Defining Social BusinessSideraWorks LLC - SideraWorks.com

What IsSocial

Business?

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The business world, and especially the professionals immersed in social media, have been discussing and debating the definition of social business from a number of different angles. Clarifying what we mean by “social business” is critical to determining whether it’s something we want our companies to be, and if so, how we go about achieving that.

Agile

Open

Engaged

Adaptive

What IsSocialBusiness?

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A comprehensive understanding of social business requires several components. We need to know:

Understanding both the nature of a social business and how it’s different - and better - than what we’re doing today means that we can approach it intelligently, and as a true organizational evolution, not just a tactic or campaign.

• What a social business is

• What a social business does

• The difference between social media

and social business

• Why being a social business is desirable

• The elements of becoming a

social business

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What A SocialBusiness Is

This is first question most people have, yet it’s the hardest to answer consistently and completely in just a sentence or two. It’s like asking “What is Customer Service?”

The answer differs if you’re describing the purpose, the processes, or the outcomes. Depending on your point of view - as the customer, an employee, or a partner - the answer can vary even more.

At SideraWorks, we’ve spent a great deal of time defining social business in a way that encompasses its essence, but avoids much of the jargon that simply adds to the confusion instead of providing clarity.

All social businesses believe that meaningful change and evolution, and the achievement of the above, must consider people and processes as well as technology and platforms.

To that end, here is the resulting high level definition of social business...

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Social Business is the creation of an organization that is optimized to benefit its entire ecosystem (customers, employees, owners, partners) by embedding collaboration, information sharing, and active engagement into its operations and culture. The result is a more responsive, adaptable, effective, and ultimately more successful company.

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What A SocialBusiness Does

So how do you recognize a social business from the outside?The core of a successful social business and the activities that support it will reflect these six traits:

Empowerment

Agility

OpennessConnected Active Intelligence

Adaptability

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The Six Core Traits Of A Social Business

Agility Balancing speed of response,

communication and information sharing with

thoughtful coordination and long-term scalability.

Openness Communicating with less

friction across organizational lines, in ways that

distribute and improve access to knowledge among

stakeholders. Acknowledging and rewarding

innovation, creativity, thoughtful feedback and

collaboration.

Empowerment Allowing communities

to self-organize within the business to solve business

problems and share insight, and trusting decision-

making to happen at the margins of the organization.

Smart Connectivity Sensibly

integrating and deploying technology that removes

barriers to communication rather than creating them,

and improves the information flow among customers,

prospects, teams and partners.

Active Intelligence Listening

and using established as well as new sources of

information. Leveraging data and analysis not just

to track activity, but to actively inform business

decisions and feed intelligence back into the business

to improve products, services, and processes.

Adaptability Designing an

organization that is flexible to the needs and

demands of employees as well as customers, and

believing that continuous adaptation and evolution is

not only critical to survival, but desirable in order to

stay ahead of the market.

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But what about the term ‘social media’ that has taken the world by storm? Is doing social media and becoming a social business the same thing?

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The Difference Between Social Media& Social Business

They are two of the most commonly confused terms in today’s business world, but they aren’t interchangeable.

What‘s the difference?

SocialMedia

SocialBusiness

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Social Media are the platforms and technologies that people use to communicate and create interactively, like Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, or YouTube. Most often we refer to social media as the technologies that are used between a company and the public at large, but it could also refer to the platforms used inside a company to communicate in a more social and collaborative manner.When most people reference social media for business, they’re referring to using these technologies for engagement with the public, or for leveraging for data purposes. The activities are typically (though not always) used and managed by customer-facing departments like marketing, customer service, PR, or sales.

Social Business is the process and result of optimizing your internal business to take advantage of social media’s opportunities, putting processes and governance in place to mitigate its risks and adapt to its implications, and applying social concepts and technology internally to enable collaboration, sharing, innovation, and open engagement. Social business can encompass using external social media, but it’s not a requirement. Technically, an organization can be a social business without engaging publicly in social media at all.

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As an example, a global building supply company created an internal social network that enabled over 20,000 of its employees to collaborate with one another, expediting and improving things like product launches.

They still needed to create policies and governance that support employees who are using social media personally, set vision and objectives for the organization, and coordinate and improve a number of internal practices to accommodate the increased connectivity. Collaboration, dynamic engagement, policy creation, governance, efficiency...this is certainly an organization evolving as a social business, yet public engagement with social media isn’t currently a focused part of their efforts.

A social businessisn‘t necessarilyengaged insocial media.

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The Case ForSocial Business

The evolution from business

as we’ve known it to social

business is a complex one,

and includes a number of

facets, from cultural shift to

organizational design, process

improvement and a hefty

dose of thoughtful change

management to guide it all.

But the transition carries with it a significant number of benefits, including...

