Understand Social media and drive transformation

Research shows that trust and transparency has become equally important to corporate reputation as quality of products & services.

Nobody argues about the importance of Social Media to the success of business. But many companies struggle with the how.

This text explains first need of companies to change and then explains what to do and how to do it.

Need for change & change

A new organizational structure is required to accommodate and benefit from the sharing culture created by social media. Organizational functions need to move from collaborating separately with customers and become fully interconnected inside the organization (overcoming of silos) and communicating with customers in an integrated, systematic fashion.

Companies need to drive key initiatives such as community management (form teams and communities), crowdsourcing, campaigns, advocacy, crisis management in addition to traditional customer service and communication.

What companies can do practically

Companies must drive a culture where their employees not only interact with their customers, but become fully networked internally and externally. It should measure the extent of socio-technology usage and drive continuous improvement through organizational models, training, policies & guidelines, incentives, etc.

In order to have customer truly caring for employees, companies need to start by caring about their own employees first. Much has been neglected in previous decades…

It means to truly learn about co-workers personally and professionally, collaborate and discuss on work products, give people the information, knowledge, tools, freedom and empowerment to do their jobs well.

Further companies must provide their employees with practical support and guidance: Help each mine their own contacts (for information, advice, reference, referrals, relationship building),

How to get started in the right way

It requires to think about People, Process and Platforms while driving digital strategies & programs focusing on engagement, collaboration, content and communication.  

Extend Social media beyond the marketing function, but include Advertising & Promotions, Public Relations, Customer Service, Marketing Research, Sales & commerce, Product Development, Internal Communications, Recruitment and other functions. Multiple functions across the organization need to work closely together to maximize outcome.

Think strategically and plan systematically

1)      Develop a social media & business strategy with core objectives, roadmap, process and technology integration, measurements based on target customers, stakeholders…

2)      Align the organization

3)      Engage with each stakeholder group (prospects, customer, Web influencers, Ecosystem partners, vendors, suppliers, employees, media, etc.) through social media

4)      Measure and incorporate feedback to adapt and optimize planning and operational execution

5)      Assure a continuous improvement journey. Social media is not a campaign!

Overall planning & implementation philosophy

-          While planning is important do not just direct efforts centrally from the top, but allow people to experiment and do improvement in their individual areas.

-          Run test pilots, validate outcome and refine planning & implementation

Drive transformation & progress as part of a systematic roadmap

1)      Establish policy, process and procedure

a.       Internal activities

                                                               i.      Form Steering Committee, put governance model in place, establish listening tools & process, establish KPIs & measurement framework, form Social Media Center of Excellence

b.      External activities

                                                               i.      Determine public moderation policy, community coordination, content development, paid media in social

2)      Shape capabilities

a.       Internal activities

                                                               i.      Build social enterprise architecture, communicate rule of engagement, train early adopters, implement community management plan

b.      External activities

                                                               i.      Establish your social media voice and tone, identify influencers, launch test & learn pilots, publish content across multiple properties & channels

3)      Develop ecosystem

a.       Internal activities

                                                               i.      Connect and coordinate partners through internal lead, formalize social CMS and internal staffing, extend steering committee to regions, roll out training across entire organization

b.      External activities

                                                               i.      Strengthen platform partnerships, form partnerships with influencers, scale engagements; coordinate across mainstream, owned and hybrid properties; formalize standardization, measurements and KPIs

4)      Drive innovation & integration

a.       Internal activities

                                                               i.      Integrate systems on back end, connect customers, employees and partners; achieve people, processes and platform maturity

b.      External activities

                                                               i.      Establish global ambassador programs, integrate systems on front end, integrate social layer across all business functions, achieve consistent product & service innovations

Align any other open individual activities with your new strategy

Examples:

-          Improve internal intelligence though listening, learning and knowledge sharing.

-          Optimize sales cycle (demand and lead generation, conversion)

-          Maximize awareness (word of mouth,  engagement data, brand awareness)

-          Maximize retention (brand engagement, customer loyalty)

Adapt your organizational structure and roles

-          Social Media is gaining strategic importance

-          New tasks, responsibilities and thus roles are emerging (Chief digital officer, social media strategist, Content strategist, Community Manager, Data analyst)

-          Form a multi-departmental Social Media Committee to bridge silos and accelerate integration

-          Each brand should be managed by a brand team or business units and cover/ manage all traditional, digital and social responsibilities.

-          The individual brands may be managed centrally through corporate hierarchy or organized around a Center of Excellence that supports and coaches each brand, but leaves them mostly room for self-management and innovation.

-          For each brand involve Agency and Technology partners, brand team and run pilots.

