Social ERP - a new Gen ERP system

In this short article I would like to give an idea about what is a Social ERP, what is the behind to have a social ERP system, what are its advantages and what are the bottlenecks to it.

What is a Social ERP?
Social ERP is a pretty new word in the computing arena which is actually the integration of Social Media and ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. It is still a newbie where we can expect lot of news in the coming months. Now if you search in Google for “Social ERP”, you can hardly find good materials on this topic.

We can abbreviate Social ERP systems as sERPs, where‘s’ stands for Social. Some optimistic techies even call sERP as the mother of all the social applications. We can even hear some people start speaking about new ERP family software as Social Accounting, Social supply Chain, Social Manufacturing applications and so on.

What actually Social ERP means?
In simple terms, Social ERP means an integrated software system which organizes the customers, employees and partners of an organization under the same umbrella. It will have all the features of a traditional ERP system but with an additional layer of social interaction at the top of the basic functionality. This layer will bring more flexibility, user friendliness, transparency to the users of the system.

We can call this additional layer as ‘Social layer’ – a layer which will provide a social touch to the ERP system, where users will have more space to interact and collaborate each other to get the work done. Moreover, users will have easy access to more data – Social Data, the data being shared in the social media system, which is accessible to all to whom the data is being shared.

Motivation behind Social ERP:
The latest statistics shows that, internet users are spending a good number of hours in social networking sites and mainly for creating connections and sharing information. The reason is social media provides a virtual social system, where they interact, communicate, share with others privately as well as publicly. This makes the users stick these system now a days of their personal and to professional work to an extent.

On the other hand, Business applications are the backbone of the organizations without which they cannot function. Many of such systems lack transparency, simplicity and flexibility in communication. So the questions is why don’t we incorporate the features of social media into the existing business applications.

Before going further, let have a look at what Social Media and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems are.

Social Media
The term social media refers to the use of online and mobile technologies to turn social communication into more interactive dialogue. According to Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein social media is “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

In simple terms, I would say social media is a collection of ubiquitous online tools that allow users to extend social interaction at online, and can do at anytime from anywhere.
Example:
Facebook ( Friendship based), LinkedIn (Professional based), Flickr( Image and Photo Sharing based),
Twitter ( Micro-blogging site). Yummer - Enterprise Social Networking
Delicious - Social Bookmarking.

For more details about Social media, you can refer What is social media?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implies an integrated business management software that allows an organization to manage its business processes and data. An ERP system integrates all facets of an organization, including development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, financial and accounting and so on.

Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.
Example: Major ERP systems in the market are Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, PeopleSoft etc.
For more details about ERP, you can refer Definition of ERP

Social ERP System – in detail
So a Social ERP is the futuristic version of ERP systems, which will have all the basic functionaly such as manufacturing, supply chain management, financials, project management, HR and data services etc plus the Social Layer which will add up the social behaviors to the system.

These social behavior include:
. Individual profile pages with personal as well professional details.
. Connect with other people and keep contacts.
. Share ideas, activities, events and interests with contacts.
. Create networks of like minded people.
. Recommend ideas, pages, and interests to others.

We can have ideal Social ERP systems in corporate environments by taking features of social networking sites to the ERP systems and at the same time removing the disadvantages of friendship based social media. As a result, employees (users of sERP) of an organization will have a clear view of what is happening in the organization and it’s procedures and at the same will get a flexible tool set for collaboration and communication.

sERP can do a lot more in corporate collaboration and communication such a way that it provides the organizations and it’s workforce a new way of interaction which reduces the time and cost included in peer-to-per communication. In fact, corporates are already started using Enterprise Social Networking sites


Advantages of a Social ERP systems.
1.It will provide the organization a new and cost effective way for inernal communication and collaboration.
2.It provides the workforce a big picture of what is happening in different processes.
3.It will make the workplace more sociable and friendship based, will encourage to setup healthy relationships.
4.Real Time access to data: Social Data would be accessible round the clock, to its users from all part of the world at any time.
5.Trust/believability: As we can make personal relationship in the system, users can rely on the data depends on your relationship with person who generates the data.
6.A social alert functionality: which will alert the users about a critical activity who are subscribed to that.

Bottle-necks
1.Migration of the existing systems: Most of the existing ERP systems are client-server based and without social media features.
2.Cost of Migration: Changing the existing systems would be a costly process and take long time.
3.Lack of maturity: social ERP systems are still in the initial stage and need to achieve maturity.
4.Data Security: if not managed properly, security of data that is being shared on a social ERP system would be a great risk.

