Enterprises and SMBs have shared their concerns and usage pattern of social media — in a Microsoft driven survey.
The Microsoft survey says large companies and SMBs use business social tools in different ways.
According to the study, conducted by the research firm Ipsos among nearly 10,000 end users at SMBs and large companies in 32 countries, SMBs are more likely to utilize multiple external social tools for professional purposes.
This is besides using solutions such as intranets and instant messaging services.
Large companies, on the other hand, are more likely to deploy fewer, more prevalent collaboration tools.
“Social collaboration technologies represent a growing opportunity for both large companies and SMBs to fully realize the benefits of cloud computing through and all-inclusive approach to productivity,” said Ramkumar Pichai, GM – Microsoft Office Division at Microsoft.
The top use for social tools in large companies and SMBs is communicating with colleagues.
Smaller companies use social tools for a broader range of tasks, including communicating with customers, clients or vendors and researching customers, clients and competitors.
Large companies are more likely to use social tools for finding an expert of information within their company.
Security concerns (71 percent of end users at large companies vs. 60 percent of SMB end users) and productivity losses (58 percent at large companies vs. 59 percent at SMBs) are the top risks.
End users at large companies are more likely to say their IT department can be a barrier to using social tools (41 percent at large companies vs. 36 percent at SMBs).
Large companies are also more likely to say social tools are restricted at their workplace because of concerns about the company image (27 percent vs. 21 percent at SMBs) or data loss (25 percent at large companies vs. 22 at SMBs).
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