Rise Of Mobile Workers Creates Strong Case For Social Media Implementation

Asia Pacific, with its large Gen-Y population, has become the fastest growing region of social networking users in the world. Southeast Asian countries such as Philippines and Malaysia have already achieved penetration rates of as much as 85 percent for popular social networking sites. Social media platforms are becoming rapidly commercialised due to the escalating need for social interaction between businesses and customers to promote products and services.

However, free-to-use consumer social networks and the Internet regulation in countries such as India and China, which offer only limited access to social media platforms, have slowed regional adoption of these global platforms. The deployment of localised versions of Facebook and Twitter in these countries could limit the impact of the regulations on the market.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Enterprise Social Media and Web 2.0 Market 2010, finds that the market experienced more than 20 percent growth. It generated revenues of $28.6 million in 2010 and is expected to touch $126 million in 2017.

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Businesses are often reluctant to implement enterprise social media and Web 2.0 applications due to the lack of successful deployment cases. Most social media platforms have long ROI periods, which deter enterprises that are only seeking short-term benefits. Companies should adopt easily measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the utility of enterprise social media and Web 2.0 applications in their day-to-day operations.

“Easily measurable KPIs will help decision makers to justify the investment in enterprise social media applications,” said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Jessie Yu. “A KPI that can be easily measured is the increase in inter-company communication and knowledge sharing, which is a clear indicator of the breakdown of information silos in a company.”

Service providers will also be pleased by the growing need of mobile workers to readily access information through an online knowledge portal. Technology vendors have been bundling collaboration solutions with their other core communication offerings to provide an integrated experience to consumers. This trend has gained pace with vendors trying to break into the collaboration space by tapping their existing customer base.

“With many enterprises having a geographically dispersed employee base, there is a need for knowledge/content management solutions to be accessible via the Internet,” noted Yu. “This will bolster the adoption of enterprise social media and Web 2.0 application among enterprises across geographies.”