CIO of CSC deploys social collaboration platform

CSC has shared insights into the deployment of its social networking platform, with CIO Ben Patey saying C3 is still engaging some 55,000 employees a year after its deployment.

Patey said the large IT firm realised early on that enterprise 2.0 would be no mean feat, and began its collaboration journey early.

“Enterprise 2.0 is not a field of dreams if you just deploy it. You need to plan for certain things. As the saying goes, ‘if you build it, they will come’.”

The firm, which has employees throughout some 90 countries, initially used wiki’s but saw the need to move to a collaboration platform and selected Jive for the deployment.

“The tools we had weren’t meeting the expectations of the organisation. It was about connecting staff with our people, our content and creating communities,” Patey said.

Having a credible process, the right investment and a formal evaluation phase was important to Patey, who launched C3 after a five to six month pilot program.

“We called it C3 – collaborate, communication and connect. In the six weeks, 20,000 people adopted it and 55,000 people are using it a year on,” he said.

“It has been a really effective way for our president to engage with staff. I communicate with my 3000 customers through video blogs because that’s where my team lives.”

Patey considers C3 a tool for the people and attributed its success to this.

“Our usage patterns show it’s the most actively used of our internal tools. We have an average of 26,000 people online at one time and over 40 per cent are active in the community,” he said.

Having avenues for feedback and letting social groups develop externally was important for Patey, who said CIOs should take all feedback on board when deploying similar projects.

“Allow people to give feedback and respond quickly to this. We want people to see this feedback being taken on board. For me, the next step for us to open up the platform for our customers.”