Manufacturers want to see more integration between social networking tools, enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems and more social network like enterprise 2.0 functionality, according to the results of a study released by IFS North America.
The study, conducted by a third party research organisation, found that while 40% of respondents said that ERP and social networking integration was extremely important, the majority indicated that they wanted their ERP system to help them perform functions typically associated with social networks and other web-based collaboration tools.
Rick Veague, chief technical officer of IFS North America, said: “Enterprise 2.0 and social media tools are designed to draw information out of people, to get them to talk. This will become more of a business critical issue as the current generation of senior manufacturing operations and maintenance professionals prepare for retirement, only to be replaced by a smaller, less experienced but more technologically sophisticated generation.
“Wikis, threaded discussion boards and other features of social media will become common fixtures in enterprise software including IFS Applications.”
A full 62% of respondents said that they wanted their ERP system to capture and record the knowledge of senior experienced engineers and professionals so that it becomes part of corporate knowledge base. Among manufacturers with more than $1 billion in revenue, 72% say that they wanted this capability. The study was based on a survey of more than 260 manufacturing software decision makers.
Dan Matthews, CTO of IFS, said: “We are planning to integrate this community directly with the applications so that our customers can access the wisdom of users outside of their organisation as they learn the finer points and more advanced features of IFS Applications.
“We are also working to structure our embedded help information not as static documentation, but in the format of wikis, so that our customers can document their business processes and indeed, capture the knowledge of senior people in a format that has lasting enterprise value.”
