Social software makes ERP shine

Last week i gave a presentation to an ERP (ENIAC-BS) usergroup community about Social software from the IBM stack; this is not about email, but about people working together in relation to each other and their business in a creative process.

Although my presentation about networking, finding people, the next generation employees, access anywhere and anytime and the fact that social software and 'the new way of work' or 'employee 2.0' was not new to all attendees (just for some) they responded rather 'cold' on this part of the presentation while showing more response when talking about more concrete solutions like CRM and the purpose of Quickr.

To late...?
Just after the presentation i realized that ERP users are used to work in a very structured way, after all companies use their ERP systems to structure their business processes, and that social software might just be the opposite of what they do now. What is the value for them after my presentation?

One of the items in my presentation was an article from the computable 'ERP is Dead', a quote from Jan Baan (Baan \ Cordis), of which i strongly disagree. My opinion is that we need ERP systems or any other system to create structure and manage our core processes without any disruption, failures or uncertainties. But, i also think that we can use new technologies to re-use data from these systems and bring it to the users, customers and partners in order to integrate our business processes with 3th parties and with PEOPLE.

PEOPLE
You know, PEOPLE, those creatures being very creative and eager to make thing bigger and better then even before. Yesterday on the 'discovery channel' there was a program about technological revolution and why new technologies go that fast at the moment. Their statement was simple, 92% of engineers, architects and scientists live now!! Wow.....should we not use that fact and do something with those people, instead of mainly maintaining processes, and be a little more creative?

Conclusion
After these couple of statements i might say that the message to this community is to maintain their current investments with great proud and operational excellence, but also start thinking about bringing forward their business processes to the user and even think of giving more control to the users.

The final real message is the other way around....don't be a sitting duck but give yourself to power to present yourself, share ideas, bring forward your expertise and value and make yourself king of your workplace.

Social software (also BI and BPM) can make your ERP shine, without processes and structure you can never maintain your business, but you can use your investments to be even more productive, creative and accelerate innovation. Think about that for the near future....

Remember: 'you cannot innovate alone!'