Incorporating social media tools more closely with ERP is a natural extension for both types of applications, Prouty says. "So many junior employees today use social media for communications in their personal lives and I think that has to be a bigger part of their professional lives as well. These workers have these skills so you might as well take advantage of them."

Deeper integration of ERP and social media could even encourage more companies to delve into communicating with their customers through Facebook, Twitter and the rest, Prouty says. "Some companies today are hesitant to get involved with social media because it only produces unstructured data. But I think they're going to want to use social media once that information can be captured because it creates useful data for ERP or BI or other systems so you can gain more information for your business."

Eventually this kind of social media integration with ERP systems could also make its way into other enterprise applications such as CRM because it could give companies much more customer information for those systems, according to Prouty.

It's only a matter of time before the inclusion of these kinds of social media tools will be key desires among customers who are shopping for new ERP platforms, Prouty says. "I think it's something they need to watch. It's going to slowly work its way into selection criteria for ERP systems. The merger of social media and ERP will allow you to get much more from your data."

covers Enterprise Applications, SaaS, CRM, and Cloud Computing for CIO.com. Follow Todd on Twitter . Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter and on . Email Todd at You can also join Todd in the "CIO Forum" group on to talk with CIOs and IT managers about the things that keep them up at night.