http://www.enterprisehive.com/social-business-solutions/social-networking-software | Social business networking is growing at a rapid pace. Successful businesses must adopt social network technology to build connections among all communities, including customers, members, employees.

1. Social Business Software: Solutions that Address Top Business Needs
In order to thrive, businesses must transform their relationships and connections with all their
communities, including customers, members, partners and employees. This is especially true for
businesses that: have a high percentage of knowledge workers, are heavily reliant on brand
recognition and loyalty, need to maintain a strong reputation to build credibility and customer
trust. Choosing the right social business software has become a critical step in successfully
managing the key business functions of marketing and sales, customer service and product
development.
Given the expanded role of social media in the lives of most individuals, customers have
heightened expectations when interacting with a company—in other words, they expect social
customer service. Enabling all your groups to communicate, share and collaborate easily in a
community where you control the user experience opens up powerful strategic advantages,
including the ability to:
engage with customers, employees and partners in a valuable way that makes information
and experts easy to find, at the same time as it builds and strengthens your communities;
use the power of gaming mechanics that incent improved productivity of your employees
and reward customers and partners for their positive contributions;
build your brand through interconnectedness, attracting stronger sales prospects at every
stage of interaction;
achieve efficiency through streamlined communication and enable quick response to enduser feedback.
Moving your company into the arena with enterprises that fully implement social technologies
could achieve an increase in productivity by as much as 20 to 25 percent2. Integrating a social
business platform like HiveSocial offered by Enterprise Hive into your business workflows will
transform your relationships with employees, customers and partners. The result will be to drive
customer satisfaction to new levels as you reduce costs and increase sales.
HiveSocial is a SaaS platform that simplifies the management of complex relationships between
and among employees, customers and partners with collaboration spaces that include such
features as wikis, forums, document management, training tools with digital certificates to teach
and reward employee achievement, as well as sophisticated gaming mechanics that reward and
incent users for their contributions.
Interacting with customer communities through game mechanics gives a company more control
over its brand and user experience in the open arena of social business. Games or quests can lead
customers to help solve each other’s issues, create positive content and share best practices
through simple techniques like awarding points. Adding awards for achieving certain levels can

2. improve employee productivity, decrease support costs, build community and strengthen
customer loyalty. There are opportunities to layer in even more levels of interaction and create a
greater sense of community by recognizing top contributors through leaderboards as well as with
badges, certificates or coupons.
Transforming your organization into a social business will position a company to address three
key business needs:
knowledge sharing—encourage easy social collaboration among all connected
communities (customers, employees, partners);
customer engagement— empower customers through social customer service by
interacting with them and quickly responding to their needs;
expert discovery—maximize the knowledge base contained within communities, making
it easy to find the person with the needed expertise at just the right time.
Ultimately, the enterprise that adopts these approaches will improve employee productivity while
decreasing costs, increase customer satisfaction that builds brand loyalty and grow exponentially.
Bio: Enterprise Hive, based in Irvington, Virginia, creates social business software solutions
including its flagship community platform, HiveSocial. Using cloud-based technology,
HiveSocial delivers a secure, private online experience that empowers all employees, customers
and partners to connect and collaborate. HiveSocial offers a dynamic mix of social business
features including content management, game mechanics and advanced communication and
collaboration tools. Enterprise Hive proudly practices sustainability and resource conservation in
their product development methods, and supports many philanthropic and volunteer activities.
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”Social Business Software: Addressing Three Top Business Needs,” Enterprise Hive White Paper, by Vicki
Tambellini, Julian Andronic and Lauren Hart Piper.
“The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies,” McKinsey Global
Institute Report , July 2012; by Michael Chui, James Manyika, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Charles
Roxburgh, Hugo Sarrazin, Geoffrey Sands and Magdalena Westergren.