Posts Tagged ‘social software’
New IBM Study: The Business of Social Business
IBM’s recent study on “The Business of Social Business” revealed three major areas where organizations can most effectively apply their social business investments. The study surveyed more than 1,100 businesses worldwide, and included extensive interviews with more than two dozen widely recognized leaders in social business. You can find a link to a downloadable version of the study later in this blog post.
If you’ve been looking for a study that will help you better understand how organizations around the globe are viewing the opportunity social business presents as a fundamental way by which to rethink and overhaul how they conduct their business operations in the social age, IBM has something for you.
Earlier today, we released the new IBM Institute for Business Value study entitled “The Business of Social Business.”
This was a survey conducted of more than 1,110 businesses around the world, and with extensive interviews with more than two dozen recognized global leaders in social business. Many of those executives explained to IBM that, in fact, social business is gaining traction in their organizations.
Top line, 46 percent of the companies surveyed increased their investments in social business in 2012, and 62 percent indicated they were going to increase their expenditures in the next three years.
As the executive summary of the report stated, “The question surrounding social media today is not whether you are doing but, but whether you are doing enough.
Getting your 100,000th “Like” on Facebook, or having your latest pearl of wisdom retweeted 200 times an hour is all well and good, but are these activities driving revenue, attracting talent, and bridging the collaboration gaps in your organization?”
Is your use of social media allowing your organization to engage with the right customers, improve their online experience, and tap into their latest insights and ideas?
And does your social approach provide your customer-facing representatives with the ability to search the globe for expertise or apply learnings?
For far too many organizations, the answer are, “not yet.”
What IS Social Business?
IBM defines social business as embedding tools, media, and practices into the ongoing activities of an organization. It enables individuals to connect and share information and insights more effectively with others, both inside and outside the organization.
Social business tools facilitate engagement in extensive discussions with employees, customers, business partners, and other stakeholders and allow sharing of resources, skills and knowledge to drive business outcomes.
And what’s the upside? Top-line growth for social business users can improve between 3 and 11 percent, according to a recent study from the McKinsey Global Institute, and productivity can be enhanced by between 2 and 12 percent.
I’ll hand you off to a link of the full study later, but to net out the findings, IBM’s survey and interviews revealed three major areas where organizations apply social business investments (see graphic above):
- Create valued customer experiences
- Drive workforce productivity and effectiveness
- Acclerate innovation
Shifting Towards Sales And Service
For those who have been involved in the social media realm to date, it’s important to note that social business is about moving beyond basic promotional activities to encompass the entire customer lifecycle, including lead generation, sales, and post-sales service.
The IBM study had a sub-sample of clients with some social business experience which revealed that while the percentage of companies expecting to use social business for promotional activities will rise slightly, from 71 percent today to 83 percent in the next two years, the number of companies expecting to use social approaches to generate sales leads and revenue will increase dramatically.
How companies are using social business capabilities is evolving rapidly. As you can see in the graphic, it is moving beyond basic promotional activities to encompass the entire customer lifecycle, including lead generation, sales, and even post-sales service.
Today, 51 percent use social approaches for leads and revenue, while 74 percent plan to get on board in the next two years. Post-sales support is also expected to increase, from 46 today to 69 percent over the next two years (see graphic entitled “Users of Social Business”).
Getting Started With Social Business
Regardless of where your organization is in its own social business journey, the use of social business practices is a transformation that leads toward new ways of working.
IBM’s research revealed three essential actions to be taken across the enterprise, from the CEO’s office to the farthest corner of the organization.
- Develop social methods and tools to create consistent and valued customer experiences.
- Embed social capabilities to drive workforce productivity and effectiveness.
- Use social approaches to accelerate innovation.
If you’re interested in reading the full study, you can register to download it here.
As IBM’s vice president for social business, Sandy Carter, explained in the video interview below during our recent interview at the IBM Interconnect in Singapore, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” Sandy offered up some great advice on world-class social business practices, as well as how companies and individuals can better establish their brands in an increasingly crowded social marketplace.
IBM Leads In Social Software
Click to enlarge and view the full infographic. IBM announced earlier today that for the third consecutive year, IDC ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software. According to IDC’s analysis of 2011 revenue, IBM grew faster than its competitors and nearly two times faster than the overall market. Currently, more than one-third of the Fortune 100 use IBM social business software.
It’s official: For the third year in a row, IBM has been found to be the most social enterprise company around.
Well, something like that.
For the third year in a row, IDC has ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software.
According to their analysis of 2011 revenue, IBM grew faster than its competitors and nearly two times faster than the overall market (which grew approximately 40 percent).
IDC also forecast the enterprise social platforms market is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2016, representing growth of 43 percent over the next four years.
Much of that growth comes with the continuing popularity of social networking, with more and more organizations looking for ways to adopt social business practices to integrate global teams, drive innovation, increase productivity and better reach customers and partners.
Using Social Software For Enterprise Transformation
While this demand is on the rise, organizations are still looking for ways to embrace social capabilities to transform virtually every part of their business operations, from marketing to research innovation and human resources, but lack the tools to gain insight into the enormous stream of information and use it in a meaningful way.
