Social Business Progress - From New McKinsey Report! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

I love the McKinsey reports on the Business Value of Social.  

The latest report was just published in October 2011.   The heaviest users of Social enjoy the benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing.  These benefits often have a measureable effect on their businesses.

Some of the cool experiences and facts that you could use with your company include:

Overall Usage:

  • The percentage of companies using social networking was 40 percent and using blogs was 38 percent.
  • Those who leverage Social internally, say that at least 51 percent of their employees use it. 
  • Nearly two-thirds of respondents at companies using Social say they will increase future investments compared with just over half in 2009. The healthy spending plans during both of these difficult years underscore the value companies expect to gain.

Management System:

  • The 2011 survey shows that the IT department is most likely to oversee internal Web initiatives (61 percent of respondents).
  • For customer-facing initiatives, 74 percent of respondents say that oversight falls to the marketing department.
  • For socially enabling external suppliers and partners, roughly equal numbers of respondents cite the IT, marketing, and business-development functions.
  • Financing comes from a variety of places, including the IT function, central corporate sources, and discretionary funds at the business unit level.

Results:

  • 64% percent of those using Social Internally derive benefit deploying Internally
  • 55% percent of those using Social Externally with their clients derive benefit deploying Externally.
  • 59% percent of those using Social with their partners derive benefits
  • About 50% of the internally networked organizations reported that Social is integrated into their workflow, compared to 21% of the developing organizations.
  • 3% of companies are using Web 2.0 in revolutionary ways. This elite group of organizations derives very high levels of benefits from Social’s widespread use, involving employees, customers, and business partners,

by sandraanncarter

Toshiba uses Social Business for Ideation / Collective Intelligence! #socbiz #ibmsocialbiz #ibm

My team is in Japan and discover a big AHA moment for Toshiba!

In August, Toshiba's research and development division decided to use IBM Connections for an internal jam to prepare for their technology preview.  The jam was conducted during a 4 day time span in early October and was deemed a success as they had roughly 400 participants across R&D, Engineering Planning, Sales, Marketing, Personnel, and other divisions.   This maxed out the number of people as they had only wanted 400 .. WOW!

Toshiba leveraged a focus on Communities. They had a main jam Community to guide the discussion rules and provide information by using wiki, files and bookmarks. The bulk of the content was contained in 10 sub communities for discussion around different themes primarily using forums and the ideation blog. Each sub community had a facilitator and leader. Prior to launching the jam, Toshiba used blogs, board updates, email and other collaboration tools to market and announce the internal jam.

The actual content of the jam is confidential to Toshiba, but here are some interesting facts from their jam.

  • Jam produced over 900 pieces of content
  • 100% of the survey participants think they should hold a jam again in the future
  • 88% of the survey participates found it successful

This Toshiba example, is indictative of using Social for Ideation or Innovation.  McKinsey says that on average a company using Social for Ideation improvements see a 20% success rate improvement in new product, offerings, or program introductions!  

What's your story!

by sandraanncarter

Social Business Crowdsourcing Research - Example Altimeter Group

This is our last of this week's focus on Crowdsourcing.  Market Research 2.0 will be done with Social. 

Here is a great example.  Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership and Groundswell, is using information for her next piece of research.

To whet your appetite, here are some early findings so far from her Crowdsourced research:

  • Creating a “watercooler” is still the most common reason for deploying — but these suffer because of lack of adoption and more importantly, purpose.
  • Companies are beginning to deploy enterprise social networks with specific business goals in mind, ranging from optimizing a business process like sales to supporting a change in strategic direction.
  • Metrics, however, are lacking. Most deployment focus on engagement metrics around adoption and usage, rather than tying efforts to business goals.
  • Some larger organizations are linking adoption and use of enterprise social networks to employee retention — engaged employees tend to be happy employees.

Take the survey!  It takes only a few minutes!  And experience crowdsourcing!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/36FZHVQ

by sandraanncarter