Most companies are looking at Enterprise Social Software as a way to drive innovation, gain market differentiation, and fuel growth. However, they want to be guided on how to successfully roll out an enterprise social networking strategy that will have a long lasting impact on their organizations, instead of simply being told “Do this or Die.”

So in response to our customers and prospects that we are talking to, today, we are launching a blog series from various experts who have worked with  medium to large companies that have successfully deployed enterprise social software. A common thread among these companies is the selection of one or two specific use cases for the initial roll out phase, and showcasing success prior to extending the implementation across the enterprise.

The “How-to” playbook of Enterprise Social Networking Software blog series will cover successful use cases, providing deployment examples such as :

• Accelerating Product Design and Innovation: The process of innovation drives businesses forward with the generation of new ideas or the renewal of something existing. Facilitating ideation and crowd-sourcing knowledge across an organization is critical to maintain market leadership, and it can be achieved by incorporating the best of social networking and Web 2.0 technology.
• Improving Operational Efficiencies: Companies benefit from improved operational efficiencies by rolling out technologies that drive cross functional programs within an enterprise to collaborate, generate ideas, distribute training material, raise issues and solve them more rapidly.
• Socializing the Intranet: Enterprises are seeking to leverage the most powerful aspects of social networking to improve the communication and delivery of information within the enterprise. A connected workforce that can tap into rich content can easily discover and learn from one another and begin collaboration.

• Engaging with Customers and Partners via Private Extranet Community: Innovation is often driven by both internal and external resources, so it is important that organizations have a way to facilitate open innovation. Whether connecting with industry peers or collaborating on a project with customers, enterprises need a private and secure environment to facilitate interaction.
• Becoming More Collaborative by Adding a Social Layer to Existing Applications: Information needed to do your job doesn’t just reside in one place; it resides in many applications across an enterprise.  To successfully implement an enterprise social networking strategy, companies need to leverage technologies that can be searched, accessed and surfaced from other enterprise systems, including SharePoint, CRM, HR & ERP systems, improving the transfer and sharing of knowledge across a company.

In the next few weeks, we are looking forward to share these use cases through real customer examples.