Home Asia-Pacific II 2013 Social business in a digital world

Social business in a digital world

by david.nunes
Sam FlemmingIssue:Asia-Pacific II 2013
Article no.:2
Topic:Social business in a digital world
Author:Sam Flemming
Title:Founder and President
Organisation:CIC
PDF size:226KB

About author

Sam Flemming is Founder and President of CIC, China’s first provider of social business intelligence. Starting with Chinapay.com, China’s first online payment platform, Mr Fleming has pioneered China’s digital revolution. Mr Flemming has since steered the company into position as both a thought and market leader in China’s social media and social business.

Sam Flemming holds a Master’s Degree, Teaching English, from the Monterey Institute of International Studies

Article abstract

A social business does more than just use social media marketing or online crisis monitoring. It is designed with social tools, social media, and social networks at its centre. A social business extensively incorporates social elements into their strategies and practices, using a variety of social media platforms and technologies and especially in its contacts with all its stakeholders, both within and without the organisation. It takes socially adapted technologies, processes, insight and culture to make a real social business.

Full Article

We’ve been talking about the concept of social business in China for a while now and one of the small wins that gives us a large amount of satisfaction is the growing recognition that a social business is more than one that engages in social media marketing or online crisis monitoring. In line with our definition, introduced in 2010 and explored in the first instalment of our white paper series, From Social Media to Social Business in 2011, that a social business is an organization designed consciously around social tools, social media, and social networks, as a response to outgrowth of the Web 2.0 technology space and its reshaped brand-consumer communication and business disciplines.

This though, is the definition of a social business; the following are the three major features of how organizations practice social business.

• Strategically – Incorporate social elements into their strategy with clear purpose and organization;
• Extensively – Wide application of various social media platforms and technologies;
• Comprehensively – Using social media and technologies in different aspects and functions of their business operation.

But how does an organization steel itself for social business and ultimately succeed in this faster, brighter and smarter digital world? Our third and final instalment in the From Social Media to Social Business white paper series, Social Business Development Roadmap in China, suggests organizations build their social capability from the inside out, which means enhancing the core of their social business.

Core represents the key concepts and methodology of an organization’s social business development and operation. It is the nucleus, housing an organization’s DNA. We concluded there are four core ingredients of a social business: technology, process, insight and culture.

Conversely, extension specifically refers to the use of social media, social software and social intelligence to enact an organization’s operation.

Let’s talk more about the core.

1. Enterprise level social technologies and products are very important for the development of social business; with these technologies and products, organizations can implement specific social business activities for different functions.

McKinsey Global Institute’s investigation into the way organizations use social tools and technologies finds that uptake is increasing, transforming business processes and performance. Of course, technology is just one core elements. A social listening command centre is a typical social-tech solution that’s generating a lot of buzz in the industry.

Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group defined a “Dedicated Social Media Engagement Center or Command Center as a physical space where companies coordinate to listen and engage their market in social channels to achieve business use cases in marketing engagement, customer care, risk management, or operational efficiency of coordination and contact center deflection”.

The London 2012 Olympic Games provided a great chance to see the impact of real-time listening and engagement in action. The most popular engagement tactic was spoofing the most talked about content. However, rather than just being funny, Nike took real-time engagement to a higher level by posting emotional, impactful images and copy within minutes of Chinese athletes’ performances. The brand used it’s command centre staffed by a crack team, to identify more than 90,000,000 comments on Sina and Tencent Weibo related to sports, athletes or Nike related topics, including its inspirational campaign slogan, ‘Find Your Greatness’. From those 90,000,000 comments, the system identified around 6,000 highly relevant, which Team Nike subsequently used to engage 4,000 consumers with direct, personal replies.

A social media listening command centre can be challenging to launch but it offers an amazing opportunity to engage with and learn from net participants.

2. Tech tools are necessary but not sufficient for success. The truly important thing in putting technology into practice is effective integration of processes. Therefore, social business means organizations making changes to operational structure and business processes.

Social business does not belong to any individual department, but connects all departments and processes, even those stakeholders outside the organization. For example, the consumer feedback you get from social media may be significant to different departments – PR, market research, product development or CRM – for different reasons, so must be delivered in the right format and frequency to these stakeholders.

In practice, some leading companies are trying to facilitate the integration of structure and process by establishing a social business centre of excellence (COE). The COE is usually composed of people from different departments, who develop policies, coordinate procedures and work across all departments, helping to set social business strategies and evaluation indices, manage social technology partners and conduct social media education for employees. A COE enables organizations to holistically plan their social business activity, cross-department and cross-function, to maximize opportunity and reduce risk.

3. Insight is another core of social business, which means organizations must develop the capability to turn social data into actionable business intelligence.

For the past 20 years, the story of beer and diapers has been the classic case of gaining business insight and driving growth through consumer intelligence. Now, in the age of big data, leading organisations now use this intelligence to directly drive business decisions.

Social media has changed the way organizations collect data. Now organizations often actively participate in the community and track key experts or conversations for real-time intelligence. They even may find some valuable and traditionally overlooked ‘weak signals’. For example, the difference in a brand’s online discussion volume in different regions may provide a preliminary reference for market entry or expansion.

Currently, although many organizations are aware of the importance of social data, interpreting it and distilling the real insight can be stunted by limits like work force talent and operating technology.

4. Last, social business is not a practice that an individual or even a handful of departments can effectively implement. It requires all stakeholders to embrace the spirit of social participation, collaboration and competence.

Stakeholders include management, employees, partners, suppliers, distributors, consumers, clients and investors. Due to the popularity of social marketing, social interaction is often limited to consumers and other stakeholders are neglected. Encouraging more stakeholders to participate in social interaction is a crucial feature of social business.

Many international companies encourage their employees to participate in social media. For example, Intel encourages employees to join in social media interaction in line with its social media guidelines. Moreover, they established an SMP (social media practitioner) certification program, to provide training sessions and allow certified employees to participate in social media and interact with consumers on behalf of Intel. Intel also released its Social Media Playbook, which listed various interaction strategies and methods to use with different social media platforms, which was shared with their global subsidiaries and departments for reference.

Some leading companies are even starting to communicate with investors through social media. Q4 Web Systems studied 629 overseas listed companies and found that 67 per cent of them use twitter to communicate with investors. Domestic companies are also starting to use social media such as Snowball for investor relationship management. Enterprise social platforms like Yammer and Jive also make it easier for companies to engage more stakeholders and encourage social interaction.

In comparison with technology, process and insight, the establishment of an organizations’ social culture is a longer journey. IBM carried out a survey of 1,161 company executives, which shows that about 3/4 of the interviewees feel unready for the revolution of social culture.

According to another recent survey of social business, 73 per cent of the respondents are optimistic about the future, amongst which, 23 per cent think it will take three to five years for companies to see their achievements, while 29 per cent lengthen that period to five years or more, which indicates that social business has a long way to go. So, best get a head start.

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