Setrag Khoshafian, Steve Kraus, and myself recently penned a chapter in the 2011 BPM and Workflow Handbook. This year’s book is focused on Social BPM. The book is launching on June 8th at the Social Business Forum 2011 in Milan, and at the BPM Conference Europe 2011 in London. It was amazing to see how quickly the book came together and it was a thrill to be a part of the thought leaders included in the book, spanning a number of technology categories, industries, and geographies.

Here is sneak preview of a few core concepts in our chapter, “The Voice of the Network Through Social BPM”:

The potential impact of social networking is enormous. But the biggest challenge is how to operationalize and realize the potential. All the interactions, tweets, forums, blogs, or wikis will amount to nothing if they are not intelligently mined and translated into action...

There is a powerful synergy between BPM suites and social networking: Business processes provide the context of collaboration, and social networking supports and augments the various phases of the BPM continuous improvement lifecycle...

Analytics is a key technology that enables companies to filter the voice of the network, extract invaluable insight, and infuse that insight into key business decisions. This capability is critical in ensuring the successful application of social networking to three functional areas Marketing, Customer Service, and Brand Reputation...

Dynamic cases provide the coordinated umbrella that aggregates social interactions and collaboration with automated and operational tasks that execute in the context of process fragments. Cases achieve specific business objectives such as: Processing customer claims or disputes, handling account management, resolving the supply chain for specific products or services, coming up with innovative solutions, and others. The kernel here is that different case workers and the social communities are communicating, exchanging, and collaborating to achieve a specific objective that is beneficial for all. A social business process is completely agile and truly enables a business to convert the voice of the network into tangible executable action...

For more insight, check out the book table of contents on our BPM Books page and pick up the book on the BPM Workflow Handbook site.

Happy Reading!