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Social platforms gaining in the enterprise - get your processes ready

Malcolm Ross, Senior Vice President, Product Strategy, Appian
July 7, 2014

Enterprise social strategies are about more than just using social media to help workers get the job done. Instead, they are often built around taking the core principles of social media and integrating them into everyday processes.Business process management software plays a critical role in this process because the technology enables organizations to carefully align their processes with their social plans. Such efforts could prove key as more organizations work to implement enterprise-specific social tools.

The rise of enterprise social networking

A recent Enterprise Apps Today report explained that while Facebook and similar social media sites are still dominant, many organizations have begun to embrace social networks specifically built to work within an enterprise environment. a Frost & Sullivan study released in March found that full-suite enterprise social network solutions featured approximately 208 million subscribers in 2013, a 30 percent increase from the previous year. Similar growth is expected moving forward, as the number of business users working with enterprise social media solutions will increase to 535 million by 2018.

Tom Petrocelli, research director for enterprise social, mobile and cloud applications at Neuralytix, told the news source that enterprise social strategies are gaining and mobile devices are playing a vital role in this process. Moving forward, any enterprise social plan will need to incorporate mobile strategies as a component of the initiative. Besides getting onboard with mobile, many organizations also need to find better ways to leverage social technologies more effectively.

Petrocelli told Enterprise Apps Today that many business users find that they can use internal social tools to share information, but once they have that data they do not have a clear pathway to putting that data to use. This is the next evolution of enterprise social tools - bringing together mobile and social functionality to enable individuals to use the data at their disposal to get the job done.

Using BPM software to unlock the full potential of enterprise social tools

Social BPM solutions can align social functions with business processes to make sure users can perform more meaningful operations using social channels. Furthermore, mobile BPM technologies can be used in conjunction with social process solutions to fully integrate data and process frameworks across social channels and mobile devices, enabling organizations to streamline everyday operations in a variety of ways.

Social collaboration methods are transforming business operations as more organizations implement enterprise social tools. BPM solutions that help organizations leverage these technologies effectively play an integral role in helping companies take full advantage of these trends.

Malcolm Ross

Vice President of Product Marketing

Malcolm Ross