OK, let’s take finance. Finance?!? But that is all numbers and stuff, how is that social? The simple answer is that people make the decision to spend money, and people are influenced by other people.

One approach is to set up an internal review system. Something sort of like Amazon reviews, but instead of reviews about consumer products, the reviews are about vendors and services used by the company. Hotels, ad agencies, meeting venues, etc. Give employees the ability to simply comment on their experience with any vendor, service or product, and now the entire company has access to that information.

Also, make it personal, not just a data dumping ground (in my opinion the tragic flaw of most “knowledge management systems”). Set it up so that you know who made the comments and allow people to interact through the system. That way when one person sees a review that helps, they can easily check in with the commenter to get more detail.

This approach will quickly move your organization toward using the best vendors/products/services, and getting rid of those that do not provide value.