Nestlé embraced social media inside the organization successfully and it implemented one of the largest internal social networks with more than 200,000 users using enterprise social network platform developed by Salesforce.com’s Chatter platform. Facebook styled intranet which Nestlé created is called NestChatter

1. Analysis & Outlook
Enterprise Social Networks Case Study – Nestlé created Facebook styled intranet NestChatter
Nestlé has more than 330,00 employees worldwide and manages some 2,000 brands like Nescafe
instant coffee, Kit Kat, Maggie, Nespresso coffee, Pure Life bottled water, etc. and each day sells
1.2 billion items. Nestle has a very active presence on various social networking sites like
Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. The company successfully manages 1,500 pieces of content
being posted every day on social media, 50 percent of all Nespresso capsules being sold online,
180 million Facebook “likes” (with growth of 5-7 percent every month) and 200,000 employees
on an internal social media platform. The company has more than 170 million fans across over
750 brand pages on Facebook alone. Company planned to embrace the social media both
externally for customer engagement and internally for employee engagement. For social media
strategy to be successful a well-planned and developed content strategy is a must. Content
developed by professional media agencies, content generated by customers and also the content
generated by employees is essential for any social media strategy to work. Enterprise Social
Networking software developed by IBM, Saleforce.com, etc. play an essential role as the
companies can create their own Facebook styled intranets within the company for active
employee engagements.
Nestlé embraced social media inside the organization successfully and it implemented one of the
largest internal social networks with more than 200,000 users using enterprise social network
platform developed by Salesforce.com’s Chatter platform. Facebook styled intranet which Nestlé
created is called NestChatter that significantly increased the level of sharing and collaboration by
employees in the company located worldwide. Employee communities were formed with an
agenda to promote online listening best practices and another strategy “Winning with Mobile”
that is mobile apps and mobile friendly sites. Company went further and also used it to recruit
talent with relationship-building skills and such employees were identified based on the way they
collaborated and participated on the intranet platforms. Nestlé has been on focusing on finding
ways to encourage and spread virally digital communication among employees across the globe.
Employees are asked to blog and are scored on likes, viral share and post clicks. There is an
internal version of YouTube and Facebook (similar to Chatter) with employee-generated content.
NestChatter streamlines the passions and experience of employees to create content, and use it as
internal currency and also encourages creating new ideas and recognizing innovative staff
members. The intranet too also improved the efficiency of employees through sharing
information, collaborating on projects across geographical regions and time zones, efficiency of
marketing teams that using the information created new innovative campaigns for various
products and also helped in testing and interacting with customers in innovating new products
and improve existing products. Active engagement by customers has reduced significantly the
time to market and product failures too. Another case that significantly highlights the need for
Facebook styled intranets within the organization that not only promotes employee engagement
but also generates content that is very critical component of social media strategy.
Rajesh Prabhakar
Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/