Category: SBF13

THINK THE CHANGE
If today’s company structures are often obstacles to smarter, more collaborative organizations, only a systemic perspective to social business transformation can succeed. How should we think and understand the business change in a systemic approach?

The key to any Social Business strategy is understanding how it will align with core business objectives and organizational goals.  You also need to understand your current culture and any specific desired or required shifts to enable a social workforce, social partnerships, or social customer engagement.  Gaining trust is another critical component of social transformation, which is closely tied to the need for transparency in a social business.  Engaging participants through exceptional experiences, gamification, and mobile increases their participation in the transformation; and networking social capabilities into existing core business processes and business systems further increases both the use of social and the key linkages back to fundamental business goals.  A successful program also needs to anticipate and mitigate potential risks and regulatory requirements, and analytics will be required for monitoring the social transformation as well as the associated business benefits as they are realized.

ACT ON THE CHANGE
How do we concretely manage a transformative experience that is able to lead companies from their current limits to fully embracing social? How can we execute a disruptive business strategy that can benefit the organization in the near future?

Your Social Business strategy will determine whether your start internally or externally, and will ideally identify specific roles or business activities that will quickly generate demonstrated value.

Based on your understanding of your unique culture, draw from our experiences with early adopters to increase the pace of adoption across the enterprise.  At different times in your transformation,  some of these will be particularly valuable, and they can provide support for programs as they are just beginning or once they have matured.  We also host an Adoption Council who’s members provide peer-to-peer guidance from their prior experiences with social.

• Create a New Way of Working — Integrate into Processes, Customize the Experience, Drive Culture with Governance, Hire Social Job Roles
• Launch with Top and Groundswell — Leaders Show the Way, Evangelize and Enable
• Engage to Fit into Work Style and Culture — Motivate and Engage, Reverse Mentor Leaders, Raise an Internal Brand Army, Show Metrics and Value

EVALUATE THE CHANGE
The social business process has its  measures and KPIs, but the idea of ROI as a silver bullet often underestimates the complexity of evaluating the impact of innovation. How do we assess and prove the value of the social business transformation?

While there are many KPIs that are critical to maintaining the health of a social program and individual communities, the ROI of social needs to derive from core business metrics.  With a properly structured Social Business strategy, clear alignment to revenues and expenses should be identified and subsequently monitored.  You also have the opportunity to leverage social business patterns captured from the experiences of early adopters in social.  The first six patterns provide top ROI, touch 70% of our clients, and show the value of social without the “S” word.  IBM’s proprietary research along with leading management consultancies including McKinsey have also provided support for substantiating the value of social business transformation.

• Find Expertise
• Knowledge Sharing and Innovation
• External Customer Insights
• Recruiting and Onboarding
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Safety