The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail

The statistics from McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report are quite impressive on social technology usage …

•          1.5 billion Social Network (SN) users globally

•          80% of online users use SNs regularly

•          70% of companies are using Social Tech. (ST)

•          90% of companies who use ST report business benefits from use

But how do these translate when you start to analyse various companies?  Have they reached these statistics and what does it mean if they have?  Are they gaining any value and is there any benefits realisation happening?   Looking at the 10 value levers across the organisational functions, how are organisations using social technologies to bring value? 

10 Value Levers sourced from McKinsey Global Institute 2012

Have they tapped into the local and global markets to increase their market share? Is this not an objective of organisations and their shareholders?  The question that looms is, if not, why not? Is Enterprise 2.0 indeed the Holy Grail of organisations?

Survival of the Fittest
So why is Enterprise 2.0 so important in this day and age? It is the survival of the fittest in the corporate world.  Michael Porter’s work on business strategy is highly valuable in explaining why the use of social technologies in organisations is so important.  Today, Enterprise 2.0 is what will bring competitive advantages to companies by incorporating them into their organisation’s strategies.  These need to be part of the organisations’ value chain where they can realise the impact of Porter’s five forces and have the marketing positioning strategies in place to counter competition in the marketplace.

Does the Bubble Size Count?

For this blog I decided to concentrate on Australian, preferably Queensland companies.  I have not come across anything as spectacular as Colgate, Novartis or Goldcorp experiences.  I went to the sectors chart below to see which industry I would concentrate on.

I choose to look at the financial sectors and decided on Suncorp and Commonwealth Bank because ‘who does not have a bank account?’

The Elephant in the Room

From doing basic scans on these companies, I realised that if the bubbles are a reflection of their businesses’ GDP due to social technologies, they would be ‘shouting it from the rooftops’ but I do not see this happening for the organisations I looked at, specifically for the following levels :

• Marketing and sales
• derive customer insights
• use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction
• generate and foster sales leads
• social commerce
• Customer service
• provide customer care via social technologies

It is not a successful exercise… Yes, both companies have a digital footprint with blogs, Facebook pages, RSS feed, Pinterest, Twitter accounts but their digital presence appears to be very low.  There is poor traffic on their sites with blogs produced on a monthly cycle.  Their approach is very corporate and not spontaneous, the writings appear to be outsourced to professional writers. 

Marketing and sales seems to be both of their predominate reason for social technologies but how much sales do they have out of their efforts? I see no evidence of them using customer insights, or working collaboration with their customers.  They use the technologies to spam, sorry, to leverage the sales and marketing and social commerce for the self-promotion of their community activities but I think they have missed the point with Enterprise 2.0.   Both have a great customer base and should be taking advantage of it by getting instant, direct feedback and then acting on it.

What value do they bring to their customers – do they provide customer care through these technologies? CBA seems to be better at this and gives timely replies on queries and complaints whereas Suncorp just seems to ignore them.  Using social technologies for marketing communication/interaction, means to at least reply to them! One of the sites, reverts back to Enterprise 1.0 by sending the customer to a telephone number to call and a form to be submitted and ‘they will endeavour to make contact the next business day’!

I am only a ‘lurker’ and do not have a full understanding of how these companies work and how exactly they deal with their customers but their use of social technologies are not promoting them as helpful, open and transparent companies to do business with. Are the social technologies more destructive than constructive for them? Are social technologies the elephant in the room for these organisations?

  Casting the First Stone...

Am I free from sin? Can I afford to cast the first stone? I think not, as I admitted in Anne's Blog - Neophyte or Luddite. That was my personal experience but can organisations afford to let this happen to them.  I understand that companies are going through stages of acceptance, like any organism but Enterprise 2.0 is not new.  They have the advantage of having resources available to them – marketing departments, legal departments, IT departments, … but are they any further down the path of redemption than I.  Are they using Enterprise 2.0 for their competitive advantage?  Will they survive?

From my quick analysis on the financial sector my questions are - Are they walking the talk? Or are they just paying lip service to Enterprise 2.0?  Organisations need to take on board and understand the '6 Key Affordances' of social technologies as described by Bradley (2009) -

I believe that these companies need to review their strategies in line with their objectives and understand how Enterprise 2.0 can assist them in achieving their organisational goals. The CIO's article on "Enterprise 2.0 - What is it Good for?" maybe a good starting point for them.

If the companies adhered to the affordances, we the customers might receive a better, richer experience from our banks. And they would receive the value and benefits that they are missing out on.  They need to stop search for the mystical holy grail and acknowledge that elephant!

References:

McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies

Bradley, A. 2009. "The Six Core Principles of Social-Media-Based Collaboration" Gartner, Inc.