At IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando, Florida, IBM announced earlier today new software and cloud-based services to help business leaders, such as chief marketing officers and chief human resource officers, advance their organization's transformation with the adoption of social business technology.
The new offerings will help business leaders integrate IBM's industry-leading social networking and analytics technologies into their business processes to empower the 21st Century workforce and transform client experiences.
Leading from the front (office)
Just as social networking has flourished in the consumer realm, Forrester has identified social business as an emerging business category, with the social technology industry growing to $6.4 billion by 2016.
Increasingly, front-office leaders, such as chief human resource officers, are looking to form a smarter workforce to unlock human potential and unleash innovation. According to a recent IBM CEO study, 70 percent of companies surveyed cited human capital as the single biggest contributor to sustained economic value.
The new social software offerings will help companies gain deeper insights into big-data generated through the use of social networks. Organizations applying analytics to their data for competitive advantage are more likely to substantially outperform their industry peers.
Today, leading organizations, including 61 percent of the Fortune 100, are licensed to use IBM's social business technologies to transform their front office business operations. This includes connecting employees globally to empower faster decision making and analyzing big-data from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and public forums to react swiftly to customer trends and outpace competitors.
Using analytics to better understand social behavior and business opportunity
At the same time, social media and predictive analytics have emerged as indispensable tools for CMOs, who are using technology to make the customer experience more intelligent, intuitive, and individualized.
According to the IBM CMO study, 82 percent of CMOs say they plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years to communicate with their clients.
IBM's new software and cloud-based services include:
A new web-based social networking environment that provides HR leaders with a better way to recruit and onboard new employees, while giving employees access to digital media and data in real-time, enabling faster decision making.
Software to help marketing teams design sophisticated advertising campaigns and quickly publish those campaigns to leading social networks, resulting in a consistent customer experience through every online channel.
The next release of IBM's industry-leading social networking platform will further enable users to access and analyze big-data from inside and outside the organization, including Facebook, Twitter, audio, and video.
Already in beta, IBM is also announcing its plans to release the industry's first truly social email client incorporating file sharing, activity streams, and a simplified user interface. This will be the first major release of Notes and Domino in five years.
"IBM is revolutionizing front-office processes with the application of cognitive computing and advanced analytics," said Alistair Rennie, general manager, social business, IBM. "Social business has transitioned from being an emerging idea to a fundamental platform that clients everywhere are using to change the way they empower their employees and engage their customers."
Enabling the 21st century workforce
Following its $1.3B acquisition of Kenexa in December 2012, IBM today announced a new web-based social networking environment that is expected to integrate IBM's industry-leading enterprise social networking platform with Kenexa's recruiting, on-boarding, learning, and performance management solutions.
The IBM Employee Experience Suite will help HR leaders attract, empower, and motivate talent to address skill and resource gaps while enabling their workforce to deliver better results for their clients.
For example, employees can use social networking, e-meeting, and instant messaging capabilities to access applications and interactive rich media such as videos, resulting in improved collaboration and greater teaming across globally distributed teams.
The Suite intends to integrate with Kenexa's Applicant Tracking System allowing HR leaders to more swiftly educate existing employees and identify prospective talent. HR leaders will be able to set up a recruiting site, use it to onboard employees, present training options, administer surveys to employees, and manage performance. Prospective employees can view the HR data on the broadest range of mobile devices, helping HR departments reach an increasingly social-savvy and mobile workforce.
Transforming the client experience
The rise of the social-savvy, empowered consumer has prompted organizations around the globe to use social business and analytics capabilities to improve the customer experience. IBM today announced new capabilities that allow marketing teams to easily design, test, and optimize sophisticated advertising campaigns.
For example, a new Social Media Publisher capability in IBM's web experience software allows CMOs to push content, such as ad campaigns or promotions, to leading social networks with one simple click and without involving already resource strapped specialized IT teams.
Social software for the enterprise
With today's news, IBM is introducing the next version of its social networking platform, IBM Connections. The new software will further enable users to access and analyze big-data from inside and outside the organization, including Facebook, Twitter, audio, and video.
