Advice on connecting disparate offices

Jason Harrison was asked to a find a better way to connect 3,000 employees in 60 locations around the globe when he joined the communications firm, Universal McCann, as CIO two years ago. The old ways--telephones and email--weren't cutting it. In short, they weren't building a sense of a common company culture.

Harrison decided to try social networking, adding social software capabilities to Microsoft's SharePoint system already in place, and using the technology from NewsGator, a vendor that offers enterprise Real Simple Syndication (RSS). This technology streams relevant information to employees over portals such as corporate intranets.

"We wanted everyone to feel one culture and one set of objectives," Harrison told CIO.com "Because we're so distributed, we had to build a common social fabric virtually."

For more on ways to connect workers around the globe:
 - see this CIO.com article