Even as more companies recognize the important role that social business software is taking as it emerges as an enterprise tool, many struggle to optimize their adoption of it. According to InformationWeek, 38 percent of CEOs said that social business is important in 2012. However, few ranked their "maturity" in this area above a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. The problems occur mostly in strategizing, prioritizing and quantifying value.
"The potential business value that comes from using social technologies is really large," Doug Palmer, an author of a report on social business for the MIT Sloan Management Review, said. "People who have kept pushing through the challenges are seeing significant value."
According to the news source, in order to overcome the challenges of social business, firms need to be proactive from the first stages of adoption. This means forming a strong strategy for integrating social processes in every area of operations, testing that strategy, experimenting with various solutions and identifying key areas where social efforts will have the most benefit. In order to optimize the adoption and integration of social media solutions, firms have to consider the advantages that business process management (BPM) software provide.
Social BPM solutions from Appian can offer a streamlined opportunity to leverage the groundbreaking benefits of social media with the highest-quality BPM platform to ensure successful integration and operation. This helps employees adapt to the changes, and helps optimize social for analytics, customer service and any other process a firm needs to use it for.
With the main challenges of adopting social business processes being strategizing, prioritizing and quantifying value, BPM software can address them all in turn by optimizing delivery, productivity, analytics and efficiency across the board. Ultimately, this will provide firms with a stronger foundation to work from and launch future endeavors from, while strengthening the adoption of social business solutions immediately.
"Left unaddressed, these barriers can lead to daunting odds," the MIT Sloan Management Review report noted. "Gartner estimates that 80% of social business projects between now and 2015 will yield disappointing results because of a lack of leadership support and a narrow view of social as a technology rather than a business driver."
By using the right tools to address social business concerns and optimize adoption and integration, companies will reap the rewards more quickly and ensure they are using the right strategies for going social from the gate.
Cindy Cheng
Director of Product Marketing
