By the looks of it, social media is not satisfied taking over our private lives, now it is entering ERP services as well. As SAP announced, it is now in co-operation with Jive SBS, a new social media ERP tool helping each and everyone and each and everything in your company stay connected. If employees are wasting time on Facebook anyways, why not give them a company internal social media platform to play with AND be productive at the same time? So far, no objections.

In fact, Jive SBS is very impressive. Watch the demo video here, and I guarantee you will be sold (maybe partially because of the cute success story). In fact, high hopes are set into the victory march of social media into the area of ERP services. Social ERP is supposed to facilitate communication (across departments or even company offices in different parts of the world) and utilize the creative potential and collective knowledge of the entire employee body. Moreover, the prospect of storing collective and seniors’ knowledge in FAQ sections and wikis is a further plus. Still, sounding pretty good.

Social media could even start to change how companies work – creating flatter hierarchies and more collective ways of working together. Maybe you could officially like your boss’s status soon - on the company’s ERP system. Or maybe it’s more likely that you will write a comment on this latest query that is just a bit too critical causing him to blank you in the hallway. Maybe it’s even more likely that your co-workers will think you’re a sucker because you like said status. Getting a bit suspicious yet?      

Also, is social media really ready to enter a company network that store confidential and highly sensible information that should, under no circumstances, leak to parts of the employees, let alone the public? When it comes to ERP plug-ins of Twitter, Facebook and the like, most CEOs are more reluctant to implement, fearing social media mishaps like the one that happened to Red Cross lately. Oh my god, absolute disaster!

All this said, social media can really be a double-edged sword. While the outlook of radically transforming a company’s corporate culture can be very promising, social media in ERP services has yet to come a long way. Implemented with care and an apprehension for the specifics of social media, it might turn into a success story.

For now, let’s wait and see.