As BPM evolves, it will head towards more collaborative processes that take into account better human interactions that serve to help knowledge workers. Social networking is a growing area for human interactions. BPM is starting to incorporate social networks into the human capital processes. One organization I talked to gets this and is applying the combination of BPM and social networking.
![MPj04394540000[1]](http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/files/2009/04/windowslivewritersocialnetsandbpm-7590mpj043945400001-2.jpg)
As we all know, attracting the best employees possible to our organizations is crucial for long term success in any economic scenario. One organization that I am aware of is creating a social network that will surround a number of targeted college campuses and surrounding gathering spots where creative students hang. While there are no hard measurements right now, this organization believes that they will have the inside track for gathering the best new employees at a lower cost thus extending the on-boarding process outside the four walls of the organization. While right now we are in a heavenly situation for finding good experience easily because of the unemployment situation, but soon smart organizations will be looking forward and try to soak up talent at a good price.
This same organization has created another social network for retired and about to retire employees. The intention here is to take known performers and extend their social experience with this organization. Though the “gray wave” has been postponed because of the present economic situation, this organization believes that they can extend the social and work experience of these retirees and to leverage their knowledge as stringers who can earn extra money without the hassles of employment. This seems like a winning idea that is likely to yield remote mentoring opportunities as well over the long haul
Both of these creative applications of social networking make sense for a “win-win” situation in personnel management. A good experience with human capital may very well spillover into customer and investment relations down the road, but that is not clear yet. What are you seeing with the combination of BPM and social networking?
7 responses so far ↓
1 Jacob Ukelson // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:17 am
Dan Woods from Forbes has some interesting insights how Wikis can be part of process discovery for BPM, which is another way social networks can be used with respect to BPM. Here is the link:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/02/cio-tacit-automate-tech-cio-cx_dw_1203automate.html
2 What is the Greatest Hurdle Facing BPM? // Apr 29, 2009 at 6:15 pm
[...] While BPM has been helping with “heads down” process workers for a while now, BPM needs to move to supporting more people activities. This is particularly important as knowledge workers need support for their kinds of unstructured processes and the kind of collaboration that they are migrating to going forward. BPM has been doing fine with defined processes, but is now making its way into more undefined processes and interactions. BPM has to make this leap going forward. This would include case management and social networking for instance, but there are other opportunities. Please see http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/04/16/social-nets-and-bpm/ [...]
3 Barton George // Apr 30, 2009 at 11:13 am
Hi Jim,
Our belief is that the greater the number of stakeholders who collaboratively participate in and contribute to process discovery and documentation, the greater the quality of your business process improvement efforts. Social networking is all about knitting people together and creating an interactive and collaborative ecosystem. It is therefore a perfect addition to process platforms.
We’ve seen tremendous uptake with Lombardi Blueprint because of the social networking aspects it incorporates. Since it enables greater involvement and collaboration between the business and IT side of the house, customers have been able to document and model their processes much more quickly and scalably than they were able to in the ‘pre-social’ world. The same way Facebook and LinkedIn let you know about changes to your friends personal or professional lives without you having to ask them (or even knowing to ask them) social networking can be applied to process efforts, letting you know about changes to processes you are involved with. By introducing social networking techniques, process can be further expanded from being the concern of a small centralized group to something that the entire workforce is aware of and involved in.
Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development
Lombardi.com
4 Mike Lees // May 11, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Jim –
Social networking has to have context if it is to survive in corporate applications. Far too many organizations are barring access to existing sites because they see it as a distraction rather than a facilitator of productivity. So, while Facebook, LinkedIn and others are valuable because of the significant ‘network assets’ people have already built up, they have to be leveraged in the right way if corporations are going to benefit. That’s why it is critical that any application of social networking principles does not ‘reinvent the wheel’ by forcing people to build up new connections, but rather allows them to exploit and extend existing networks in a new, more productive context.
BTW — It is interesting and very heartening to see these discussions starting to come to the fore now. It no longer feels as if we are lone pioneers with AlignSpace and it is great to see validation of the concepts and some healthy discussions and debate. While there is still much to be sorted out e.g. security issues, business models etc., anything that relies on network externalities for its success needs a strong and vibrant community of interest to succeed and it seems we have one emerging!
Mike Lees
AlignSpace.com
5 Jim Sinur // May 11, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Mike,
It is encouraging that there are open discussions on this now.
Jim
6 BPM Enables People // Jun 2, 2009 at 8:21 pm
[...] http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/04/16/social-nets-and-bpm/ [...]
7 BPM Leverages Information // Jun 4, 2009 at 7:13 am
[...] http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/04/16/social-nets-and-bpm/ [...]
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