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96 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise

simplifying compliance with the stringent regulations and audit requirements
of the international pharmaceuticals industry (IBM, 2010).
Two related IBM Lotus products provide more specialized teamwork and
social networking tools and are able to access information from Lotus Notes.
IBM Lotus Quickr helps teams of people share documents and information using
team spaces, content libraries, discussion forums, and wikis. IBM Connections
supports internal corporate social networking with capabilities for searchable
profiles, communities, blogs, activities, wikis, and forums.
Roland Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer of electric musical instruments,
musical amplifiers, professional video and audio, and computer music equipment,
uses Lotus Quickr and IBM Connections to foster creativity and collaboration
among its 3,100 employees worldwide. It now has an “electronic public square”
that facilitates sharing of concepts and ideas as they develop. Lotus Quickr helps
the company manage and track projects, such as a new product launch where 90
percent of the 200 employees involved worked overseas. The software gathered
and stored all the product launch information and made it much easier to set
up Web sites for the accompanying sales activities. Connections increased the
visibility of the specialists and expertise within the company and helped employ-
ees informally share information and ideas (IBM, 2011).
Enterprise Social Networking Tools The tools we have just described
include capabilities for supporting social business, but there are also more
specialized social tools for this purpose, such as Salesforce Chatter, Microsoft’s
Yammer, Jive, and IBM Connections. Enterprise social networking tools create
business value by connecting the members of an organization through profiles,
updates, and notifications, similar to Facebook features, but tailored to internal
corporate uses. IBM recently introduced a set of social business tools running
on a cloud platform called SmartCloud for Social Business, featuring user pro-
files, communities, e-mail, instant messaging, Web meetings, calendars, per-
sonal dashboards, and file sharing.
Table 2.5 provides more detail about these internal social capabilities.

TABLE 2.5 ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING SOFTWARE CAPABILITIES
SOCIAL SOFTWARE CAPABILITY DESCRIPTION

Profiles Ability to set up member profiles describing who individuals are,
educational background, interests. Includes work-related associations
and expertise (skills, projects, teams).
Content sharing Share, store, and manage content including documents, presentations,
images, and videos.
Feeds and notifications Real-time information streams, status updates, and announcements
from designated individuals and groups.

Groups and team workspaces Establish groups to share information, collaborate on documents, and
work on projects, with the ability to set up private and public groups
and to archive conversations to preserve team knowledge.
Tagging and social bookmarking Indicate preferences for specific pieces of content, similar to the
Facebook Like button. Tagging lets people add keywords to identify
content they like.
Permissions and privacy Ability to make sure private information stays within the right circles,
as determined by the nature of relationships. In enterprise social
networks,there is a need to establish who in the company has
permission to see what information.

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