Jon Hoehler, Deloitte Digital

Social networking is not just social any more: more organisations are using social business apps to enhance communication and productivity.

Jon Hoehler, manager, Mobile Technologies, Deloitte Digital, highlighted the trend towards social business in his keynote address at the ITWeb Mobility Summit in Johannesburg.

These social business apps can function in much the same way as popular social networks, he explained, with a request for information posted on the app reaching an individual’s network of colleagues and stimulating discussion and collaboration. Apps such as these can be particularly useful in uniting expertise in organisations with huge numbers of employees, he added.

“The aim is to connect with people.

It’s about building and forming bonds within the organisation, and finding expertise. It’s also about bringing about cost reduction and increased speed and efficiency, through collaboration and streamlining business processes.”

These benefits are tangible, Hoehler added: “Of surveyed organisations who have implemented social business software, 77% gain faster information access, and 60% reduce communication costs.” Gamification, the trend towards using game-like thinking such as point rewards to encourage engagement, can come into play in stimulating activity on these networks: “If someone uploads information, they could get rewarded with points for their participation, which could maybe be translated to a reward within the organisation, such as an extra day’s leave.”

Gathering employee communication under one roof can also help to understand activity in the company, noted Hoehler, especially with the workforce spread across numerous geographies. “We can analyse how that activity happens, we can plot trends, and see how that conversation is going.”

Although there are a number of social business apps available, enterprises are tending more and more towards building their own apps for their own internal purposes. “We all know about BYOD, but we are also seeing ‘bring your own app’ – BYOA. If I have a specific challenge, why can’t I create my own app?”

The creation of multiple in-house apps is driving enterprises to build their own app stores, said Hoehler. “By 2017, 25% of enterprises will have an enterprise app store.”