The theme of Dreamforce ’11, The Social Enterprise, marks a new direction for enterprise software, one that embraces social media as an integral part of enterprise applications. The emergence of the social enterprise has already dramatically changed how businesses interact with their customers. Customers engage actively in two way conversations with vendors; providing consumers with a powerful voice providing unprecedented influence over everything from how customers are serviced to product strategy and direction.

“We often forget the symbiotic relationship between trust and ROI”
Gary Vaynerchuk, The Thank You Economy

However, the impact of the Social Enterprise on business-to-business relationships is evolving more slowly as many industries cling to out-moded ways of interacting and doing business. Take the relationship between many industrial product vendors and their distribution partners for instance. Being “social” starts with trust between the parties. How do you build a full relationship when parties are reluctant to share sales and forecast data freely with each other? In many industry segments partners are still unwilling to share end-customer data due to the fear of disintermediation. The irony is that when the information is shared vendors can better serve their partners by improving incentive programs, product features and marketing programs.

Communication must be a two-way street. Countless partners have been burned in the past when they shared information with vendors, but this is changing. Just as consumers have found a stronger and more powerful voice through social media, so will partners and end-customer businesses. The vendor / partner relationship will be transformed with open sharing of information. Information will flow more freely among all parties and will become actionable analytics that will guide vendors and partners alike in an interactive “social” relationship. Those that embrace it will benefit greatly as they understand the real ROI associated with trust.