A social communications strategy can help you boost productivity and innovation

Social communications is the evolution of unified communications (UC) that provides integrated voice, data and video across social networks. It can be integrated with applications your workforce uses every day for easy access to enterprise instant messaging, online meetings, telephony, video conferencing and more—wherever they are working. With social communications software you have an immediate and cost-effective way to help improve customer engagement and to make faster, expertise-based decisions with people inside and outside your business without travel costs.

Old is new
Many of the components of a social communications strategy – instant messaging, web conferencing, real-time collaboration, mobile device support, telephony integration, and others -- aren’t new.

But open architectures and programming models are enabling organizations to pull these different pieces together in new ways. An instant messaging application, your telephone, or your email, for example, pulls all your social networking tools into a single environment.

The result is a social communications environment that’s easier for IT staff to configure, administer, and maintain and easier for users to use. Drive down the costs associated with disparate communication and collaborate solutions. Drive up productivity and performance, and leverage enhanced collaborations to foster a more innovative workplace.

IBM social communications and collaboration solutions enable you to:

• Faster, expertise-based decisions
• Improved customer engagement
• Speed business processes and improve operational effectiveness
• Reduce travel, telephony, and other collaboration-related expenses

Real results
Finnish Defence Forces use an IBM instant messaging and unified telephony solution that combines voice and collaboration tools on the same workstation. The result is availability and data security of voice communications as well as the improved connectivity of people.

Terna is the major transmission system operator of high-voltage and very high-voltage electrical grids in Italy. It deployed a unified communications and collaboration solution that provides tools to help employees efficiently communicate and share information from disparate locations to decrease employee travel costs.

La Vacanza is a small travel agency based in The Netherlands that offers rapid, personal, and friendly service to their customers. A communications and collaboration solution from IBM helps the agency improve personal, responsive service for a competitive edge.

Integrate real-time communications services to collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners.

Social communications software supports and enables groups of users to work together in real time by sharing information, processes and the collective intelligence of their professional networks. Social communications includes:

• Enterprise instant messaging applications, including text, audio, and video
• Online meetings (or web conferencing)
• Real-time team collaborative applications
• Telephony middleware, such as softphone, PBX integration middleware, and Fixed-Mobile Convergence middleware
• Social networking software
• Social content software

All products - Unified communications

Unified communications middleware

Stay connected with others in the social communications community through social media

Participating in social communications communities can help enhance your personal and professional development and establish your expertise.

Get connected with your colleagues and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere to stay up to date on the latest IBM news and information that’s important to you.

Communities

• SametimeBlog
• Sametime design blog
• Unified communications strategies community blog
• Social Business Insights blog
• Sametime wiki
• Social business on Facebook
• @IBMSocialBiz on Twitter
• Social business on Tumblr
• IBM collaboration solutions community