Social Apps in the enterprise

Social Networking Systems (SNS) & Social Media Apps (SMA) collectively form the Social Apps. Social Apps form a sub set of what are called the web 2.0 technologies. They provide the capability to connect, find, aggregate, filter, and share on the web. Social Relationships, user generated Content & open conversations along with social metadata consisting of user reviews, ratings, etc. (as called by Oracle's VP for Social CRM, Anthony Lye) are what can be collectively called the Social Data.


In an enterprise context the Social Apps can be either internal facing (for employees) or external facing (for customers). Sometimes it is very easy to differentiate - the two are present on the two sides of the corporate firewall: confined to intranet within the firewall or open to the internet beyond the firewall. But sometimes, the difference can be in the user definition - employee or other. Either way, integrating the social data with the enterprise data is the key challenge from an IT POV. [I have already covered about Social Data & CRM Data in an earlier post.]

When used inside the enterprise, social apps are typically extolled for their collaborative powers & are claimed to be great for Knowledge Management among other things. (Disclaimer: My employer uses social media, esp. blogs & forums pretty effectively.) The use of web 2.0 technologies, including the social apps, inside an enterprise is generally termed as Enterprise 2.0.

The other side of the firewall or the outside world sees the Social Apps as customer channels. If these channels are tied in traditional CRM systems, it then becomes a Social CRM. Some people prefer to call it CRM 2.0, but IMHO, CRM 2.0 is much more than mere integration of Social Apps from an IT POV. Whatever it is called, in the external context, the Social Apps are used primarily to influence the buying process of the customers. [View this earlier post to know more about how social apps align to the buying process.]

There are quite a few Social Apps available in the market. Though they started either as internal or external facing apps, they seem to be providing features allowing the use of the same package for both purposes.

It would be interesting though to see how they allow for the integration of the Social Data with the enterprise data, for both Enerprise 2.0 as well as CRM 2.0.

In the next post, I will try & compare some of the social apps from the vendors available today.

P.S.: Since I am not too aware of enterprise data from a Enterprise 2.0 aspect I would like to ask you the readers to help me with this. :)