eAROS

Collaboration Platforms are becoming increasingly common at companies. Consequently, plenty of products have recently appeared on the market offering measurement and analysis of collaborative networks in Corporate Social Platforms.

Acquiring a platform is a considerable investment for an organization, due to both high cost and to the changes required on the way the employees work and communicate. Therefore, it is essential to count on a tool that measures in real time whether the implementation of the platform is successful and to check if the advantages of social and digital transformation —collaboration, engagement, efficiency and transparency— also result in a higher impact on the ROI of the organization.

What is eAROS?

eAROS is a SaaS application for the real-time analysis of Corporate Collaboration Platforms. These platforms consist of several applications that promote team work beyond organization charts and stimulate transmission of knowledge. Some of these applications are blogs, wikis, forums, shared agendas, communities, bookmarks and file exchange.

eAROS analyses each of these applications as well as the whole platform on its own, adjusting completely to the model set by the client. What makes eAROS different from other analytical tools is that it is based on the Social Network Analysis approach, a discipline that started long ago in Anglo-Saxon countries and IIC has become its referent in Spain.

These networks analyses allow evaluating the applications of the platform fully. For instance, measuring the number of times employees access a forum is not enough, but most analytical suites are limited to it. The key would be to get to know the networks that are being generated by means of that forum. Are distant delegations —with different locations— starting to share solutions and knowledge? In short, is there a new collective intelligence emerging in the organization?

How does eAROS work?

eAROS 2.0 records the electronic footprint of connections among employees within a collaboration platform and, on the basis of them, builds the networks of the relationships among them. The analysis allows determining the real effectiveness of platforms in reference to Key Performance Indicators (social KPIs) such as the potential for innovation.

eAROS captures interactions among users of collaborative applications (communities, blogs, wikis, message boards, profiles, file exchange, calendars or shared agendas, bookmarks, etc.), builds a graph of the relationships and measures it with social network analysis algorithms.

The resulting measurements define the operational parameters of the collaborative network for each activity of interest on several levels:

These parameters are presented in multivariable charts to be easily interpreted and make decisions to improve aspects of processes such as the dynamics of the relationships among communities, the contribution of each employee to the transmission of innovations or knowledge, the influence of every person on the overall organization or the social capital distribution.

Benefits

People responsible for a collaboration platform, Heads of Business Transformation or Community Managers at a company can take advantage of the eAROS benefits:

Methodology

eAROS 2.0 is implemented in 3 stages:

Types

eAROS 2.0 provides 8 types of multivariate analysis:

1. Structural capacity. Combines seven structural parameters of the network in a radar graph.
2. Small-world structure. Compares the network structure with small-world networks that promote innovation. This allows the organization to see at a quick glance which applications are promoting innovation within the platform.
3. Functional equivalence. Compares the structure of networks selected, for instance, blogs and wikis networks. One of the applications would be considering the possibility of doing without an application that offers a function similar to another one.
4. Network evolution. Visualises the evolution of structural parameters of a network throughout time. This allows monitoring digital transformation campaigns, among others.
5. Group balance. Measures the balance of interactions within each group and among groups, for instance, among departments, different hierarchical ranks…
6. Reach. Measures the position of potential influence of an employee or group (node) and refers to the chance of reaching other employees or groups at different levels: nodes of the network that can be directly reached and nodes that have to be reached through another contact. Detects influencers.
7. Structural roles. Shows the behaviour of an individual or a group with reference to the sender or recipient of interactions within a platform, that is, it identifies employees who check the forums to get informed but do not produce content for them, and separates them from employees who neither check nor produce content.
8. Reciprocity. Shows the level of correspondence generated by an individual or a group, id est., the degree of conversation generated by his/her posts. Analyses engagement.