The analysis found that organizations may not integrate disparate social networks in the short term as other areas of business investment take priority, but they will begin to target online communities as a way to incent ongoing conversations and to connect disconnected social networks inside and outside the enterprise.
"An enterprise social network should become the social 'backbone' in a company by forming a relationship layer across the business to facilitate information sharing and collaboration in the context of work processes," said Vanessa Thompson, Research Manager, Enterprise Social Networks and Collaborative Technologies.
IDC recommends that companies create awareness and increase the number of interactions a customer or partner has with a company, product, or service by connecting enterprise social networks with online communities to engage in bidirectional feedback between businesses and their constituents. Additionally, the handoff between the technology solution and organizational silos needs to be integrated, and all business constituents need to be engaged and involved in the enterprise social network in some way.
"However, enabling this social 'backbone' requires the ultimate solution to be open, extensible, and easily integrated with existing social networks, content repositories, and enterprise applications. For organizations to support the changing nature of work, they will also need to consolidate internal applications where redundant processes start to occur. This will be the common approach for the foreseeable future until all applications are built to be inherently social and other applications are replaced," added Thompson.
Companies Covered:
COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES CORP
Regions Covered:
United States
Topics Covered:
Applications, Enterprise social software, Social networking, Software