Posts Tagged ‘ibm connections’
From Liking To Leading: Driving A “Purposeful” Social Business Strategy
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.
IBM’s Combination Of Social & Analytics = Social ROI
The embedded experience of the news feed in IBM Connections, also known as an activity stream, allows employees from any department inside an organization to explore structured and unstructured data such as Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, weather data, videos, log files, SAP applications, electronically sign documents, and quickly act on the data as part of their everyday work experience.
Big news today from IBM re: social analytics, and for some key customer wins on the social business front.
First, to the news about social analytics. Today, IBM unveiled new software and services that bring the power of big data analytics into the hands of a social savvy workforce anytime, anywhere.
With this new capability, organizations will be able to apply analytics to their social business efforts, allowing them to gain actionable insight on information generated in social networks and put it to work in real-time.
IBM’s Lead In Social Business
Today, more than 60 percent of the Fortune 100 have licensed IBM social software to activate their workforce to improve productivity, and gain insight on data to anticipate individual customers needs.
IBM’s leadership role in analytics has been established through a thoughtful strategy that required the expansion of R&D, acquisition and business initiatives across its hardware software and services portfolio.
As part of today’s news, IBM announced the availability of its industry-leading social software platform, IBM Connections.
IBM Connections incorporates sophisticated analytics capabilities, real-time data monitoring, and faster collaborative networks both inside and outside the organization, whether on premise, in the IBM SmartCloud or using a broad range of mobile devices.
You can check out a demo here.
IBM Customers Becoming More Social
IBM also announced today that leading companies around the globe, including Bayer MaterialScience, Colgate-Palmolive Company, LeasePlan, Primerica and Teach for America, are using its social software to achieve real returns on their social business investments.
The rise of social media is prompting business leaders, from the CMO to the chief HR officer to the CIO, to evaluate how to create opportunities that drive business transformation through the use of social technology, creating real business value.
At the same time, business leaders lack the tools to gain insight into the enormous stream of information and use it in a meaningful way. According to IBM’s CEO Study, today only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years.
Do you want to know what becoming a social business can do for your company? This video will help you understand how you can create exceptional customer experiences and a smarter workforce to empower your business. Find out how you can compete with — and win against — the world’s best by giving customers what they want. You can view the video here: http://bit.ly/SASGdi
A recent IBM study of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers reveals 82 percent plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years.
“To truly realize the full potential of a social business, leaders need to empower a company’s most vital asset — the information being generated from its people,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager, social business, IBM. “Now is the time for business leaders to embed social into their key business processes to shift their business from the era of ‘liking’ to ‘leading’.”
Social ROI
Today, more than 60 percent of the Fortune 100 have licensed IBM social software. There is strong demand for IBM’s social business platform in regulated industries, with 41 percent of Connections 4 beta participants in banking, finance and healthcare institutions.
Primerica, a leading distributor of financial products in North America, will utilize Connections and WebSphere Portal, to transform how its agents engage with its 2.3 million policy holders on the fly, to provide increased value for its customers.
The company plans to use social business software to improve the overall client experience, drive competitive edge and stay on the forefront of innovation in the financial services industry. You can read more details on Primerica’s adoption of IBM social software here.
And in the video at the bottom of this post, you can check out my interview with Digital Influence Group’s Glenn Engler about the challenges and opportunities for social media in heavily regulated industries.
Expanding IBM Social Capabilities In Key Growth Markets
To support the burgeoning demand for social business solutions in growth markets, in the fourth quarter of 2012 IBM will open two social business customer support centers to serve IBM’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American clients.
Located in Manilla, the Philippines, and Sao Paolo, Brazil, these centers will support the rapid adoption of social business tools in these growth markets. The Philippines and Brazil centers join a roster of IBM social business centers in North America, Dublin, Japan, China and India.
IBM’s growing business partner network of more than 39,000 business partners are also bringing new, cutting-edge capabilities to IBM’s social platform every day in areas including gamification, video, compliance, project management and mobility.
For example, Actiance provides leading compliance capabilities to thousands of organizations globally, SugarCRM helps sellers use social networking and analytics for effective selling, and Bunchball provides gamification capabilities to IBM Connections.
Making New Connections With IBM Connections Social Software
IBM Connections, a cornerstone of IBM’s social platform, is available on premise, in the cloud, and on a broad range of mobile devices.
IBM Connections integrates activity streams, calendaring, wikis, blogs, a new email capability, and more, and flags relevant data for action. It allows for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social, secure communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results.
The new Connections mail capability provides simplified access to email within the context of the social networking environment.
Empowering Your Employees
The new capabilities empower employees from every line of business, such as marketing, human resources and development to gain actionable insight into the information being generated in their social networks.
