France Telecom-Orange provides mobile, Internet, and fixed telecommunications services to 203 million customers. The company wanted to strengthen social connections among employees to keep morale high, encourage collaboration, and improve business. It created an informal social network, called “plazza,” using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as the foundation. Employees voluntarily join the network, which provides access to people profiles, blogs, wikis, communities, and content sharing. In the first two months after the launch in France, more than 15,000 employees joined the network and 70 percent of their communities focus on work-related topics. Soon, the plazza will be available to all 181,000 France Telecom employees worldwide. Because plazza is based on a flexible, scalable platform, the company can easily add to the social networking services it provides, as the community grows.
Situation
France Telecom-Orange is one of Europe’s largest providers of mobile and broadband Internet services and a global telecommunications company. France Telecom-Orange has 203 million individual customers located in 32 countries and also delivers telecommunications to companies in 166 countries. The company’s 181,000 employees are located in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In 2010, France Telecom-Orange, launched an initiative called Conquests 2015, aimed at improving experiences for customers, shareholders, and employees. As part of Conquests 2015, France Telecom-Orange will improve and upgrade its IT infrastructure and tools to improve the daily quality of work life for employees.
France Telecom-Orange supports a corporate intranet and a unique group directory, which provide employees with access to contact information, collaboration, human resources support, and productivity tools. The company also supported disparate, department-oriented social networks in IT, Labs, Marketing, and Operations. These networks were based on different technology platforms, did not interoperate, had limited functionality, and were available only to employees located in France.
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We set out to create a common social network in a complex organization, which could help people get to better know each other, share ideas, and form stronger connections. SharePoint Server 2010 helped us do this. |
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Thierry Flury
Director of Performance, Process, and Tools for Human Resources, France Telecom-Orange |
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The Human Resources department felt that France Telecom-Orange could do a better job of promoting informal social networking among employees. It wanted to provide a forum where employees could connect with others about business and nonbusiness topics. By better serving employees’ social interests
and helping them form stronger interpersonal connections, France Telecom-Orange believed it could maintain high morale, improve work-related collaboration, and achieve greater innovation and better customer service. Thus, creating an enterprisewide social network became an official project of Conquests 2015.
France Telecom-Orange wanted the informal social network to be accessible to all employees regardless of their department, role, or location. “We wanted to implement a common network that was less business-oriented than our existing networks, where membership was voluntary and compelling on a social level,” says Thierry Flury, Director of Performance, Process, and Tools for Human Resources at France Telecom-Orange. “And we wanted to serve thousands of employees with it, rather than just hundreds.”
France Telecom-Orange conducted five focus groups to determine employees’ interest in a companywide social network and gain insights on how to design it to best serve their needs. “We wanted the network to be effective for and interesting to everyone, not just young people or tech-savvy people or people who already belonged to other social networks,” explains Flury. The Human Resources department interviewed 5,000 employees from interns to senior executives, across departments and worldwide locations. “Overall, the feedback was positive,” says Flury. “More than 50 percent of employees said they would begin to use a France Telecom-Orange social network immediately.”
Solution
France Telecom-Orange used the data that it developed in its focus groups and worked with the key stakeholders—owners, managers, and users—of the company’s existing social networks, as well as the IT department, to identify the features and functionality that it wanted its social network to provide. Requirements included:
France Telecom-Orange used the list of requirements to evaluate several potential solutions for social networking. Jean Daries, Manager of Corporate Identity at France Telecom-Orange, says, “We looked at three different categories of platforms: commercially available enterprise tools; open source options; and software from smaller, startup-level, niche product providers that were marketing extremely user-friendly products.” Cost and compatibility with the France Telecom-Orange IT infrastructure were also primary considerations.
“Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 emerged as the best solution,” says Daries. “It would connect easily to our existing IT environment, and it offered many out-of-the-box features as well as the flexibility and customizability that we needed to continue to develop a comprehensive social network over time.”
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| Figure 1. Plazza welcome page with instructional videos |
In January 2010, France Telecom-Orange began to develop its social network, which it named “plazza.” Developers used Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, and the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system to create a compelling, interactive user experience. “We customized the SharePoint Server 2010 environment to reflect the look and branding of France Telecom-Orange,” says Flury. “We also tried to make it very easy for users to jump right in and find the activities or communities that they want to engage in. Making plazza user-friendly was a primary goal.”
In April 2010, France Telecom-Orange released the first version of the social network to a pilot group of employees, while it continued to test and add more features and functionality. In December 2010, France Telecom-Orange deployed plazza to all 100,000 employees based in France.
The plazza home page features informational articles and instructional videos about what plazza offers; the plazza charter, which sets forth basic guidelines and expectations for etiquette; and the option to join (see Figure 1). “Membership to plazza is not moderated,” says Flury. “Anyone can join instantly, without having to be validated by a manager or department.”
Once registered, employees gain access to a web-based dashboard, called MyDashboard, for personalizing and customizing their plazza experience. Here, employees use SharePoint Server 2010 profile pages to publish information about themselves such as interests, biographies, and hobbies. They can include keywords in their profile and invite other users to contact them if their interests are similar. “For instance, I am in Human Resources, and I can tag ‘human resources 2.0’ [technologies] as a topic that I am interested in and invite others who are interested in discussing the topic to contact me,” explains Flury.
