An AIIM study shows businesses plan to integrate enterprise social networking with key business processes within the next 12 months. 50% of businesses surveyed, see this integration as extremely valuable, with some of the strongest benefits being:

• collaboration across departments and geographies – 42% of respondents
• increased knowledge sharing – 40% of respondents
• increased customer support & satisfaction – 32% of respondents
• more effective sales & marketing – 30% of respondents
• enhanced staff engagement – 30% of respondents

CEO, CMOs and line-of-business managers are especially eager to take advantage of the opportunities presented from integrated social network. Let’s look at quick example of how they’d benefit. General counsel Shawn Burke is at a dentist appointment when he receives a notification from his enterprise-social application on his smartphone to approve a legal contract, in order to close a deal within the next few hours. Because his enterprise social network integrates with their contract management system, he can open and approve the contract right from his mobile device—without logging in to a VPN or some other system. This is just one of several ways businesses see the value of integrating collaboration in the context of their business processes.

Survey respondents also ranked which internal processes would be of most value for integrating social. According to the AIIM survey, customer support (59%) and marketing processes (58%) are of greatest interest. In fact, 46% of businesses plan to integrate social with content creation and management before the end of 2013.

For more interesting facts about the benefits of enterprise social networking and where it’s heading within the next few years, download the full AIIM study.