By Anne Widjaja
The social networking experience has evolved to become an integral component of business culture and workplace strategies, according to a recent IDC report on the adoption of social business tools in Australian organisations.
The report, titled The Australia and New Zealand Social Business Maturity Model by Vertical Industry, overlayed data from past IDC research with the IDC Social Business Maturity Model to form the basis of its analysis of social business trends. The data was drawn from two IDC reports: the ANZ Next Generation Workspace Ecosystem CIO and IT Decision Maker Survey and the ANZ Enterprise Employee Survey.
The research confirmed that industries such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), distribution and services and government had the greatest adoption intensity and maturity with regard to their use of social business tools.
The vertical industry model also revealed where social business would most likely be adopted and where a different go-to-market approach may be required.
“Whilst the model [shows how] other industry groupings have yet to find the value in social tools, this is not to suggest they won’t be eventual adopters,” said IDC software analyst, Vanessa Thompson. “The less-mature industry groupings are a smart target for supply side organisations [of social business tools] looking to carve out a niche.”
However, the report also warned that businesses adopting social business tools must develop a “holistic road map focusing on people, culture and business outcomes”.
This roadmap was necessary in order to “reach the required level of maturity to enable a truly social business.”
Thompson spoke positively about the trend of “enterprise social business initiatives in Australia… being rolled up into broader workplace strategies”, explaining that this integrative approach to social media would “break the inertia toward enterprise deployment of social tools, as well as the current mantra of business unit ‘social’ silos”.
Thomson suggested that aligning social business initiatives with overarching business strategy in a workspace road map was also the best way to validate the implementation of these social tools.
The report even demonstrated that the adoption of social business tools actually provided businesses with positive return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics.
The increasing rate of adoption of social tools was also found to be urging on the development of best practice industry guidelines. According to the report, developing these industry benchmarks will not only help businesses plan future investment in social business but also help IT departments prove their contribution to organisational goals beyond ‘keeping the lights on’.
The report can be accessed here: www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=AU1123702U
