Recent studies, including an employee satisfaction report from APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald, point to several benefits that arise from social intranets as enterprises deploy new social communication solutions.  Enterprise social networks, when configured and used properly, are becoming the main knowledge repositories and communication hubs in the enterprise. They are replacing corporate intranets as the most comprehensive and reliable places to find information about the company, its processes and procedures, and the people who work there. 

e been keeping tabs on the rise of social business in healthcare, McKinsey's 5th annual survey on the way organizations use social tools & technologies finds that they continue to seep into many organizations, transforming business processes and raising performance.

In fact, McKinsey reports 72% of 4,200 global execs said their companies now use social tools.  So with the rising level of adoption, it is no surprise Forrester Research predicts the Enterprise Social Software Market will become a $6.4 billion market in 2016.   Given the increased utilization and...

According to Forrester, 57% of enterprises are making some investment in enterprise social in 2011.

The rise of social business (within both consumer and enterprise segments) was front and center at Dreamforce 2011.   At this year's conference, Salesforce CEO Mark Benihoff  set the stage for his drive to become the leading social enterprise player.  As Mark said at Dreamforce, “It’s a social revolution...and it’s about enterprise."  Unlike many of the industry's niche players Yammer, Socialcast (which was bought by VMWare), MangoSpring, and SocialText to name but a few, Salesforce has vertically integrated its social tools, namely Chatter, into the salesforce automation workflow.

Simply put, no organization can become a social business unless...