BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Month: November 2011 (Page 2 of 3)

SoMo: Leading Black Friday (or Thursday!) #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

From our latest IBM Retail study, this Black Friday will be very SoMo focused!

Starting on Black Friday (or Thursday), an unprecedented 15 percent of people in the U.S. will log onto a retailer’s web site through a mobile device. 

IBM reports that in October nearly 11 percent of people used a mobile device to log onto a retailer’s site, up from 4.2 percent in October 2010. Additionally, mobile sales continue to increase, reaching a high of 9.6 percent in October 2011, up from 3.4 percent in October 2010.

One of the new trends expected to take place is among Android users. And for the first time, the growing number of Android users will demonstrate similar levels of mobile shopping as iPhone users. These October 2011 numbers show iPhone accounting for 4 percent of mobile traffic and Android 3.5 percent. The iPad will also play a big role in holiday shopping this season. In October, iPad conversion rates reached 6.8 percent as compared to the overall mobile device conversion rate of 3.6 percent.

IBM also says that mobile shoppers will display a laser focus on buying this season that surpasses that of other online shoppers with a 44.2 percent bounce rate on mobile devices versus online shopping rates of 37.3 percent.

Social influence, mainly from Facebook, will also play an increased role in the buying process this holiday season. According to October conversion rates, 9.2 percent of consumers that visited a retail site from a social media site made a purchase. This compares to 5.5 percent of all direct online shopping last year.

All signs point to this holiday season being a big one for SoMo!!!

 

Hot off the presses – New IBM Study on SoMo! Social Mobile! #mobile #e20conf #ibmsocialbiz

The 2011 Tech Trends Report surveyed more than 4,000 Information Technology (IT) professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries who provided their views on future IT trends. The results also show a growing need for technical skills in the areas of business analytics, social business, mobile computing, open source technologies and cloud computing. Read the report at:  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport, share your opinions at #TechTrends and see what IBM experts are saying about the findings at: www.youtube.com/IBMEcosystem

The world has gone mobile and that means big opportunities for developers, business partners and entrepreneurs.

· Everyone’s doing it: Three of four survey respondents are currently working in mobile computing

· Its an App World: The top focus areas for mobile are enterprise app development, Industry specific apps and extending mobile to core applications

· Openness is key: The openness and ease of development make Android the platform of choice for developers (70%) vs iOS (49%)

· Region differences: The US and Russia are building infrastructure while India and China are building applications

SoLoMo: Social and Mobile 101

Social, Local and Mobile go together.  SoLoMo — it’s the buzzword du jour meaning “Social, Local and Mobile”  These days, everybody is talking about social features, local business (i.e. coupons) and mobile applications.

And at IBM, we help our clients understand how the “SoLoMo” sector can be applied to business.

In the video, I call out what IBM calls Social Business. A Social Business does more than use Twitter and put up a Facebook Fan page. A Social Business means that every department, from HR to marketing to product development to customer service to sales, uses social media the way it uses any other tool and channel to do its job.

A social business is an organization that uses social networking tools and mobile devices fluently to communicate with people inside and outside the company. It’s a strategic approach to shaping a business culture. Becoming a Social Business can help an organization deepen customer relationships, generate new ideas faster, identify expertise and enable a more effective workforce.

Social networking has had a profound effect on society, couple this with the explosion of mobile devices and new Cloud delivery models, a perfect storm of industry trends is merging that makes this the right time to move social from the hands of teens to business.

Be a part of the SoLoMo discussion and join us on Twitter using hashtag #IBMsocialbiz

Proof? 

  • 68% of social networking users do so on a mobile device
  • More than a quarter of all US adults (28%) use mobile or social location-based services of some kind (source: Pew Research Center)

Social Business Progress – From New McKinsey Report! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

I love the McKinsey reports on the Business Value of Social.  

The latest report was just published in October 2011.   The heaviest users of Social enjoy the benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing.  These benefits often have a measureable effect on their businesses.

Some of the cool experiences and facts that you could use with your company include:

Overall Usage:

  • The percentage of companies using social networking was 40 percent and using blogs was 38 percent.
  • Those who leverage Social internally, say that at least 51 percent of their employees use it. 
  • Nearly two-thirds of respondents at companies using Social say they will increase future investments compared with just over half in 2009. The healthy spending plans during both of these difficult years underscore the value companies expect to gain.

Management System:

  • The 2011 survey shows that the IT department is most likely to oversee internal Web initiatives (61 percent of respondents).
  • For customer-facing initiatives, 74 percent of respondents say that oversight falls to the marketing department.
  • For socially enabling external suppliers and partners, roughly equal numbers of respondents cite the IT, marketing, and business-development functions.
  • Financing comes from a variety of places, including the IT function, central corporate sources, and discretionary funds at the business unit level.

