Adam and Eve and that Darned Apple!

Sadly the world is not the Garden of Eden.  There are a lot of good things in the world but there are also bad things.  Human behaviour shows both sides.  Do we know the difference between right and wrong? Why are we surrounded by a quagmire of social, ethical and legal issues on a daily basis?

So, has this quagmire been avoided in the digital age? Alas not, with all our advances in social technologies, we still sadly have the negative side, like that rotten apple has spoiled the barrel of apples in the digital age. Some of the social technology escapades are just simple blunders and can be laughed at but there is a deep dark seedy side that can be seen with people’s use of social technologies and social media.  What we have in the physical life, even though we may choose to ignore it, also exists into the virtual world – from cyberbullying to sexual predators.

Can there be policing of the internet and social media? In Australia, The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is a government regulatory body whose role is to regulate the internet.  But can anybody really do this task, as it is both a global and a personal problem at an ethical and legal level?  They highlight some of the illegal social networking activities that need to be avoided by both organisations and people in general.  But Richard Bean, the deputy chairman of ACMA, admits in the article which discusses whether social media can be effectively regulated, that the authority has ''few formal powers in relation to the online world'' and those that exist relate primarily to illegal content, such as images of child abuse.  David Rolph, a media law specialist at the University of Sydney, in the same article explains that ''If you regulate for specific technologies, different ones will proliferate and your technologically specific policy or legislation will be useless.

So where does this leave us, as both companies and employees are making mistakes? Forbes talks about 5 deadly sins that companies need to avoid with social technologies.  What does this misuse of social technologies mean for organisations and employees?  The rise of e-misconduct in the workplace is rampant and one such case is that of Linfox and Stutsel.

The Case ….

Linfox is an Australian logistics and supply chain organisation which was established in 1956.  It is the largest privately owned supply chain company in Asia Pacific that employs over 23,000 in 10 countries. Linfox specialises in complex supply chain design, IT systems integration, distributed operations, linehaul, freight forwarding and warehouse management.

Strutsel, an employee of Linfox as a truck driver from 1989 to 2011, posted on Facebook comments about two of his managers.  The comments were deemed as racially derogatory, sexually harassing and threatening violence.  His employment was terminated.  Strustel lodged an unfair dismissal claim with Fair Work Australia.  

Linfox did not have any social media policy in place to deal with these issues. The Commissioner of the case emphasised the importance of such a policy. Linfox could not defend itself.  Strustel was awarded the case and Linfox had to reinstate him, including payments of lost wages as compensation.

Risks Vs Benefits of Enterprise 2.0

Do the risks outweigh the benefits of social technologies? Dawson (2009) looks at the key risks and concerns associated with Enterprise 2.0:

Some of these came true for Linfox, who had a loss of control of information with the negative comments on their workers. Through inappropriate staff behaviour their reputation was muddied and with the publication of the case and the prominence that it got as they had to reinstate the employee, tarnished it even more.

The legal risks of social networking for business can be categorises into internal and external risk for an organisation. These risks are -

• Confidential information
• Wrongful dismissal 
• Statutory risks - Trademark infringement, copyright, privacy, discrimination, misleading and deceptive conduct, defamation and negligent misstatements
• Occupation and organisation specific risks
• Reputation risk

Linfox legally were held for wrongful dismissal but were they are also breaking the statutory risks for discrimination and defamation of the two real victims in this case?

Will a SMP solve the Problem?

So what about Social Media Policies (SMP)? Can rules and policies be written in stone like The Ten Commandments? Do they mean anything and are they adhered to? Dundas Lawyers discuss whether organisations need social media policies? And Paul O’Halloran of Rigby Cooke Lawyers writes about what an SMP needs to contain to be legally defensible.

Strangely enough there was another case involving Linfox but this time Linfox proved the value of workplace social media policies. The case concerned a Mr Pearson who refused to sign the company’s social media policy as he said it was infringing on his freedom of speech outside work. The company dismissed him and he brought an unfair dismissal claim against them. This case shows that the boundaries are blurred with the use of social media in a person’s work and private life. The ruling on this case was in favour of the company as their social media policy applied to inside and outside the workplace and Mr Pearson lost his case.

There needs to be a balance between rules and technology advancement that are empowering users as the McKinsey Global Institute 2012 - The Social Economy report (p.119) discusses “the implications of social technologies and that policy makers will need to find ways to protect the rights of individuals, groups and organisations in ways that do not undermine the essential strengths of social technologies“.

