Social Business - is your company ready?

Harvard Business review released an interest report entitled:  "The New Conversation:  "Taking Social Media from Talk to Action".   It provides some very insightful data about what companies think about the new Social age, what their current maturity level is, and what their concerns are going forward.  If you have an interest in this area, it's worth a read.

This report highlights a couple of very interesting topic areas:

• Strategy:  "Two-thirds of users have no formalized social media strategy in place.... many organizations’ activities seem more focused on “making noise” about their company and products, and less on understanding and participating in the conversations already going on about them on the Web."
  
•  Culture:  "Many organizations seem to operate under old paradigms, viewing social media as one-way flow marketing messages, instead of capitalizing on the opportunity to monitor, analyze, and participate in the millions of conversations between consumers"
  
• Maturity:  "For many companies, social media use is still viewed as an experiment."
  
•  Budget:  "Just 20% of social media users have a dedicated budget for their social media activities, with marketing controlling that budget in almost half the companies ... This reflects just how experimental many organizations view social media and how they have been reluctant to commit resources, perhaps because they are still not certain of its goals, effectiveness, and impact on the organization.
  
• Demonstration of business value:  “It’s hard to define value when we are still trying to measure it. We will get it eventually, but right now we are stabbing in the dark for measurement criteria.”

 As I reflect on the important topics above, here ares some others that companies should think about as they move from talk to action:  

• Blurring of personal and company persona:   As companies start to encourage and enable employee participation in social media to drive business value, it's important to consider how to or if employees should include their personal social interactions with social business discussions. 
  
• Company risk profile:  Enabling employee participation in social discussions does come with risk.  Companies need to think about what is the risk/benefit tradeoff ... and how does that align with their companies values. 

It's evident that Social Business is driving a paradigm shift for many companies, just as it was in the e-business era.   To fully embrace Social Business, companies need to seriously consider cross-company transformational changes to their culture and business processes. This paradigm shift could effect HR, Legal, Finance, CIO and product development organizations.  It's a fundamental change in the way we work. 

These are exciting times with great opportunities!  Is your company ready for them?

I'll talk more about each of the areas above in future blog posts.  I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Social Business - customer perception becomes business reality

IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) recently published very insightful report titled:  From Social Media to Social CRM.  Based on extensive survey results from both consumers and business executives, IBV uncovered significant gaps between what customers want and businesses think they want in their social media engagement.  Consumers desire tangible value such as coupons and discounts, while businesses feel that they want to learn about new products.  The table below highlights the significant perception gap.

Note: Consumer: N=1056; Business: Learn N=333, General info N=336, Submit opinion N=334, Exclusive info N=333, Reviews/rankings N=333, Feel connected N=331,
Customer service N=331, Submit ideas N=332, Community N=329, Event N=332, Purchase N=334, Discounts N=331.
Source: IBM Institute for Business Value analysis. CRM Study 2011.

Most customers want to use social media for personal reasons ... to connect with friends and family, not with companies. Consumers are willing to interact with businesses if they believe it is to their benefit.  Have you noticed that many successful social media campaigns often include some type of prize or incentive?  Even recent TV commercials feature stories where customers who tweet about their brand are surprised with prizes in coffee shops or airports.   While that is an interesting business tactic to introduce customers to social media, it can get expensive and have questionable long term returns.

Survey results show that businesses are three times more likely to think consumers are interested in interacting with them to feel part of a community.  It's clear that businesses are overestimating consumers’ desire to engage with them to feel connected to their brand.   In reality, these two activities are among the least interesting from a consumer’s perspective. 

So ... what does this data tell business executives?  First - they should assure that they are getting continuous direct consumer feedback about their social media initiatves.   Are they working?  What needs to change?  What is the perceived value to the customer (as compared to the expected value from the company's perspective)?  As the report suggests, businesses need to stay laser focused on customer value to avoid falling into the perception gaps they've uncovered.

If you are interested in the Social business area, this report is definitely worth the time to read.  I welcome your insights ... and perceptions :-)

Is Social Media Employee Training is overrated?

I stumbled across a very insightful blog post called Empowering Your Employees May Solve Your Content Problems.  It talks about the idea that employee training is overrated ... what is really needed is management permission to try things. 

Is employee training overrated?  My first reaction was that training is often touted as the mitigation to many social media risks.  Worried about leakage of confidential information?  Training is the answer.  Worried about inappropriate employee behavior that could impact your brand image?  Training is the answer.   You get the point ... training is often the answer to many Social Media concerns.  It can't be overrated ..... or can it?

When you think about training ...

• is it about how to use Social Media?  The user interfaces are fairly self explanatory...  
• is it about following Business Conduct Guidelines?  This should be about acting professionally, and not doing anything 'stupid', which should be expected of all employees...
• is it about getting the majority of employees to have a consistent social messaging?  While this is valuable to a point, companies have to make sure their social conversations are not perceived only as glorified marketing channels...

If employees would take some time and 'jump in' to social media conversations, they would quickly be able to train themselves on most of the items above.  What is holding many of them back?   According to the referenced article: "What they need is ownership approval to practice, and the flexibility in their daily work agenda to have the available time to create digital content." 