For example, the Connections landing page features a single location that allows users to view and interact with content from any third party solution through a social interface, right alongside their company’s content, including email and calendar.
The embedded experience of the news feed, also known as an activity stream, allows employees from any department inside an organization to explore structured and unstructured data such as Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, weather data, videos, log files, SAP applications, electronically sign documents, and quickly act on the data as part of their everyday work experience.
To learn more about IBM’s social business initiative, participate in a simulcast on September 13, 2012 at 1 PM ET at bit.ly/Pn9sqd or sign-up to attend IBM’s Connect conference in January 2013.
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/press/socialbusiness.
IBM blogger and tech evangelist Todd “Turbo” Watson interviews Digital Influence Group CEO Glenn Engler at SXSW Interactive 2012 about the opportunities and challenges of social media for heavily regulated industries.
InformationWeek’s IT Pro Ranking: Enterprise Social Networking
Click to enlarge. InformationWeek surveyed 405 IT professionals to evaluate enterprise social networking software. When it came to success metrics, fifty percent of respondents cited “user activity on the system” as a key metric of success.
We’ve seen a lot of consolidation in the social enterprise scene of late.
Most recently, Oracle bought Involver and Collective Intellect, Salesforce bought Radian6 and, later, BuddyMedia.
We’ve also started to see some report cards being issued about who’s leading in what arena.
Last week, InformationWeek released such a report, entitled “IT Pro Ranking: Enterprise Social Networking,” in which IW surveyed 405 IT pros to evaluate enterprise social networking software vendors.
IW explained that its ratings were based on two broad sets of criteria, the first for overall performance and items such as product reliability, innovation, and cost. And second, category-specific features like status updates, team workspaces, and social bookmaring.
Six firms made the top box to receive a full evaluation: Drupal, Google Sites, IBM Lotus Live/Lotus Connections, Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce.com Chatter, and Yammer (the study was apparently conducted prior to Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Yammer).
In terms of overall performance, Google Sites came out on top as the “best-performing” vendor (73%), but IBM’s Lotus Live/Lotus Connections and Salesforces’ Chatter were just a percentage point behind Google (72%), “indicating a tight race.”
Drupal arrived at 70%, and Microsoft 69%.
In terms of product reliability, Google, IBM and Salesforce came in on top with a 3.9 score, the highest mean average ranking for that criterion.
In terms of respondents’ rating of enterprise social networking features, Google earned the highest ranking at 77%, with IBM following at 75%, and Microsoft at 74%.
In terms of data security controls, IBM came out on top at 4.1, although Microsoft was close behind at 4.0.
The report had some other interesting insights, citing the need to “enable new services or applications” as the number one reason for replacing or adding a vendor, followed by “performance gains” and “operational cost savings.” “Substantial operational cost savings” was cited as the number one reason for “factors resulting in a change in vendor,” followed by “substantial capital cost savings” and “clear technology advantage compared with current vendor.”
You can download the full report here. Meanwhile, you can learn more about how your organization can garner measurable ROI with IBM Connections enterprise social software here.
IBM Leads In Social Software
Click to enlarge and view the full infographic. IBM announced earlier today that for the third consecutive year, IDC ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software. According to IDC’s analysis of 2011 revenue, IBM grew faster than its competitors and nearly two times faster than the overall market. Currently, more than one-third of the Fortune 100 use IBM social business software.
It’s official: For the third year in a row, IBM has been found to be the most social enterprise company around.
Well, something like that.
For the third year in a row, IDC has ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software.
According to their analysis of 2011 revenue, IBM grew faster than its competitors and nearly two times faster than the overall market (which grew approximately 40 percent).
IDC also forecast the enterprise social platforms market is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2016, representing growth of 43 percent over the next four years.
Much of that growth comes with the continuing popularity of social networking, with more and more organizations looking for ways to adopt social business practices to integrate global teams, drive innovation, increase productivity and better reach customers and partners.
Using Social Software For Enterprise Transformation
While this demand is on the rise, organizations are still looking for ways to embrace social capabilities to transform virtually every part of their business operations, from marketing to research innovation and human resources, but lack the tools to gain insight into the enormous stream of information and use it in a meaningful way.
“Social software is gaining in momentum in the enterprise,” says Michael Fauscette, group vice president for IDC’s Software Business Solutions Group.
“Companies are seeing significant gain in productivity and increasing value from successfully deployed social software solutions including supporting ad hoc work by bringing people, data, content, and systems together in real time and making more effective critical business decisions by providing the ‘right information’ in the work context.”
Today, more than 35 percent of Fortune 100 companies have adopted IBM’s social software offerings including eight of the top 10 retailers and banks.