Available in March 2013, IBM Connections 4.5 will include embedded document management capabilities so that members of a network can access, analyze, and act on wide ranges of data types in the context of their work to improve decision-making and business results. IBM Connections' Content Manager feature will allow teams and communities to harness an organization's collective intelligence to solve business problems, increase productivity, and drive profit.
IBM Connections clients have access to new social features in the cloud, including blogging and ideation in Communities and access to information. In addition, IBM Connections will include enhanced integration of social capabilities in the Microsoft Outlook client, allowing users to access their social data such as profiles, files, and communities directly in Microsoft Outlook.
In December, IBM expanded its social business platform to include social document editing on-premises and in the cloud. The recently released IBM Docs, available on-premises and as part of the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business, allows browser users to simultaneously collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents to improve productivity.
IBM also announced that it expects to ship IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 in March 2013. IBM Notes and Domino 9 will be the industry's first truly social email client and delivers a social experience to users, whether using a browser or on the broadest range of mobile devices.
IBM Notes and Domino are used by more than half of the Fortune 500. IBM mobile capabilities manage and support a variety of platforms, including Apple (iOS 6), Android, Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows and BlackBerry smartphones (including BlackBerry 10).
Go here for more information about IBM's social business initiative and creating a smarter workforce.
You can also follow #IBMSocialBiz and #IBMConnect on Twitter.
Alister Rennie, General Manager, Social Business @ IBM, addresses how organizations everywhere can move "from liking to leading" and build "purposeful" social business strategies.
So true, @Anand. You really have to figure out what you want to do with social media first before you can begin any voyage, otherwise you'll run into problems fast -- and probably publicly.
There are some amazingly sophisticated tools available out there that enable businesses to do so much with social media
@Alison, true, there are many sophisticated tools available but most important thing for the companies is to identify the role of social media plan in the companies growth. If the company is convinced about the role of the social media then they can consult service companies that specialize in this.
There are some amazingly sophisticated tools available out there that enable businesses to do so much with social media -- but that does mean companies have to develop a social media plan, as you say. The good news is that there are service companies that specialize in this, too, so it doesn't mean a small or midsize business has to suddenly add social media marketing to their list of capabilities. Lots of options, lots of great tools!
Obviously, it's a lot more sophisticated than that!
@Alison, yes social media initiatives doesnt mean creating a Facebook page and a Twitter handle, its more sophisticated than that. Companies should also plan methods by which they are going to analyze the data which they collect through social media channels.
Good question, Mashka, and I believe (although I'd have to do some digging to find the facts to support my semi-educated guess) that although a lot of companies/brands are either shifting or adding more marketing/ad funds to their social media initiatives, some are totally new to advertising and/or public relations. That's why we've seen some really ham-fisted social media efforts, unfortunately, led by companies who think social media initiatives simply mean creating a Facebook page and a Twitter handle. Obviously, it's a lot more sophisticated than that!
May be my questions are a bit off topic, but when I was reading this great post I was thinking-
More and more business invest their money in social media- we can call it in different ways, but it's still an advertising or PR, so do these companies keep investing in traditional media channels and..
Is it correct to consider that social media investsments are made also by companies that have never ever made any other investsments or, it's just a turn of the strategy- those who had invested previously , just changed their channels?
I think the most important aspect of IBM's newest offering will be how well it blends existing social networks into its own HR-based one along with marketing's social offerings. Unless I'm reading the article wrong, it sounds like that's the goal but with how cranky social networks have gotten with working together lately, it still remains to be seen in my eyes.
Even if it does blend the social networks, the next challenge is blending down those silos so the right information is shared across departments. That's more an organization's climate issue, but it'd be nice to see if the software encourages it.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
You only need take one quick glance around the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit at the Gaylord Opryland facility here in Nashville to recognize how busy the Smarter Commerce customer reference team has been these past few months in anticipation of the event.
In this morning's general session here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville, our emcee Jay Baer said what I've been thinking for the past several days: We're in a giant terrarium.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
A growing number of HR managers are suspicious of individuals who do not take part in social media and view them as anti-social in real life as well as online.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
"Social Enterprise" is an increasingly trendy term, and Salesforce.com has been leading the way. At its Dreamforce conference last week, the theme was clear: From here on, enterprise applications must have social capabilities built in.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
Email This