Are our Ethics being attacked by a Serpent?

With creating a SMP, ethics need to be considered from both a personal and corporate viewpoint.  Rogerson and Fidler's 8 Ethical Principles

• Honour
• Honest Bias
• Professional Adequacy
• Due Care
• Fairness
• Consideration of Social Cost
• Effective and Efficient Action

need to be included in these polices and they should be done in conjunction with the employer and the employee in order to meet the ethical challenges of social media.  Effective communication and training on these policies with the monitoring of social technologies are needed to ensure compliance and understanding.

The cog of our responsibilities are changing and increasing from being just a citizen to a corporate citizen working for enterprises and increasingly becoming that digital corporate citizen as social technologies usage increases in both our work and personal lives.

References

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0.

                San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from                     
                 https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics.

$$$$ Show Me the Money $$$$$

It all comes down to money, dollars and cents. Money makes the world go around. If companies are to stay in business - debit/credit, balance sheet, profit and loss, cash flow, expenses and revenues are their concerns, to create that profit which will decide whether they can keep their business afloat. So why then are companies spending their money on social technologies? It has to be more than a fad or a whim for both large and small enterprises to be making these investments. Are the benefits tangible or are they intangible? And can these intangibles be measured? What is the return of investment (ROI) for the social technologies that they are implementing?  

Case Study Overview

In this blog, a case study will be examined to understand how to analyse the ROI in social technologies for an Enterprise 2.0 project. Newman, Thomas & Ebrary (2009, p. 22) discuss how this ROI can be measured through opportunity costs by looking at existing processes; analysing time spend by employees communicating through emails, phones, and meetings; improving customer interactions and creating better customer service to see how Enterprise 2.0 can improve the processes and bring change to the business operational model, all to improve their bottom line financially.

The case used is Forrester’s Total Economic Impact of IBM Social Collaboration Tools.  IBM commissioned Forrester, an independent company which provides advice on technology research and analysis, “to examine the total economic impact enterprises may realize by deploying IBM Social Collaboration tools”. The organisation used for this analysis is a manufacturing company.

Social technologies have begun to be recognised for more than business-to-consumer interactions for marketing and communications.  This social business is in fact related to their business profits. As maturity grows in this area, as shown by Deloitte & MIT Sloan Management Review. (2014). Moving Beyond Marketing: Generating Social Business Value Across the Enterprise, social business can bring value to organisations. The below graph shows how value can be realised by companies with the maturity of social technologies:

Source: Deloitte & MIT Sloan Management Review. (2014)

The Company

The case study describes the unnamed company as a “large, global manufacturing company which employs 50,000 employees with a complex product set consisting of tens of thousands of product families”. McKinsey Global Institute 2012 shows how social technologies can add value to this industry -

Source: McKinsey Global Institute 2012

The manufacturing company hopes to address issues by implementing IBM’s Social Collaboration tools.  Some key decisions and points which will support this project are:

• The company needs to modernise the way they collaborate and the latest Web 2.0 social technologies are required
• Support has been gained from senior management 
• A vendor has been selected for what the company feels will offer them a better integration solution with less administration overhead
• With the company’s recent growth in emerging markets, better global collaboration is required and an associated global rollout
• Two specific business areas, Product Research & Development (R&D) and Sales, are selected for initial implementation as quick wins would be realised from these areas.  A collaborative platform will assist both these distributed areas.  

The Enterprise 2.0 Project

IBM’s Social Collaboration tools are a range of collaborative enterprise solutions such as “blogs, wikis, bookmarking, communities, team spaces, content management tools, enterprise IM, online meetings, audio and video chat, email, calendaring, and other collaborative applications”. These are provided through their products IBM Connections, IBM Connections Suite, IBM Notes and Domino and IBM Sametime.

The Benefits

The company’s potential benefits with implementing IBM’s Social Collaboration tools are:

• Increased revenues from new product ideas facilitated by collaboration tools that result in more new products brought to market
• Faster time-to-market of products, resulting in faster accrual of revenue
• Staff productivity gains through faster access to expertise and information regardless of location (Source: Forrester (2010)).

