The path to becoming a social business, one which has a more engaged workforce, customer-base and supply chain, is one which ultimately leads to greater business success. What components, however, do you need to consider putting in place from a strategic standpoint?

My graphic below attempts to put each of the components I feel any organisation should consider implementing or integrating into their social collaboration environment.

The blue cans at the bottom of the arrow are the... Read the article

If you have been following my series, 10 Easy Steps to Social Business, so far then hopefully you’ve gained an understanding of:

1. Embedding social techniques into your business processes with some examples (more to come).
2. The need for customization of your social business solution.
3. Things to think about when preparing a Social Business Governance Plan.

Many thanks for the kind feedback and comments I’ve received so far.  Steps 4 – 6 of the plan will be coming soon.  In the meantime let me keep you busy with my infographic which summarizes the first three steps:

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I was lucky enough to attend the IBM Leadership Alliance conference last week in Boston.  This is an annual gathering of a large number of senior IBM execs, IBM Champions, key customers and a some hangers-on like me.  The entire event is covered by a non-disclosure agreement as the IBMers share their product plans and seek feedback on their plans from the audience.

One session stuck out particularly for me.  It was Sandy Carter‘s presentation on becoming a social business.  Although the precise content of her presentation is under NDA I am allowed to discuss the 10 steps to becoming a social business.  I will examine each of these in a forthcoming series of blog posts but wanted to... Read the article

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I consider a Social Business to be one which harnesses the power of social networking technology to aid collaboration and decision making in organizations. I see this as the modern extension of Knowledge Management which was seen in the early part of this century as the consequence of better database solutions, the advent of the Web as we now know it and a way to finally make our work “smarter”. But will Social Business disappear like Knowledge Management, “Knowledgebases”, “Groupware” and other solutions like it in the past?

In the late nineties many computer systems were still focused on making electronic versions of previously physical processes. The emergence of good-quality scanning solutions and processing systems from the likes of Kofax..

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Setting up a structure in an intranet can be a tricky business. Many organisations follow the organisation tree and decide to structure sites, folders, etc based on the established hierarchy of the company. Others let it grow organically. In most cases the results of the former approach is that it turns into a data coffin because the only people who think along the lines of the org chart is the HR department. The latter approach, while encouraging adoption, just turns into a mess where no-one can find anything. Instead of being a functioning society of information it turns into little pockets of activity which no-one outside of the people using it a) know...

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Having just returned from Lotusphere in Orlando, Florida and just about shaken off jet lag, I have started to reflect on what was certainly for me the best ever Lotusphere.

Apart from the glitz, glamour and energy around, I was surprised by the number of people I knew. Most of them I had never met in person, but I was familiar with because of their online presence in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and...

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