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| Figure 2. Page where employee can view and manage “contacts” on the plazza |
Employees can invite other employees to join their personal network. Once they join, these employees are referred to as “contacts” (see Figure 2). Employees can join existing communities, start their own communities and invite other plazza members to join, initiate blogs, partake in wikis, and share files—including documents, photos, videos, and audio—with other members. Profile pages also include a “wall” on which employees and their contacts can write messages. “These activities are not monitored,” says Flury. “plazza is based on voluntary use, and it is assumed that employees will abide by the guidelines we set forth in the charter.”
There are currently 900 communities available on plazza, some of which are business-focused, centered on specific job activities or career paths such as marketing, human resources, or research. An intern, for instance, can join the human resources community to gain exposure to many current topics, issues, and discussions. “Other communities are related to people’s passions, like football or photography,” says Flury. “Communities are very popular.”
France Telecom-Orange connected plazza to the company’s group directory, called One Directory, that provides contact and organizational chart information and uses Active Directory Domain Services for user authentication and single sign on, to take advantage of the directory’s heavy use. One Directory receives 600,000 visits daily from employees, so the company embedded links to plazza within each employee’s identity card to make it easy to access the social network. Also, the connection is configured so that when an employee joins, basic details—such as name and contact information—are automatically downloaded to initialize the user’s plazza profile. “But we customized the connection so that organizational chart–related information was not carried over,” says Daries. “We wanted the experience to be horizontal rather than vertical—promoting connections among peers rather than showing where your colleagues sit within the organization.”
France Telecom-Orange continues to add features to plazza and enhance the environment such as creating even richer forums for conversations and discussions, and a graphic representation for users’ personal contacts.
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With SharePoint Server 2010, we are able to create an experience that is very separate from everything else employees do within France Telecom-Orange. It is truly voluntary, truly social. |
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Thierry Flury
Director of Performance, Process, and Tools for Human Resources, France Telecom-Orange |
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Currently, plazza has more than 20,000 members based in France. The company plans to make plazza accessible to employees in Spain, Dominican Republic, Jordan, and Romania by June 2011. By the end of 2011, plazza will be available to all 181,000 employees throughout the world.
Benefits
France Telecom-Orange is using its social network to help employees form social connections and improve collaboration. The network interoperates with the company’s existing IT infrastructure and, because it is flexible, customizable, and scalable, it can accommodate growth.
Establishes Forum for Social Interaction
Plazza provides a common social network for France Telecom-Orange employees across departments, divisions, hierarchies, and geographic locations. “We intentionally did not link this system to any of our human resources tools or portals,” explains Flury. “We wanted the environment to be voluntary, and the information that people provide to be declarative and controlled by them or their peers, not by the company.”
Although SharePoint Server 2010 provides a link to One Directory and the Active Directory service for identity management and authentication, France Telecom-Orange customized the connection to One Directory to pull in only necessary information when people register, including name and contact information. No hierarchical information—such as who an employee reports to—is available on the plazza. “With SharePoint Server 2010, we are able to create an experience that is very separate from everything else employees do within France Telecom-Orange. It is truly voluntary, truly social.”
Within the first two months after launch, employees created 500 communities and 800 blogs. “And that is with just 15,000 members,” says Flury. “We did not go into this project with specific benchmarks or goals. We set out to create a common network in a complex organization, which could help people get to better know each other, share ideas, and form stronger connections. SharePoint Server 2010 helped us do this.”
Inspires Trust, Keeps Morale High
Network membership is voluntary and activity is not moderated or overseen by company management, and positive results are evident. France Telecom-Orange has received highly affirmative feedback from employees who belong to plazza. “Our users and community leaders tell us they like plazza because it makes them feel that the company trusts them,” says Flury. Even though France Telecom-Orange constructed plazza for social networking, approximately 70 percent of the communities that users have created focus on professional, work-related topics.
Communities on plazza grow naturally. People publish information on their profile pages; when others see they have mutual interests, they contact them voluntarily. “With SharePoint Server 2010 as the foundation for plazza, France Telecom-Orange is able to encourage natural connections and collaborations among employees,” says Flury. “If people are connecting on a social level, it will help them know and understand each other better. Ultimately, we believe they will work better together.”
Provides Comprehensive, Flexible Platform
France Telecom-Orange customized the SharePoint Server 2010 interface to make it familiar and inviting to employees. It reflects the look and feel of the France Telecom-Orange brand, and provides a cohesive sense of community. France Telecom-Orange also uses SharePoint Server 2010 blogs, wikis, file sharing, and profile pages, and plans to add more features soon, such as enhancing the functionality of conversations and discussions, and adding video podcasts. “We selected SharePoint Server 2010 as the platform on which to base our social network because it integrated well and provided many capabilities that we identified as necessary,” says Daries. “We knew we could customize it and add on to it to provide more services as the social network grows.”
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web.
For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
For More Information
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For more information about France Telecom products and services, visit the website at:
www.orange.com