Results:

  • 64% percent of those using Social Internally derive benefit deploying Internally
  • 55% percent of those using Social Externally with their clients derive benefit deploying Externally.
  • 59% percent of those using Social with their partners derive benefits
  • About 50% of the internally networked organizations reported that Social is integrated into their workflow, compared to 21% of the developing organizations.
  • 3% of companies are using Web 2.0 in revolutionary ways. This elite group of organizations derives very high levels of benefits from Social’s widespread use, involving employees, customers, and business partners,

Toshiba uses Social Business for Ideation / Collective Intelligence! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

My team is in Japan and discover a big AHA moment for Toshiba!

In August, Toshiba’s research and development division decided to use IBM Connections for an internal jam to prepare for their technology preview.  The jam was conducted during a 4 day time span in early October and was deemed a success as they had roughly 400 participants across R&D, Engineering Planning, Sales, Marketing, Personnel, and other divisions.   This maxed out the number of people as they had only wanted 400 .. WOW!

Toshiba leveraged a focus on Communities. They had a main jam Community to guide the discussion rules and provide information by using wiki, files and bookmarks. The bulk of the content was contained in 10 sub communities for discussion around different themes primarily using forums and the ideation blog. Each sub community had a facilitator and leader. Prior to launching the jam, Toshiba used blogs, board updates, email and other collaboration tools to market and announce the internal jam.

The actual content of the jam is confidential to Toshiba, but here are some interesting facts from their jam.

  • Jam produced over 900 pieces of content
  • 100% of the survey participants think they should hold a jam again in the future
  • 88% of the survey participates found it successful

This Toshiba example, is indictative of using Social for Ideation or Innovation.  McKinsey says that on average a company using Social for Ideation improvements see a 20% success rate improvement in new product, offerings, or program introductions!  

What’s your story!

Social Business Crowdsourcing Research – Example Altimeter Group

This is our last of this week’s focus on Crowdsourcing.  Market Research 2.0 will be done with Social. 

Here is a great example.  Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership and Groundswell, is using information for her next piece of research.

To whet your appetite, here are some early findings so far from her Crowdsourced research:

  • Creating a “watercooler” is still the most common reason for deploying — but these suffer because of lack of adoption and more importantly, purpose.
  • Companies are beginning to deploy enterprise social networks with specific business goals in mind, ranging from optimizing a business process like sales to supporting a change in strategic direction.
  • Metrics, however, are lacking. Most deployment focus on engagement metrics around adoption and usage, rather than tying efforts to business goals.
  • Some larger organizations are linking adoption and use of enterprise social networks to employee retention — engaged employees tend to be happy employees.

Take the survey!  It takes only a few minutes!  And experience crowdsourcing!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/36FZHVQ

Women professsionals need sponsors – Are you a dad or mom? Read this for your daughters – #witi #nafe #socbiz #ibm #ibmpartners

Yesterday I was invited to share Social Business for the NAFE group, the group of Female exeuctives dedicated to assisting women in their search for professional growth.

While waiting to present, they shared some facts that I found appalling.  They come from a Catalyst study:

  • Women seem to be paid for proven performance—women who changed jobs two or more times post-MBA earned $53,472 less than women who rose through the ranks at their first job.
  • In contrast, men seem to be paid for potential—men who had moved on from their first post-MBA job earned $13,743 more than those who stayed with their first employer.
  • Across all career profiles, men were more likely to reach senior executive/CEO positions than women; in the most proactive category, 21% of men advanced to leadership compared with 11% of women.

The working session then focused on these women helping to set up “Sponsorship” focus vs mentoring.  The full study showed that woman do have mentors, but not sponsors.   People willing to stand up for them, and push them and let them learn in new roles.  Men tend to get these “potential” promotions based on their sponsors.  

The same strategies don’t work equally well for men and women. Women must adopt strategies different from their male colleagues’ to advance their careers. When women were proactive in making their achievements known, they advanced further, increased their compensation growth, and were more satisfied with their careers. They also advanced further when they proactively networked with influential others. Making their achievements known did not impact men’s careers. Rather, gaining access to influential others also helped men advance, and indicating a willingness to work long hours and conducting external scans for other opportunities helped men increase their salaries.

Hope this helps.  As a mom and a professional, it helps me doubly. I’d love your thoughts.

Social Business Crowdsourcing – How do you select your crowd? #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz

Crowdsourcing is a top value of Social Business.   Crowdsourcing is the act of soliciting input (knowledge, insight, ideas and other forms of social capital) from a widespread, diverse population in order to produce an optimal solution, product or service. Often either monetary or non-monetary incentives are provided as motivation.

How do you select your crowd for this innovation?

Some suggestions!

  1. Decide if you want an open “crowd” — i.e.  everyone and anyone, or an invited “crowd” based on a set of criteria.
  2. Where do you find that crowd?   Do they hang out on LinkedIn? Facebook? In a particular communtiy?
  3. How do you reward them to come to your “crowdsouricing party?”
  4. Articulate your goal and process clearly so that the right people stay.  For instance, Community to Innovate 2015 Technology Trends.   We will start brainstorming in community y, for 3 days with votes deciding the winning ideas.
  5. Make sure it matters enough to your team — SR team as well — to participate with your Crowd!

And always thank the Crowd!!!!

  1. And always remember to say Thank you!

 

 

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