About the Author
Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article. He is a Social Media Enthusiast and blogger in social and digital media topics. You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com.
http://ascentranks.com
Blog:blog.Ascentranks.com

What you mean by Enterprise Social Netoworking?

In this short article I would explain what Enterprise Social networking is – application of social media in enterprises for internal communication and collaboration, its benefits and advantages and the popular social networking sites in the market.

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What is Social Networking?
Let us start with Social networking services. By definition, a social networking service is an online service or platform, that focuses on building and maintaining social networks or social relations among people, which allows users to share their interests and/or activities. A social network essentially consists of a profile of each user, his/her social links, and a variety of additional services.

What is Enterprise Social Networking?
Now it is the time to understand what Enterprise Social Networking is, I would term it is as ESN in short. Enterprise social networking (ESN) means the use of social networking concept or social relations among employees who share business interests and/or activities within enterprises. ESN is often considered as a facility of enterprise social software ,which is essentially social software used in "enterprise" (business/commercial) contexts.

Enterprise Social Networks throw light to the fact that existing corporate intranets and other software platforms need to be modified to fully leverage the benefits of Web 2.0, which will enable organizations to be more effective and economical in organizing their communication, collaboration and other aspects of their intranets.

I would call Enterprise social networking as the adoption of social media in enterprises, by leveraging the advantages of having a social platform among the workforce who share the same business internets or activities and at the same time, fine tuning the drawbacks of implementing a friendship based social network in corporate.

When we talk about Enterprise social networking, we should also need to understand about Web 2.0 Enterprise 2.0 and
Web 2.0.

As you guess Web 2.0 is the second generation of World Wide Web, that facilitate two way interactions with websites or web applications like information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue in a virtual community, in contrast to Web 1.0 websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0 is the use of "Web 2.0" technologies within an organization to enable or streamline business processes while enhancing collaboration - connecting people through the use of social-media tools. Enterprise 2.0 aims to help employees, customers and suppliers collaborate, share, and organize information. Andrew McAfee describes Enterprise 2.0 as "the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers".

Benefits of using Social Networking tools in an organization
1. It provides the employees more voice in their workplace and increases the chances for to be heard and at the time .
2. Employees can search and find resources in other departments so that work can be get done fast.
3. Provides organizations a way to implement more effective and economical systems for internal communication and collaborations.
4. Helps corporate to leverage the benefits of social media in work and at the same time limit the use of friendship based social networking sites in office.

Emerging trends in Enterprise Social Networking
Today we can see a large number of organizations are started implementing social networks to promote collaboration and sharing amongst their employees. Vendors at different domains of business are now using social networking tools as a way to help out the different companies.

These networks are being implemented to get employees collaborating and sharing tips and ideas about how to improve the workplace. Some of these social networks are homegrown systems that are built internally. Companies are using social networks to trade information amongst team members or other people who are part of the company. Sometimes this might also mean trading documents in real time. Based on research that Gartner has completed, 50% of enterprises will be using some sort of social network within the next two years.


Popular Enterprise Social Networking tools:
1. Yammer
Yammer is an enterprise social network service that was launched in September 2008, which is used for private communication within organizations or between organizational members and pre-designated groups. According to TechCrunch in September 2010, the service is being used by more than one million users and 80,000 companies worldwide, including 80% of the Fortune 500.
Website: http://www.yammer.com

2. Chatter.com
Chatter.com is a product of SalesForce, founded in April of 1999 by Marc Benioff. Chatter provides organizations with a free private social network which is available in a number of formats, such as for mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, Blackberry and Android phones plus a desktop version. Through SalesForce Chatter, employees can quickly communicate and resolve issues or work on projects regardless of where they are geographically located.
Website: https://www.chatter.com/

3. Canopy
Canopy, created by J Media offers business a protected, secure way to improve communications between employees. The application makes it much easier to search for individuals based on expertise as well as name. Private messaging and groups can further bring employees together.
Website: http://www.canopyhq.com/

References
1.Enterprise Social Networking - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_social_networking
2. Enterprise Social Networking - http://www.appappeal.com/apps/enterprise-social-networking/


About the Author
Firoz Muhammed is a Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques. You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com . SEO Agency Bangalore, Cheap SEO SMO SMM services

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AscentRanks.com made its presence

Hi World,

AscentRanks marked its presence in the digital world, with a handful of digital marketing services in basket.
AscentRanks is a digital marketing service provider based at Bangalore, India with a hands on industrial experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing (SMM). We guide our customers to improve their online presence which would help them to increase their brand value, popularity, and reputation, eventually they can turn their visitors to valuable customers and more revenue from online business.

