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IDC Social Business – An IDC Four Pillar Research Area

IDC's recent Social Business Survey showed an overwhelming acceleration in the number of companies that have deployed enterprise social software, as well as the maturity of use cases. As adoption of enterprise social solutions increases, barriers have decreased, and the concession is that more than one solution may be required to support a company's needs. As companies respond, they are targeting a set of core capabilities and functionalities to initiate and tie together current social initiatives that may already be active in separate systems and business processes.

Primary Analyst Team


Michael Fauscette Group Vice President
Vernon Turner Senior Vice President
Vanessa Thompson Research Manager

Mary Wardley Vice President
Christine Dover Research Director
Lisa Rowan Research Vice President

Alys Woodward Research Director

Additional Social Business Analysts

Adelaide O'Brien Research Director Casey Tallon Senior Research Analyst Christine Bardwell Research Manager
Eric Newmark Program Director Kimberly Knickle Practice Director Melissa O'Brien Research Analyst
Marc DeCastro Research Director Phil Hochmuth Program Manager Rich Costello Senior Research Analyst
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IDC defines social business as organizations that apply emerging technologies like Web 2.0 accompanied by organizational, cultural, and process changes to improve business performance in an increasingly connected global economic environment. IDC's unique capability to cover the Social Business landscape stems from a cross functional team of analysts spanning multiple software, services, and infrastructure research practices.

This team provides comprehensive supply side/vendor evaluation encompassing a full range of Social Business processes supported by extensive and ongoing demand-side research efforts including end user interviews, surveys, and deal tracking.

An enterprise social network (ESN) represents a wider group of social applications, standalone or embedded in other applications, that facilitate the connection of people inside and outside the firewall. An ESN will become the social backbone by forming a relationship layer across the business to facilitate information sharing and collaboration in the context of work processes.

As companies aim to capture feedback from the social Web, the Internet, and the broader network of constituents, collaborating in real time and supporting some work processes with social tools will become essential to build a more productive and dynamic business operation.


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IDC's CRM applications and customer experience research keeps product, marketing, and strategic planning professionals informed of trends, leading and emerging vendors, and new market opportunities in the CRM applications market. As customers expectations of interactions with companies continue to shift dramatically, businesses are leveraging technology to level the playing field.

Customer experience (CX) encompasses the software and processes that encourage better, more effective customer interaction and leverage and coordinate the broader organization with the intention of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers. Social, mobile, and analytics are key technologies supporting the CX initiative and represent the market dynamics that suppliers must track, understand, and respond to.

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Through the expansion of digital commerce, customers have rapidly increasing ways of interacting with brands and expect a consistent experience. IDC believes that a new commerce infrastructure is required that includes an omni-channel buying experience and incorporates mobile, social commerce and loyalty.

Our digital commerce research includes experience management (includes content management, commerce platforms, integration, and advanced analytics) for B2B and B2C; mobile commerce (mobile app marketplaces, built-for-mobile commerce capabilities); and the proliferation of shared services in EA/DC implementations.


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IDC defines the term socialytics as a set of cross-discipline solutions that are used to analyze social data created through socially-based interactions. Socialytics includes tools and applications that are either purpose built to analyze social data or may act on social data in a more generalized fashion as another form of data input.

Socially-based interactions create social data that reflects the relationship of people to people, topics, ideas or locations. Social interactions may occur within employee, customer, or partner-based communities, as well as within public and private social networking environments and forums.


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IDC's social learning coverage examines strategic HCM applications, including core HR, erecruiting, incentive, performance, and workforce management.

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IDC's unified communications (UC) research is supported by a cross-functional team of analysts to provide a holistic view of how multiple markets intersect in the journey toward unified communications and collaboration (UC&C). It examines unified communications – a combination of directory, routing, and management of communications, presence, and mobile access to deliver seamlessly integrated voice, messaging, collaboration, and video applications – from multiple technology and services angles.

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