Toyota uses Salesforce.com enterprise social network platform called Chatter that facilitates internal communication between hundreds of thousands of Toyota employees across the world to interact, share and collaborate with each other on a day to day basis and work for the organizational growth

1. Analysis & Outlook
Toyota uses Salesforce.com enterprise social network platform called Chatter that facilitates
internal communication between hundreds of thousands of Toyota employees across the world to
interact, share and collaborate with each other on a day to day basis and work for the
organizational growth. Employees have to login to access the intranet, join groups and
participated in discussions of their interests and can post updates, comments, opinions, questions
and get answers and suggestions from coworkers based in 170 countries around the world. With
Chatter platform allowing collaboration and sharing of information and documents employees
can actively collaborate and work together to resolve critical issues. “People have only 24 hours
a day,” says Toyoda. “But through social we can connect with many people at once.” Enterprise
social networking platforms are critical tools for knowledge management as organizations need
to document and share the knowledge within the organizations effectively for growth. "Most of
the knowledge is tacit. It is walking around in the heads of our employees," said Steve Kang,
social enterprise manager for Toyota. "The question is how do you get that knowledge? How do
you extract that knowledge? Because it's not written down anywhere. This provides us with a
way to do that."
Toyota started using the Chatter based intranet since 2012 and employees can access the intranet
not only through desktops but also using the mobile devices like iPad, Android and BlackBerry
applications. Employees can create topic centered groups and engage with others on this
platform and interactions should be mostly work related and one of the popular group is the "ask
all Toyota" for employees to pose questions to other Toyota workers around the globe. Another
important usage of Chatter in Toyota is the cross-departmental task forces that collaborate across
different departments located across the globe and they prefer chatter rather than the traditional
email as Chatter allows easy flow of information between collaborators. Even the senior
management in Toyota actively use intranet to communicate with employees and employees
keep track of the posts by the senior management. Toyota even implemented a translation service
within the chatter so as there will be seamless interaction between Japanese and Non-Japanese
employees that enhanced communication among Toyota employees around the world, leading to
quicker decision-making and information-sharing as enhanced communication ultimately help to
make products and services best suited to consumers. Along with digital modes of
communications Toyota also uses face-to-face contact where in Senior management regularly
walk around and talk to employees and also regularly hold roundtable discussions. Employees
are critical part of organizational success and organizations need to implement platforms that
allow communication, collaboration and sharing of information and knowledge between
employees and also with senior management so that they can also work together for achieving
the organization goals and objectives. Enterprise Social Networks also allow employee
engagement with customers and also allow engagement on external social networking platforms
too.
Case Study: Enterprise Social Networks @ Toyota – Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration