Just recently I came, incidentally, in possession of a study conducted in August 2010 by IFS North America and Affinity Research Solutions, Boston, on a sample of 325 executives at large/middle-market manufacturers and focus on a possible marriage between ERP / CRM and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN). According to the study, social media has begun to influence, more powerful, the ERP market.
As a result, vendors are experimenting with integration between enterprise software, typically involving customer relationship management (CRM) with social media tools like Twitter or Facebook. In some cases, software vendors are already offering functionality to deliver benefits of enterprise 2.0, enterprise functionality with integrated, built-in Web 2.0 technologies.
The conclusion that emerged was that ability to integrate with external social media tools on the public internet does not weigh heavily on the selection process for ERP. However, the adoption of social media functions to include collaborative and communication capabilities is viewed with importance but is not seen as a major influencer. Also, manufacturing executives are optimistic about the potential benefits of social functionally embedded in ERP and realize that there could be great value if their ERP application includes features that mirror the functionality of online social networking tools.
For more information, take a look to http://www.mbtmag.com/Content.aspx?id=1783