AscentRanks holds a good team of Internet marketing experts who having years of experience in the world of web, can understand the customer pain points and bottle necks where there they are stuck to make revenue from their website. Our team will analyze the current condition of your website and will give valuable suggestions on where your website needs improvements and the techniques that can raise the visibility of your website in the web, say in the popular search engine results such as Google, Yahoo and Big. This ultimately make it easy for users to reach out to you through your website, results more valuable customers for you and more revenue from your business.

Websites are a good source of income to business if your are managing it properly with the proper care  and attention, especially int this digital media era where Internet plays vital role in business. Today as per the latest statistics ..............................
Businesses from all sizes, from start-ups to corporates and using Internet and internet marketing tools to leverage the potential of web and have been making more business out of it. Have you started thinking in this way..? do you have a thought to start selling your products or services through online.. yes then your are on the right path at the right time. 


at a time when the social media plays a vital role in the Internet marketing area where a good percent of world population spend most of their online and prefer to do their business online.

For more similar articles, visit our SEO company site

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article, who is a Social Media Enthusiast and a writer on internet marketing and related topics. He is a successive blogger and expert in search engine, social networking and other social media tools.Works as a consultant for an SEO Company based in Bangalore  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com

An introduction to Social media

An introduction to Social media

Today we hear the crowd around us talking more about the buzz words like social media, social networking sites, facebook marketing etc. and so many raise basic questions such as

What is social networking?

What is social media marketing?

How can we use social media in business? etc

In this article, I would try to answer these questions in a very simple and comprehensive way, hoping this would help you to get a hang on social media and its relevance in business and marketing.

What is social Media?

The term social media refers to the use of online and mobile technologies to turn social communication into more interactive dialogue. According to Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein social media is  "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."
In simple terms, I would say social media is a collection of ubiquitous online tools that allow users to extend social interaction at online, and can do at anytime from anywhere.

Social media can take on many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, podcasts, rating, pictures or video sharing and social bookmarking etc. The websites that enable this kind of social interactions online are collectively known as Social networking sites, the most popular them are Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc. social networking sites provide the facilities to share their profile, files, applications with their friends or contact and do interactions.       

What is social media marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social media sites or tools to market products and  services to the targeted customers in a much interactive and cost effective way. In other words, SMM is a means of attracting more traffic to the websites, and more business.

 Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube,  Digg,  Flickr, Twitter etc.

On the other side, marketers need to spread their messages where their customers are to sell their products. That’s way social networking sites are emerging as a powerful new kind of marketing tool. In fact three social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace – are among the top trafficked web sites in the world.

Social media in business

Social networking sites are a good platform to market your products online. Today’s consumers spend a good amount of their time at Internet browsing for new products, their favorite brands and merchandise. In fact, we can social media sites for sell our products and services, to update customers about new product launch and run a online customer service at a low cost.

Social media sites allow business owners  to seek out new customers through referrals from other customers, and to create positive and rapid word-of-mouth for new products and services.

To make your business social media friendly, you have to have presence in these social media sites. We can start our presence by creating business profiles in Facebook, twitter etc. Facebook allows you business or brand have a webpage to tell the world who you are and what you do, at free of cost. You can have an account in twitter, where you can add your customers as followers, and let them know about your offers, new product launches etc through micro-blogging.

Social Media Marketing related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO). Benefits of using SMO and SEO along with SMM are many as these techniques would hep the social media sites to attract more customers towards your website.

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article on Social Media and social networking, he is Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques.  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com @ SEO Company

References

1.Technorati.com- Social Media Marketing is Crucial to your Business Success.

2. Wikipedia.org - Social Media Marketing –

AscentRanks.com

AscentRanks is an Internet Marketing agency based in Bangalore, India, provides Search Engine Optimization(SEO), Search Engine Optimization (SMO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) services. We do help our customers to attract more traffic their website and find more business and revenue.

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How to add Facebook share Button to your blogger/blogspot posts

How to add Facebook share Button to your blogger/blogspot

With the growing popularity of social networking sites especially Facebook and Twitter, everyone want to publish everything on these sites. In fact, these sites could be great source of quality traffic for any blog. You can include a Facebook share button in each of your posts. This button will allow users to quickly share/like a post on Facebook.

In this article I would explain how we can add a Facebook share button to your blog that is a easy work to do.

