http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/rss en-us In their social business effort, the luxury goods designer was clearly thinking big: A true digital company must use digital channels through and through for all interaction.

]]> Can an entrenched and highly traditional business culture handle a rapid adoption of internal social media? CEMEX, a $13.5 billion building materials supplier, shows how it’s done.

]]> The 80,000-worker telecommunications giant began adopting social media inside the organization as far back as 2008. But Alcatel isn’t stopping at basic social collaboration.

]]> Social business is proving to be a strategic win inside the enterprise firewall. Dion Hinchcliffe highlights some success stories from the trenches.

]]> We are not far from a tipping point in IT where the majority of business solutions come from workers and the lines of business via the cloud and newer mobile platforms. While this is a sea change in the way we look at software and data ownership and management, it’s clearly under way. What will happen to the traditional IT department as consumerization takes place and what should organizations do to get ready?

]]> The data keeps coming in: The sale of social business software continues to rise and is forecast to continue rising for years. But does that translate into adoption? New data shows that while adoption is slowing, it’s indeed happening, with real benefits. If so, what are the most useful lessons we can take away from the early pioneers?

]]> The “Big Five” IT trends are in the midst of making their impact felt in organizations around the world. Is this is a significant chance for IT to drive innovation and business agility at long last, or will the impact of these be the undoing of the classical era of IT? Here are some of the likely strategies that organizations will need to consider to make the “Big Leap” required to guide organizations into the 21st century with next-generation mobile, social business, cloud computing, consumerized IT, and big data.

]]> In today’s ever more technology-centric world, the stodgy IT department isn’t considered the home of innovation and business leadership. Yet that might have to change as some of the biggest advances in the history of technology make their way into the front lines of service delivery. Here’s an exploration of the top five IT trends in the next half decade, including some of the latest industry data, and what the major opportunities and challenges are.

]]> Creating successful online communities is still more art than science, yet techniques and frameworks are now emerging to turn social business into a real discipline. This week we take a look at a new case study that explores metrics that can measure the intrinsic health of communities instead of looking purely at size as the defining barometer.

]]> Regulated industries often have a difficult time adopting social media beyond simple outbound marketing. Fortunately, engaging with the marketplace and getting into the more interesting and valuable scenarios, such as Social CRM, is getting easier as solutions and frameworks for dealing with the legal and compliance issues emerge. I examine the recent discussions from a major financial services conference and summarize potential solutions.

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