Worldwide enterprise collaborative decision-making (CDM) software revenue will reach $US 664.4 million in 2010, a 14.9 percent increase from 2009, according to Gartner research.
The market is poised for continued growth in 2011, when revenue is forecast to reach $US 769.2 million, up 15.7 percent from 2010.
Collaborative decision-making software: A flexible problem-solving environment
CDM software enables individuals within an organizational context to harness the power of social media and networking technologies, applying them to workplace problems to facilitate effective collaboration, resulting in faster and better decision-making.
“The social software market is evolving in response to the demand for flexible environments in which participants can connect, create, share, and find people and information relevant to their work,” said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner.
Collaborative decision-making software: The benefits
“Social software improves the connectedness of workers, promotes collaboration and helps capture informal knowledge. Social software excels in business contexts that leave room for individuals to interact informally, brainstorm, explore ideas, and encourage or challenge peers. Specific business value can be derived through customer intimacy, product/service excellence, operational effectiveness and creating innovation.”
Social software technologies can create business value by: driving changes in interpersonal interactions; improving operational efficiency and effectiveness; raising organizational performance; and leveraging internal and external social networks.
What does this growth mean for Business Intelligence?
CDM software has surpassed the point of mere academic theory and fanciful entrepreneurial idea. It’s now a proven value-adding enterprise technology. 2011 will see CDM components merge with Business Intelligence (BI) solutions to offer organizations not only the ability to better understand their operational environment, but a platform for acting on the information gleaned from reporting and analytics with effectiveness and efficiency.
Will every current user and producer of BI software adopt and develop social capacities in 2011? No. But those who do adopt this disruptive technology will outstrip their competition.