For the past seven years Forrester’s Groundswell Awards have recognized the most innovative social and collaboration programs with a measurable business impact. This year in the business-to-employee (B2E) division we gave out awards in two categories:
 
  • Employee Collaboration. This category recognizes programs that help employees work better together.
  • Employee Empowerment. This category recognizes programs that help employees better serve customers. 
In all, Forrester received more than 100 entries for this year's awards across the B2B, B2C, and B2E divisions, including submissions from all over the world. We applaud all the companies that entered, but of course only a few can win. This year in the B2E division we highlight two programs that used social and collaboration technologies to significantly transform their business processes:
 
EMPLOYEE COLLABORATION 
 
Finalist: Red Thread by LexisNexis
Finalist: Going Social With A Purpose by Ernst & Young and Microsoft
Winner: Atos Journey to Collaboration by Atos and blueKiwi Software
 
LexisNexis, Ernst & Young, and Microsoft all deserve recognition for their outstanding work — and we recommend that you look at their programs using the links above. However, our panel of judges thought Atos’s program stood out for the pure gall of the initiative and impressive stats.
 
Atos was also a contender in the awards last year, and even though it did not win we thought it was worth blogging what others could learn from Atos’s zero email initiative. Whereas most enterprise social initiatives actually add to the overall number of messages employees have to check on during the day, Atos’s concept is powerful because it focuses on reducing the overall messaging load. Atos still hasn’t gotten to zero email, but has saved 25% of work time previously spent on email and reduced disruptions and email overload by 60% — down from from an average of 100 internal emails per employee per week to 40. And Atos has a certification process that has resulted in 220 business processes being redesigned to become “email free”.
 
For much more detail on Atos’s winning program, click here.
 
EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT
 
Finalist: Ideapreneurship by HCL
 
Tech Zone is a knowledge management program to externalize findings by internal engineers addressing customer problems. While on the surface Tech Zone may seem like any other knowledge management system, the algorithm Cisco built to assess the value of content goes above and beyond, and kicks up the innovation quotient. Furthermore, Cisco estimates that the program has resulted in $10 million of savings due to case avoidance.
 
For much more detail on Cisco’s winning program, click here.