Getting Social BPM to work for you

There are many reasons a business might consider deploying an internal social network. From boosting productivity to enhancing collaborative efforts through streamlined information sharing, such social aspects to workflow can be a considerable boon. However, there are key factors that have to fall into place, or a company might end up struggling, or even backtracking, through such a deployment. These solutions have to be convenient and easy to use, or a business might not see the success it wants.

With any standard internal social network deployment there are key steps. For most businesses these can all be accomplished with one investment - social BPM. Applying social applications to business process management will integrate many of the factors a firm needs and expects from these efforts with ease, with the appropriate support of high-quality BPM software. According to CITO Research, this is critical for driving the business value of everyday operations.

"Today's world is complex and customers (and shareholders) have much higher expectations about how fast we should accomplish our goals. Where once we had to manage only 10 or 20 segments of business, we may now have thousands of segments, with new ones developing every day." The research group noted. "We need to bring products to market with a high degree of customization and personalization while keeping track of profitability, compliance and risk. The mobile workforce is expected to do its job 24 hours a day, wherever employees are located. Increasingly, employees and customers expect from a business the same simple and always-connected interactions they have in their personal lives."

By including aspects of social networking with these workflows, companies can promote this always-connected, always-there interplay between processes that is necessary to adapt in this environment that CITO Research describes. This eliminates silos and provides the support needed to boost overall productivity and success, as long as a firm has the social - and mobile BPMthat is support needed.

With the right solutions in place, enterprises can start making their processes work for them. Nearly 80 percent of online users interact with social networks on a regular basis, and businesses need to harness that trend for their own productivity. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that companies can see up to 25 percent improvement in productivity simply from leveraging social technologies that 70 percent of firms already have in place.

Ultimately, these improvements will drive the next generation of enterprise operations and help companies deliver the quality that employees and customers are beginning to expect in any industry or market.