Get going, get social, practice social business

BANGALORE, INDIA: Change was said to be the new constant, but adoption is the newest. New trends in the technology arena as well as business can help organizations to keep pace with this change, only if they adapt to the new change.

Social Business, Cloud and Mobility are key enablers that can help an organization innovate, deliver promptly, understand and serve customers better and establish a more engaged and empowered workforce. And all of this can be made possible through Social Business. But first, we need to understand what a social business is all about.

A social business is an organization whose culture and systems encourage networks of people to create business value. It connects individuals, so they can rapidly share information, knowledge and ideas by having conversations and publishing informal content - just like Facebook or Twitter - analyze social content from multiple channels and sources and gain insights from both external and internal stakeholders.

Remember, the key is for them also to adopt to these new tools in order to connect with the socially savvy and transformed customers

Social Business presents a huge opportunity, for business leaders as it helps to transform their organization and key business processes and thereby fueling substantial value creation.

But the question is: how exactly are organizations transforming these processes and becoming social businesses? What best practices have emerged? Well, the answer lies in the Social Business Patterns. These patterns are best examples on how you cold have a classical used case to apply the technology.

Social business patterns

Social business perspectives and techniques give an organization, different opportunities to improve specific business processes and their execution through the application of Social Business Patterns. I will elaborate on the six Social Business Patterns that organizations can apply to quickly realize business results.

1. Finding expertise

It is challenging for most organizations to locate the best expertise needed to quickly resolve problems or address a business opportunity, as there are Silos at different stages. This takes a toll on the employee engagement, effectiveness, and productivity.

Overall, this leads to failure in doing swift business as well as lower satisfaction among existing customers. Social Business comes into picture and shows how relevant expertise can be captured, discovered and shared in support of both internally - and externally -facing business processes. It can

- discover hidden expertise across a company by using analytics and social interactions

- enable internal and external stakeholders communicate and collaborate with experts

- help the talent management to recognize and reward proactive employees for collaborating and solving challenges and retain talent within the organization thereby reducing attrition

- find out the stars on demand basis and leverage them for their and organizations success.

Organizations that have applied Social practices have observed that there are improvements in speed of accessing experts and increase in visibility of company's subject matter experts on its public website.

2. Gaining external customer insights

Social businesses can help organizations take advantage of market opportunities because they use analytics technologies to uncover insights about their customers. These insights can then be fed into internal social systems and processes, enabling employees to collaboratively respond to customers with appropriate solutions in a much efficient and prompt way.

Also, storing customer and transaction information within a consolidated data warehouse enables the organizations to look at the big picture as to which product offerings are successful and which are not. This will in turn help organizations better serve their customers, speed new revenue gains and cut cost out of the product and service development process.

As it's always said, be with customers to understand their needs. If the customers are starting to spend more time on Social networks, we need to keep learning from that and apply those to modify and fine tune our offerings.

3. Increasing knowledge sharing

Organizations using Social can create value by sharing knowledge across internal silos created by organizational structure, and traditional barriers between them and their partners or customers. You can share a story of your professional experience and what was your learning in a blog, it will help your ecosystem to learn from it. We have worked with organizations who have replaced their learning systems to compulsory story telling by senior management to their workforce.

Some of these customers are also integrating gamification elements to reward individuals who openly share their knowledge. The trick is to make people-based knowledge as accessible as document-based knowledge through social communication tools. And at a certain maturity level, everyone in the organization can share a story with the peer group to help learn. Social businesses can use social practices and capabilities to locate, share and use collective knowledge for competitive advantage in today's fast-paced environment.

IBM has a programme - Blue IQ - a program that helps IBMers adopt social business practices, including sharing knowledge. Since 2007, Blue IQ Ambassadors have volunteered their time and expertise to help their peers collaborate more successfully.

4. Improving recruiting and on-boarding

It is becoming imperative for organizations to identify, hire and retain the best available talent, in order to gain and maintain competitive advantage. I know of some CXO's who engage with a prospect employee, to be hired for a senior position for more than nine months "socially" to take the call.

As this engagement with the employee gives a number of insights which one cannot assimilate in the first meeting (where the prospect employee has come prepared for first impression).

Stats reveal that such assessments have ensured better selection and sustenance. Social organizations can meet those objectives by connecting communities and social networks that connect external candidates with HR staff and hiring managers, as well as new hires with direct supervisors, team members and other sources of expertise.

According to 2012 IBM's CEO Study, CEOs today are focused on three essentials for the business, one of which is empowering employees. The report also reveals that 65 percent of global companies are finding it difficult to identify employees with the required skill set! IBM uses LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to support its external-facing recruiting processes.

Potential candidates can be made aware of country- and role-specific positions for which IBM is hiring, as well as interact with IBM recruiters through these channels. Recruiters and hiring managers can learn about the candidate by conversing online with them and by visiting their social profiles on the Web.

5. Managing M&As

Organizations want to create significant value is through carefully considered mergers and acquisitions (M&A). However, failure rates on M&A activities are high for reasons such as difference in work culture of the new combined entity is neither paid attention to, nor are they clearly communicated.

But with Social, organizations can use social networking techniques and technologies to create and communicate a shared vision and improve M&A management activities and connect experts that will positively influence both the single culture and operations of the combined entity. The new entity can create and leverage a social network comprised of senior leadership, HR and Corporate Communications of both organizations and use multiple social channels and tools to discuss, make decisions on and communicate specific M&A actions.

6. Enabling and improving workplace safety

Applying social business patterns towards achieving workplace safety and security is a fairly new concept and is yet to gain foothold in the corporate sector. Work environment in the current scenario is highly complex and distributed which makes it difficult to effectively communicate new safety practices. Owing to the increase in number of businesses operating from multiple geographies and time differences that persist, it becomes difficult for safety experts to effectively connect and coach the front like workers.

Social business practices provide organizations with quick and real-time solutions for workplace safety. These include providing the workers with latest and relevant safety expertise through social software on mobile devices making it both cost and time effective, creating communities to help workers connect with safety experts and keep them abreast with the latest safety practices. They can, hence, encourage collaborative safety decision making by linking employees in office and front line work environments using real time and social communication tools.

Most companies, especially those which fall under manufacturing sector house hazardous chemicals and use potentially dangerous equipment for production and it becomes difficult to control and predict accidents, following simple workplace safety steps can go a long way as precautionary measures. Complying with work place safety norms at all times can reduce accidents if it is made a compulsion and not choice.

Social business is not just about connecting via social networking sites! It is much more than that. A social business encourages and cultivates a spirit of collaboration and community throughout its organization-both internally and externally. By maintaining this sense of collaboration/community outside of the company as well, it's a natural way of engaging current customers, as well as having the means to engage new ones. Social can really assist organizations in capturing information, creating insights and generating interactions that translate into real business value.

The author is Country Manager, Social Business & Collaboration Solutions, IBM India/SA.