A recent report published by French consultancy Lecko (http://www.lecko.fr) found that 92% of managers believe developing a collaborative culture is important. But how do organizations achieve this if 73% of them agree that communication tools such as email are saturated? What is needed is a digital transformation of the enterprise to help organizations unlock the many information silos and unleash employee productivity.

In their latest report entitled: Supporting and Preparing Your Business for Change: Latest Developments in Enterprise Social Networking, the Lecko team provide a deep-dive into the collaboration and communication capabilities and best-practices that organizations must consider as they begin to address the challenges of digital transformation. More than just buzz words, many companies have embarked on efforts to truly transform their internal systems and practices to improve they ways in which they interact with their customers, partners, and employees. The end result is an organization that is more quickly able to respond to industry and economic changes, better able to capture the collective knowledge and expertise of their employees, and retain and leverage that knowledge to innovate ahead of their competitors.

For those not familiar with Lecko and their annual research on various aspects of collaboration, the company has worked with many customers in building social platforms and intranets for some of the largest public and private entities in France and beyond. But with 20% of its resources invested back into R&D, the company also leads a comprehensive analysis of the knowledge economy and its supporting ecosystem.

Rather than review the same content and companies each year, their annual research looks at different aspects of the knowledge economy. As a result, their studies look at various complementary trends, such as the identification of social value and how it should be integrated into broader collaboration initiatives.

Download a copy of the latest Lecko report here.

One of the benefits of this research is not just the data provided, but the insights into the success drivers of the customers reviewed. For example, they call out the valuable role of community managers and other influencers as a primary reason why some organizations succeed. Beyond a deployment role, these influencers often provide a necessary layer of "traffic control" and arbitration between end users, IT personnel , and the executive team to bring all parties together during these transformational activities.

The value of analysis such as this to companies beginning their digital transformation journey is that Lecko has assessed each technology (such as IBM Connections, SharePoint, and Slack, among many others) against more than 60 categories. They also provide insights into which platforms work best for which purpose -- whether knowledge management, collaboration, or communication.

For example, an important insight they identify is that many companies attempt to change too much too quickly, which can have negative impacts for both executive sponsors as well as impacted end users.

If change is to be extensive, there will be more people to be unified and it will be harder to create the conditions for success. The energy expended in building this digital collective is energy which is not injected into the transformation process.

In other words, successful transformations tend to come through a series of small wins, or pilot activities, which can be expanded as milestones are reached and your leadership team is convinced of the business value of the transformation. In fact, a good portion of the 148-page report focuses on garnering executive support for your transformation initiative.

Beezy is positioned prominently within this report, included within the Leader quadrant for Social Potential, Information Dissemination and Circulation, Productivity, and Knowledge Management alongside Office 365, Jive, IBM Connections, GoogleDocs, and a handful of other well-known brands.

For those interested in learning more, the Lecko study consists of five chapters:

• Identifying social and collaborative value, which tries to help the reader understand the various emerging technologies and trends that are transforming the digital workplace.
• How managers tackle the challenges of collaboration, which discusses some of the underlying issues of digital transformation, and the practical applications of common solutions.
• Looking at things from an UK/US point of view, which includes some comparisons of Western Europe with international markets to help put their analysis into a global perspective.
• Practice leaders, which describes the goals and approach for their analysis, behavioral profiles of the leaders identified in the report, and some key takeaways that companies can apply to their own strategies.
• Market analysis, which delves deeper into market trends and, based on Lecko customer experiences, analysis of the solutions from key leaders.

At Beezy, we believe that it is time for organizations to experience a digital transformation, allowing them to better unlock the collective intelligence within their internal communities. We are happy to support the ongoing work of the Lecko team, and have made a copy of their report available through our website.

Download your copy of the Lecko report Supporting and Preparing Your Business for Change and get started on your own digital transformation today!