One of the biggest problems in the IT world that businesses and organization face is data and information management. Knowledge Management (KM) and Business Intelligence (BI) approaches are being discussed, evaluated, implemented and assessed in order to maintain and gain competitive advantages in today’s constantly changing economy and globalization. Although information is knowledge and power, simple and massive data storage today is not the way companies want to approach that concept. Business Intelligence can provide accurate and real time data such as statistics, numbers and information which can be used to make educated decisions for business strategies, sales and marketing purposes. But that alone does not keep businesses running. Knowledge management was implemented to “replace” BI and provide for two activities that Business Intelligence lacks. These activities are the creation of new knowledge and the dispersion of that knowledge throughout an organization (Saint-Onge, 2002).
Although many companies have been implementing BI as well as KM solutions in their environment, many of these companies have been frustrated by traditional knowledge management efforts. The reason is that although knowledge management might encourage information sharing and innovation, it does not map the data where the information is coming from and how it gets where it is needed. Companies are actively looking for ways to find out how knowledge flows through their organizations because looking at the company organizational chart, as it turns out, often doesn’t tell the real story about who holds influence, who gives the best advice and how employees are sharing information critical for success.
Social Network Analysis (SNA): A New Perspective
That is the reason why most recently, social network analysis (SNA) has become an important tool for organizational consultants seeking to understand the connection between patterns of interactions and business outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, adoption of new ideas or technologies, likelihood of information getting shared, and creation of new ideas. This paper will evaluate the current problems in information technology management and how social network analysis can help resolve — and those that it can’t. It will also review information about the key concepts in social network analysis, the disadvantage of social networking applications and why these are essential to help businesses maintain their competitive advantages and remain successful in business. Further, this study will also show how social network analysis can be used not only in the social or human network analysis but also in the technical environment for improving technical processes and efficiencies.
According to Valdis Krebs, an SNA guru with his own SNA software company called Orgnet.com, SNA can be defined as “the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, or other information- or knowledge-processing entities.” SNA provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human as well as technical relationships. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes. To understand networks and their participants, in SNA the location of actors in the network is analyzed by measuring the network location and finding the centrality of a node. These measures provide insight into the various roles and groupings in a network — who are the connectors, leaders, bridges, isolates, where are the clusters and who is in them, who is in the core of the network, and who is on the periphery (Kreb, 2007).
Tapping into Hidden Human Capital
As the name social network analysis implies, the probably most obvious objective of an SNA application will be to analyze the social and therefore human network, where the individual and his location within a network is assessed to evaluate what role he or she is playing. Social network researchers measure network activity for a node – in this case an individual – by using the concept of degrees — the number of direct connections a node has. Someone or something that has the most connections is considered a ‘connector’ or ‘hub’ in this network. Common wisdom in personal networks is “the more connections, the better.” Not always true. What really matters is where those connections lead to and how they connect the otherwise unconnected.
People are the true key to business intelligence. There are employees that know more about the customers than the sales or advertising departments ever will. That is because these people have that something special that makes it possible for them to connect with other people on a very valuable level. These people tend to find ways to connect people that just don’t appear in the formal structure of the company–and they work. But capturing that information is difficult at best, because it is hard to locate these people in the first place, and even when located, they don’t know what causes that connection (Ledford, 2006).
SNA as a Complementary Tool
Therefore, SNA is a good tool to find out whom people are going to for information and what connections these people have. But it also can be used to help flag potential problems if a lot of those “experts” are about to retire. And that is a pressing problem given that, by 2010, more than half of all workers in the United States will be over 40 and that tens of millions of baby boomers turn 60 in the coming three years and will be contemplating retirement in the coming years. Mapping the social network within an organization, companies can find out ahead of time who has the necessary knowledge and the “right” connections and can create ways of transferring it to younger employees before it is too late (Patton, 2005).
