In a recent Forbes‘ blog entry, LRN CEO Dov Seidman shares a concern he heard from a fellow CEO: “There are times I wonder, ‘Will I be the next Mubarak?’”

The worry seems a bit overblown on first glance; after some deeper consideration, however, it seems right on the mark. After all, the era of the social organization is upon us. Social media, mobile technology and ubiquitous connectivity are knocking down previous hierarchical structures and boundaries that separated different “levels” of employees and also employees from customers and other external stakeholders. more

A few weeks ago wiredFINANCE looked at the ROI from social networking . It showed Lowe’s , the home improvement retailer, as a leader in the use of social business. But more companies already are doing it.

Meanwhile, Tom Austin, VP and Gartner Fellow, offered this advice back in June: If you’re trying to build positive emotional momentum for whatever you’re trying to accomplish with the business, look seriously at social tools as a potentially powerful element in a broader overall strategy.

For IBM and Forrester Research, the business value [of social networking] lies in the ways it enables collaboration to succeed within a business environment. Here’s what some business are doing with social business clouds now. more

ERP systems not only collect information about transactions, they also automate processes. The latter includes managing the handoffs between roles and enabling electronic document creation and management associated with that. Indeed, it was the promise of improving process management and process execution that spurred companies to adopt ERP in the 1990s.

Yet despite ERP’s ability to streamline and improve execution, our research shows that not many companies use their systems to manage common end-to-end processes such as order to cash and procure to pay. Among companies with at least 1,000 employees, only half (51%) use order to cash and two-thirds (69%) utilize procure to pay. I suspect that even these findings may overstate the actual penetration since companies may have automated some but not all of their order-to-cash and purchase-to-pay volumes. more

Just what issues and challenges are likely to impact corporate treasurers in 2012? The folks at tech giant Sungard have identified the top treasury trends for the coming year. Among them:

1. An increased focus on assessing risk holistically. Several drivers are behind this trend, says Paul Bramwell, Sungard’s senior vice president of treasury solutions. One is simply an increased awareness of the risks – FX, interest rate, credit, among others – to which their organizations are vulnerable. Of course, the global financial crisis highlighted the need to focus on risk over the past few years. In addition, ongoing questions about the viability of the euro, as well as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, are adding to the uncertain environment. Treasurers want to know where their cash will be today, tomorrow and in the future, in order to make sure that they’ve planned adequately for any upcoming debt repayments or business flows they need to accommodate, Bramwell says. more

Given their (well-deserved) emphasis on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement, the future of Dodd-Frank and increasingly complex IT-related issues (namely, privacy and security), risk and compliance managers can be forgiven if they put their GRC (governance, risk, compliance) technology learning on auto pilot.

They also might want to click into the reading mode of the holidays, thanks to a new Aberdeen report (one that requires a purchase) that looks at five current GRC technology trends. I recently chatted with Scott Goolik, ControlPanelGRC’s chief technology officer, to get his read on the report – and GRC-tech trends for 2012. more