I’ve written before about the social business trend and it’s impact on businesses (see The Social Business Train Is Leaving The Station Are You On It? and A Social Business Strategy Can Make A Company More Responsive and Agile).
I believe that the social business trend will have a profound impact on the architecture and design of future businesses. Business processes will change and that will lead to required changes in application software. Those businesses that make the successful transition will be more agile, more responsive, and more successful than others.
This post provides links to three white papers found on IBM’s Social Business website. IBM has been on the forefront of the social collaboration and social media marketplace, learning how to leverage these technologies internally. These white papers provide a great overview of social business, the potential value of the trend, and the challenges all businesses must overcome to become a true social business.
The Social Business: advent of a new age
(February 2011) This 10 page white paper written by the Lotus team at IBM Software Group defines what a social business is and what it takes to become one. It puts forth the view that businesses are entering an inflection point where social computing and social media are about to be fully integrated into enterprise application design. The table of contents are:
- Introduction
- What does it mean to be a Social Business?
- What is the value of Social Business?
- Deepen customer Relationships
- Drive operational efficiencies
- Optimize the workforce
- Preparing for the future
- The right partner for a changing world
- For more information
Becoming a Social Business: the IBM story
January 2011) This IBM-sponsored 14 page white paper was written by IDC’s Erin Traudt and Richard Vancil. In this paper, IDC provides three case studies that describe IBM's internal evolution to a social business. The paper then uses the learnings from these case studies in order to provide guidance to other large organizations considering making the transformation to a social business.
- IDC Opinion
- Methodology
- In This White Paper
- Situation Overview
- Case Studies
- IBM DeveloperWorks
- From Individual Contributor to Community Manager
- BlueIQ
- Future Outlook
- Challenges / Opportunities
- Conclusion
(April 2011) Exploring new approaches for the next era of business. This IBM white paper provides a review of the key findings from a 72-hour online brainstorming session held in February 2011 between over 2,700 participants from over 80 countries. This report summarizes the key insights gathered from the all the conversations, comments, and tweets.
The table of the contents of this report reads as follows:
- The Social Business Jam
- What is a Jam?
- Jam insights
- Building the social business of the future
- Building participatory organizations through social adoption
- Using social media to understand and engage with customers
- What social means for IT
- Identifying risks and establishing governance
- Our jamming experience
- Next Steps
If you are tasked with learning about the social business trend, these three white papers are an excellent resource for you. More information and case studies can be found at the IBM Social Business website. For those of you who want to follow the discussion on Twitter, search on the hashtag #socbiz.
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