The initial implementation and analysis is based on two of the company’s major areas and are used to uncover how this Enterprise 2.0 project can impact these areas:

New Product Development Process

• Increase the number of ideas generated
• Increase in collaboration across the distributed areas of the company and in a more efficient manner with the ‘wisdom of the crowd'
• Increase in innovation
• Increase marketable products and time to market
• Increase in sharing of information and best practices
• Increase in revenue

The expected benefits from this are

o  Incremental revenue for new products

o   Improved time-to-market

Sales Process New Opportunities

• Sales community collaboration within sales teams and across the company
• Increase in competency and capability of the product lines which facilitates an increase in sales
• Greater and easier technical assistance available to the sales teams from a larger pool of intellect to draw on
• Increase in revenue

The expected benefits from this are

o   Incremental revenue in sales

o   Staff productivity savings

With each of these identified benefits, the report shows the figures as to how these benefits can be calculated for revenues - new products $8,400,000, improved time-to-market $672,000, incremental sales $600,000 and productivity savings of $884,813.

The Costs

Costs are tangible and can be easily calculated. The costs for the project have been broken down and show both the capital (hardware and software licenses) and the operational (ongoing maintenance and support) costs with the internal (project implementation, communication plan) and external (professional services) resources required to implement the project.  A total cost figure is not calculated.

The Outcomes

The benefits realised for this company are:

• As Aral, Brynjolfsson, & Van Alstyne (2012) discuss the ability of a network to grow by its own accord which is not possible without social networking tools, as the information tends to be siloed and relationships are harder to build. This project proves this point as the adoption of tools grew virally rather than through a management directive which created a better uptake and collaboration
• The company’s business processes have started to change and improve as the collaboration tools become embedded. No restrictions are being placed on the collaboration and it is growing organically and achieving positive results
• Monitoring of the site provided statistics such as “viewed by 7,500 unique visitors with 14,000 visits per day and 75,000 page views per day. More than 12,000 photos have been uploaded”
• Aral, Brynjolfsson, & Van Alstyne (2012) discuss about employees connecting, their network diversity and how this returns payback through the top performers work being through shared workspaces which are searchable and readily available to all staff. This promotes increased productivity, value creation and innovation. The above statistics prove that this has started to happen
• Creation and searching of blogs and communities for information was improved with expertise knowledge and findability
• With the beginnings of a rich data repository, it now allows for the sharing of information within teams and across the company globally
• Training impact and costs were low as the tools are intuitive. Little impact on helpdesk resources noticed

The ROI Approach

The ROI approach used and explained the benefits and associated costs for the implementation of this project. The intangible benefits were translated to dollars and cents.  Timeframes on the goals were not given and weakened the business case.  The principal problem with the ROI approach is that does not actually calculate the ROI. Why is it unclear? A total cost figure is not calculated nor are the benefits fully fleshed out so that an ROI can be simply calculated. “The return on investment will only grow in the years to come” Forrester (2010, p.9) is a disappointing statement as the report done by Forrester fails to provide the ROI number for this business case and weakens the belief that social technologies are indeed valuable and are worth companies’ investment and time into it.

Is the simple formula for ROI that hard to calculate?

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) X 100

                    Cost of Investment

References

Aral, S., Brynjolfsson, E., & Van Alstyne, M. (2012). Information, technology, and information  

     worker productivity. Information Systems Research, 23(3-part-2), 849     

     -867. doi:10.1287/isre.1110.0408

Deloitte & MIT Sloan Management Review. (2014). Moving Beyond Marketing: Generating Social
     Business Value Across the Enterprise.

Forrester (2010). Total Economic Impact of IBM Social Collaboration Tools

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

Newman, A., Thomas, J., & Ebrary. (2009). Enterprise 2.0 implementation. New York: McGraw-

     Hill.

Are You Feeling Fruity?

Boost Juice is an Australian retail company which specialises in healthy fruit juices.  Boost Juice was founded in 2000 by founder Janine Allis with co-founder Jeff Allis in Melbourne.  There was a gap in the drinks market for a healthy alternative to fizzy drinks which Janine filled remarkable well and has created a thriving business from this original concept where her friends invested $250,000 in her plans. Since then, her business has grown from strength to strength with expansion of juice bars across the continents with about 300 stores operating worldwide. Boost Juices also extended its product line with the introduction of smoothies, yoghurts, fruit and muesli bars.

Janine is considered a role model, not just for woman in business, through having a business model that has proven successful here in Australian and also in the international marketplace. She won numerous awards over the past 14 years such as ARA Retailer of the year 2007, AMEX Franchisor of the Year in 2005, Telstra’s Australian Business Woman of the Year 2004 and her most recent feather in her cap is achieving 24th place in BRW Rich Women 2014 list. 

