Social networking in office ... thats the way to GO!!

Atos Origin sets out its ambition to be a zero email company within three years

07-Feb-2011 - Atos Origin says it's time to ease information pollution, just as environmental pollution was reduced after the industrial revolution.
Atos Origin sets out its ambition to be a zero email company within three years
Atos Origin set out its ambition to be a zero email company within three years.
Speaking at the fourth in a series of innovation press conferences, Atos Origin CEO and Chairman, Thierry Breton, addresses the challenges organizations face as a result of the explosion in data.
He explains his ambition to eradicate all emails between Atos Origin employees by using instead improved communication applications as well as new collaboration and social media tools.
Breton said: “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives. At Atos Origin we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.
“The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business. Managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week reading and writing emails. They are already using social media networking more than search, and spend 25 per cent of their time searching for information. “At Atos Origin, for example, we have set up collaboration tools and social community platforms, to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales. Businesses need to do more of this - email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business.”
The focus of Atos Origin is to adopt innovative social business solutions in the workplace to bridge the ‘social business gap.
Built on collaborative technology these solutions provide a more personal, more immediate and importantly more cost effective means to manage and share information that supports the way of working in the 21st century and enables the Smart Organization.
In line with its wellbeing at Work Programme launched in 2009 to support its goal of being one of the best places to work, it has implemented a number of initiatives to improve communication and information sharing across its organization.
For example, it is encouraging the use of tools such as Office Communicator and has set up social community platforms to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales.
Initial feedback is that these type of tools reduce email by between 10 and 20% immediately.
Information overload – the facts:
• By 2013, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and editing of existing information
• Online social networking is now more popular than email and search
• Middle managers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information
• 2010 : Corporate users receive 200 mails per day, 18% of which is spam

Source: http://news.top-consultant.com/UK/news_story.aspx?ID=7606