I received some feedback that this elevator pitch was a bit techie, which is fair feedback. I should have been clearer in specifying that the stakeholders I’ve been most actively engaged with over the last few months have been the IT department, and therefore I was targeting that audience. I’ve now changed the title to clarify. Next week I’ll take a shot at the line of business and see where that variation lands :-)
I’ve been asked the question “What is a Social Business Platform?” a lot over the last few months, so I thought I would just share my “elevator pitch” response. Its just my personal perspective on what I think a social platform should ideally do, in the abstract. And while very few platforms do all this today, I think its fair to say that a social platform should at least have a vision for getting there.
Yes/No/Maybe? Am I talking rubbish? Please say No to that one ;-)
A Social Business Platform is…
A platform that provides the business with a set of social services that facilitate the process of collaboration.
- Sharing, commenting, versioning, tagging, rating, alerting, following, … with profiles, communities, activities, blogs, wikis, files, status updates, activity streams, …
- Which can be easily integrated into any business process or application — bringing social to the business and not the other way around.
A platform that has the potential to capture and represent within its social semantic network, all human actions and interactions across the business (and beyond).
- Explicitly social actions; such as following a topic, tagging a person, or commenting on a file.
- Implicitly social actions; such as attending a meeting or working on a project.
- Non-social actions; such as booking a flight, buying a product, or completing certification.
A platform that can harness the insights hidden within this network and allow them to be integrated back into the business.
- To ensure that the right information, gets to the right person, in the right context, at the right time, on the right device.
- To allow the “systems of engagement” to:
- Influence the flow of information across the enterprise
From recommending people, content, data, processes, visualizations … to providing dynamic, personalized and contextual filtering. => People Productivity - Provide insight about that flow of information
From identifying knowledge gaps within the enterprise, finding the key people or teams … to recognizing trends or sentiment. => Organizational Analytics