Social Business Nominations: Do I Hear A Second?Social Business Nominations: Do I Hear A Second?

Unisys: Unisys, which designs, builds and provides "mission-critical" technology and services for organizations worldwide, has made a significant commitment in deploying new social computing technologies and processes within its own global enterprise improve connection and workplace collaboration among its 22,000 employees, drive operational efficiency, streamline innovation processes and increase marketplace agility. Business leader: Gloria Burke, Director, Knowledge & Collaboration Strategy and Governance; and Rajiv Prasad, Director, Knowledge Management & CTO Operations. Technology leader: John Knab, Director, IT Applications. Nominated by: NewsGator.

SAP: SAP's leadership among social businesses is best reflected by the SAP Community Network (SCN), a community of SAP customers, employees and partners who contribute and collaborate to determine best practices in business technology. SCN's diverse community (members in more than 200 countries) extends beyond 2 million users and attracts more than 30,000 new viewers each month which range from developers to business analysts to consultants and product specialists. Business leader: Oliver Bussmann, SAP CIO. Nominated by: SAP.

McKesson: Using social collaboration based on SocialText to unify information in multiple repositories for the use of teams supporting the health care software company's electronic medical records and practice management products. In addition to consolidating information for internal customer support personnel, McKesson made a version of the community accessible to its value added reseller community. Business leader: Tim Kelly, Executive Director, Customer Support. Nominated by SocialText.

Avanade: Avanade, a global technology consulting company, had a relatively strong base of collaboration and community technologies in place already, but has exploring the deeper connections possible with social technologies. Business leader: CIO Christopher Miller. Nominated by: NewsGator.

Canford Audio: Canford Audio, a leading manufacturer and distributor of audio and video equipment to the professional sector, is increasing its worldwide sales performance and driving process efficiencies as a result of implementing a social business product from m-hance seamlessly integrated into its accounting system. Benefits include cost savings of $120,000 per year by improving productivity for knowledge-based workers by up to 8% per user and increased employee engagement by up to 5%. Technology Leader: Durwin Brown, IT Director. Nominated by: m-hance.

DaVita: DaVita Inc., a provider of kidney care that delivers dialysis services to patients with chronic kidney failure and end stage renal disease, operates or provides administrative services at more than 1,800 outpatient dialysis facilities in the United States, serving approximately 149,000 patients. Many of its 40,000 teammates are not regularly connected by email or other computer systems, but the Eureka! website originally implemented to solicit input from biomed technicians has developed into a broader platform for driving improvements and efficiencies across the company. Business leader: Chan Basho, Director of Corporate Finance and Anurati Mathur, financial analyst. Nominated by: Spigit.

Enterasys: Enterasys Networks, a global provider of wired/wireless network infrastructure and security solutions, created isaac, a solution that uses social media and mobile apps to securely manage and monitor their customers' networks. Enterasys isaac is a social media interface that securely enables networks to communicate with humans in the language of social networking. IT networks can now communicate status and receive a company's commands all from social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Salesforce Chatter. Business leader: Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer. Technology leader: Dan Petlon, CIO. Nominated by: Salesforce.com.

Red Robin: Red Robin, a chain of more than 450 burger restaurants, understands the power of social connections and letting employees and customers share and interact via social channels. The company has a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter, and has created social media campaigns like BurgerHub, a website that allows restaurant-goers to share pictures and videos of their Red Robin dining experience, and the "Chief Burger Officer" contest, which used a social voting mechanism to elect Red Robin's first "CBO" (a loyal customer). Red Robin uses Yammer internally to coordinate marketing and operations and for training. Technology leader: Chris Laping, SVP of Business Transformation and CIO. Nominated by: Yammer.

Infusionsoft: Infusionsoft serves over 10,000 small businesses and 36,000 users worldwide with its all-in-one sales and marketing software. The leadership team at Infusionsoft adopted Moxie Software's Collaboration Spaces as a social platform that would encourage inter-departmental communication and foster collaboration across the organization without any technical hurdles. Business leader: Hal Hallaway, senior vice president of corporate and cultural development. Technology leader: Kimberlee Morrison, culture content evangelist.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

Social media make the customer more powerful than ever. Here's how to listen and react. Also in the new, all-digital The Customer Really Comes First issue of The BrainYard: The right tools can help smooth over the rough edges in your social business architecture. (Free registration required.)