Case Study:

EGON ZEHNDER INTERNATIONAL

Collaborative, social intranet lets Egon Zehnder globalize their business model

Egon Zehnder International is best known around the world for their largest professional service, Executive Search, where they identify, assess and recruit the worlds most talented business leaders. The company is distinguished in the market by their deep expertise in specific industry segments and management functions. Every consultant and partner brings years of experience as a top executive in one of Egon Zehnders targeted industry practice areas. Based on their excellent reputation, the company has grown to 1,500 people in 64 offices across 40 countries. With 22 industry practice areas and practice leaders spread around the world, Egon Zehnders strategic challenge has always been maintaining the highest level of collective expertise across a staff that is widely dispersed. More recently, the company found themselves facing additional challenges that finally stretched their business model to the limit: A higher proportion of their clients are now multi-national, and an increasing number of their strategic initiatives span across practice areas. To maintain their lead in the market, Egon Zehnder needed to globalize their business model. For this, they deployed a collaborative intranet using the Socialtext collaboration platform.

Egon Zehnders new cross-border challenges:

Consultants and partners in different countries needed a way to work together on cross-border assignments, sharing ideas and driving strategy. Practice leaders across their 22 industry segments wanted to be consistent in the way they approached clients, and in the services they offered. Researchers across office locations needed a better way to collectively create institutional knowledge such as templates and presentations, and to leverage each others work. All staff needed to come up to speed on cross-practice strategic initiatives as they emerged, and be able to easily leverage the initiatives in their engagements. Executive assistants had to make the information required by traveling staff accessible whenever it was needed, any time, day or night.

SOLUTION
A dynamic, social intranet using the Socialtext collaboration platform

+1 (650) 323-0800 www.socialtext.com

Traditional intranet was not suited for conversations and collaboration

Prior to adopting Socialtext, Egon Zehnder had a company intranet. Like most traditional intranets, the structure did not reflect how people needed to consume information to do their jobs better; the information was limited to a collection of documents, and it was hard to find what you needed. If you didnt know exactly what you were looking for, you wouldnt find it, said Bill Hopkins, Egon Zehnder Director of Operations. Like most traditional intranets, the documents it housed were often dated because the intranet could only be edited by technology people instead of the people creating the content. As is typically the case with a traditional intranet, people generally didnt trust or rely on it.

working together on a single assignment, the companys tradition of local strategy sessions no longer sufficed. Consultants and partners in different countries needed a better way to share ideas and drive strategy on cross-border assignments. Booking live conference calls or face-to-face meetings with people in different countries created huge scheduling and logistics overhead, and waiting for people to be able to talk live slowed down the flow of good ideas. To solve this problem, Egon Zehnders people now use Socialtext workspace pages and blogs to create conversations that gather a rich diversity of perspectives, ideas and insights very quickly. We use Socialtext to have conversations around a given search, said Bill. Time zones and geography make it difficult for people to talk live. Socialtext lets us create a continuous flow of good ideas for everyone to tap into. With Socialtext, people have the richness of a conversation without waiting to schedule one.

A dynamic, social intranet everyone uses in their daily flow of work

Bill had a vision for a dynamic, social intranet that would serve Egon Zehnder as a powerful strategic tool. It would be a place everyone trusted and used in their daily flow of work. It would break from the old document paradigm, and information would be easy to find and also highly discoverable through social networking and other types of information feeds. It would help everyone be more effective consultants and partners, researchers, executive assistants, IT, HR and training staff alike. Bill made his vision a reality by deploying the Socialtext collaboration platform and transforming the company intranet into a powerful collaboration hub. Our intranet is now a powerful strategic tool, said Bill. The new social intranet quickly became a hub for resources and information exchange within and across Egon Zehnder departments. We were very pleased with how quickly Socialtext became part of our daily flow of work, said Bill.

Compressing cycle times

Egon Zehnders talented people now leverage each other around the clock, avoiding the delays caused by scheduling, and compressing cycle times. Anything that lets us compress any phase of a search engagement is a win for our business, said Bill. A consultant who is thinking through a strategic question now poses the question in Socialtext, said Bill. When they come to work the next day consultants in different countries have pitched in their ideas and a rich conversation is well underway.

Learning more from each other, creating competitive advantage

Egon Zehnders 600 consultants and partners form the strategic backbone of the organization. Their collective expertise gives Egon Zehnder the ability to attract the worlds highest quality C-level candidates. These are very smart people, said Bill. Collectively, they are our engine. Getting them to tap into each other and leverage each other is a big part of our secret sauce. People are feeling increasingly free to toss out an idea for brainstorming, said Bill. Then others engage, and everyone benefits.

Sharing a continuous flow of good ideas that knows no borders

Traditionally, the companys search projects were contained to one office, with the client, consultant and supporting team all made up of country locals. But with an increasing number of borderless searches, and consultants in different countries

TEAM COLLABORATION

MESSAGE CONSISTENCY

GLOBAL TEMPLATES

Someone may start a blog about a trend theyve seen with their clients, and it will generate a lot of feedback and ideas, said Bill. It has surfaced different ways of thinking, which is really helpful. People are learning more from each other. The collaborative blog then serves to document the strategic thought process, recording it in a place that is searchable and discoverable by others in the future.

and how of the initiative, or to have an open dialogue about it. Sharing it via the annual all hands meeting was not timely, sharing it via e-mail created unmanageable clutter, and sharing it on a conference call only benefitted those who could attend the call and took people away from servicing clients. We wanted to be more proactive with our strategic initiatives, said Bill. Transcendent movements such as succession planning and green environmental expertise have become strategic initiatives. But they cross practice areas and we needed to find a way to get them incorporated into the service offerings of each practice area, regardless of geography or industry silo. We didnt have a good way to share them. These initiatives are now being shared across practice groups in the Socialtext collaboration platform, as they are evolving, and are being improved collectively by the Egon Zehnder team via feedback, questions and ideas. Client resources are posted in Socialtext along with useful lessons learned, providing a place for others to share input and ask questions. Everyone benefits from having early access to the unfolding initiatives, and from the input of their peers.

