The siloed nature of Global Consulting Group's business pushed it to adopt a social enterprise network, according to strategy advisor, Paul Hunt.

The consultancy was already using Google Drive, but Hunt said business growth resulted in the system reaching its limits in terms of cost benefit.

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"We are a siloed business that operates out of two different university campuses," he said.

"Out of those campuses, we have six or seven individual teams working out of, all of which were in different physical locations and different times."

Without the right tool, Hunt said managing that arrangement would be increasingly difficult.

After looking at several different options, Global Consulting Group decided on Podio, a Cloud-based collaboration service that was acquired by Citrix last year.

"What that has allowed us to do is move away from an emailing system and to an active feed or collaborative communication basis," he said.

The social enterprise

In addition to gaining insight, oversight and management of the organisation, Hunt said the shift to Podio enabled the consultancy to establish a social enterprise network.

"Sending a group email and having numerous one-to-one conversations is not practical, especially when you're dealing with 100+ university students who don't always have the best email etiquette," he said.

Hunt adds that a platform like Podio can also provide a familiar user experience.

"Behaviours that users are already used to from services such as Facebook and Twitter can be harnessed in terms of communication openness and collaboration," he said.

Another benefit of Podio has been the open nature of the platform, which Hunt said enabled Global Consulting Group to add third party services without too much complexity.

Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.