CSC Smart Business UK Edition February - Social Business
Social Business
Understanding what makes a Social Business is the key to successful Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM
Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 are two significant and growing markets, with Enterprise 2.0 being the larger and arguably more mature of the two. Social CRM encapsulates a business strategy and approach for serving customers in a more personalised way. Ultimately, this makes it much easier and less frustrating for customers to consume goods and services from suppliers.
The corresponding phenomenon inside the organisation is Enterprise 2.0; it enables true collaboration, participation and engagement. Traditionally, Enterprise 2.0 has been focused on employees within an enterprise and sometimes suppliers to the enterprise too.
However, despite their differences, these two worlds are very closely interlinked with each other. I believe it is time to explicitly document and describe an approach, which enables businesses to become social. In summary, Social CRM + Enterprise 2.0 = Social Business. It's that simple.
Social Business is about making transformational business change happen within the enterprise. This change happens through the practical application of tried and tested methods and processes, spanning the interconnected networks of customers, partners and employees.
Focussing on Social Business enables us to look at the opportunity that the 'social' layer provides in much more meaningful terms. Often projects for the delivery of Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM have been built on buzzwords and flaky business benefits. Initiatives have been focused on something perceived to be cool and the technology required to deliver it rather than the business change required to make a difference.
The single biggest barrier to successful Social Business projects is the subject of change itself: business change, culture change, organisational change and changes to the products and services offered by businesses to customers. However, a business cannot operate in a vacuum; to succeed in Social Business employees, partners and customers must work together in collaborative value networks. These value networks will provide a shared workplace to co-create products and services whilst addressing the simplest question from all stakeholders: "What's in it for me?". Fig. 1
Human nature determines that in order to persuade people to do something they need to understand the reason they are doing it. It is even better if the reason aligns with their core values and beliefs. Therefore, a combination of excellent service design and Social Business are essential in joining up the physical and virtual networks that connect employees, partners and customers, enabling them to co-create value with each other. If you can design products and services that answer the "what's in it for me?" question and keep everyone in that simple but diverse eco-system happy, then your chances of success are much higher.
Examining successful Social Business implementations paints the same picture. From the Nike+ collaboration with Apple, to Dell, Starbucks, Jimmy Choo, GiffGaff and Logitech - all of these businesses have successfully answered the question "What's in it for me?" across their enterprise. In some respects it is simple. However, there are many subtleties which add complexity, in addition to the fact that all of the traditional concepts surrounding successful business transformation also apply. Taking an approach to Social Business such as the one outlined above will enable those relationships to mature and reduce many of the barriers that exist today.
Partly for fun and partly to support the arguments presented in this article, I decided to compare Social CRM (#scrm), Enterprise 2.0 (#e2.0) and Social Business (#socbiz) by performing some social media monitoring. It is telling that the results over a period of 30 days illustrate a bigger audience for #socbiz than exists for both #e2.0 and #scrm combined. The peaks and troughs were broadly similar too. Granted there was a small lag between them but the conversations were about the same topics. Indeed so were many of the contributors to articles within the topics discussed.
In summary, there is a large overlap at the intersect between Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM. This intersect is Social Business. Given it is a much larger and broader subject to tackle. However, it is necessary to do so in order to achieve buy-in from all involved and deliver real change and benefit from investments in people, process and technology in this area.
If we apply a Venn diagram to depict this to Figure 1 and add the core concepts of relationships, trust and value, which apply across and between all stakeholders, then we can start to model how stakeholders needs can be addressed at all levels. Similar models can then be used to communicate change across the enterprise as well as with external stakeholders too.
The courtship between Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 is heating up and will continue to blossom; the wedding date is set for June 2012. Product vendors will continue to build their software suites either through development and/or acquisition. However, ultimately, the ability to execute Social Business as ‘business as usual' will increase.
Personally I know we will have been successful when the 'social' moniker is dropped and the principals underpinning Social Business become just another part of the fabric of the everyday business world. Organisations seeking to obtain value for money from their investments in Social Business will most likely do so by delivering a Social Business portfolio that joins up and drives commonality across employee, partner and customer networks as described throughout.
Mark Walton-Hayfield is a Principal Social Business Strategist at CSC. He leads CSC's customers in both the strategy and practical application of Social Business across the areas described in this article.
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