Social Business Goes Mainstream in the Enterprise, Forcing Cultural and Process Shifts from the Inside Out

Recent IDC research on the intersection of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and collaboration shows that we are entering a time of significant cultural and process change for businesses, driven by the emergence of the social Web. According to a new IDC survey, 57% of U.S. workers use social media for business purposes at least once per week. Additional findings from IDC’s social business research include:

15% of 4,710 U.S. workers surveyed reported using a consumer social tool instead of corporate-sponsored social tools for business purposes due to the following top three reasons, (1) ease of use, (2) familiarity due to personal use, and (3) low cost.

The number one reason cited by U.S. workers for using social tools for business purposes was to acquire knowledge and ask questions from a community.

While marketers are the earliest and largest adopters of social media, these tools are now gaining deeper penetration into the enterprise with use by executive managers and IT.

Software companies will increase their social software offerings significantly as customer demand steadily increases and “socialytic” applications will emerge, fusing social/collaboration software and analytics to business logic/workflow and data.

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