The hierarchical nature of corporations is antithetical to the collaborative nature of bottom-up social networking. That was the theme of the session “Power to the People: Drive Business Innovation through Collaboration,” led by Mark Woollen, VP Social CRM at Oracle.
The three factors of urgency, fragmentation, and engagement are driving enterprise 2.0, said Woollen. The market and communications are changing. Where it’s changing to is not known. What is known is that top down rigid processes of an organization will not allow you to respond appropriately in this given environment. People have the desire to be connected. Social networks have proven that.
The traditional hierarchical corporate system doesn’t lend itself to social networks’ any-to-any style of collaboration. You’ll want to harness your staff’s creative energy through fun and engaging use of social networking tools. It’s worth it to you, because it can be far more costly in terms of loss of productivity and competitive innovation if you don’t engage your employees.
Referring to a study whose name I never caught, Woollen posed the question, “Where do enterprise applications fall short?” Those companies surveyed responded (in order of importance): populating and maintaining data, getting user acceptance, generating meaningful analytics, customizing CRM applications, measuring CRM project ROI, and identifying sales-process problems.
Think like a really good marketer
When introduced with a new product to sell, a good marketer works his internal resources. He first connects with a company expert on the product. He learns from that person or persons, and then moves to partners who may have different kinds of wisdom to the product or audience, such as a design firm and a lead generation firm. This is the kind of efficient methodical behavior you want to replicate within a social network, but amplified, across as many people and groups as possible. Ultimately, what you’re trying to do is take the behavior of a good marketer and make it leverageable and scalable across the entire organization so the business can benefit.
If you’re looking to leverage social capital, let your audience know that you want to break free from the hierarchical “us vs. them” mentality. It requires bottom up creativity, flexibility in communities, and users must be recognized within the organization.
The difference between consumer based social networking and enterprise-based social networking is the enterprise cares about monetizing these relationships. How do you go from concept to cash? Networks are not flat, they’re very complicated, and social networking tools need to reflect this in their DNA and how they harness the power of communications.
When you get into a business driven environment, it isn’t just who you know, it’s about the depth of that relationship. Woollen didn’t talk about this, but if you’re looking for a solution that answers this question, check out Hoover’s Connect. I interviewed the President of Hoover’s Connect and this is exactly the model of his social networking tool. It’s a business social networking tool like LinkedIn. But what’s different about Hoover’s Connect is they show the depth of each of your relationships by monitoring your email communications via Outlook and webmail.
Make sure you check out the summary of all coverage from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 in Boston.
This post is cross-posted from the Enterprise 2.0 Blog.
