I see clear signs that more organizations are now approaching social software strategically. As executives and business leaders begin to understand the potential benefits of new technologies such as social software, they want to use them strategically and see if and how they can add business value where they need it the most. How can they help to improve sales processes? Innovation? Purchasing? Recruting? Employee retention? Product development? Service delivery?
What this means is that instead of just buying a social networking platform and putting it next to their existing platforms, risking that it will become yet another silo, they are looking at how social software and other technologies such as mobile and cloud computing can make them perform better as an organization by enabling more agile, responsive, efficient and effective ways of working. The key word here is integration. Specifically, they are looking into how they can use a combination of technologies such as social software, cloud computing and mobile technologies to integrate operations across locations and organizations, supporting their core processes. Ultimately it is about using their capital, and specifically intellectual capital such people and information, in a smarter way in their daily operations.
We can expect organizations that work a lot with Lean (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing) to be more willing to embrace these new technologies as they can use the technologies to leverage lean practices and mindsets (such as continuous improvements) as well as to apply lean principles and thinking in new areas.