So, maybe Employee training is overrated.  What IS needed is Management training ... at all levels. Maybe the focus should be on Social Media Management Training.  This does come up in various feedback, but is often not prioritized.  If we focus on Management Training, employee usage will follow.  Food for thought :-)

Unlock the power of internal conversations

Most companies have an internal capability to collaborate between employees.  Some have sophisticated social tools that enable their employees to share information within the firewall, while others have manual processes.  To be successful in Social Business:    Internal Conversations + Social Media = Sales Conversations.  As discussed in this referenced blog post, companies should start slowly on this journey.  Start with an agile process that enables fast learning and iteration.  Select specific target areas, assure policies are in place and understood, and measure results.  Over time, with management encouragement, this will drive a culture shift for employees towards open collaboration externally.

For me personally, I am beginning this shift.  When I want to start an internal community/team discussion, I ask myself:  Will we be talking about anything confidential?  If not, would the conversation have higher value if shared externally?  Surprisingly, in many cases the answer is that an externally community could provide additional value and insights.  The next challenge is to get everyone on the team comfortable with open collaboration externally.  It's a slow shift, but I see it beginning to happen.   I'd encourage everyone to begin that thought process and be an early adopter. It's a journey .. the first step is the hardest.

Interesting concept - spending based on Social Business Maturity

I recently read a slideshare presentation from Jeremiah Owyang entitled How Corporations should Prioritize Social Business Budgets.  I found it very interesting, and thought provoking.  Here are a few insights ...

• 'Overall budgets increase as social business matures.'  This is counter to typical business cost curves.  The traditional theory is that a company can find and implement cost improvements as they mature and become more efficient.  It's interesting to think about how to 'sell' this concept to the finance team.  Perhaps Social Business investments should  increase as a 'migration' from traditional spending as ROI  becomes more evident.  The age-old challenge still exists ... how to stop work in 'the way we have always done things' projects in favor of new Social Business.  
• 'As social business matures, team sizes grow but spread cross-functionally across the enterprise.'   As companies think about staffing requirements, it's interesting to think about scalability and long term sustainability.  Even though dedicated teams may be more efficient in the short term, are they affordable as a long term strategy?  Perhaps Social Business should just a part of everyone's job.  It's like the analogy of using the telephone or instant messaging ... social capabilities are part of the tool kit that employees have to enable them to do their job better.
• 'To scale, organizations organize differently as they mature.'    It is interesting to think about a centralized or decentralized model for scaling.  Ultimate Social Business success is when it is completely integrated into a companies processes, including HR, Legal, Finance, Strategy, etc.  This requires a culture shift to promote open sharing, with a realization that open dialog will result in improved business results.  

The entire presentation is worth a read ... thanks to Jeremiah for sharing it openly with the broad community.

'Social' risks - are they unique?

 
Social Business is all about mitigating risks in support of driving business value.  Risks come in multiple dimensions:  business, legal, HR, technology, etc..  As companies begin to better understand the risks resulting from participating in social conversations, it's interesting to think about which are unique to 'social', and which are fundamentally enterprise risks that existed years ago.  Some examples of potential risks :

• Someone could post some comments that could potentially damage a company's brand image.  
• An employee could post confidential information, which could impact a product announcement.
• An employee could share someone's personal information, which could violate privacy laws.

The question is ... are these unique to social?  Prior to social capabilities ... could someone write an article in a newspaper that could potentially damage a companies brand?  Could an employee e-mail a confidential document to an un-authorized person?  Could an employee copy an external person on a personnel e-mail to an employee with their personal information?

The answer to all of the above is .. YES.   While there are some risks that could be unique to social, most of them are not.  So, when we talk about social business and the associated risks, what are the 'social' risks?

We need to consider the dimensions of risk:  their impact and likelihood of occurrence.  

• Impact:  While many of the risk themselves may not change, their impact may change .... due to the viral nature of social.  In the case of the newspaper article above.  This comment may only be viewed by a few thousand people (depending on the distribution of the paper).... while it now has the potential to spread in a viral fashion to millions of people very quickly.   
• Likelihood:  Let's now think about the likelihood of occurrence dimension.   With the easy access to blogging tools and twitter feeds, there are millions more people with easy access to express their opinions (both good and bad).  Could this drive a greater likelihood that someone may post some comments that could damage your brand?

When companies consider the social risks in these new dimensions, they will need to identify ways to mitigate these 'new' risks.  It's highly recommended that companies take the time, and conduct a Social Media risk assessment.  I'm sure it will uncover new insights and recommendations.

I welcome any comments or additional insights you'd like to share.

Manager Memo ...Not Working but Networking!

I liked the title from the ZDNet Blog post, ... Not Working, but Networking.  This is catchy, and powerful at the same time.   There is growing consensus that active participation by employees in social channels will provide business value.  But... there are still many managers that haven't yet gotten the 'memo'.  Blogging and tweeting are seen as personal social activities and are discouraged by many managers, since there is not a clear understanding of how it links to their department mission.  It does remind me of the days where employee use of the internet was also viewed as wasting time.   So, what needs to change?  It's easy to say that the culture of the company needs to change, but it's certainly an evolution. I see it in three major phases:

1. Grass roots efforts by early adopters is the starting point.  Passionate employees go outside 'cultural norms' and participate (with or without specific management permission). Value derived from these efforts can be used to start momentum within a compnay.
2. Executive leadership needs to set company wide agendas and strategies in support of Social Business.  Once this happens, it can drive support organizations (i.e. HR, Finance, IT) to align to common goals.  This is the phase where cultural norms begin to shift
3. Company wide management support, especially at the 1st level, is one of the mature phases of the evolution.  When management uniformly supports cross-company collaboration and social conversation, culture will begin to shift.

Social Business is a journey.  I find it fascinating to watch the evolution happen...