Esteban Kolsky: Social CRM, Enterprise 2.0 and the collaborative enterprise

I love the comment that to be a social business you need to be a social business. Out of context it sounds like a riddle, but I think a key point has been touched here. Social CRM solutions are an enabler of something that social companies would most likely have been chomping at the bit to do, or perhaps already doing on a small scale. SCRM is very much of a social philosophy that has been gaining momentum over the past decade or so. It's just adding structure - so to make sense on a commercial level - to the way that people now interact, thanks for the most part to the internet.  Sometimes a good idea is so clearly a good idea that it shouldn't really need explaining, as it 's been on the tip of everyone's tongue almost without them realizing it. A business that hasn't yet at least seen the value in Social, whether or not they've acted upon it, will struggle to integrate it more than one that is seeing these developments and getting excited by the possibilities. 

Esteban references CEMEX as a good example of deploying a social business solution, yielding positive return.  A description of CEMEX' deployment is on Pg 5 of this IBM brief - http://www.ibm.com/ibm/cioleadershipexchange/us/en/pdfs/CIO2011_CaseStud...  The CEMEX deployment is based on IBM Connections, of which the latest offerings is the IBM Connections Suite -  http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/suite/   - which includes presence, online meetings, a softphone, real-time collaboration and document libraries within an authenticated, and managed environment, and accessible via a broad array of mobile devices and tablets.