Keep Your People Connected with Social Business Software

Large enterprise businesses need to communicate regularly with several different stakeholders ... from channel sales partners, shareholders, field sales teams, IT, and more.

Social networking software turned into a business communication and collaboration platform can be a single channel to communicate and reach out to all these different groups consistently and effectively, and ultimately keep your business connected.

There is more to the social business collaboration software platform movement that is currently taking large enterprises by storm.

It's not surprising that companies like Starbucks and others are laying so much emphasis on being able to leverage the social media boom on their own websites and enable collaboration at the level they have managed to.

In previous conversations on our blog we have talked about the following benefits of social business software:

• Social software platforms on business websites are great way to engage customers online
• They are great tools to communicate and get feedback from customers
• They provide a platform for those who love your business and products to promote them online
• Social networking software platforms are useful as a collaboration and communication tool internally for a business

But there is more…

A business is made up of people, and people are not restricted to just employees on the inside and customers on the outside. There can be other stakeholders involved in your business, such as investors, stock holders, channel sales partners, distributors, suppliers and more.

Now, think of the collaboration efforts and the amount of communication that is involved on a daily basis with each of these stakeholders ...

• We need to reach out to our shareholders with an explanation of why the stock prices were effected to give them back their confidence
• We need to inform our distributors about the new sales incentive plan
• We need to reach out to our suppliers and get the word out on the new component that we will need in a few months
• We need feedback from our customers on what they think of the latest product changes and upgrades.

The sheer amount of communication and co-ordination required within your business calls for a technology platform that can enable everyone to get together and interact with the least fuss.

This is where the social business platform comes in.

Imagine a website with the key elements of a social networking platform, where all the different stakeholders in that business can sign up, create a profile, and get together. Groups can be created for each type of stakeholder — so the investors, distributors, suppliers, sales teams, or offshore teams can each be grouped together to make communication to or within these groups a piece of cake. Wikis, groups, message boards, blogs, and poll widgets are all powerful in providing a structured platform for all these different people together and forming an efficient way to do business collaboratively.

Now that is true collaboration!