Social is big, and getting bigger.
Social is sweeping into the enterprise with astonishing speed. Corporations, government agencies and nonprofits are using social tools such as blogs, wikis and Twitter-like activity streams to collaborate internally, with both customers and the general public. It's an undeniable trend and it's quickly picking up speed.
The opportunity is immense. Most enterprise technology is in the business of automating human tasks: taking the creativity out of work and replacing it with rigid, formal process. Social software does just the opposite; it fosters, encourages and empowers the natural creativity of human beings working with each other towards a common goal.
Yvette Cameron of Constellation Research describes it this way:
For the first time, technologies are becoming available that better align the way people naturally work and think. As humans, we're social creatures. Until recently, technologies didn't really support that. A lot of the processes that we use in our business applications are about automating paperwork, as opposed to really fostering collaboration [and the] rapid discovery of information; getting to the people, content and the knowledge that's needed to get work done."
Enterprise social software is key to businesses of all sizes because it enables new relationships to be created amongst your employees. Classic examples where enterprise social software can help your company and your employees become more productive include: getting a question answered by the most knowledgeable person, joining a new cross-functional team or getting help resolving a complex customer problem.
Who Owns Social in the Enterprise?
Most enterprise technologies have natural owners inside the enterprise. Sales owns sales force automation. Finance owns the financial software. Marketing owns marketing automation. It’s not exactly rocket science.
But social software is different. It doesn’t map to a single business process. Social software is all about unlocking the potential of all employees across an entire organization — whether they’re in Sales, Marketing, R&D, Product, Support, Operations or whatever.
While social software may be new, human beings aren’t. We've been walking the earth for about 200,000 years, give or take. What's new is that for the first time we have the tools to collaborate effectively at large scale, without the benefit of physical proximity; and when we collaborate, each of our efforts becomes exponentially more valuable because we build on each other.
Large organizations are also nothing new, and for the past hundred or so years most of them have created a special group whose sole purpose is to optimize for the value of its people. This group is called Human Resources, but is better known as HR.
HR and enterprise social software were made for each other. Both are in the same business of making talent more productive.
“Aha!” you say, “But isn’t everyone in the enterprise trying to make talent more productive? So really each line of business should own social for itself!”
But remember that enterprise social is all about network effects. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter succeed precisely because everyone is on the same platform. People participate in the network because everyone else is participating. There’s no solution without scale. And the same is true in the enterprise. It’s only when we get everyone on a common platform that companies can offer a compelling value proposition.
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Source : cmswire[dot]com
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