The adoption of social enterprise software

Social enterprise software is a highly promising software application for firms, though it is still in an infancy state. It offers rapid real-time information transfer based on business collaboration tools or instant messaging. The software collects and processes customer data from surveys, consumer feedback, reviews, blogs or social networks. This enables firms to build up detailed customer profiles potentially anticipating upcoming trends. We analyze the determinants of social enterprise software adoption based on the literature on the adoption of new technologies. In our analysis, we control for factors like firm size, intensity of information and communication technology, human capital and international competitive situation. Exploiting recent German firm-level data and a model controlling for sample selection, the results reveal that firms with highly qualified workers, a large share of young employees and international business activity are more likely to adopt social enterprise software. Larger and more ICT-intensive firms and recent innovators also have a higher propensity to use social enterprise software. In addition, firms belonging to the service sector are more eager to implement social enterprise software applications than manufacturing firms.