IBM Connections: Social Inside And Outside The Enterprise
IBM’s social business software and services is unique combining social networking capabilities with analytics to help companies capture information and insights into dialogues from employees and customers and create interactions that translate into real value.
IBM’s social networking platform, IBM Connections, allows for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results.
IBM Connections is available both on premise and in the cloud.
In the past year, new IBM Connections clients include Lowe’s Home Improvement, Electrolux, TD Bank, Newly Weds Foods, Russell’s Convenience stores, Bayer Material Science, The Ottawa Hospital, Premier Healthcare Alliance, Earthwatch, and the law offices of LaVan & Neidenberg.
“The opportunities for organizations to adopt social business processes to connect people and speed innovation is limitless,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager, social business, IBM.
“A successful social business can break down the barriers to collaboration and transform the next-generation workforce, from device to delivery vehicle of your choice, to improve productivity and speed decision making.”
Learn more about IBM and social business technologies here.
Vacation Over, Or Getting Over Vacation
Well, I’m back from vacation, and (mostly) no worse for the wear. Ironic though it may be, I went from being somewhat Internet challenged to extremely Internet challenged when I returned home to Austin last evening.
I’ve been using AT&T U-Verse for the better part of this year for my Internet, phone, and digital cable access, and have had little-to-no issues (as opposed to frequent outages Time Warner Internet, my prior provider)…that is, until arriving home, when I discovered I’d been completely cut off from the world. This, just as I was trying to get back into the saddle and catch up on the voluminous emails that had streamed into my in-box the past week.
After an hour of troubleshooting, I finally found a support number to call, and helpful though the AT&T support rep was on the other end of the line (my iPhone line, that is…remembering my landline no longer worked!), she couldn’t get me up and running.
Fortunately, they were able to get an AT&T truck roll to my house this morning, and I was back up and running in no time.
Thanks a million, AT&T. I know people like to give you a hard time, but you moved as quickly as could reasonably be expected, and I very much appreciated the quick response, considering that otherwise I was going to be dead in the water my first day back in the home office.
Lots happened in the past few days on the IBM front, so I’ll be playing some blogging catchup. But I did want to highlight one piece of news that came through during my absence: On Wednesday, IBM unveiled seven new social networking and collaboration mobile apps designed to address enterprise-class requirements.
The new software is available for download from the most popular app stores, and takes IBM social networking, real-time collaboration, and online meeting capabilities from behind the company firewall and into the hands of tablet users.
The new offerings span the widest range of tablets, including the iPad, and allow employees to more effectively collaborate and share data, images, and conduct meetings more securely as part of their everyday work experience.
The business card feature allows an IBM Sametime user to launch an announcement or chat to an individual or group using an iPad.
Here’s the rundown:
- Social networking for iPad: Available from the Apple app store at no charge for existing IBM Connections users, the new app includes a new interface ideal for tablet devices allowing for unique document editing capabilities.
- Attend Online Meetings: Employees can attend on-line meetings from their tablets anytime, anyplace. Available on Android, BlackBerry, iPad, and iPhone devices, LotusLive Meeting users can view shared presentations, chat with meeting participants, and virtually raise and lower hands from tablets and other mobile devices. IBM Sametime software users can also lead, participate in and manage browser-based meetings from their iPad or Android tablets.
- Instant messaging: New mobile apps for iPad and Android enable IBM Sametime users to use tablets to take immediate action on urgent business tasks by providing one-on-one or group instant messaging, background notifications, and the ability to send photos through the chat window.
- Access business documents: Available now in the Android Marketplace, IBM Lotus Symphony Viewers allow users to view any ODF-based document, spreadsheet and presentation on their Android devices. The viewers will be available for other devices soon.
- Reduce calling costs: IBM Sametime Unified Telephony on tablets allows a user to initiate calls to whatever phone happens to be nearby by controlling call routing preferences and device selection as well as have his one unified number appear in caller ID.
- Easier access to mail and calendar: IBM Lotus Notes Traveler now allows IBM mail users to easily add widgets to their Android home screens for quick, convenient access to mail and calendar, and allows users to call people listed in their calendar views with just one click.
According to IDC France, the tablet market is forecast to reach over 4.1 million in 2012, representing a 48% growth compared to 2011. A recent IBM study revealed that 73 percent of business leaders surveyed currently allow mobile devices or tablets to connect to their corporate networks.
IBM is also advancing the use of business analytics by delivering expanded native mobile device support with IBM Cognos Mobile on the iPad. Available to try out in Apple’s iTunes store, the software enables mobile workers to take their business analytics on the road whether offline or online, allowing for uninterrupted productivity.
Speaking of productivity, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to trimming down my burgeoning post-vacation in-box!
turbotodd
Turbotodd 