“Social software is gaining in momentum in the enterprise,” says Michael Fauscette, group vice president for IDC’s Software Business Solutions Group.
“Companies are seeing significant gain in productivity and increasing value from successfully deployed social software solutions including supporting ad hoc work by bringing people, data, content, and systems together in real time and making more effective critical business decisions by providing the ‘right information’ in the work context.”
Today, more than 35 percent of Fortune 100 companies have adopted IBM’s social software offerings including eight of the top 10 retailers and banks.
IBM Connections: Social Inside And Outside The Enterprise
IBM’s social business software and services is unique combining social networking capabilities with analytics to help companies capture information and insights into dialogues from employees and customers and create interactions that translate into real value.
IBM’s social networking platform, IBM Connections, allows for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results.
IBM Connections is available both on premise and in the cloud.
In the past year, new IBM Connections clients include Lowe’s Home Improvement, Electrolux, TD Bank, Newly Weds Foods, Russell’s Convenience stores, Bayer Material Science, The Ottawa Hospital, Premier Healthcare Alliance, Earthwatch, and the law offices of LaVan & Neidenberg.
“The opportunities for organizations to adopt social business processes to connect people and speed innovation is limitless,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager, social business, IBM.
“A successful social business can break down the barriers to collaboration and transform the next-generation workforce, from device to delivery vehicle of your choice, to improve productivity and speed decision making.”
Learn more about IBM and social business technologies here.
IBM Leads Social Platform Software Market
For those of you in the U.S., I hope you enjoyed the long holiday weekend.
For those you not in the U.S., I hope you enjoyed not having to hear from your U.S. colleagues yesterday!
I survived my trip back from Bangalore, but just barely. The horrible weather in Houston (remnants of the minor Hurricane Alex) left me spending the night Friday at the Houston Intercontinental airport Hilton Garden Inn.
Thanks for the hospitality, Houston.
It appears during my flight homeward that we made an announcement I wanted to be sure and pick up here in the Turbo blog, and that was the announcement that IDC has ranked IBM as the worldwide marketshare leader in the Social Platform market (and based on total software revenue in 2009).
Worldwide, the IDC report states that revenue for social platforms was $369.7 million, representing growthof more than 55 percent.
This is the first time that IDC has published a report on worldwide social platforms by revenue.
According to IDC, social platforms emerged as one of the leading technology trends for organizations, based on the recognition that people –- customers, employees, business partners, and suppliers –- are looking for ways to more easily collaborate interact and share data.
The report states that "social platforms are centered around, but not limited to, social networking applications that allow people to connect share, and interact on the Web around a common goal or interest."
IBM’s portfolio of social computing, mashups and Web 2.0 technologies, including blogs, communities, profiles, activities, shared bookmarks and more, can help organizations of all sizes work smarter, become more agile, and foster innovation.
IBM Lotus Connections profiles feature helps workers find the people they need based on their expertise, projects and responsibilities.
IDC characterizes social platform software as "promoting transparent and authentic two-way dialogue that is open, synchronous, and unstructured."
"Social software helps enterprises define their collaboration agenda," said Alistair Rennie, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "The use of social software can transform the way people work increasing the speed of business."
According to the 2010 IBM CEO Study, 98 percent of CEOs need to restructure the way their organizations work. 5.3 hours is wasted per employee per week due to inefficient processes.
Two hours is spent per employee per day looking for the right information and expertise within an organization. Social software can help alleviate this problem because it helps keep global work teams better connected and more able to deliver results.
We use these tools inside IBM to manage our own business, and I’m finding them to be extremely helpful in helping to try to bridge the big gaps that can occur between time, space, and people!
By way of example, I run a weekly team call on Fridays that’s been in operation for over 4 years now. I use my own Lotus Connections space for that call to manage all the assets related to the call, to email the extended participants info about the call, and even to help self-manage the access control.
It’s a huge time saver and provides the necessary context and materials required for running the ongoing call.
Global Adoption of IBM’s Industry Leading Social Software
According to IDC, the social platforms market includes IBM Lotus Connections as well as the cloud based offering, LotusLive Connections.
IBM Lotus Connections is software that empowers business professionals to develop, nurture and remain in contact with a network of their colleagues; respond quickly to business opportunities by calling upon expertise in their network; and discuss and refine new creative ideas with communities of coworkers, partners and customers.
LotusLive Connections is an innovative set of Web-based collaboration services combined with social networking capabilities. LotusLive Connections features include file sharing, business instant messaging, activity management and networking.
Over 35% of Fortune 100 companies have adopted IBM’s social software offerings. IBM Lotus Connections clients include Berlitz International Inc., Sogeti, Digital China Holdings Limited, and Rheinmetall AG.
For more information about IBM social software, visit www.ibm.com/software/lotus.
In the meantime, listen to IBM’s (and Austin’s!) own director of marketing for Lotus, Kathy Mandelstein, expound on the virtues of social software in the video clip below:
turbotodd
Turbotodd 