In general, we can break down the processes of a social business into four broad categories: The first category is the totality of an organization’s human activities including any conversations that involve it or are relevant, both inside and outside of the business. These include the day-to-day business processes that keep the organization running, the ad hoc and informal processes of knowledge workers involved in creating new information or dealing with exceptions and edge cases of operations, as well the main digital engagement cycle of the business itself as it interacts with itself and all of its many and varied stakeholders. This includes customers, the general marketplace, suppliers, and business partners. Note that each and every type of business activity is reflected in social and non-social media both, to varying degrees. Some processes will principally involve systems of engagement, others will only involve systems of record. A large and growing number of them will involve both. The second major category are key support functions. These in general are a requirement for social business to operate successfully and include community management, social business transformation (which is almost ways is a series of loosely integrated and disparate efforts of varying size over time within the organization), as well as the definition, management, and enforcement of corporate policies related to digital engagement, especially including social media. Of all of these, social business transformation is the most fraught with unpredictability and requires a healthy dose of culture change in order to “take” within the business. From The Operations of a Social Business | Collaboratory See Also The Architecture of a Social Business | Collaboratory Sizing Up the State of Social Business | ZDNet Six Strategies to Optimize Your Social Business Efforts | Collaboratory Moving Beyond Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement | Collaboratory Connecting Employees to Social Media: New Possibilities | Collaboratory Choose Your Social Business Strategy Before Your Tools | InformationWeek The convergence of mobile and social: The next IT battleground | ZDNet How to up IT's game with social apps | ZDNet The Intersection of Digital Strategy, Social Business, and Smart Mobility | Flickr The Social Business Index | Dachis Group Social Business By Design | Amazon Hardcover (John Wiley & Sons, 2012)