It is easy for any new business initiative to quickly turn into a large IT project. It is imperative that business avoid focusing so much on technology as they work to implement social operations that they fail to let initiatives have a major impact on their day-to-day operations. Business process management software can play a huge role in helping organizations focus on procedural gains that can come alongside social media investments. Social BPM solutions can end up playing a critical role in helping organizations leverage social tools effectively.
Using social tools effectively
In any organization, data that is used effectively eventually becomes knowledge as employees come to understand what data means for how they work.Euan Semple, one of the early thought leaders in the knowledge management movement, recently spoke with ComputerWeekly about how big data, enterprise social strategies and knowledge management are all uniting to alter enterprise operations. He explained that one of the greatest threats organizations face when implementing social projects is letting them become focused on IT and not letting them transform the organization.
"I don't think [knowledge management] is a technological problem," Semple told the news source. "The biggest risk of deploying an enterprise social network is getting suckered into an IT project. Resist."
Semple also pointed out that organizations need to focus on not using social and knowledge management just to get busy, but instead to maximize operations.
"There is the same sort of risk [that knowledge management will focus on IT systems of record] with big data: that it becomes about 'busyness,'" Semple told ComputerWeekly. "
Overcoming these challenges and using data, knowledge and social tools to improve enterprise operations depends on aligning these various services with business processes to ensure end users benefit. Achieving this goal and ensuring social efforts don't just turn into big IT projects is especially important because technology teams have plenty of things to spend their money on and companies can't afford waste.
IT budgets rise
A recent Computerworld study found that spending in IT departments is set to rise significantly in 2015. Approximately 43 percent of those polled said they expected their budgets to rise, a significant increase over last year's 36 percent mark.
With businesses looking to spend more on technology, they cannot afford to have these precious financial resources being devoted to projects that do not deliver clear value to the business. This underlines the importance of preventing social and knowledge management projects from being limited to IT initiatives. Instead, solutions like BPM tools play a key role in ensuring business value is created.
