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Enterprise Social Plans Can't Just Be About New Tools

Joshua Hoffman
April 16, 2015

Many businesses try to capture the magic of solutions like Facebook for internal collaboration, only to find that it is difficult to get users to embrace corporate social tools. A recent Network World report explained that part of the problem here is that businesses can't just use social tools, they need to establish an organizational culture that fosters social collaboration. Business process management technologies can help companies achieve this end by enablingthem to integrate social capabilities into processes so users can collaborate without having to turn to dedicated social tools that are separated from their other operations.

"BPM lets you build social features into processes that cause business problems."

Making the changes needed to get social

According to the news source, figuring out what business problems users turn to social solutions to solve is critical to finding success with social tools. For the most part, people aren't going to collaborate with their co-workers just for the fun of it. Instead, they will interact with managers and peers because there is some kind of problem getting between them and their work. In most cases, organizations focus on finding ways to go social with collaboration as the priority. Instead, businesses should emphasize solving business problems and identify ways that social collaboration, when integrated with processes, can help users solve those problems efficiently.

Focus on the community

A recent CMSWire report echoed that the sentiment that social tools alone aren't enough to develop a better environment for collaboration. Instead, organizations need to look beyond the core social functionality and embrace community management. By improving the way you reach out and interact with specific communities in the work place, you can better manage your social tools and use them to create meaningful business gains.

BPM tools let you build social functionality into your processes.

Using BPM tools to build social into processes

Organizations can increasingly using BPM software as an application development platform. The low-code development features included in BPM solutions enable organizations to quickly and efficiently build social features into the processes that are causing business problems. Similarly, integrating social and process tools lets you customize user dashboards and operational hubs so you can reach out to different groups within your work community in the most efficient way possible.

Establishing enterprise social capabilities isn't about using social media in the workplace. Instead, the focus needs to be on creating an organization that is capable of operating in natural, social ways, without forcing users to step out of their normal operations to collaborate.