Social business requires a process evolution, not a technology evolution

Dennis O’Malley of Moxie talks to MyCustomer.com about the biggest misconceptions surrounding collaboration projects and the importance of customer-centricity in social enterprise networking.

There are two things that people are saying about social media - "Oh my god, I can't believe that there are actually 845 million people on a social network" and "how do you tap into that and replicate it internally into an enterprise?"

So says Dennis O'Malley, vp of services at enterprise social software firm Moxie, who refers to this as "the Facebook effect". And inevitably, enterprises' rush to answer the question above is leading to a number of dead ends.

He continues: "Enterprises have all failed in social technologies, whether it's through experimentation with services like Yammer or in corporate web initiatives around SharePoint - everybody’s experienced failures and they're looking for a partner that knows what the hurdles to adoption are and can help successfully socialise their business processes, take the information internally and share that knowledge externally out to their clients."

O’Malley doesn’t see this as a technology evolution. He explains that few organisations are asking for social technologies with executives instead asking for help eliminating work processes such as email, documents and meetings.

"The evolution is understanding that social software can provide new business processes. It’s exposing where the hurdles are in terms of collaboration and determining where the disconnects are from the customer to the enterprise and understanding that a social technology and social platform can overcome that. Those are the 'aha' moments for the enterprises."

More...