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

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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.

“If you look deep into the social business movement you will see that we are on the brink of a fundamental change in the way businesses interact with customers, partners, suppliers, and employees”

"If you look deep into the social business movement you will see that we are on the brink of a fundamental change in the way businesses interact with customers, partners, suppliers, and employees," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Strategies. “Businesses today fall into three camps – the social “denyer”, the accidental socialite, and the socially aware. Regardless of where a company falls in these categories, customers expectations of technologies and the way they interact with suppliers have changed, driven greatly by the social Web.”

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.

The IDC study, The State of Social Business: 2009 Survey Results (IDC #221383) outlines the use of social media for business purposes. It is broad in scope and represents the current state of social media usage for business in the United States, providing a profile of business workers leveraging these newer tools, and an understanding of the use cases for each social tool, including blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, photo/video sharing sites, social bookmarking tools, social networks, Web chats/instant messages, wikis, and virtual worlds. For this primary research effort, IDC captured the use of consumer social tools and corporate-sponsored social tools by functional role and company size. This survey also asked respondents the business objectives accomplished by each social tool, challenges involving social media initiatives, and metrics collected to prove return on investment (ROI), as well as annual budget for sponsoring social software.

The IDC Insight, The Intersection of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Collaboration: The Social Business (IDC #221413) examines the changing business trends around enterprise use of the concepts developed for Web 2.0 and the growing movement for cultural and process change inside the enterprise.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 100 countries. For more than 46 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

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