InfoWorld Daily just recently published an interesting article titled “Why social tech's real value is inside the business”.  It confirmed many of the observations I have had with ENOVIA’s own social collaborative initiatives.  From an internal company perspective, social media is certainly a powerful way for employees to share information with one another and locate expertise that may have otherwise remained unknown.  The article’s example of IBM is very similar to how DS has successfully implemented its SwYm technology internally.

I was more interested though in the discussion about social media and a business’ relationship with its customers.  My brief summary of the article’s key points:

• Social media as a customer marketing tool has limitations.  I have been on the receiving end of many companies’ Twitter feeds and Facebook posts.  Their sole marketing value (with me anyway) was limited to coupon offerings.  So, I think these media are strongest when an immediate “purchase” response is desired, which is typical in the CPG and Consumer Goods, Services, and Retail industries, but probably not as applicable to other industries.  For other industries, a well-thought out Web-site presence is needed that allows the customer to better research and “experience” the product at their own pace.
• Social media could be very powerful for building relationships with customers.  The article provides several examples of companies successfully doing this.  Of course, the mission of the “Collaborative Innovation” community is to build relationships between ENOVIA and its customers so they become more successful with their PLM initiatives.

One final point is that the article discussed the need for social media to often be integrated to some sort of content management system (the article mentioned MS SharePoint).  This made me more excited about the possibilities for SwYm as it continues to get enhanced and improved to become a seamless extension to the existing ENOVIA business process applications.  As you are aware SwYm already combines social collaboration with content management.

As usual, I would be very interested in hearing about your experiences with social media either inside your businesses or with customers.  Could you envision social media successfully being used to augment your PLM system?