Social CRM & Mobile Care

CompTIA (News - Alert) has released new research that shows an expanding social presence beyond well-known public sites could impact businesses positively and it is time that businesses begin to recognize this.

Titled, Social Business: Trends and Opportunities, the research report is based on a Jan. 2012 online survey of 400 IT and business professionals in a variety of industries in the United States.

Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis at CompTIA divides the social space into two essential categories, the public social media sites and the more important social enterprise tools that allow for stronger and more positive outcomes.

The survey results indicated that while 82 percent of responding organizations have a Facebook presence, 68 percent have a Twitter (News - Alert) profile and 68 percent, a LinkedIn page, less than one fifth of the companies actually use these social tools to their maximum benefit.

Many of the companies that have used these social enterprise tools cited enhanced communication with customers, cost savings, customer satisfaction, potential lead generation and brand positioning as positives that emerged, but for a large majority of these firms, social tools and even social media is still in a stage of infancy.

Melding social tools with existing platforms and operational processes brought in its wake problem scenarios that companies had struggle through and it was here that IT departments could play a critical role in furthering and nurturing the development of the social enterprise.

By helping build the overall social platform, selecting the correct tools, crafting the necessary strategies and integrating them into the enterprise environment, IT departments could well ensure the proper use of social tools.

Given that 10 percent of the surveyed companies indicated that the company's social activity was being handled by their IT solution providers and another 38 percent indicating that they consulted with a solution provider on social topics, this could be an opportunity for solution providers to explore the untapped potential.