VideoVendors cite some impressive statistics. Spoke says that by prioritizing sales leads according to the strength of connections, one of its clients saw a 35 percent increase in lead pickup the first day, and sales were closed 2.5 times as often. Visible Path's initial data indicates users shorten their sales cycles by about 20 percent and raise their close rates by the same amount.
While it's hard to calculate ROI, IntraLinks's vice president of marketing says he had no trouble justifying the purchase of Visible Path after a six-month trial. "In terms of deals that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, I'd say there are no more than 10," says Julian Henkin. "But it doesn't take more than a couple of those to make something like this make sense."
Henkin wouldn't divulge the cost of the software, but Visible Path says it charges $100 per user a year. Allen's coauthor, David Teten, advises users to bargain hard: "This space is very new. Everyone is cutting deals because they're so eager to get customers."
There are trickier considerations, though. Privacy is the biggest. People don't want Big Brother reading their E-mails, handing out ex-girlfriends' phone numbers, or revealing confidential client information. Vendors are trying to answer those fears with participation options and privacy safeguards. Visible Path stresses that E-mail content is never monitored, and contact owners remain anonymous until they agree to requests for help. "We not only protect the CEO's Rolodex," says Visible Path co-founder and CEO Antony Brydon, "we protect the CEO by allowing him to remain anonymous."
But people have wildly different notions of what's invasive. When Spoke first rolled out its software, 20 percent of users said it didn't provide enough privacy, while 80 percent complained it gave too much. Now the system is configurable at both the corporate and individual levels. "There is no agreed-upon definition of privacy," says Ben T. Smith IV, chairman and CEO of Spoke.
He's not kidding. One consulting firm using Contact Network's software worries about a revolt if it mines company address books, but has heard few complaints about E-mail scanning. Meanwhile, 3i's E-mail-scanning pilot met with so much resistance that the company dropped it, but management won't let employees hide even sensitive contact information such as home numbers from the system. "We've tended to take the line that the more information we have for the business, the better," says Perry.
Making IT Work
Once you've convinced employees that the system can help them without harming them, you've still got to get them to help one another. Some companies say loyalty and team spirit are motivators enough. When law firm Duane Morris enabled InterAction, upper management led by example. The chairman was the first person to share all of his contacts, followed by the executive committee and all 50 of the firm's partners board. "The message is that we all must share to make this work," says Edward M. Schechter, chief marketing officer at Duane Morris. Everyone must share "to get the most of our existing relationships," he says. "The InterAction software enables us to more easily tap into firmwide resources — that is, our contacts. If you don't have commitment with a capital 'C' at the top of the organization, it won't work."
At 3i, like many other companies, employees' cooperativeness is reviewed during performance evaluations. Perry says that sharing contacts and information forms one part of the staff-assessment system. Employees are reviewed against each criterion, and their bonus pay depends on the review.
This approach comes with caveats. "If use of the system is monitored for performance reviews, the company shouldn't be specific about what metrics are used," warns Allen, "because people will game the system." In other words, if management declares it will give bonuses to the three people who respond to the most requests, employees may get their buddies to make fake requests purely so they can respond.
Other companies prefer to offer carrots. At IntraLinks, anyone who grants access to a contact gets a $25 American Express gift certificate. If the contact results in a sale, the person gets a 2 percent sales commission. "We liked the fact that for the first time we could commission people outside the sales department who help with sales," says Henkin.
If all of these issues can be sorted out, social-networking tools could become a ubiquitous part of larger enterprise applications, just as search engines have. "It's hard to imagine that five years from now someone will be wandering the halls of IBM looking for inroads into another company," says Brydon. Instead, they'll be firing up the machine that can help them quickly find that needle in the haystack.
Yasmin Ghahremani is a freelance writer based in New York.
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