Steps to Add Facebook Share Button above blog posts

To add Facebook share button below post title, simply follow these steps:

1. Login into your Blog Dashboard -> Design.
2. Select Edit HTML option. Back up your layout/template. Click ‘Download Full Template’ option, this help you backup your contents of your blog and if anything happens while editing the script, you can restore this backup to the default settings.

3. Go to Layout then select Edit HTML tab.
4. Check Expand Widget Templates checkbox located at the top of the script window. This will make the page refresh automatically.

5. Now search this tag in the snippet:

<data:post.body/>

6. Place the following code just  before the tag found in step 4:

<!-- Facebook Button -->
<div style='float: left; padding: 5px; '>
<a expr:share_url='data:post.url' name='fb_share' rel='nofollow' type='TYPE OF BUTTON'/>
<script src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>
<!-- Facebook Button -->

<data:post.body/>                           -Place the code before the <data:pst.body> tag.

Click on the Preview button to see the result and then save your template.

Add Facebook Share Button below  Blog Posts

To place a Facebook share button under each post instead at the top, you have to follow the exact steps given above but there is small change instep 5.

5- Place the following code right below the code found in step 4:

<data:post.body/>                          - Place the code after the <daga:post.body> tag

<!-- Facebook Button -->
<div style='float: left; padding: 5px; '>
<a expr:share_url='data:post.url' name='fb_share' rel='nofollow' type='TYPE OF BUTTON'/>
<script src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>
<!-- Facebook Button -->

Button Modifications

You can also change the button type like adding a counter with the button. All you need is to replace TYPE OF BUTTON from the above code with:

button for a button like this:

button_count for a button like this:

box_count for a button like this:

icon for a button like this:

Search for more at Ascentranks.com, the Internet Marketing Company

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article, who is a Social Media Enthusiast and writer on internet marketing and related topics. He is a successive blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM and social media marketing.  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com

Search for more at Ascentranks' website, an SEO Company

References

Betemplates - http://www.betatemplates.com/2010/06/add-facebook-share-button-in-blogger.html

Facebook Developer Page -  http://developers.facebook.com/docs/

How to do blog posts from mobile

How to do blog posts from mobile

Here is a wonderful video from Google support team on how to do mob-blogging in blogger.com

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=42448

Search for more at Ascentranks' website, an SEO Company

Benefits of using Social Media Optimization in business

Benefits of using Social Media Optimization in business

                Social media is growing day by day and customers become more glued to the news and updates coming on social networking sites, which help the social media to grow further. As a business owner, you cannot block its overwhelming growth nor hide what is being told about your products and services online. Only thing what we can do is leverage it for your business, use it to promote your services to the customers, interact with the customers real-time and increase chance to retain them, increase your brand image etc.

Below listed some of the benefits of using social media optimization that I found useful for a business:

1.       Link Generation:

Through SMO techniques you can generate thousands of inbound links for your web site in a very less time. This rapidly spreads the awareness about your business on the web and hence more potential customers.

2.       Establish Brand Equity:

SMO techniques allow you build a good brand image online. As more and more users get to know about your web site, your brand gains power and popularity, and thus you earn that cutting edge over the competitors.

3.       Increased Web Traffic:

The amount of web traffic to your website incredibly increases in a very short span of time with proper SMO implementation. It is the cheapest way of driving more potential customers to your website and it will make the website popular which further motivates more internet users to browse through it.

4.       Increased customer base:

More traffic volume to your website means more chances of conversions online and increased customer base for your business. Well planned SMO techniques would allow you to convert traffic into good long time potential customer base.

5.       Easy to implement and Cost effective:

The beauty of SMO is that this online marketing method cost you much less amount when compared to other marketing media and at the same time does need less effort and time to implement. It’s affordable yet very effective.

6.       Faster and Higher ROI:

SMO gives you quick and high returns on the investments. Within a short duration, you can realize your business is start booming.

7.       Lessen the Risk:

With SMOs, the risk regarding ROI reduces as you do not completely rely on Search Engines to drive traffic to your web site.

8.       Results can be easily Measured:

The benefits or returns generated by the SMO techniques can be easily quantified and measured. Today lots of vendors are providing free as well paid tools which measure the effectiveness the quality of SMO work that you done for your site with great precision.

For more similar articles, visit http://www.ascentranks.com

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article on benefits of Social Media in business, he is Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques.  You can reach out to him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com @AscentRanks an seo company India

References

1. Social Media Optimization , Wikipedia
2. Top 14 Benefits of Social Media Marketing