Rapid changes in consumer behavior, fuelled by the ever increasing popularity of social media and the adoption of consumer technologies in the workplace, urge companies worldwide to rethink their positions. People spend more and more time online to connect and interact with friends, to publish opinions, and to purchase goods and services. Employees share their views online, strengthening or weakening the corporate brand.

Social Media is human interaction in a virtual world. Social Media is strongly related to topics such as social networking, social collaboration, micro blogging, co creation, crowd sourcing, content sharing and reputation management.

The essence of social media is human interaction. Transforming your company to benefit from new ways of human interaction, is not about a technology push, lead by new tools, new architectures and new platforms. It is a true transformation of the way you conduct business, how you relate and interact with your customers, your stakeholders and your employees. It is about being part of a huge ecosystem, where your clients, employees, and business partners are all visibly and actively interconnected.

These changes offer exciting opportunities to all enterprises. Opportunities to increase revenue, strengthen brand, reduce costs, attract the right employees, and deliver products and services according to the wishes of their customers.

• Marketing can be made more effective, reaching your ‘social’ clientele, by turning your satisfied customers into successful marketers. Active participation in discussions online, with the proper tone of voice, will allow you to strengthen your brand and prevent damage.
• Product development will never be the same when your customers design your products and services. Your development costs will drop.
• Sales will transform from being transaction focused to relationship centric, and from short term cashing to long term earning. Develop the relationship, and the transactions will follow, potentially with higher margins.
• Production will benefit strongly from using social business technology by making knowledge work more efficient and making it more fun, at the same time boosting knowledge sharing and creativity.
• Customer Service processes will take a completely different angle, when you reach out to your customers before they make an official complaint, and when your customers will become your most valued service representatives.
• Recruitment and HR will win the war on talent by finding the right employees at lower costs, building early relationships with potential employees, spotting and selecting talent, and stimulating involvement of your existing staff.

You can follow various strategies to execute a Social Business Transformation for your company, depending on market competitiveness and degree of ‘social’ clientele. You can focus on employee satisfaction, on top line growth, on cost reduction or on a complete enterprise wide transformation where you also adjust your business models and your cost structure.

If you would like to read more about this topic, you can read the embedded document below:

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