Dell joins IBM to help clients become #socbiz

English: Dell Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

IBM and Dell have both been lauded for their ability to become "social businesses" listening to conversations on the social web, integrating social internally, unleashing the collective power of their employees, partners to build their brand advocacy and also to use social to deliver customer support.

However between the two organizations, IBM already had a "social" tool and services in the "IBM Connections" toolkit and therefore what it was becoming a social business, it was also selling the tools and services to move them along the same lines.

Dell in December announced that it would start a consulting services for honing customer listening, engagement and response operations. Its consulting offerings include:

• Best practice seminars on building a command center, gaining executive buy-in and support, launching a training program and other topics related to social media monitoring (SMM) 
• Design, build and operate a social listening command center 
• Listening and insight outsourcing using Dell’s command center and consultants Strategy advisory services.

Dell's example shows how an innovator who builds a new competence can leverage that for revenue by offering it as a service to the laggards.