Sparking a Culture of Collaboration

As a new employee to SuccessFactors (I recently joined through the acquisition of CubeTree) there are a lot of new people to meet and new processes to adopt. Coming from a acquired organization, fitting into an organization of over 1200 people, can be a challenge. Finding the right people, working on the right projects, sparking the right collaborations are the concerns I hear from my co-workers on BOTH sides of the equation. Fortunately, the company is using CubeTree internally as enterprise social software and we are able to use it to connect people, initiate conversations, explore the new company culture and start working together. What follows are a few of the experiences people have shared with me about using CubeTree to create a culture of collaboration at SuccessFactors.

Finding the right people to work with on a project is a fairly typical challenge for a new employee in any organization. Beth, in Product Management, needed to work on a new integrated product demo. Coming from an acquired company, the first thing she did was perform a search in the SuccessFactors CubeTree for existing demos. In addition to the demos, she found a discussion thread in the feed and was able to connect with the publisher, Jake, who turned out to be the demo expert at SuccessFactors and a critical partner for Beth's project. The two were able to continue collaborating right away on the new joint product demos and quickly formed a group with all the Solutions Consultants who are responsible for demo delivery.

Who's who in the new company? For Shelby, Director of Customer Success, the first time she met anyone in person from any of the companies SuccessFactors acquired this year (CubeTree and Inform) was at an industry event in NYC. But it turned out that it was just too many people to meet at the busy event and it wasn't possible to make all the connections she wanted. When she returned to her office she started following some of the new people on CubeTree and vice versa. By connecting with new co-workers on-line she now understands who does what and how they fit into the new organization.

"Without CubeTree, I'm not sure how I would have gained that knowledge so quickly. Now, every opportunity I have to initiate a communication that requires follow-up and collaboration, I think how can CubeTree help me do that?"
-- Shelby, Director Customer Success.

Another team within the SuccessFactors Customer Success organization also started using a CubeTree Group to share best practices and information. They use the Group Chat to communicate in real time while on the phone with customers. With all the reps live on the chat it's simpler and faster to transfer a customer to the right regional support person. The result is quicker service and a warmer hand off for the customer.

Ross, an executive from CubeTree, needed to decide how to participate in Industry events at the new company. Using CubeTree he was able to find the project groups for events already underway; including the agendas, plans and registration lists. With this information, Ross was able make informed decisions about participation in the events, start identifying customer meetings, and engaging the event teams. With information already shared on CubeTree, Ross and the event teams then spent more time and energy focused on executing the events and less time having to bring each other up to speed.

Using enterprise social software to combine two companies into one after an acquisition can help build a culture of collaboration. A collaboration platform like CubeTree makes it much easier for individuals across the company to make connections with new co-workers and spark new ideas. The benefits include increased information sharing, better decision making, reduced redundancy and a faster ramp to productivity.