Enterprise-class social media tools have the ability to streamline those organizations and create efficiencies in operational processes by improving the quality of data used in making risk management decisions, experts say.

Jon Bidwell, chief innovation officer at Warren N.J.-based Chubb Corp. said Chubb is using social networking tools to increase knowledge sharing throughout its organization.

“When we look at ultimate business impact, particularly in knowledge-based industries such as ours, we are finding that the ability to extend social-based platforms as private, interactive, on-demand networks is where the next wave of productivity improvements will come from,” Mr. Bidwell said. “It allows us to flatten the organization and move information around more effectively.”

Mr. Bidwell said the use of social media tools in his company has helped free information from the silos common in large companies and enabled “cross-pollination” of ideas not possible in other communications platforms such as email.

“We are large, global organization but are made up from a lot specialized, bespoke underwriting entities,” he said. “This new class of tools enables you to force multiply a limited set of experts and make information searchable and transparent.”

Moreover, Mr. Bidwell said the tools help eliminates a top-down approach to knowledge.

“When your customer base is involved in rapidly evolving dynamic businesses, the accumulated wisdom at the top is important but so are tactical, transactional observations of the people out in the field actually doing the business,” he said. “Social media tools enable you to marry those perspectives in real time.”

Indeed, the speed at which the tools enable the collection of new information is especially valuable to larger organization, he concluded.

“If you look at the original theory of incorporation, which was developed in the 1920s, it was that large, highly organized corporation could do things more efficiently than small organizations,” he said. “Over the years, you saw the momentum swing toward smaller, more nimble organizations. The newest class of software tools has the potential to make a large organization small and nimble because we can make any node in the organization as smart as the whole.”