Intec predicts that the path to becoming a Social Business is inevitable. However, the differentiating factors – those which will separate the leaders from the masses – will stem from how effectively an organisation embraces a Social Business culture; as well as the technology to deepen customer relationships, drive operational efficiencies and optimise the workforce. Now you know the nuts and bolts of Social Business, your next step is to start thinking about how your organisation can transform itself by applying social technologies that will: IBM Connections social software is designed to help you better gather and ...
Social technologies are being used to gather insights about products and brands, opinions about competitors, and perceptions of market segments. This market research and customer insight can be used as input for product requirements and design, advertising campaigns, pricing, packaging, and other marketing and product development activities. In a recent study of 541 executives at 500 companies, 40% found that they could see specific improvements and increases in sales from social customer relationship management and 71% found that it led to a reduction in time to resolution for support issues. Social Businesses increase their customer reach by ...
Over the last decade social tools have become not only prevalent, they have become critical to business. Just under a decade ago I created a LinkedIn profile. I doubt I was in the first wave of early adopters, but I was early. So early I forgot about it for a few years until I started getting lots of people connecting with me. Now any social business will use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool, maybe posting status updates of a new position but certainly checking out the LinkedIn profile of those who apply for positions. Twitter has changed the way people do ...
Last year I had the honour of answering a call for sidebar contributions to Ed Brill's book, "Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager". I had no doubt it would be a well-written, informative book. Ed's announcement today of his new role as Director of Market Management - IBM Mobile Enterprise has given the book an interesting angle as well. IT professionals are renowned for being great at doing, not so eager at documenting. At what point Ed's change in role started to come into focus, he has certainly left excellent documentation for his ...
Over on ZDNet site there is a debate going on at the moment about whether the social enterprise is fact or fiction. This is particularly apposite, at a time when social media is becoming more prevalent in business for some people whereas many people are still sceptical. My own views are no secret, based on previous blogs I've written on the benefits I've seen in my own business life from being social. Businesses who at least allow and at best encourage their employees to be social will reap the rewards. Employees who are social will also reap rewards, increasing ...
Lotusphere is over for another year (and the perennial debate about the name also seems to have been put to bed - announcements have always said "Lotusphere 2013"). From the Domino standpoint it's been another step on the road to the Vulcan vision and a reaffirmation of a new deployment model. We've seen in the last couple of months the approach of 8.5.3 base install extended with additional functionality (in this case primarily the Extension Library) by installing Upgrade Pack 1. The Extension Library has been demoed in a number of sessions, not only the base functionality that made it into ...
The dust has settled on the first day of Lotusphere, so time for a quick review. The OGS was spectacular and a huge improvement on last year. Even before the OGS started, as IBM Champions we had a dedicated area at the front right of the stage. Thanks to Joyce and everyone at IBM for that. Amongst the people milling around in that area before the presentations where Sandy Carter (@sandy_carter) and Brian Cheng (@quasifu). It was great to have a brief chat with Sandy, her book 'Get Bold' hit big chords, as I've already blogged. Next up were Ok Go, ...
Just before Christmas two new communities launched on Lotus Greenhouse for Lotusphere and Connect The communities have a wealth of useful bookmarks, wiki articles and other content. IBMers and Champions have been adding content over the last few weeks and will continue to build in that in the lead up to Lotusphere and during the conference. The communities are intended as an ongoing resource for attendees to use to get the most out of the conference. (If you have any further questions, there's also a forum in the communities.) There is also an Ideation Blog in the Lotusphere community. ...
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from IBM Press about Sandy Carter's new book 'Get Bold'. Shortly afterwards, my copy arrived. I'm not one for reading many IT books - most of my library comprises fiction, often based in the Classical world. But I was interested to get a bit more of a background on social business, one of the main IBM Collaboration Solution themes in 2011. I will freely admit that although I get social - I blog, I take part in forums, I am one of the hosts of The XCast, and I speak ...
Over the last week or so I've been making some major enhancements to the XPages Help Application I provided on OpenNTF earlier this year, now available at the shortened URL http://xhelp.openntf.org. The main areas have been adding dijit.Tree support for the navigation, but also fixing an issue that meant images didn't appear when viewed in Notes Client. I had a couple of queries - one about how to reference server-based images for XPages in Notes Client and the other about the correct syntax for dijit.showTooltip(). Both times I resorted to Google. The first answer I found in responses to a blog ...
