Social business is the next big thing

Social business is said to rely on collective intelligence from everyone within an organisation and critical stakeholder groups to address particular strategic objectives for a company, while social business software is the technology platform within which the right conversations can be facilitated for achieving the said strategy.

In addition to the standard features of social business products, it allows for bespoke development to create a client's look and feel, integration within existing software platforms, conversation triggers from existing systems and external alerts, local pricing, upfront and ongoing consulting to align and refine strategy, readily available technical resources and the feel good of buying globally relevant and proudly South African.

South African companies have reportedly been remarkably slow adopters, with an informal poll conducted amongst the JSE listed companies identifying that none have social business on their roadmap.

"Positive benefit being obvious

"In our experience in dealing with local companies, many are still seeing it as a toe dipping exercise, despite the rationale and positive benefit being obvious," comments Kappers.

"A number of larger companies have downloaded or purchased software packages such as Yammer and are surprised when it becomes a white elephant or an internal Facebook. Firstly, companies need to understand that social business software is merely a tool; for a product like this to work inside an organisation, we need to spend time with the executives to align the social business roadmap and deployment architecture to the enterprises vision and strategies."

Typically, WyseTalk will spend 8-12 weeks in this consultative phase before the rollout is affected. "You are telling CEO's that they need this product to improve collaboration, communication, innovation and operational efficiency, so it's our job to ensure that there is a measurable ROI."

Social business growth

The social business market size is tipped to reach an excess of US$4.5billion in the next two to three years. Deloitte places it in the top tech trends for the year. IBM expects CEO's interest in social business to triple within the next three to five years off an existing 16% base. IDC recently concluded a social business survey, where respondents reported that using social tools internally made them 11-30% more productive.

Tom Eid, Research VP of Gartner, says it best, "For 2011 through 2015, the highest instances of software market growth will align to the business requirements of attracting and retaining customers, enhancing business processes, improving collaboration and social networking, managing content of all types, reporting of performance and results transparency and workforce effectiveness and flexibility."

For more, go to www.wysetalk.com.