Social business tools are evolving into a holistic way of collaboration for smart enterprises and this smart working energises the social enterprise for organisations.

Enterprise 2.0 in Boston later this week brings together corporate social collaboration platforms.  Companies such as Yammer, Mindlink and Igloo will be there alongside larger collaboration players such as IBM and Microsoft.

Smaller, more agile companies are really worth watching not only because of their potential to be swept up by larger companies in the social business land grab.

Platform features across each of these platforms encourage team collaboration and bring better business value to organisations.

Improving team based processes inside an organisation improves collaboration across the group. Tools bring together the ability to exchange knowledge seamlessly, making them intuitive to use and accessible to everyone who needs them throughout the organisation.

Social Intranets

Igloo, positioned in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for both Social Software in the Workplace (SSW) and Externally Facing Social Software (EFSS) allows you to create and manage your own company intranet. It uses the cloud to create your community, whether that is department, team or project based.

Team discussions can be created, threaded view conversations and questions followed and voted up or down if the question is resolved. Igloo brings together content and conversation in one unified, collaborative environment that doesn't have to be managed by IT.

Stephen Rahal, Marketing Communications at Igloo reckons that Igloo differentiates from other social business platforms and says:

"We've built our own comparison of the other social business platforms here based on analyst research and feedback from our prospects and customers.

From our perspective, unlike the traditional enterprise software players that continue to enter the space, Igloo is built specifically for this new era in computing - driven by social, mobile and cloud technologies."

The challenge that many traditional businesses have is that they are 'siloed' - they contain vast amounts of intellectual capital that is never accessed by the organisation.

Contrast these silos with the social business model. This model democratises data by breaking down the information hierarchies and ensuring that knowledge stays alive, and a true organisational asset.

Moving from closed private conversations which are traditional in most organisations to open transparent forums are important. Inside enterprises, employees can then interact using tools that are familiar to them.

The challenge is finding the way to get your workforce both informed and engaged. Information should not be sent around by email, but accessed when appropriate. If the information is not relevant then filters should be applied to prefent information overload.

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