Strategy, Social media, CRM and me!
Now, back to me further dabbling in Digg, sharing it on Reddit, StumbleUpon some relevant pages for my sensor research and yeah, slowly the idea of social media being a fad and the social tool being looked upon as a magical tool is also a present day reality. Have an iPhone, will advertise! Well Ok. Have an iPhone will sell! I see.. Have an iPhone and I will show a upward sales trend...ahem! as a graph?!
What is it that makes this the right time to look at social enablement via the same pair of "strategy"-oculars as we now see CRM with? Should we? What can Foursquare which tells me that I am now mayor, help me drive my business! Well, lets ask Starbucks! Some foursquare mayor got a 1$ discount on his favorite frappucino! While I still load my starbucks card and swipe it to get 30 gold stars to be rewarded. Ahem...can we move on? Point is - time to define strategy to meet the goals that define the business vision. That strategy is no more business and technology oriented, but the customer dictating what is needed and that too in real time. Hence, you either listen and analyze and shift gears OR invest in the stocks of those who are doing it (I am!).
Additional food for thought on the same would be to look in the direction of the following. Question to ask and ponder is where and how can I fit in each of them at a maturity level or can more than one be a fitment to attain the level faster. More on the mapping in a later post. The below are in no particular order.
1. Customization of social needs
2. Listening platforms and co-collaboration
3. Mobility platform is the first wife of Social media
4. Reputation Management workflows, Response and Feedback
5. Social Analytics, Sentiment and Semantic Analysis
6. Geo-location, Co-creation - responsibly and advocacy
7. Reusability of CRM tools and processes to complete the social wrapper
8. A Social Media Policy and evolution
9. Personalized incentivization
10. Avoid the fad bait and latch on to the Strategic fit
I spoke about Social Media and Social CRM here with emphasis on a loop back here. In the overall journey to "wrap" social media to enable CRM and make it a viable option. But, the journey is not complete without a maturity model to guide the steps towards value realization. It would serve well to check and evolve processes using Social media and not change processes to fit social media. Social Media tools as Strategic, Tactical and Operational level levers will help make the journey more comfortable.
Social media maturity and more is available at our Infosys booth at OOW in detail with the more interesting parts of CRM integration thrown in. Clear elicitation of the levels of maturity in the Social CRM journey can be found there.
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Meet us at Booth No. 1701, Moscone Center South, OOW 2010.
Explore more at http://www.infosys.com/Oracle/news-events/Pages/oracle-openworld-california10.aspx
Follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/infyatoow
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- Venkataraman Ramanathan
Venkataraman (Venkat) specializes and works in functional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions and implementations. He has more than eight years of IT experience. He has also led a team for the CRM and Business Process Management (BPM) implementation for a global financial services company. He has been involved in several training and organizational activities, besides pre-sales activities.
Comments
Hi Venkat,
Although there is no doubt that Social Media goes a long way in aiding the function of CRM in a cost-effective manner.But as of now, there is a reasonable challenge in measuring Social Media from a BI angle, because of the nature of the beast(pre-natal stage).So, it'll be a while before we can accurately measure Social CRM, and use it as BI. Also the challenge is greater in a B2B environment. Your Thoughts?
Posted by: Siddhartha | September 6, 2010 10:38 AM
Hi Siddhartha,
Apologies for the late reply. Measurement of Social Media is already available in various ways by various players in the market. One exmple is Radian6. When you look at the depth and breadth of the drill down into categories and analysis that can be represented in dashboards and reports that can be generated, you already have measurement in place. Now to your valid point of BI and Social media, we cannot measure social media's impact in BI but can look at it as an enabler for BI. How can the business enhance and use social media to improvise BI? That seems to be the question. Social media cannot be a substitute for BI it can be a wrapper around it.
Look forward to your inputs on this too.
Posted by: Venkat | December 3, 2010 10:44 AM
Hi Venkat,
The current measurements in place for social media is all well and good, and continuously improving in terms of accuracy. I agree. Coming to the point of BI, for Social media to be wrapped wound it. The decision makers in the organization need to understand the dynamics of that wrapper. Right now, very few Decision Makers in organizations across the world, have understood this new media.How do you think this mindset of the decision makers will change and how long will it take?
Posted by: Siddhartha | December 6, 2010 7:00 AM