The results of a study entitled The Socially Enabled Enterprise, conducted by Oracle, Social Media Today and Leader Networks, show that transitioning to a socially stable enterprise is key for modern organisations.
The global survey of more than 900 marketing and technology executives looked at the challenges and opportunities that organisations face when integrating social technologies and practices.

Overall, the findings revealed that the transition to a socially enabled enterprise is a key priority for marketing and technology executives as they see social media playing an increasingly significant role in future business success.

Oracle defines a socially enabled enterprise or social business as an organisation with social capabilities woven into the fabric of its daily business operations, from consumer marketing and sales, to customer service and research, to employee communications and collaboration.

Key findings of the study include:
* Becoming socially enabled is a big priority – nearly all executives (97%) surveyed believe it will be important for successful organisations to transition to being socially enabled enterprises. In fact, 72% reported that leveraging social media will be very important for their organisations to be successful in the future.

* Larger organisations are leading the charge – organisations with 50 000 or more employees are much further along the path to becoming social businesses. In fact, 46% of organisations in that 50 000+ employee category reported that they are already socially enabled, compared to nearly one-third of companies with less than 5 000 employees.

* Transition towards a social business is not expected to be easy – 43% of executives stated that it would take their organisations more than a year to truly leverage social throughout their businesses.

* Social plays critical role in customer care – 60% of respondents plan to integrate social business metrics into customer care initiatives in the next 12 months.

* Social business metrics are still in their infancy, but are expected to be more operationally focused in the future – while companies consider a wide array of social business performance metrics, currently marketing metrics (awareness, customer satisfaction, and share of voice) are the leading performance metrics, followed by lead generation and sales and new product development.

* US lags in using social business insights – organisations outside of the US are significantly more likely to use social business insights for new product development and R&D: non-US at 38,6%, compared to 29,5% for US
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“By weaving social capabilities into the fabric of their daily operations, organisations can achieve significant improvements in areas ranging from marketing and sales to customer service and employee collaboration,” says Meg Bear, group VP of Oracle Social Cloud Platform.

“As this study shows, business executives now understand that creating a socially enabled enterprise can create better customer experiences, enable more responsive internal networks and drive organisational efficiencies. This combination gives organisations of all sizes a significant competitive advantage.”