CASE As the world continues its movement towards all things social, businesses have followed suit. Modern businesses can use social networking platforms to engage employees, custom-ers, and suppliers and to deepen interactions between these groups within the firm. The conversations that happen on social media represent opportunities to gain information, deepen relationships, and improve all areas of a business. Some of the many applications of social business include crowdsourcing, blogs, wikis, and shared workspaces. Many busi-nesses have also opted to create company-wide social networks where its employees can share information, find other employees with the information they need, and contribute ideas. For global companies, social business is critical to allow people from all parts of the world to connect and contribute to shared solutions together. IBM is a leading provider of tools that enable this kind of social business. In the first video, IBM portrays a fictitious clothingcompany {Greenwell Couture} making use of social business tools to strengthen its global brand and improve collaboration across the rm. Benefits include faster decision making, greater productivity, and improved customer service. IBM Global Business Services drives the shift in business culture and technology towards social business, IBM Connections encourages collaboration and provides a variety of ways to share media and in Formation witlt colleagues, and IBM Exceptional Digital Experience Suite allows Greenwell to provide individualized social marketing offers to customers. Although modern employees are increasingly comfortable with social media and social networking platforms, social business is still unlikely to take hold within a company without the necessary efforts to build a collaborative culture and instill business processes that make use of social tools. Senior management must ensure that the company's ernployees consider collaboration and teamwork to be essential. Employees also need to engage with coworkers and customers in a way that doesn't compromise the company or the brand. In the Greenwell video, the company's hypothetical employees were active on social networks, but had minimal ability to connect to other coworkers within the company. Using IBM social business tools, Greenwell employees were able to make these connections. They also gained the ability to share stories and videos with their colleagues. As the video states, employees and customers turned into something more: advocates for the company and its brand. The IBM tools also allowed different types of employees to their jobs more effectively with social technologies. Greenwell's top fashion designers blog about the latest fashion trends, the hmnan resources staff nds the best candidates for job openings more efficiently with IBM Workforce Solutions, and data analysts better understand sentiment towards the company on the part of both employees and customers via C ognos Insights and IBM Digital Analytics. Because Greenwell prides itself on customized service, its customers are highly engaged and loyal to the company. Maintaining this level of service is easier with IBM social media tools. Individual customer service queries can be answered more efficiently and accurately. The company can monitor social media platforms for any instances of negative feedback and respond as soon as possible to resolve the issue. But what about real companies? Fictitious clothiers are one thing, but multinational manu- facturers with 41ml} employees over St} countries are another. The latter describes Cemex, the third largest building materials company in the world. The Mexico-based company oper- ates cement plants, ready-mix-concrete facilities, quarries, distribution centers, and marine terminals, and generated over $32 billion in revenues in 20 i El. Fotmded in 19%, Cernex doesn't seem like a perfect candidate for social business at first glance. But even Cemex has found major value in going social and improving collaboration. Cemex used IBM social tools to create an internal social network available to Cement employ- ees. (If its 41ml) employees, 1100!] had joined this network. Cement used the network to allow employees across the globe to conh-ihute to innova-tion initiatives and to form communities focused on individual tasks within the rm. Using the network, Center: developed the rst global brand oFreadv-mix cement. The network has also driven a host of other innovation initiatives. Although shifting the culture of the companyr towards collaboration and usage of the network was a challenge, Cerncx ofcials consider the network to he a success. Social networking allows a big company to feel like a email company