Social Business, Social Enterprise News, Analysis

Most Americans would prefer to work virtually, but most also believe the traditional office will last for at least another half century. Those conflicts between desire and reality are among the findings in a new survey about attitudes toward virtual work. 

IBM’s social software platform for businesses, Connections, is bursting with new features and add-ons. Now there’s one more, with the announcement this week by gamification vendor Bunchball of its first Nitro for IBM Connections. 

Forty six percent of companies increased their investments in social business in 2012, while 62% said they would do so in the next three years an IBM report has found.

My confidence in the "thought leader" blog posts at LinkedIn is waning. First, there was the ridiculous Inge Geerdens post on being reluctant to hire forty-something professionals. And last month, Ron Baker had written a "Big Idea for 2013", which to me actually seems quite small.

The most common types of manager resistance to enterprise collaboration that I've come across in my work are: not a priority, uncertainty about tangible ROI, uncertainty about overall business value, and lack of a supportive culture.

Let’s take a look at each one in more detail and explore how to deal with them.

Our industry event planner gives you the heads-up on what key industry events are coming around the corner. If we've missed something, don’t hesitate to add your event to the list. (You can view the full calendar here.)

Tuesday's opening keynote at IBM Connect 2013 focused on how the combination of social, mobile, digital and analytics are having an impact in all industries. IBM Information Management General Manager Bob Picciano, along with IBM Global Business Services new markets Managing Partner, and IBM Public Sector General Manager Dan Pelino, described how these 4 key technology trends combined are leading to a fundamental transformation of front office processes.

I've often said, it's not "all about the _____." It's about everything. Focusing on tech or people or process alone is rarely a road to success. The more years I spend looking at technology and the ways that organizations leverage it, the more I find this to be a universal truth.

Collaborating on documents has never been easy. Even if you’re working from a desktop with people in the same room there’s bound to be issues, so you can only imagine what it’s like trying to share and edit documents from a mobile device while on the go. Workshare is trying to improve this experience with a new app that aims to offer document comparison for mobile devices.

Enterprise video solution provider Qumu is launching a new application designed to allow users to directly collaborate with video from the IBM Connections interface. The IBM Connections Social Video Solution enables uploading, sharing, distributing and managing video from IBM Connections.

A SharePoint road map. It’s a neat phrase, and one that evokes images of nicely labelled diagrams, feature discussions and documented plans for the future.

And it won’t work. Certainly not for everyone.

From the opening act of They Might be Giants, to a closing view of IBM Watson's new life in enterprise collaboration, the Opening General Session of IBM Connect 2013 was a play on the theme of “from 'liking' to leading” through the purposeful application of social technologies.

Enterprise social collaboration software from IBM gets a boost in 2013 with the announced release of Connections 4.5 at the company's Connect Conference this week.

Interested in increasing SharePoint end user adoption and productivity? Gamification might be for you. 

Building Customer Loyalty
If you want to have loyal customers then there are four core customer experience competencies you must have a handle on. Pick up a few more great CXM tips from our recent #CXMChat Tweet Jam.

Goodbye Marketing Funnel
Forrester says you should ditch the marketing funnel in favor of the customer life cycle. But there is one funnel you should consider key to your customer experience strategy -- the social funnel.

The 21st Century "Social" Business
Organizations are in a state of transformation, which many refer to becoming Social Businesses. But there's more going on here then a need to be more "social". Today's ideal organization is a complex adaptive system, of which social is only a part.

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Featured Events (all events | post your event

• Feb 05 -- (Webinar) The 5 Linchpins of Great Digital Experiences
• Mar 04 -- Adobe Digital Marketing Summit
• Mar 20 -- SharePoint Conference for Business Users
• Apr 18 -- Forrester's Forum for Marketing Leadership Professionals Los Angeles
• Apr 29 -- Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit San Diego 2013

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