Enterprise social networks are growing in popularity. Need proof? Leading technological research firm Forrester has estimated the market will be worth around $6.4 billion in 2016. To put things in perspective, that value will be more than 10 times the market’s 2010 value – $600 million. This begs the question, “Why is this happening?” While we have crafted several blog posts that outline some of the main business benefits companies experience with enterprise social, I thought I’d take it a step further today and share a few reasons why enterprise social networking is exploding.
- Enterprise social networks drive real business value. The main reason companies should use enterprise social software is because they drive legitimate business value. Altimeter group reports their ability to encourage sharing, capture knowledge, enable action, and empower people makes them a valuable solution. But, you can bet that as businesses learn how to implement enterprise social more tightly into their systems and processes, this platform will only continue to increase the value it provides.
- They offer helpful features not found in current technology. Enterprise social software allows your company to establish private communities with clients, employees to access your network with their mobile devices, and easily share screens with multiple coworkers. Innovative features like these allow businesses to offer unique value to employees and clients. Also, with nearly instantaneous access to everyone in the company and additional types of information now available with a social network, employees will more readily buy in to their use.
- Employee demand. As would probably be expected, employees are actually demanding workplace platforms that resemble the applications they use personally. It makes sense though once you think about it – why should your private life and work life be two completely different worlds? If employee wishes really are driving demand for enterprise social software, these platforms could be headed towards becoming a standard workplace application in the coming future.
- It’s more than the cool thing to do. The primary reason any company should purchase a social networking solution is to enhance business outcomes. Among companies surveyed by McKinsey in 2008, enterprise social network usage has grown more than 50% since the new measure earlier in 2012. And, Forrester also predicts an annual growth rate of 42.4% per year from 2011 to 2016. This kind of growth doesn’t just happen because something’s “cool.” It happens because businesses learn how to increase the value they receive from their social networks.
For these reasons, you can expect to see continued growth in the enterprise social software industry. Perhaps we’ll even see greater growth than Forrester predicted.
Did you find this article interesting? If so, you might also enjoy Discover the Future of Enterprise Social Networking.
