Connecting the Enterprise with Social Media

By Mark Walton-Hayfield - Principal Business Strategist CSC

The hype previously surrounding social media as a shiny new thing has now died down. For the past 3-4 years it would appear that the prefix "social" has been used to describe almost anything that has changed in the business world. Whilst most businesses are now using social media and the adoption of its use by business is likely to be circa 80%, it is fair to say that very few organisations (probably less than 10%) have managed or indeed started to integrate "social" into their overall business operation and operating model. Since "social" often sits within the domain of the marketing or PR department it has not been able to fulfil its real transformational potential as a radical front office channel to support the marketing, sales, service and experience of products with customers. Indeed it is rarely integrated with other front office channels very effectively; it tends not to scale very well either let alone become integrated with back office data and systems.

All people and businesses are "social" and people's expectations of business have changed dramatically over the past 5 years. Customers now experience products and services rather than buy them. This adds a further dimension to the expectation shift that has occurred. Experience is so important that I believe it will quickly become established as the roof over the traditional pillars of CRM (marketing, sales and service). Many products and services are now being re-imagined. Customers are buying into and seeing the benefits of online services and digital products which are made available online to customers. These are asset light, rather than owning physical products which are asset heavy. As a result the way you experience them becomes even more important. A personalised, meaningful, and purposeful customer journey enables you to differentiate services from the competition too.

One way of providing customers with a superior customer experience is to connect the enterprise not only with social media but with all of the other channels and touch points that exist between the customer and the company they are doing business with. If you take an outside-in approach to designing a holistic customer experience which considers the emotional and functional considerations within a broad customer journey, then the customer experience will be more personalised and purposeful and customers will have a higher propensity to spend money with you. This is far more important from a digital perspective than people often realise. For example during a face to face interaction and, to a certain extent, a telephone transaction, the retailer is able to make certain broad assumptions about you as a buyer and offer you appropriate products and services as a result. Without information and data about the customer and their digital body language this is almost impossible in a digital world. As digital becomes mainstream, the importance of customer experience as a differentiator will continue to be underlined and will become a key factor for the performance of digital businesses.

Supporting great customer experiences requires the integration of "social" into the overall business operating model. This is no mean feat which would explain why many businesses have not undertaken it yet and why those that have started to (Burberry, GE, Toyota, Rossingol, Nike, and KLM for example) have typically chosen specific entry points to support new products and services which they are taking to market. This approach is helping these organisations to transform themselves and differentiates them from their competition too. In short new ways of working and thinking about the business are enabling them to deliver against the unmet needs of their customers. This allows them to capture mindshare and leadership within their given market in the process. All of the above companies are starting to transform themselves. These organisations are finding ways to connect their brands with their customers, employees, partners and even their products and in doing so are creating a responsive business which serves the ever-changing needs of their customer base. They are offering a differentiated amenity service which makes them compelling in comparison to their peers.

A recent and well articulated article about the Evolution of Social Business by Altimeter Group suggests there are 6 stages of Social Business Transformation. I would suggest that the sort of connection and integration which is required will drive a larger return on investment and business benefits when an organisation reaches a "Strategic" (stage 5) or "Converged" (stage 6) level of maturity. However, enterprise customers will require a converged strategy in order to get to that level of maturity over the longer term. If we continue to think about "social" as being within the Marketing and PR domain alone then this is less likely to happen.

I believe there are 7 key points that need to be included in any strategy and vision for businesses that are seeking to deliver on the promise of the potential that sits before them.

• Focus on the external market, the internal enterprise and the customer experience that intersects it
• The implications of "social" need to be considered from an outside-in and an inside-out perspective
• Using public and private data and conversations, and being able to flip data between both domains
• Content-based marketing needs to be driven using social media outposts and brand-owned channels
• Community and collaboration across all areas needs to be considered and managed
• Security measures and appropriate policies need to be in place
• Training and education for employees combined with new ways of working must be addressed

It goes without saying that the above activity needs to be aligned with the business strategy and the goals of the business overall (this was well covered by my colleague Steve Cockerill in a previous post). Transforming the enterprise is not going to happen overnight. Big bang transformations are problematic; lean, iterative, and well aligned micro-transformation projects are what are required to act and react playing into your strategic end game. However, if the foundations are laid with a strategy and vision which considers all areas of CRM including the customer experience then in the long term the ability of the business to realise their overall vision will be far greater.

An approach like this requires far greater flexibility and communication between the IT and the business. I have read many pieces of research suggesting that the Chief Marketing Officer will have more budget than the Chief Information Officer over the next three to five years and that their spend on Marketing Technology is going to increase significantly. However, the Marketing department alone is not going to be able to deliver the kind of change that is required across the organisation even with an increased budget and more applications and services moving to cloud infrastructures. Rather, the CIOs and the CTOs within IT will need to demand further involvement in that spend and in doing so they will also need to change the way in which IT is perceived in order to better serve the business and provide the business with the sorts of people, skills and solutions that are required so that the business can meet its objectives. Ultimately this is likely to lead to a demand to support the kind of integration that is required to enable a transformed enterprise to be successful.

Thank you for reading my post, now it is over to you. What do you think? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences. If you have enjoyed this blog, then please take a look at my broader but related presentation on slideshare. It explains what "social" means for enterprise IT and how IT needs to change in order to support the changes that business requires in order to respond to industry, market, and consumer demands globally.

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