Very interesting conversation with Thomas Schaeck from the IBM Lab in Boeblingen talking about aspects of the future development of IBM’s Social flagship product Connections. I am always stressing, how important analytics and providing users the right content, context and experts is. We need to put people in the centre and help them effectively in their daily work. This is where a Social Business-platform can and should stand out, differentiates from competitors filling functional gaps. And Smart Social Q&A sounds like a very interesting concept, designed and developed together with a German customer:
IBM is collaborating with Robert Bosch GmbH, IBM’s research partner on this initiative. The two are integrating an early version of Smart Social Q&A with the multinational engineering and electronics firm’s Connect platform, which is based on IBM Connections. Schaeck believes that within several years, social business platforms and smart applications leveraging them, like Smart Social Q&A, will be common and essential for large enterprises to remain competitive.
“Smart Social Q&A builds a bridge between all the people and all the knowledge within a company, whether it has a couple thousand or hundreds of thousands of employees,” Schaeck said. “It gets knowledge from people’s heads into the social business platform, where it becomes useful to everybody.”
via Meet Thomas Schaeck: Another Person for a Smarter Planet « A Smarter Planet Blog.