Suggested measurements and KPIs

-          Brand advocacy: Loyalty (members re/share), brand mentions,…

-          Dialog: Share of Voice, Engagement Duration,…

-          Company support: Resolution rate and time,…

-          Innovation: Capture trends, generate innovation,…

-          Share of voice: own brand mention divided by total mentions (own brand and competitors’)

New rules for engaging on the Web

-          Monitor, listen, discover and learn

-          Solicit and gather feedback

-          Participate

-          Share (company perspective,

-          Actively involve audience, co-create

-          DO NOT push information, sell or manipulate

This article has incorporated thoughts and expertise of Edelman Consulting, the world leading Public relations firm. Special thanks for their insights and best practices.

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To share your own thoughts or other best practices about this topic, please email me directly to alexwsteinberg (@) gmail.com.

Alternatively, you also may connect with me and become part of my professional network of Business, Digital, Technology & Sustainability experts at

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Keys to building your digital commerce platform right

Building effective commerce platforms are important to meet the sophisticated needs in the digital age. The undertaking is very complex as it requires work on the strategic, tactical and operational level. Looking only at technology is a frequent shortcut to failure.
Every larger company should consider working with a service provider that can ideally address all aspects of this complex undertaking.
Based on previous projects, I provide you with a check list of key areas and recommendations.

Vision, strategy and business model
Your service provider (SP) should be able to help you develop/ refine your digital vision, strategy and business model. Your SP should be able to help you build a roadmap for transforming your organization.

Management, business and technology consulting
Your SP should not only speak tech-language, but truly understand your business needs from top to bottom. Throwing technology at problems, before clarifying/ solving the business side, often only creates more problems.
The SP should provide true vertical domain knowledge, including customer behavior & 360 degree view, Omni-channel objectives, partner models, inventory, pricing and sales.

Operations
Many areas are obvious candidates for outsourcing. Your SP should be able to take you through various options such as hosted, managed services, performance based pricing models, staff outsourcing, etc.
As requested, the SP should be able to provide commerce infrastructure and operations services (advanced automated site testing, performance management, security testing on cloud platforms)

Systems
Often upgrades to ERP and order management systems are necessary. The SP needs to be able to integrate disparate internal client systems (legacy, home grown ecommerce systems, etc.) and advise on design and architecture.

Technology
Ability to implement the technology flawlessly has become a basic requirement. The SP need to implement a solid commerce technology infrastructure able to meet the expected demands in the future. It involves upgrading and optimizing existing sites and integrating diverse technology programs to enable a comprehensive digital experience. As needed ecommerce, call-center, in-store and other areas need to be fully brought together; applications, mobility wisely integrated.
Big Data & Analytics increasingly drive the marketing of the digital age. XaaS and Cloud enable faster, better and more efficient business and operations. The SP needs to understand these areas and incorporate those effectively into the overall solution.
The SP should offer accelerators and own of the shelf software and solutions to minimize time/ cost to market and maximize value of the new commerce applications. Further the SP must be able to provide solid post-implementation support.

Organizational alignment and Program Management
Markets, Customers and Competition are rapidly evolving. Realignment of the organizational structures, roles, processes, policies, procedures and metrics is unavoidable. The SP should provide guidance in organizational design, transformation & change management. Solid Program management and project execution should support all efforts.

Innovation and agility
The SP should be able to drive innovation and offer best practices from across the industry; leverage insight and solutions from its own innovation labs.
The SP should practice agile methodology and should drive agility throughout the organization.

Price/ Costs
Be aware that the price quoted is not the total cost! Some service providers may be considerable cheaper, but also come with substantial burden on the client organization in terms of increased management time and other overhead. The biggest – often unaccounted - expense – is that of missed revenue and business opportunity.

Engagement
Last but not least the SP should really support a collaborative arrangement and offer various pricing and operating models in line with the client’s needs and performance metrics.

Finding the right Service Provider
Not all Service providers (SP) obviously have breadth and depth of experience to provide the mentioned necessary service. Nevertheless, a good number of companies, also called Global Commerce Service Providers, are able to address most of those needs and provide full client solutions.

Accenture Digital, Sapient Nitro, Deloitte Digital, Razorfish Global, Cognizant and IBM GBS are among the leaders of GCS Providers. Strong contenders are Tata Consulting Services, Infosys, HCL, Wipro and others.

Finding and selecting the right Service Provider for your company is both a science and an art. This guide has given you some key pointers. For questions and thoughts, please let me know.
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To share your own thoughts or other best practices about this topic, please email me directly to alexwsteinberg (@) gmail.com.

Alternatively, you also may connect with me and become part of my professional network of Business, Digital, Technology & Sustainability experts at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwsteinberg   or
Xing at https://www.xing.com/profile/Alex_Steinberg   or
Google+ at  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexWSteinberg/posts