Social Media is already useful to businesses in that it allows them to connect with their customers on a new and more efficient level. Social Networking has allowed companies to invite users to dialogue with them about how they can improve. It has also opened a new avenue for word of mouth advertising. Now, Social networking is helping businesses on a new level by creating platforms that work within the business itself.
According to USA Today:
Using social networks to foster connections lets companies match the skills of people working all over the world who wouldn’t easily find each other, said Eric Lesser, a research director at IBM’s Institute for Business Value. It’s especially valuable for companies built by acquisition, whose managers in different divisions often don’t know each other, he said.
Take SuperValu, a collection of supermarket chains ranging from Shaw’s in Boston to Albertsons in California. SuperValu last year used Yammer to build a network to connect 11,000 executives and store managers, chief information officer Wayne Shurts said. They’ve organized themselves into more than 1,000 groups to talk about specific challenges.
For example, 182 managers from different chains joined a group to mull common problems of running markets in college towns. Another 153 banded together to talk about running stores in beach communities, where business is seasonal. Those didn’t replace any other process, because there was no way to do it before: The managers couldn’t all be pulled from their stores for retreats or meetings, and the cost of getting them together would have been prohibitive, Shurts said.
Click here to read more about how Internal Social Networking has helped Red Robin introduce four new burgers.
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