IBM Defines Social Business
Tags :Lotus Connections Social Business IBM RedGuide
A RedGuide from IBM was released (I have never heard of this new RedGuide term yet) titled:
Using IBM Social Business to Take Your Business Relationships to the Next Level
Quite the mouthful. The core of this document was defining social business and showing how IBM software is the solution that wraps it up tight.
IBM® defines Social Business as a business that embraces networks of people to create business value. Social businesses embrace technology to enhance relationships between employees, customers, and partners. They augment business processes and applications with social interactions and insight. They provide integrated activities that use business data and social data. Social businesses more fully integrate the collective knowledge of people-centric networks to accelerate decision making, strengthen business processes, and increase innovation that matters.
The idea is that companies have not understood how to use what the employees know in their heads and personal document storage and bring it out via social interaction in software. Software has always been bland, corporate feeling and dry. All process and no shine. Some argue that email is social and has feeling in it. I agree. However, email has been a silo for a long time.
Here is the graphical representation of a social business:
In the RedGuide, IBM manges to highlight the yellow section and cross blend it with the current motion IBM has in selling the social business theory backed with the terms and software they use. The yellow box brings together activity streams, communities, analytics and mobility in the RedGuide. The pages following the graphic list the software IBM offers to give that exceptional experience in a social business.
I am guessing from reading this is the guide is made as a heavy pre-sales and "get some CEO interested" maneuver. It is not made to compete with the technical Redbooks already published by IBM. I am still trying to figure out what I took away from the ~15 pages of the guide. Even with the definition above, I am unsure what the heck I am supposed to do. Is the call to action to get IBM in the door to make me social, or to do something myself? Am I already on the path? Is there a benchmark?
blog comments powered by Disqus
On Thursday, April 28th, 2011 by Chris Miller