With the success of the juice bars, she created a parent company called Retail Zoo and expanded her business into different sectors such as Mexican Salsa fast food and coffee shops with Cibo Espresso.  In 2010, The Riverside Company, a US based firm acquired 65% stake in the group.  She has been in the media limelight recently as questions arose as to her commitment to remain with her business.  She discusses with the Australian Financial Review (AFR) of how she won’t sell her business but that has all changed in the last couple of months as the AFR article explains how Bain Capital partners with Janine Allis to buy Boost Juice, for a tidy sum which was worth the original investment 14 years ago. 

Go Bananas with Social Technologies!

Janine Allis can be quoted from her self-published book, A Bit about Boost 2011 on their website with “We are on the forefront of the ‘social media’ and industry leading in the IT sector in Retailing”.  From the McKinsey Global Institute 2012, we can see that the retail sector is one of the larger players in the aspect of adopting social technologies – 

Sourced from McKinsey Global Institute 2012

So is the proof in the zest or the fruit in the juice? How has Boost Juice demonstrated this adoption and how has this been used to the company’s advantage?

One of key factors in Boost Juice’s business model is the market segment that Janine has positioned Boost Juice for, which is young people under 25.  She utilises unique marketing campaigns by using both traditional, television and radio, and the latest modern campaign developments which she has kept abreast of over the past 14 years and continually moved with the trends rather than becoming a ‘rotten fruit’.

What did aiming for this market segment bring? A great channel for her marketing strategies which includes the use of social media technologies which has been central to its success.  She has positioned herself in the market place, to target an audience of young 25 year olds who are social media savvy in which she has built loyal customer relationships, and thereby increasing Boost Juice’s customer base and increasing the bottom line sales.

Boost Juice has the usual ‘fruit bowl mix’ of social media tools with their main website supported by Boost Juice Facebook, Boost Juice Oz Twitter, Boost Juice Instagram which have 255,556 likes, 4977 followers, 15174 followers respectively.  They also have a BoostAustralia YouTube channel. Changes have been adopted even down to the paper advertisement poster whose day has come to an end with the advances in digital signage that they have implemented storewide.

Their latest foray into capturing customers is by creating the Boost Juice Apple application and the equivalent android application to replace plastic loyalty cards for their Boost Juice Vibe loyalty program.  Brand loyalty is a strong strategy of Boost Juice and they are making their products more freely available to customers through smart devices.  But these applications are more than just a digital loyalty card and allow for customer orders and payments.  The product is sold before the customer even enters the shop door!  These applications will give instant sales and customer data to the company about customer demand which will help in demand forecasting, by realising the trends and assist them in their sales and operations with the planning of product supplies and people management.

Under the fruit skin …

Boost Juice’s main website is the hub of their internal activities and functions, it shows the company’s technologies which are used by employees for store management, and communications from the shop assistant to the franchisee. Boost Juice is using technologies, including social media, to provide enterprise wide business application support by improving collaboration and communication across the Boost Juice community.  

Comparing Apples and Oranges?

What value does social technologies bring to Boost Juice as an organisation?  McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report breaks down the 10 value levers across the organisational functions:

10 Value Levers sourced from McKinsey Global Institute 2012

From these levers, Boost Juice appears to utilising several of them but this article will concentrate on the one that they use to their best advantage which is marketing and sales and is used to-

• Derive customer insights
• Use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction
• Generate and foster sales leads

From the use of their social media tools, they have availed of customer insights through customer interaction and feedback via forums such as Facebook and Twitter. Boost Juice has listened to what their customers want and applied this to their stores and franchises which has brought them a huge success.  They have used these insights for their product development as they have expanded their product line to include smoothies, fruit, etc and created marketing campaigns that have captured their customers’ attention such as ‘What’s Ya Name Game’ which has led to an increase in their customer base and their sales. 

Boost Juice utilise their communication channels with social media to its highest value and most recently with the innovative development of their smart device applications which not alone creates another communication channel but can also generates and fosters sales leads. As McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report has predicted that “social technologies will also take an increasing role at the point of purchase in stores” (McKinsey, 2012, p.67, para 3), this has indeed happened for Boost Juice with the launch of their smart device applications.  This also compliments and enriches their current customer dataset which can be analysed for further customer insights.

So, when comparing apples with apples, and oranges with oranges, Boost Juice is a great success story in the retail sector. Its underlying use of social technologies have brought this success about.