IBM Software Universe event would be kicking off at Mumbai in couple of days (19th and 20th Oct). List of speakers in this event is as diverse as it is impressive. Even Martina Navratilova is listed as a speaker in this event and would be very interesting to hear out what she has to say about IBM products and technologies which are shaping up the future. Other speakers include various Distinguished Engineers from across globe and customers.

One of the tracks mentioned in the agenda list which got me thinking was titled “Social Business: You Can’t Afford to Miss it!”. The session would be taken by Kartick Padmanathan. He would be talking about how Social is everywhere into Business ( or at least successful ones ) and how can IBM help you to leverage the social networking era that is fast changing consumer and employee mindsets, and the collaboration landscape!

It would be very interesting to hear out Kartick’s opinion on this topic and I would certainly want to write another blog entry with details of this. But it is not that complicated to see how true his opinions are. When I look around there is hardly any aspect of organization untouched with Social aspect. Social is present in every strategy, in every department, in every decision of a modern organization. Below are couple of thoughts how Social effect employees of every modern organization.

When a company wants to attract potential employees ( or customers ) where does it head to ? Have you seriously seen any job openings in conventional mediums like newspapers etc ?. Many of us would disagree, the latest place to attract employees and to look out for jobs are social medium ( example Linkedin ). Social platforms provide extreme benefits to employers like Employment history, Recommendation, Social activity etc., all this in amazingly fast and convenient way. If you have not heard of Talent As A Service or TaaS( just like SaaS ), brace yourself for a new paradigm of hiring.

Then begins On-boarding of selected employees. No longer are these mechanisms of introducing an organization and its values happening inside closed rooms. Among several tools one of favorites is Lotus Connections, that I have seen being used heavily for this. HR’s are using services like Activities/Wikis to share core policies and updates for the organization. Other services like Blogs are used to make the new joined aware of whats latest happening inside organization. Profiles is used to quickly connect with people several thousand miles away from your physical location. The employee is quickly absorbed in socially connected enterprise when compared to a company which does not have social tools like Connections.

Project Management is happening on tools like Communities ( service from Lotus Connections ). Allows you to start other services like Activities ( having all hierarchical communications around one topic at a centralized place ), Files ( share artifacts with a community ) etc. All these tools have changed the face of conventional approach of managing everything in emails, presentations etc. You do not have to worry of maintaining context in emails ( by means of folders, archives etc. ) or on multiple machines ( impossible to search ). All your collaborations and artifacts get tied to a one Community where multiple people can contribute in parallel and can also comment on activity of others.

Marketing, wonder which are the established companies who do not have registered places on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. Company website though continues to play a crucial role, its the other social platforms mentioned above which drive a major chunk for traffic to companies websites. Internally companies post high importance news/artifacts at special pages ( For Example IBM uses Featured Blogs ) to quickly and effectively send out information to enterprise wide audience, rather than using Emails.

To sumup companies are increasingly using Social platforms/technologies to collaborate effectively and smartly both to internal and external audiences.