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Improved customer satisfaction since you’re reacting faster and more openly, applying their input towards improving products and services, and making them feel like a much more invested and engaged part of your business.

Deeper employee loyalty fueled by a more collaborative work environment that empowers each person in the organization to be a part of shifting and improving the business. That makes your company a more attractive place to work, too.

More effective knowledge sharing that’s one part a sound technology base, one part well-thought out process, and a large part giving everyone from employees to partners the ability to learn from, contribute to and preserve the collective intelligence of the company.

Strengthened brand reputation from customers and partners who feel better informed, heard, and connected, and from the people inside your organization who are charged with stewarding that brand in their everyday work.

Lowered costs through everything from improved product development and an appetite for innovation to more efficient internal processes, more collaborative employee education and training, and stronger relationships with partners that yield better opportunities.

Clearly established vision and governance to guide the organization’s social initiatives overall, and a coordinated center to unify independent social and collaboration projects within departments or business units.

Benefits of a Social Business

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However, all of these things, including the unquestionable benefits of agility, collaboration, and so on have been objectives of the more progressive organizations for some time. Why is this anything new? Why are organizations so aggressively pursuing this thing called ‘social business’?

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Organizational efforts in the past have been driven from the inside. Efforts to acquire these individual traits have typically had passionate sponsorship within a successful company at one time or another. Yet, those internal efforts most often wither away, relegated lower and lower on the priority list as the daily demands of business take precedence.

Instead, today’s perfect storm of business evolution is powered by a series of external forces that are driving the shift instead. Social media and their associated implications are at the very center of that change. For example:

• The incoming workforce, its values, and its expectations for open communication and empowerment demand a more flexible culture and work environment;• Customers expect to communicate more seamlessly and have more attentive, personal relationships with businesses;• The technologies available to successfully enable social concepts have matured in both capabilities and affordability;• The profile of today’s successful companies reflect social values that are embedded in the core of the organization.

While that may mean that it is no longer a choice for a company to evolve if it wants to thrive in this changing environment, it also represents a significant opportunity.

The biggest question for most organizations, however? How to move from where they are today to the social business model they envision for the future.

The answer to that question lies outside of the company...literally.

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How To Build ASocial Business

Almost any area of a business can become the spark that ignites a social media initiative and turns it into the foundation for a social business plan.

But whether social business begins in marketing or customer service, or starts as a holistic and organization-wide initiative, there are specific areas that an organization will need to address and evaluate as part of shaping an overall plan.

Social business strategies can vary widely between organizations based on their unique opportunities and challenges.

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Vision & Goals: Is there a guiding vision for why the company wants to become a social business and what they hope to achieve as a result?

Cultural Readiness: Is the organization’s mindset conducive to change and the more open and collaborative nature of social business?

Organizational Structure: Is the design of the business optimal for faster information flow and more distributed decision making? Are all the pivotal roles filled with the right people? Are there critical roles that don’t yet exist?

Social Strategy: Are there external and internal social strategies in place, and are they unified or integrated in some way?

Communication: Are there fluid communication processes in place and the infrastructure and tools available to support them?

Social Technologies: What systems are in place now, and are they consistent across the business? Are there needs gaps? How is due diligence and deployment being handled?

Training and Education: How is social business and social media education being designed and implemented throughout the organization?

The start of any social business

planning - whether departmental

or organization-wide - should

start with a comprehensive

readiness assessment that

considers each aspect of the

company that social can and

will touch, whether directly or

indirectly. Knowing where you’re

starting from ensures that you

can craft a thoughtful model for

where you’re headed.

In its culture, people,

communication and systems.

Social is something that a

business is, inside and out, not

just something that marketing

does. It’s forging a new center

to the business universe, a

center that needs a new kind of

ecosystem - and balance -

to thrive.

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The real power of social lives in the bedrock of a business.

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What DoesSideraWorksDo?

• Assessment and audit workshops

• Development of ‘end state’ social business vision

• Plan development for bridging from ‘current state’ to ‘end state’

• Program management of a social business plan

• Change management & culture initiatives

• Social technology due diligence, deployment planning, contract assistance

• Process and governance implementation

• Executive and partner/agency facilitation

• Development of training, onboarding or education programs

In short, we focus on developing and building social business models and helping companies implement them. We don’t work on social media programs, like individual social marketing campaigns or developing and managing social media presences on Facebook.

Instead, we focus our expertise on the business evolution process, from conducting audits and readiness assessments for businesses trying to become more social, to building a centralized pivot point for social program coordination in an organization that we call the Center of Gravity™.

For more about what makes SideraWorks different and how we approach our engagements, have a look at our website and case examples.

Questions? Comments? Email us at info@sideraworks.com and let us know.

Our workmight include:

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Sideraworks LLC321 Clark St // Ste. 500

Chicago // IllinoisSideraWorks.com

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