Shaping strategy and direction

While their 22 industry practices operate independently from each other, practice leaders around the world wanted a better way to learn from each other and leverage each others best practices. Practice leaders across the globe wanted to be more consistent in the way they approached clients and in the services they offered clients, said Bill. They now use Socialtext as their platform to strategize on new client services, and to collaborate on methodologies for service offerings. We use Socialtext to shape strategy and direction, said Bill. Partners use the new collaborative intranet to publish thought pieces covering timely topics that have implications for executive search. Other team members are automatically alerted to the new articles, discuss and digest them in Socialtext, and use the new knowledge to serve clients better. Socialtext lets us serve our customers better, said Bill. We are more effective with clients. The practice leaders also use their new social intranet to share resources they are actively using with clients, learn from the client work examples of others, and collaborate on best practices. Automated feeds and alerts keep them apprised of new input from other team members, spreading new ideas and feedback very fast, and keeping the collaboration moving quickly.

Making travel easier

To make it easier for their highly mobile staff, and to eliminate redundant work for themselves, the executive assistants created a set of resource pages to support all the staff who visit their offices. Each of the companys 44 offices now has a set of pages that post most everything a visitor might need, including: Office address Parking Best local hotels Nearby restaurants, including which are open late Ground transportation Cultural conventions (tipping, etc) Local IT resources Safe areas of town, areas to avoid Currency converter Directions Calendar of visiting clients As staff members traverse the globe, they can now get the information they need any time, day or night, and can access the information on Socialtext using their mobile devices. The executive assistants keep the information fresh in one place instead of fielding a continuous stream of individual phone calls with common questions.

Tapping into the newest initiatives as they emerge

Prior to Socialtext, the staff did not have an easy way to tap into the latest thinking as cross-practice initiatives emerged, or as they evolved. They had to wait until a deliverable was defined and completed, and this built in an information lag. The staff working on the initiative also had no good way to share the why

COLLABORATIVE

CROSS-PRACTICE INITIATIVES

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

Rolling it out
ESTABLISHING GREAT IMPACT ON A GLOBAL STAGE
Socialtext gave us a collaborative hub that let us globalize our business model, said Bill. Our most strategic asset is our people. Socialtext lets us leverage that asset. To sum it up, Socialtext helps us establish great impact on a global stage, said Bill.

The level of enthusiasm was stunning

To roll out their new Socialtext collaboration platform, Bill Hopkins and Ramona Nussey, Manager of Training for Egon Zehnder, defined a basic information structure and populated some content onto workspace pages. They posted the two Socialtext one-hour recorded training sessions so people could self-learn, and also published a taxonomy of key tags to encourage people to tag pages in a uniform way. They then chose 20 people for a pilot and kicked it off. We initially intended to pilot Socialtext with 20 people, but they were so excited about it that they spread the word, and the pilot very quickly grew to 200 people. said Bill. It snowballed very nicely, said Ramona. To help drive adoption, she posted new user tips on a regular basis, tips such as how to set up a daily digest alert, or how to add a picture to your profile. We gauge success by how much people take to it and rely on it, said Bill. We had pretty much 100% unanimous adoption from the researchers within a month. They took to it like gangbusters. They wholeheartedly adopted it. The level of enthusiasm around Socialtext was stunning. The training team was also a key early adopter. They wanted a single residence for all information and resources, said Bill. They got that with Socialtext. They now post their training videos and all other resources on the training pages where everyone can find them and benefit from them. The executive assistants also took to Socialtext right away, as it gave them a way to keep everyone on the same page with a lot less effort. Three months later, Egon Zehnder rolled out the solution company-wide to all of their 1,500 people. We rolled it out at our annual partners conference, said Bill. After I showed what it could do, I got a standing ovation from the partners. That has never happened before. Within a month, we had over 50% adoption from our consultants, said Bill. The newer consultants in particular adopted it very quickly. Socialtext hit a sweet spot, a real pressing need for us, said Bill. And as far as technology rollouts go, it was almost a non-event. With Socialtext, people look at what they need to accomplish, and structure it the way they need it, said Bill. It keeps growing and evolving without IT involvement, which is exactly what we wanted.

About Socialtext Established in 2002, Socialtext, a Bedford Funding Portfolio Co., was the first company to deliver social software to businesses. By unlocking knowledge, expertise, ideas and data, Socialtext eliminates information silos across the enterprise to drive superior business performance. Socialtexts enterprise social networking products including microblogging, blogs, wikis, profiles and social spreadsheets provide simpler ways for employees to share vital information and work together in real-time. Delivered in a variety of hosted cloud services, as well as on-site appliances, enterprise customers are provided with flexible deployment options

+1 (650) 323-0800 sales@socialtext.com www.socialtext.com

that meet their security requirements. Built on a flexible, web-oriented architecture, Socialtext integrates with virtually any traditional system of record, such as CRM and ERP, enabling companies to discuss, collaborate, and take action on key business processes.
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