes the social media business value compass as a tool that enables managers to assess the perceived business value derived from the usage of enterprise social platforms. It classifies the business value along four dimensions: efficiency, innovation, retention and transparency. Using the social media business value compass, managers can redefine and orient their digital strategy.