Tuesday, March 27, 2012DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. -- Businesses can improve communications, recruiting, customer relationships and other processes by expanding their social engagement. And that means beyond well-known public sites.
"Social media and social networking are widely recognized terms associated with large public sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn," said Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, CompTIA. "But these terms do not fully convey the full range of social applications available to businesses."
For businesses the social space can be divided into two categories: public social media sites and social enterprise tools that bring social capabilities into an organization's business processes. "Social enterprise tools incorporate the characteristics of social media into business processes, allowing for stronger internal collaboration, deeper understanding of customers and other positive outcomes," Robinson said.
The top five business benefits of employing social tools identified in CompTIA's study, Social Business: Trends and Opportunities, are better communication with customers (cited by 61% of responding companies), cost savings (51%), brand positioning (49%), real-time customer satisfaction (48%) and potential lead generation (43%).
"Companies find that the conversational nature of social media allows them to carry on discussions with their customers, strengthening the relationship and gleaning insights on products, services and satisfaction," Robinson said. "It makes good business sense to apply their success using social tools to internal activities and processes."
Robinson noted, however, that for most organizations the move to the social enterprise is in its infancy -- if it's even started at all. Companies also may struggle through several trial-and-error scenarios as they meld new social tools with existing communications platforms and operational processes.
The large majority of firms now using social tools are taking their first steps by using social media, the survey found. A full 82% of responding organizations have a Facebook presence, 68% have a Twitter profile and 68% a LinkedIn page. By comparison, less than one in five companies are currently using social enterprise tools.
"Confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt a consumer-driven development inside the enterprise make the social landscape one that still requires definition and justification for many companies," Robinson noted. "Understanding the characteristics of social technologies is a critical starting point for understanding their business use."
While the marketing staff has been the primary owner of social activity to this point, Robinson said that information technology departments will play a critical role in the further development of the social enterprise. IT departments may craft strategies, develop policies, build the overall social platform, select the appropriate social tools and integrate them into the enterprise environment.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.