Social Media for the Enterprise - A Business Case

[Social Media for the Enterprise:] [A Business Case] A social business is a connected business, means they are connected with their employees, their customers, their partners, and even sometimes, their competitors. A connected business, a social business, is one that can quickly adapt to their ecosystem. When it comes to social media maturity there is a bell-shaped curve when we see the adoption. And while they are successful in marketing and customer support there are other departments that need to adopt these. In particular product innovation, supply chain, working with our partners. These are really untapped area that companies need to continue to invest in. The really interesting thing about social is the terms B2B and B2C really don't matter as much. It's around P2P, people to people. The way that people act in a B2B environment it's very similar to how you might see them in Facebook. getting to know somebody they like, building relationships with them and then having meaningful conversations. Social media has been the fastest adopted media in the human history. There is nothing that actually has been adopted faster than that. And so to a certain extend businesses are just trying to catch up. We think we're very early in the S-curve of adoption and especially capturing value from social. So all organizations have a lot farther to go, particularly large organizations, in terms of the adoption of these technologies, but especially the value that they can capture from these technologies. Some of the things that we've discovered that technology allows businesses to do is really to break down some of those internal barriers. Businesses are often organized in silos that don't communicate well with each other. One of the things that technology allows you to do is for employees to be able to communicate across organizational boundaries which they previously wouldn't be able to. You know, if there is a way to inspire people partly through their use of technology so in fact that they have more fun at work while they are doing good things I think that's a great thing. ***'s mission is to be the most irresistible brand in the world and social media is a way of connecting with as many people as possible. From Richard Branson down everybody at *** is interested in social media and loves social media. Richard tweets and blogs 24/7 every day and so it's kind of knitted into the fabric of the whole company now. At *** everybody owns social media. It's important that everybody feels that they can be just as much a part of what we're doing- from Richard Branson to somebody who is starting at *** on day one. And it's also about finding those wonderful stories, the one off moments that can only come through social media. It's always hard to tell what it's gonna look like in 5 years time because social media moves so quickly, but we want to be at the forefront of everything that's happening and, you know, make sure that we're picking up on new innovations and make sure that we stay ahead of the game. Social media is such a terrific way to connect with our customers that I would never miss out. I think we're absolutely at the beginning still. I think we have-- over the next couple of years we'll see the effect of it. And we're now just starting to see small, medium, and enterprised businesses adopting it, and figuring out models that they are going to use for social. They are also, you know, blazing the trails and creating best practices. Brands like Pepsi, ***, NHL, American Express all are doing amazing things in social. They are experimenting and they are creating thought leadership that ultimately will be adopted by other brands that start to move into this space. The difference between social-- online and offline--is definitely there but I think it can also augment and accelerate offline connectivity. I think it's core to our DNA. I mean we are social creatures and this is an extension of our social beings, and allows us to connect better, more frequently and often in a happier way. [Engagement] [Collaboration] [Analytics] [Security]