Macro Forces Driving Social Business Software Adoption

Orbital RPM has identified the following Macro forces and industry trends that are driving social business software adoption in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Macro Forces

(Kottler/Keller Marketing Management 12th edition)


Demographic: The mindset of younger generations is conditioned to technological advancements.  This technical aptitude is forcing organizations to adapt business operations to stay competitive.

Economic: With market fluctuations, post dot.com era, the recession and global market expansion, organizations have become more focused on core competencies by stream-lining business processes, relying on supplier and partner relations to outsource components that are not core to their business.

Socio-Cultural: Social interaction, flexibility, work-life balance, core values and access to information of the younger generations are driving our customers to consider their overall presence in society.  Companies are much more exposed to viral positive or negative feedback that can affect their image, brand and bottom-line.  Companies must be proactively monitoring and meeting the demands of their customers, partners and suppliers to stay competitive.

Natural/Trends: Because of the large population of baby boomers on the verge of retiring, companies are left with a much smaller population of upper management resources and as a whole they are more technically savvy than their predecessors.  Even with the current economic conditions delaying the baby boomer retirement, companies will be required to do more with less while embracing, facilitating and catering to the younger generations preferred mode of working and learning.  Generation X&Y has a need for instant access to information and responsiveness and this continues to drive the speed at which the industry adapts to the technological advancements.

Technological: Technological advances are driving the knowledge based economy where user generated content (Web 2.0) is overly abundant and it’s now an opportune time for organizations to structure and make available their knowledge to enable the most effective use.  Companies are finding intrinsically motivated employees are self navigating their informal learning within the organization and by setting up internal structures to support this transformation, companies will maximize value, increase innovation, stay better connected to customers, increase productivity, reduce loss of knowledge, capture learning histories and drive value to the extended enterprise resource management of their organizations.

Political-Legal: The industry transformation is also driving a legal market that will provide structures, policies and procedures for the user of social media that could jeopardize competitive advantage, intellectual property and expose organizations to litigation.

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