Social software powers the drive to innovate

Electrolux is connecting its work force in 60 countries with social software from IBM in an effort to foster innovation and knowledge sharing.

The appliance maker realized that the ability to access content and collaborate on the fly is critical to its global operations. The IBM social software runs on most mobile devices, including tablets. Employees will be able to find experts and gain insight from data on their company intranet portal, IBM Connections social networking platform and IBM Sametime instant messaging software.

Electrolux has seen the number of internal online communities, networks and microblogs grow rapidly, IBM reports. The intranet, powered by IBM Connections and Microsoft SharePoint, contains more than 100 information portals managed by more than 450 editors, and has 15,000 monthly and 9,000 daily readers. With more than 1,000 collaboration spaces with 8,500 members, Electrolux employees are communicating in new ways. They will also have access to a social collaboration dashboard, IBM adds. 

Ralf Larsson, the director of online employee engagement and development at Electrolux, says, "Our goal is to empower our employees so they have access to content and collaboration tools anytime and from anywhere. Working with IBM, our employees are now becoming better engaged and more connected into specific business processes that help them expand the scope of production innovation."