Social networking seems to be on everybody’s mind these days. Google’s (News - Alert) trying to horn in on Facebook’s social networking with Buzz. And the chatter – sorry – after CRM provider Salesforce.com’s (News - Alert) Dreamforce in November was about Salesforce Chatter, their enterprise social network and collaboration platform.

“Salesforce Chatter will completely transform the way you collaborate with people in your company,” Salesforce.com officials said with the company’s trademark understatement, describing it as “both a collaboration application and a platform for building social cloud-computing apps.”

According to IT Knowledge Hub, however, of more import to the CRM market is their Spring ‘10 update and more recently, the company’s CRM cloud computing platform, Force.com Visual Process Manager – these updates are naturally less flashy without the weight of a company conference.

Remember: Salesforce.com acquired Informavores, a call scripting startup in the United Kingdom, for the Visual Process Manager technology. “Force.com houses the Visual Process Manager, which will help those using Salesforce’s Enterprise and Unlimited editions to create business applications with established set forms, questions, and decision trees,” IT Knowledge Hub officials said.

According to reports, Visual Process Manager leverages a drag-and-drop interface to help users design their business processes. There are four components, one of which is a wizard builder, which creates step-by-step guides for end users. The other elements are a process designer, a simulation tool for testing, and a process execution engine.

The wizard builder is pretty nifty; it lets companies design wizards that walk end-users, step-by-step, through their business process. There’s also a process simulator, which lets users “optimize the process design by simulating complex processes before they are deployed,” company officials said, adding that “companies can now test the process flow entirely in the cloud, identify bottlenecks and conflicts, and immediately revise by reviewing each phase of a process.”

Salesforce.com officials said that the Visual Process Manager “will help companies rapidly automate any business process.” Using it, customers can “visually design any complex business process with an intuitive, visual design tool, and instantly run it in the cloud.”