Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRFT), a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout North America, is experiencing an increased demand from customers in helping apply social business strategies and technologies to their portal and collaboration solutions. Social business has the power to increase employee productivity by giving users access to necessary resources and allowing them to collaborate more intuitively. It can drive innovation, improve customer loyalty, find efficiencies, mobilize workforces and empower leaders.

“Social business is a powerful trend that cannot be ignored. Imagine if all knowledge workers were empowered with the information they needed to be successful – what kinds of innovative solutions could be created, and what kind of relationships could be cultivated,” said Michael Porter, principal for Perficient’s National Portal and Social Practice. “Yet, organizations are still challenged with how to get the right information to the right people when they need it and in the format they want to consume it. This is where a successful social business strategy can help create a winning organization, one that allows for communication, ad hoc collaboration and engagement both internally and externally with customers.”

Perficient partners with organizations to help navigate the social landscape, and design and implement the right technologies, whether it is CMS, portals or e-commerce solutions, to foster social interactions, create engagement and realize more significant business results.

“Today, these organizations are realizing that jumping on the social business bandwagon has to be well thought out, and take into consideration the user experience. We see a major opportunity for the chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief information officer to take the lead and partner in crafting the right strategy for social business,” continued Porter. “The social CMO is challenged with delivering value to empowered customers, fostering lasting connections, and capturing and measuring results. Fortunately, in addition to the numerous external social media sites available, IBM provides powerful social portal and social networking software in the form of WebSphere Portal and IBM Connections. A large part of what we’re doing now around social business is helping our customers couple the right tools with the right strategy.”

Witness Perficient’s Social Business Expertise in Action

Porter and Saren Sakurai, strategist for Perficient XD, will delve deeper into the social CMO conversation at the IBM Connect 2013 conference, the premier social, collaboration and community event worldwide, which is being held Jan. 27 – 31 in Orlando, Fla. In their session, “Social CMO: Engaging the Consumer,” Porter and Sakurai will explore the trends companies see that help engage their customers, including social communities, gamification, web analytics, personalization, customer segmentation and mobile. They also will touch on plans to help engage potential customers and turn them into long-lasting relationships.

In addition, during the conference Perficient experts, Jonathan Distad and Glenn Kline, will showcase how the company has partnered with clients Premier healthcare alliance and Fluor Corporation to create exceptional web experiences using IBM’s latest social business and collaboration solutions to improve customer satisfaction and employee collaboration within organizations. Both Distad and Kline recently were named an IBM 2013 Channel Champion for Collaboration Solutions, which recognizes innovative thought leaders who have made a collective contribution over the past year to the IBM community by demonstrating the power of IBM solutions through successful client engagements, sharing knowledge and experiences, and helping grow the community of business leaders focused on IBM solutions.

Healthcare Gets Social at Premier healthcare alliance

Premier, a provider-owned performance improvement alliance of more than 2,700 U.S. hospitals and 90,000-plus other healthcare sites, maintains the nation’s largest clinical, financial and outcomes database. It contains information on one in every four patient discharges, 2.5 million real-time clinical transactions a day and close to $43 billion in annual purchasing data.

In the session, “Premier Case Study: Saving Money and Lives through Excellent Web Experiences,” Premier Chief Technology Officer Denise Hatzidakis and Perficient’s portal, social, and collaboration expert Jonathan Distad will discuss how, in partnership with IBM, Premier developed solutions that offer social business capabilities and data analytics to help health systems improve quality while safely reducing costs.

Social Business Goes Global at Fluor Corporation

Perficient jointly delivered a global, social business intranet with its client Fluor Corporation. Fluor Corporation delivers engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance (EPCM), and project management to governments and clients in diverse industries around the world. Through its global network of offices on six continents, Fluor's 43,000 employees provide comprehensive capabilities and world-class expertise in the fields of engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, fabrication, operations, maintenance and project management.

In the session, “Connect and Collaborate Globally: Fluor Corporation’s Social Business Intranet,” Fluor expert Say Lim and Perficient expert Glenn Kline will discuss the new social computing platform – OneFluor – which is powered by IBM Connections and IBM WebSphere Portal with Web Content Management, and delivers relevant communication and collaboration capabilities to employees around the globe.

Find Out More

Perficient experts will be on hand at Connect 2013 in exhibit booth A22 to discuss how the company helps clients deliver exceptional web experiences for all stakeholders, whether internal, customer-facing or partner-centric, that achieve a desirable mix of brand, functionality, usability, and technology innovation.

For more information on Perficient’s IBM expertise including analytics to recognize changing market conditions and to attract new audiences; technology expertise in portal, collaboration, content management, BPM, SOA, MDM, Data Warehouse, Business Analytics, and ECM; integration services for social media, web analytics, structured & unstructured data; and IBM Lotus and WebSphere education and enablement, visit www.perficient.com/connect2013.

For updates throughout the event, follow Perficient experts online at www.perficient.com/connect2013 and via social media by viewing Perficient’s IBM Technologies blog, Perficient’s Portals blog and on Twitter @Perficient_IBM and @PRFT_Portals.

To learn more from Perficient expert Michael Porter, check out Perficient’s recently published perspective, “Social Business Ushers in New Normal for Enterprises in 2013.” In this perspective, Porter offers his thought leadership and expertise on how companies can address social business trends and offers insights into what makes organizations truly social.

To schedule a media interview with a Perficient IBM or portal, social and collaboration expert, please contact Liz Drazen at 314-529-3563 or liz.drazen@perficient.com.

About Perficient

Perficient is a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and enterprise customers throughout North America. Perficient’s professionals serve clients from a network of offices across North America and three offshore locations, in Eastern Europe, India, and China. Perficient helps clients use Internet-based technologies to improve productivity and competitiveness, strengthen relationships with customers, suppliers and partners, and reduce information technology costs. Perficient, traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market(SM), is a member of the Russell 2000® index and the S&P SmallCap 600 index. Perficient is an award-winning “Premier Level” IBM business partner, a TeamTIBCO partner, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and Gold Certified Partner, an EMC Select Services Team Partner, and an Oracle Platinum Partner. For more information, please visit www.perficient.com.

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