Social tools offer concrete gains to businesses

MANILA, Philippines—Before directing your IT department to set up a firewall blocking popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, try looking at how these so-called obstructions to productivity can be harnessed to generate gains four your business.

According to IBM Corp. vice president and social business evangelist Sandy Carter, businesses can harness the power of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking to register gains as concrete as higher revenues, accelerated time to market for products and services, and faster access to qualified talents and experts. Such gains could be both internal and external.

Ms. Carter relates that companies that used Web 2.0 technologies, or interactive online tools, experienced an average growth of 15 percent on their revenues as a result of more customer-targeted sales and marketing efforts.

Used on the research and development aspect of the organization, social businesses were also able to roll out new products and services 20 percent faster, on average, she says.

Such businesses were also 30 percent faster in acquiring knowledge and experts when it came to human resource and talent management.

“You can use (social networking) to make your company more enjoyable, transparent, and nimble,” Carter says.

User participation

Over the past few years, she says social tools had become the fifth era in the field of IT, following the age of the mainframe, the time of departmental computing, the rise of the personal computer, and the boom of the Internet.

By 2015, the social realm in the IT world would be worth between $30 billion and $50 billion in Asia alone.

Here in the Philippines, Carter says businesses could very well take advantage of the social boom, considering that the country had the biggest Facebook penetration in the world, with 93-percent participation from online users.

The Philippines also ranked ninth worldwide in terms of number of users of micro-blogging site Twitter, according to the January-April comScore Media Metrix.

Social business agenda

With the world becoming increasingly hooked on social networking tools, Carter says companies would have to adopt a social business agenda if they wanted to boost their prospects for growth.

The social business agenda is composed of six key strategies, equivalent to each of the letters in the word “agenda.”

The first thing that organizations would have to do to become social businesses, Carter says, was to Align organizational goals and culture. Companies that were willing to embrace a more open and transparent culture stood to gain the most from being social.

They also had to Gain social trust, primarily by engaging with “tippers,” or stakeholders, that could influence how the company was perceived by others. These “tippers’’ could range from university students to big-name executives and experts.

Businesses should also Engage through experiences. Externally, customer engagement played a key role in growth as customers were more likely to have a better view of the company if they were more in touch with the organization. Internally, engagement tools such as games could be used to teach new technologies to employees and get their buy-in on innovations.

For businesses to be social, they should also Network their business processes, to ensure synergy among the various parts of the organization. They should likewise Design for reputation and risk management.

“You cannot opt out of social. Even if you’re not out there, people will still be talking about you, or your competitors can leverage on your absence (to gain traction in the market). You have to have a plan and a team, be proactive and fast, and be transparent in two-way dialogue. Don’t try to manipulate,’’ Carter explains.

Businesses should also focus on analytics and Analyze their data.

“Look at your brand and look at your affinity. See who’s talking about you online,” she says.

Particularly in the Philippines where Facebook and Twitter penetration levels were very high, she says businesses stood to gain a lot by being social.