It is encouraging that there are open discussions on this now.

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

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