Collaboration is a top buzzword floating around industry news and thought leadership today. Firms want more, easier and beneficial collaboration to drive their value and productivity. However, not all companies are sure how to achieve this greater collaboration that they know they need. While investing inunified communications and collaboration solutions will deliver the foundation for these improvements, this is only the pathway to get there. Businesses also need to drive the use of these channels through the right business process management.
According to Business 2 Community, social business is having a considerable impact on the success of collaboration efforts. Citing a recent joint study by Oracle, Leader Networks and Social Media Today, the news source indicated that social business process management is having a profound effect on how companies operate on a fundamental level, with particular impact on marketing and IT departments.
"Social business has spurred more collaboration between IT and Marketing leaders within the organization," noted the report. "In addition, it has raised awareness of the impact of thought leadership, offered an opportunity for more say in management decisions, and enabled better articulation of ROI. Finally, it has highlighted the need to acquire new skills both individually and ñ through new hires ñ for the organization as a whole."
In fact, the report found that 41 percent of marketing professionals and 38 percent of IT workers are engaging in more collaboration as a whole because of social opportunities, with a significant focus on increasing the effectiveness of operations.
Social BPM provides key advantages for collaboration because it aligns work practices with the social tools that employees need to communicate effectively. From sharing data to simply brainstorming on new ideas, the right, internal social platform will streamline these processes, allowing professions to perform better on a time crunch and manage their resources more effectively. Rather than taking away from daily operations, these tools add to them.
Rather than focusing solely on collaboration solutions, enterprises should invest in the right BPM software to kickstart their process optimization, allowing the social collaborative efforts to fall into place afterward. This will set a stronger foundation for these initiatives and set the stage for future improvements as well. Ease of use and successful integration will drive efficiency, rather than proper channels and communications support.
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