7Summits Agency

A large company in France (Atos) “having concluded that the vast majority of email is just time-wasting noise” has recently made the drastic decision to ban all internal email, and instead utilize community and instant messaging metaphors for internal communications.  This is a huge step forward for the maturity of the social business and so far their employees have been on board with the decision. Case studies such as these become proof that a socially enabled business is not an urban myth, or just the futuristic dreams of high paid consultants, it truly is the new way to business and real companies are seeing enough benefits to act.

As the workforce grows younger and brings their preferred ways of communicating into the way they work, organizations must take notice and accommodate those working styles.  The chart above showcases this shift in the email behaviors of the different age groups. Atos is certainly a first mover in the mature social business space and we are excited to track their progress as well as the progress of other companies who will now begin to feel more pressure to figure out what exactly a social business entails and how they can enable one for themselves.