Message instantly, repent at leisure?
Jinfo Blog

3rd February 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

Thomson Reuters’ announcement of its new enterprise instant messaging hub merely serves to confirm the continuing onward march of social networking applications in the workplace. But such developments also carry risks – especially when the financial services sector is already nursing a lacerated reputation. Corporate instant messaging deployments have not yet fully used their potential to enable their users to reach their counterparts and customers in other organizations, says Thomson Reuters’ Global Head of Collaboration Services David Gurle http://digbig.com/4yetp. Now by providing a hub to the leading EIM systems, Reuters’ Messaging Interchange allows users to communicate with colleagues and external contacts ‘from the safety of comprehensive security and compliance functionality’. Reuters’ launch looks timely. Among its Five Business Intelligence Predictions for 2009 and Beyond http://digbig.com/4yetq the IT consultant Gartner highlights collaborative decision making as an emerging new product category that combines social software with BI platform capabilities. ‘The emergence of social software presents an opportunity for savvy IT leaders to exploit the groundswell of interest in informal collaboration,’ Gartner says. ‘Instead of promoting a formal, top-down decision-making initiative, these IT leaders will tap people's natural inclination to use social software to collaborate and make decisions.’ Well yes. But there’s still the crucial issue of risk and reputation that needs to accompany the exploitation of such tools – an issue highlighted in a recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Based on a survey of nearly 500 senior executives across nine industries http://digbig.com/4yetr Managing Risk through Financial Processes concluded that such processes hadn’t kept pace with the rise in risk, and that dangers from incomplete, inaccurate or uncontrolled data might rise as the downturn deepened. Automation can help to embed rules and controls within processes in order to control risk, the report continued – although, it added, ‘no amount of process automation eliminates the need for judgment’. There’s admittedly no direct cross-over between the risks reviewed by the EIU and those associated with enterprise social networking. But the reference to ‘uncontrolled data’ resonates nevertheless – and recent advice from the law firm Pinsent Masons further reinforces the need for caution, even as regards the chatting employees do in their private lives in places like Facebook. Citing examples of New York Times journalists and White House staff, the firm’s employment law partner Simon Horsfield suggests http://digbig.com/4yexc that employers have every right to ask their employees not to do something in their private life which damages the employer or their own ability to do their job. If a respected law firm is countenancing restrictions on even personal social networking, where does this leave communications on business-to-business instant messaging systems? However exciting Reuters’ new hub might be, it may possibly have opened a sizeable can of worms.

« Blog