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Social media just getting started

Cindy Cheng, ​Sr. Director of Marketing Communications, EMEA, Appian
September 28, 2012

It is tempting to look at the state of social media in the enterprise and consider the technology mature. Corporate social media solutions are common and offer diverse functionality. At the same time, methods using a variety of social tools to improve enterprise operations have reached best practice status. However, this is not the end of the technology's maturation, Forbes reported.

According to the news source, technology generally goes through a cycle that involves IT solutions expanding exponentially. In most cases, background improvements that are relatively small in scale deal with basic issues, then something happens to combine all of those upgrades in a major way, leading to significant growth. This idea is championed by industry expert Ray Kurzweil, and provides insight into how social media is developing.

Social media's current role

The report said social media has not yet matured, despite the plethora of tools available. Instead, it is a well-established technology that is witnessing a number of minor improvements from various channels that will help it take an exponential step forward into how it will look in the future.

Social media's future

To get social media to the next level, advances need to be made to integrate various social systems and unify corporate social goals. According to the news source, business process management software will play a key role in making this future possible. The technology provides the vital framework needed to not only capture social media content in the enterprise, but connect it in such a way that it reshapes business operations into a more social functionality.

This framework created by BPM software will also enable a more intuitive development platform in which user demands increasingly impact how applications are developed and deployed.

BPM is able to connect social media with other aspects of enterprise operations in unique and important ways. This allows social technology to play a pervasive role in operations, enabling major operational gains for many departments.

What can be done now

While the Forbes report focuses on the social future as enabled by BPM, there are things that businesses can do now to get the most out of the technology. One of the best ways to get the most out of BPM in the current enterprise climate is to use the technology to integrate cloud, mobile and social functions. With businesses dealing with growing challenges in each of these areas, BPM offers key relief by helping workers use the technology to enable process-level gains.

Cindy Cheng

Director of Product Marketing