With all the talk of the social enterprise at Dreamforce, two studies suggest growing use of social technologies in business is gaining widespread support of employees, who largely support the idea that becoming a "social enterprise" is a necessity in today's business world.
However, business leaders are also concerned about their ability to own and manage their brand as they shift to a strategy of both internal and external collaboration, according to the Social Enterprise Readiness Survey, an in-depth analysis of B2B organisations' social media strategies and the concerns associated with its adoption, conducted by consultancy Bluewolf.
The survey found that 60 per cent of respondents believe that "every business" needs to be social, with a further 61 per cent listing social media strategy as a "high priority". Meanwhile half of respondents said they were extremely confident in their social media strategies.
The survey also highlighted a major shift for B2B enterprises, as organisations give employees more freedom and opportunities in social media engagement, enabling both internal and external collaboration; 65 per cent enable employees to communicate with other employees and stakeholders via social networks and 42 per cent offer employees a private social network for internal collaboration.
Meanwhile 56 per cent allow employees to access external social networks during work hours. But despite the apparent enthusiasm for social media, reservations are still rife. Among the top concerns associated with "going social," the survey identified management and ownership of social media (58 per cent), employing proper metrics and proving value (54 per cent) and loss of productivity (27 per cent).
Bluewolf managing director Greg Kaplan commented:
Elsewhere research firm Gartner suggests that global spending on social CRM will reach over $1 billion (£616m) 2012, up from $820m (£505m) in 2011.
Despite a 40 per cent increase in spending by buyers on social software for marketing, customer service and sales to approximately $625m (£385m) in 2010, social CRM remained less than 5 per cent of the total CRM application market.
And while use by consumers accounts for over 90 per cent of spending on social CRM, revenues from business to business (B2B) use are growing faster and will account for 30 per cent of total social CRM spending by 2015, Gartner predicts.
The analyst firm identified more than 100 vendors with social CRM offerings. Even though many grew 50 to 100 per cent in 2010, the analyst warned that most are not profitable and generate annual revenue of less than $1 million.
In order to thrive in the future, Gartner said they will need to provide clear benefits for companies and communities, demonstrating multiple use cases for sales, marketing and customer service processes.
Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner, said 2011 would be characterised by ongoing rapid consolidation across the market:
The functions that social CRM vendors offer tend to reflect one of four typical starting points: hosting and supporting a branded or private-label community, monitoring and responding to private-label or independent social networks, facilitating the sharing of B2B or B2C contacts through communities or establishing community product reviews largely to facilitate online sales. Sarner added:
Other factors that would differentiate vendors included seamless interoperation between public social networks and internal collaborative communities, integration of processes with traditional CRM applications, application-specific analytics and partnerships with global system integrators, or digital or interactive agencies and consultants, to promote and deploy the applications.
