Integrating social media with ERP applications
Guest post by
Amit Kumar Dey, Senior Consultant, Infosys
The importance of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube no longer need any emphasis. Perhaps the power of these tools were not known even to the perpetrators of the great Middle East revolutions until they were able to garner support of millions and mobilize the masses which resulted in the end of decades of despotic rule. Social media which acted as the stimuli and later as a catalyst for the movement was very effectively used by the revolutionaries to unify and spread their message between themselves and also to animate support from the international community.
The use of social media by corporates has been limited mainly to marketing activities, and they have misconstrued the impact, that collaboration using social media, can bring about in their daily operations. They need to take a cue from the Middle East uprisings which unleashed the potential of collaborating using social media. Collaboration presents ample opportunities that can help businesses to improve their performance and extend their capabilities but it is the lack of tools to collaborate faster and smarter that is hampering the deployment of such strategy. In today's dynamic world everything is changing at lightning speed, presenting opportunities for value creation at every step. Businesses need to keep pace with such changes, if they wish to remain competitive and that is only possible if they move away from isolated approaches and archaic structures to an environment conducive for collaboration.
Social media can be used as a shared platform by employees, partners, customers, suppliers and other business stakeholders to collaborate with each other in realizing their business goals, managing change, addressing challenges and improving business processes. Social media will help to leverage the collective genius of the stakeholders and transform the business to gain competitive advantage.
Currently, the methods of collaboration used by most businesses are limited to Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint, but these tools are inept in todays' world. Real time information is the success mantra for businesses today, and this has changed the way we consume information. This needs to be borne in mind and business communications need to be aligned the Facebook way - synchronous and intuitive. Although the only constant thing in the world is change, it is irony that the software that powers our businesses is disconnected from the truth. Information is power and we need smart tools with the ability capture, share and retain intellectual capital.
Having said this, ERP/CRM vendors do recognize the need to harness the power of social media within the enterprise and are incorporating the social media aspect into their next generation of enterprise application products. We already have some applications in the market with built-in social media capabilities, which can be leveraged to bring together diverse groups of business stakeholders to promote a mutual purpose that creates value. This new way of working- mass collaboration - is the value proposition of integrating social media with ERP applications.
According to Gartner analysts Mark McDonald and Anthony Bradley - 'Mass collaboration is the combination of leadership, readiness, culture and technology that when it exists together, provides employees with the opportunity to work in ways that improve and amplify individual ideas and contributions into organization-wide change.'
Embedding social media with ERP would aid the collaboration process by providing an environment conducive for knowledge sharing. Use of social media will help in establishing a borderless business community with a shared vision that delivers sustainable organizational performance. It will promote a new way of working with purpose-driven communities that will enhance productivity and improve efficiencies.
We have seen how the latest social CRM packages have incorporated many features that mimic the functionality of online social networking tools; some have even gone as far as integrating their offerings directly with online social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter etc. However, socializing CRM without ERP applications wouldn't be complete.
Potential benefits of marrying social media tools with ERP include:
- Facilitation and streamlining of communications both within and outside the enterprise
- Increased cross functional interaction within the enterprise
- Building extended and better connected communities and leveraging the information from their interactions
- Enable creation of reusable assets from the tacit knowledge of key resources
- Ability to sort and save information as structured data for future analysis
- Ability to initiate loose form of collaboration like Mail, IM, VoIP from within application
- Possibility of integration with external forums to drive innovative development
- Enhanced product training, troubleshooting and user support
- Instant access to social networking profiles of prospects, customers and supply chain partners
- Access to market feedback about your company and competitors
- Better engagement with customers ensuring faster response to their needs and concerns
There are a host of Web 2.0 features that have been very aptly integrated with some of the latest CRM packages available in the market. To name a few there are: Recent items, favorites, watch list, enterprise search, ratings, tags, instant communication tools, Wikis and blogs, tweets, RSS feeds, communities/group spaces, analytics integration.
CRM vendors are doing a remarkable job in converting these Web 2.0 features into Enterprise 2.0 tools that enable social networking and other collaborative actions; so that people can use these features with the same convenience at work as they do in their personal lives.
Standalone CRM vendors were the early adopters of the Enterprise 2.0 cult; however it is just a matter of time before we see these features integrated with ERP applications as well. ERP vendors are not quite late in joining the social media bandwagon and they are gearing up to provide an enterprise collaboration infrastructure which will surely bring about a radical change in the way we work.
