Internal networking tools are enabling colleagues to solve one another's problems-and benefit their company's bottom line.

The question came up on Sabre Holding's internal social networking platform: an employee was about to spend $3,000 for Italian translation services. Did anyone know of an alternative?

Another employee who spoke Italian fluently spoke up and offered to help, costing Sabre nothing. Collaboration like this has been saving the company $150,000 a year, says Sarah Kennedy, Sabre's manager of social solutions.

"By embracing social technology, global organizations can put the collective knowledge of its entire workforce at the fingertips of every employee," she says.

Such stories explain why internal social media-wikis, social networks, blogs, and mashups-is the hottest new topic among experts who study intranets. Employees can collaborate and reach out directly to one another for advice using tools like IGLOO Software, Sabre's Cubeless, Socialtext and scores of others.

Blogs, wikis and other "intranet 2.0" tools are present in nearly 50 percent of organizations' intranets in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, says Toby Ward, founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media. Some 47 percent have intranet wikis, 46 percent have discussion forums and instant messaging, and 45 percent have intranet blogs.

Surveys by McKinsey Quarterly show that three constituents gain from social media on an intranet, says Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology.

"The benefits accrue to employees but also to partners and suppliers through faster turnaround, faster access to subject matter and experts, improved relationships, a variety of dimensions," he says.

Ward recently highlighted several case studies of successes in a blog post. The Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NCMI) is the second-largest network in the world, used by 700,000 military and civilian employees, he writes. Leroy Merlin's employees use an intranet to exchange messages and tasks and share photos.

Meredith Corp. is using social software from Socialtext to increase circulation of its magazine brands and offset the downturn in the ad market, Ward says.

So how do you make your intranet a success?

1. Recognize that social media is a given

Employees have come to want and even expect and that it should be available on the corporate intranet, Ward says, and companies are investing in it.

"If they don't, employees will be doing it on their own, creating their own Facebook groups, creating their own LinkedIn groups, using Twitter regardless," Ward says. "If they ban it, they face certain wrath from employees who view them as really dogmatic, overprotective, and just certainly not 21st-century."

2. Find out what you've got

Survey what tools your company is already using. In the early days of the Internet, Holtz says, he was intrigued to discover that many executives didn't know they had an intranet when they actually did. Some have a similarly nonchalant approach to social media.

3. Assess your needs

It's easy to get seduced by the new wikis and Twitter-like forums, but organizations need to integrate the tools with its mission. Ask yourself what your goals are-not what's cool out there, Holtz says.

"The fact that this is happening out there doesn't mean that organizations at the highest levels know how to leverage it to make it the most effective it could be, to provide the greatest return, and to align it with organizational needs," he says.

4. Have a strategy to boost intranet social media

Often IT is implementing social media because they have the tools, but there's no strategy to get people to use it, says Holtz.
 
"You have organizations that throw the tools out there and let them grow organically," Holtz says. "You need to have a strategy about how you're going to roll this out, how you're going to get people engaged."

5. Remember that employees want information first

The key is social media that ensures that collaboration is easy and is pertinent to the problems encountered in the workplace, says Andrew Wright, managing director of CIBA Solutions.

In a survey of 15,000 intranet end users from 50 organizations, Wright found that their most highly rated aspect of the intranet was being able to tap into the knowledge base within the organization. Interaction ranked far lower.

"What this tells me is that your average intranet end user is not that interested in being able to contribute and interact in comparison to being able to find information," he says.

6. Solve one another's problems

The greatest momentum within organizational intranets lies within Facebook-like social networks, where employees maintain profiles, form groups, connect with their colleagues and collaborate on finding solutions, Holtz says.

During a visit to Dell, he saw employees using Chatter, an internal tool similar to Twitter.

"I was watching things fly by, and in a matter of minutes, you could see could see a problem emerge and get solved or a query sent out and then answered," Holtz said. "You could see how fast work was getting done when you have access to colleagues and peers both that you know and that you don't."