Intelligent organizations worldwide are using social collaboration technologies for more than a decade. But since the growing impact of the Social Media input, the importance of CRM 2.0 and ERP, smart social software applications are required to integrate the increasing data stream in useful information and multivalued knowledge.

This social transition is a result of 5 key changes:

1. The transition from separate social collaboration environment to collaboration where employees are working together, in different places, in different time zones.
2. The shift from generic social capabilities to applying social capabilities to solve specific business problems.
3. The emergence of social platforms vs. siloed social solutions which often proved to become either dead ends or the beginning of the chaos.
4. The growing demand for decentralized collaboration und coordination reducing cost and time.
5. The slow but steady awareness that knowledge connectivity facilitates innovative and creative processes.

But to avoid the risks of information overload and snippet working generated by too many open Social Channels, the Social Streaming Platform brings method in the chaotic confluence of Social Media flow and work flow.

The benefits of Social Streaming platforms are immediate and sustainable.

• Vendors incorporate social technologies directly into HR processes and applications.
• HR management can be streamlined in order to connect the right person with the right place, to facilitate human interaction and dynamic knowledge transfer.
• Social learning becomes also a permanent interaction inside and outside the organisation. Social learning enables any person in the organization to discuss, share documents, or even record video on the fly, but also to integrate in real time information and knowledge input from the Social Stream.
• Formal training from learning management systems (LMS) with social and collaborative capabilities become informal ways to capture and share key information, reducing the overall cost of creating and delivering training, as well as shortening the time to productivity for a new employee.

Let’s take an example:

In the past, a junior sales representative would learn about the company, its products, competitors, and priorities via

• scheduled meetings,
• hallway conversations and chats at the coffee machine,
• formal training sessions,
• some smart incentives,
• internal collaboration system,
• weekly team discussions.

But it’s the informal conversations that provided the additional business context needed for sales people to be successful. This is part of Social learning enabling any person in the organization to discuss, share documents, or even record video on the fly.

And the ROE?

•  product managers can share the latest competitive positioning,
•  customer service can highlight how to solve top issues
•  sales operations can provide quick insights into how to process orders.
•  Product developers get feedback about their products directly from the users, the vendors, the retailers.

Using the collective wisdom of the organization exposes a wealth of information to help these new sales representatives to become productive faster, thus enabling greater revenues, shorter sales cycles, avoiding common errors made by others before, and last not least customers who appreciate to keep in touch with the vendor.

There are many other examples of how companies can take advantage of social and collaborative capabilities in their HR business processes.

With social applications, the ability to capture and analyze the work history of employees makes it easy to give praise to top performers.

Social collaboration helps companies recognize employees’ achievements and promotions, and some organizations already give employees promotions based on their social engagement.

Rewarded employees are persuaded to remain loyal to their company.

At the same time, other employees will be aware that hard work is recognized and be influenced to perform at the top of their ability.

Social software also enables employees to locate experts in their organization, connect better with colleagues, and leverage knowledge that employees have shared, even after they have departed from the company.

With the need to tie together an employee’s actions, information, discussions, and work across many processes and applications, these social capabilities can’t be limited to a single application, but instead require a comprehensive social ‘fabric’ that weaves through every place an employee works – HR processes, sales processes, operations, etc.

This social streaming enables a seamless and aggregated experience for a business person while they work with other employees, customers, partners, vendors, or suppliers, allowing them to avoid unnecessary interruptions and providing them with value that motivates them to adopt and continue using social technologies.

The IT guys will appreciate the multiples interfaces implementation of social applications.