Enhance Decision-Making
These are elements of social networking, and social network analysis turns up these patterns and makes it possible to analyze them. Using that information, businesses can discover where the true intelligence hides in the human capital. Questions such as who is the person who naturally seems to connect with the customers, what does he know that no one else does, and identify that person who ‘gets’ the company and everyone turns to him for answers can be a very strong asset. Once this information and the individuals has been identified and the potential properly assessed, management can put the business into an advantage never thought of before. This is the most valuable type of business intelligence — the type that cannot be found from analyzing data or comparing reports as done in Business Intelligence or sharing information as supported in Knowledge Management (Ledford, 2006).
Although SNA is not a replacement for traditional KM tools such as knowledge databases or portals, it can provide companies with a starting point or blueprint for how best to proceed with KM initiatives. SNA alone also can not always provide crucial information about why people behave as they do. As a component to a larger KM strategy, however, SNA can help companies identify key leaders and then set up mechanisms, such as “communities of practice” or other groups, so that those leaders can pass on their knowledge to colleagues. Social network analyzing gets businesses one step closer to understanding how people work, support innovation, productivity, and responsiveness through plugging “know-who” gaps. This process support smarter decision making about organizational changes and establishment of key knowledge roles as well as enable insight into challenges of knowledge transfer and integration following restructuring, mergers, or acquisitions (Anklam, 2002).
SNA for IT Infrastructure Evaluation
SNAs allows for the social network analysis, but they can also be very efficiently used in the technical and computer environment to identify important nodes, avoid downtime and bottlenecks in the IT processes but also to improve IT enterprise infrastructures. Using SNA provides insight into a nodes (in this case a technical hardware) location in the network.
The resulting relationship and connection between the centralities of all nodes may reveal much about the overall network structure. One or a few very central nodes dominate a centralized network. If these nodes are removed or damaged, the network quickly fragments into unconnected sub-networks and can become a single point of failure. Similarly, a network centralized around a well-connected hub can fail abruptly if that hub is disabled or removed. A less centralized network has no single points of failure. It is resilient in the face of intentional attacks or random failures — many nodes or links can fail while allowing the remaining nodes to still reach each other over other network paths. Networks of low centralization fail gracefully. IT managers can take advantage of this kind of information in their evaluation of the IT resources, current network status and implement in their strategic planning.
Breaking Down Silos and Encouraging Collaboration
SNA used in the IT field and especially in project management can also make the lack of connections (or collaboration) painfully clear. Especially in today’s fast growing global work environment where companies have various offices and employees located throughout the world, but working on one and the same project, these people are often working independently, with little knowledge of what their counterparts in other countries are doing.
SNA provides a solution on how to break down this independent work environment and get users across continents, states and offices to talking to each other to improve service and create efficiencies. IT managers and executives alike can reorganize around functional groups instead of regional teams, allowing a single manager overseeing the domain, directing the efforts on a worldwide basis. People sometimes do not believe that they are disconnected from the rest of the organization, even though they might be working in the same location or on the same project, but in some cases, a picture speaks a thousand words and will graphically display who the outsiders are and where the lack of communication exists.
Embracing SNA for Long-Term Planning
Over the past several years, the corporate world has been waking up to the uses for this once arcane social science. Some of the interest stems from disappointment with efforts to build knowledge management databases that were largely ignored by employees or did not provide the success it promised. Meanwhile companies and executives want to have a picture of who the key knowledge brokers are in their organization. Although SNA can be a useful diagnostic tool in a wide variety of industries and professions, the practice is relatively new in the corporate arena.
Finding the Return of Investment (ROI) can be a challenge and many executives have difficulties linking the actual business performance to SNA. But the results, displayed in data or visual format, when analyzed properly provide the business the knowledge to implement the most qualified resources for the job where the success results will be much higher than anywhere else. This guarantees not only success, but also efficiency, innovation, long term strategic and disaster planning in the human as well as technical environment of their business. Blogs, online support sites and social networking sites—such as Friendster and LinkedIn—have helped raise SNA’s profile and create real-life benefits for all parties involved and will provide many advantages to businesses all over the world in the long run (Patton, 2005).
