As social management becoming an integral role in an organization’s success, consulting and business process outsourcing (BPO) company, Capgemini, expands into the realm of social media monitoring.

In a partnership with Attensity, provider of text analysis tool, Capgemini offers a managed social media monitoring service.  This service intends to provide smart text analysis and language processing technology to scour for post and comments on blogs and social networks. Capgemini will then provide the data gathered by the tool and assists customers in analyzing it. Currently, the project is already used by 20 customers.

Many organizations have neglected or unable to fully implement social media monitoring. In most cases, they don’t have the expertise to effectively manage it. Instead they usually assigned it as an ad hoc task to certain individuals in marketing or sales. According to Capgemini Vice President for BPO Customer Operations, Paul Cole, there are only less than 20 percent of companies that are implementing social media monitoring.

Social media should be managed properly since it can be a “double-edged sword”. It provides an opportunity and a risk at the same time. “This is not a self-service phenomenon, where people pick up chatter on the web and try to categorize it. That is firstly, taking a risk, and secondly, missing an opportunity,” said Cole. Social media is the best venue wherein organizations could keep track about the sentiments of their customers. By carefully listening to its customers, organizations may come with sound products ideas and innovations. However, social media could also be a risk due to “brand saboteurs”, which could easily spread false rumor mills across the social network.

According to Gartner, expenditures in social software that supports sales, marketing, and customer service will exceed $1 billion worldwide next year. With this new service from Capgemini, they have elevated their consulting services to a new level, inching closer to their goal to land in the top 10 service provider in North America.