Here at Helpstream, we talk a lot about the important intersection of customer community and existing business processes. Dion Hinchcliffe had a great post this week called “Reconciling social computing with the enterprise” that addressed this very topic. Hinchcliffe discusses the gap between what happens in the business world and what happens everywhere else, and the disconnect that cuts companies off from their most important asset, their people. He summarizes the issue very well when he says:

The key point here is the broader changes we are experiencing today: The pervasive presence of social software and today’s highly open, interactive, and remixable Web embedded deeply into our personal lives is increasingly allowing us to experience a new way of living. And it’s one that bears less and less resemblance to the workplace all the time, with significantly differing behaviors, skills, tools, and expectations.

Today’s businesses face a big challenge, but it’s one they must meet – transforming their current business processes for social technologies. We believe an entirely new and important value can be created from the right blend of existing process with social applications and specifically, customer community.

“Why do we need to redesign our processes?” From our perspective, there are a few reasons.

First, there’s a very good chance that your competitors are moving towards incorporating social applications and you don’t want to be left behind. Some of today’s most talked about companies exemplify the success that can be had from embracing social technology without throwing business process out the window. Think Zappos, Comcast, and Travelocity.

Second, your customers are already talking about you on the Web. Wouldn’t you like to enable them to do it on your turf so that you can learn from the conversation, improve your business and strengthen your customer relationships?

Third, as we’ve previously discussed, there’s a strong financial case to be made for engaging customers through social applications. You can see the ROI we proved from customer community in our white paper here.

Helpstream’s platform was built from the ground up with a full, integrated view into people, process and technology because we believe the best service can be achieved from combining the best social elements and business processes. That’s why our technology fits into whatever business processes or CRM systems you use every day. We also just announced the first true enterprise application mashup that seamlessly embeds Helpstream communities with Salesforce and Oracle CRM solutions.

We don’t believe companies should have to choose between what Hinchcliffe dubs “process vs. product.” Process integrated into the community setting will create the very best service and outcome for your business.