The funnel is overflowing with our new social networking packages. In other to segment our client’s needs we’ve launched five different packages on Beezbox platform. Here’s a highlight of all five packages:

• Extranet 2.0: A solution package designed to give companies social networking capabilities. This package has been designed to increase collaboration and communication among employees, teams and your clients while employing document sharing features. Extranet 2.0 allows you create and manage member and company private communities with ease.
• CRM 2.0: Customer- centric companies need to develop their business around their customers. CRM 2.0 offers your clients the right platform to share their views and voice out their opinion about your product and services. CRM 2.0 provides you the best way to listen and speak directly to your customers. A unique viral marketing tool that helps keep you brand at an advantage.
• Fans 2.0: Sports, Media, Entertainment and Fashion all share one thing in common, “Fans”. A social network built on Fans 2.0 gives your Fans a medium to mingle with each other and get closer to you. As a company or individual you are the “Star”.
• E-city 2.0: Enter democracy 2.0, where citizens and associative life have their says. Empower your people in your city (or your area) to bring all the city life on a platform. It will enable you to have a closer relationship with your citizens.
• University 2.0: We’ve gone through school with boring Uni portals. University 2.0 provides universities and colleges a university portal built with academic and social networking features. This packages has been designed to meet both students and lecturer needs, using an impressive Web 2.0 concept. 

You can learn more about features present on each package from Beezbox website. Do let me know what you think.

Source – Beezblog

A good number of employers are concerned about the time spent during work hours by employees on sites like Facebook. According to employment law firm Peninsula, 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees “wasting time” on social networking. A study revealed that workers who spend time on such sites as Facebook coulld be costing firms over £130m a day. Many employers have considered or even implemented a ban on the use of social networks during work hours. But how effective is this move?

Facebook and a few others are already on mobile phones. Recently launched by Hutchison Whampoa was INQ the ”Facebook phone” to provide improved accessibilty to social networks while on the move. Let’s take our minds some years back to when email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Excite rocked the web space. Most employers  were furious about the lost time spent using personal email service during working hours. Most implemented a time restriction or a ban of the use of these services. Even at that, some employees tried hard to get privilege rights to use these same services while at work.

The most effective step employers followed was the introduction of an enterprise email service that allowed their employees send official emails. Although being official these emails where also used sparingly to send personal mails. It was easy for employees to adjust to the use of in-house email service since they were already familiar with its use outside office business.  Employees were accustomed to the “habit” of checking their mail boxes so employing that custom into their daily routine in the office was the key to keeping employees on check.

A Similar Approach

Can a similar step work today for business when it comes to social networking? Yes, it can. Granted we are in the craze of social networking and its use at work cannot be completely eliminated. Employers should leverage on the best way to adopt this “time wasting service” into productivity by introducing a similar service into the enterprise. Companies that have implemented an enterprise social network have found its use to be very effective. Reports show that social networking in business not only improves collaboration among employees but it also led to an increase in overall productivity and efficiency.

What Benefits Result from Enterprise Social Networks?

SAP and and Universal McCann are just a few examples of companies benefiting from deploying an enterprise-wide social network. Its use has provided employees a platform to engage more in team activities within communities resulting in  useful contributions to discussions that involved business matters. Employees have been seen spending loose and planned time updating company community blogs or forum discussions and threads. Content from this tool can become knowledge assets; content can be harvested and transfer into the company knowledge repository. It becomes even valuable to younger employees when knowledge is tapped from retiring employees who are also members of the company social network. Work is enjoyable when it is made more relaxing.

Employee adoption of social networking as a business tool will bring a better ground to interact with colleagues across the enterprise. Associate more with colleagues who share similar interest and share expert knowledge among teams. Some companies have also found the use of their enterprise social network to improve customer relationship, customer acquisition, marketing and support. Employers will reap business rewards if only they start looking into the positive use of social networks and how employee productivity can be affected by its proper use.

A few days ago I was in one of my groups on Linkedin, and I commented to a group member’s question who was seeking academic materials on Web 2.0 and HR 2.0 as it relates to recruiting for his masters degree project. Unfortunately he only had available to him non-academic materials. Apparently, it is clear that academic materials are yet to be penned down. But how soon will this be? How soon will these never tuning back technologies stay out of the classroom books?  Blogs and Wikis are are growing with thousands of viewers reading articles and white papers on business case studies and more bloggers like you and I will never stop preaching about Web 2.0 until we hear it echo back at us. The enterprise is fast realizing the use of these tools to enhance collaboration and communication and overall improve performance. Like my dear friend at the onset of this post, I think his project will make an impression on his professors. We know Web 2.0 and HR 2.0 were all created outside the classroom but so are many of the technologies we know today, that we learnt while at school. Never the case I expect to see this new trend supported at the academic level pretty soon. I’m sure I’m not alone on this.

-Paulette.