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IBM's Sandy Carter says businesses need to understand the value of internal social media networks -- or get left behind.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Sandy Carter is vice president of social business sales at IBM. Global market intelligence firm IDC recently ranked IBM the #1 enterprise social software vendor worldwide.

(CNN) -- It's a well known fact that the social networking phenomena has had a profound effect on society. Consumer social networks continue to creep into the workplace as many companies are encouraging and allowing the use of Facebook, Twitter and even Pinterest during business hours.

But what's new is that this shift is now causing a ripple effect in the business world.

Socializing the workplace is no longer about conversations at the water cooler, chatting about team deliverables, client leads and pipelines. With the emergence of social networking platforms, socializing the workplace means that an organization has embraced a platform that allows its employees to share ideas and expertise, connect with colleagues, customers and business partners across the globe and gain actionable insight from social data that provides them with the ability to make smarter business decisions faster than ever before.

Forrester Research estimates that the market opportunity for social software is expected to exceed $6 billion by 2016, an increase of 60% annually from 2010. IBM's recent CEO Study reports that only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers today, but that number is poised to spike to 57% within the next three to five years.

If your organization plans to stay competitive, it can't afford to ignore the impact of social on the workplace. Sandy Carter, IBM

How do you quantify the ROI (return on investment) of Social Business?

The ROI of social business is a topic for debate, as many of the benefits extend beyond just a company's bottom line. Enterprise social networking tools are fundamentally changing the processes through which we do business and in the past year, we've progressed from just talking about the idea of a social business to companies reporting real and tangible business outcomes from collaborative practices.

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