Heath Brownsworth

With Dreamforce 2012 in full swing, the Twitterverse is awash in tweets about the ‘social enterprise’. Just in case you don’t know, Dreamforce is the name of the annual user conference/marketing event that is put on by Salesforce.com.  I am not actually attending the event in person this year, but the Salesforce.com team is doing an excellent job of making most of the event virtually accessible, although I still miss walking around Howard Street, fighting the crowds at Moscone Center and searching for a decent Wi-Fi signal!  At any rate, a major theme at Dreamforce 2012 is enabling the ‘social enterprise’ and Salesforce.com has introduced new offerings such as Chatter Communities and ChatterBox to support this theme. Rather than focus on these new offerings, the more interesting discussion that is being bantered around by virtual attendees, and I am sure among in-person attendees as well, is what does social in the enterprise mean?

By far the best attempt that I have heard at defining social comes from @ValaAfshar who has turned social into an acronym: S.O.C.I.A.L. – sincere open collaborative interested authentic likeable.  There are two words in the acronym that for me really speak to what social in an enterprise context has to mean, collaborative and open, for which I would also substitute the synonym transparent. Business has always been inherently social.  Business has always been about working together to achieve goals and objectives that are beyond the reach of a single individual.  Openness and transparency have also always been a part of this equation. The more open and transparent the team, or organization, the less friction and the greater the ability to achieve or exceed the defined objectives.

Expect many product and solution offerings to come to market over the next 2-3 years carrying the tag ‘social’.  Use the S.O.C.I.A.L. acronym as a framework to evaluate whether these product offerings fit natuarlly within the enterprise and facilate your business or whether they hinder you and your teams. You will be surprised.  We already know a lot more about social in the enterprise context than we think.

Heath-