Page 251 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

236 8 Social Enterprise and Other Social Commerce Topics

increased productivity. However, this was not enough. In
addition, top management was looking for ways to facilitate LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CASE
innovation. Given the company’s global nature, top manage-
ment realized that they needed to improve the company’s The CEMEX case illustrates a successful private in-
internal and external collaboration to foster innovation. house social network whose major objectives were to
foster collaboration among its thousands of employees
worldwide and facilitate idea generation via internal
The Solution crowdsourcing. Using Web 2.0 tools, collaboration
became effective and efficient. A major result was idea
Recently, many companies have implemented Enterprise 2.0 generation and the evaluation and implementation of
platforms that include social media tools as well as mecha- these ideas that facilitated innovation in the company.
nisms of social network services. CEMEX decided to follow This chapter presents the major activities that private
this trend. The company wanted to fully utilize the institu- social networks support within enterprises and the struc-
tional knowledge possessed by its thousands of employees ture and benefits of public business networks. This chap-
worldwide and make it available to others whenever needed. ter also presents the issues of network-based job markets,
CEMEX created an internal private social collaboration plat- social entertainment, gaming and gamification, crowd-
form called Shift (cemex.com/whatisshift), which facilitates sourcing and crowdfunding, and social collaboration.
innovation, efficiency, and collaboration by letting employees
share information and jointly conduct problem- solving. Shift
integrates some of the best capabilities of social networks with
knowledge management (KM) and collaboration techniques 8.1 SOCIAL BUSINESS AND SOCIAL
(using IBM Connection and its language translation feature). ENTERPRISE
Shift includes many internal communities; each is composed of
people with similar interests. A major forthcoming trend in social commerce is its move to
the enterprise level. This trend is related to the concept of
social business. Let us define both terms.
The Results

The main result was the major change in the way that people Definitions: Social Business and Social
worked together. The workforce became more cooperative; Enterprise
employees helped each other, shared more information and
knowledge, were more empowered, and were able to be more The social enterprise concept has several names, definitions,
mobile. This led to better internal collaboration using in-house and explanations. The concept is sometimes confused with
networking. the related concept of social business. Generally, one can
Projects started to move more quickly, with faster time to distinguish between the two concepts that often are used
market; therefore, business processes improved. In short, interchangeably. Let us explain.
the company successfully leveraged the collective talents
and skills of its employees. One internal community, the Social Business
“Construction for the twenty-first Century,” was challenged to
suggest the strategic topics that CEMEX should focus on to A social business is a name for a commercial for-profit or
remain a leader in the construction industry. The 400 commu- nonprofit organization that is designed to achieve some
nity members of this twenty-first Century group responded by social goal(s), such as improving human well-being, rather
proposing innovative ideas, tactics, and strategies addressing than just make a profit. SocialFirms UK (socialfirmsuk.
the challenge. Overall, Shift drew 5000 users by the end of its co.uk) provides several other definitions (of what they call
first month. By 2013, there were 25,000 users of Shift and over social enterprise). They cite the following UK government
500 groups. By 2014, the company’s stock price increased by definition: “A social enterprise is a business with primarily
over 300%. social objectives whose surpluses are reinvested for that pur-
For more results and discussion see: slideshare.net/soccnx/ pose in the business or in the community, rather than being
shifting-the-way-we-work-at-cemex. driven by the need to deliver profit to shareholders and own-
Sources: Based on Garcia et al. (2011), Hinchcliffe ers.” About.com distinguishes between two types of social
(2012), and Donston-Miller (2012). business: one type that describes companies that “aspire to