The Socially-Enabled Enterprise: a work in progress

My takeaways from yesterday’s Socially Enabled Enterprise panel at the Social Shake-Up conference:

  1. It doesn’t matter if we label Social a “channel” or not. In Chris Boudreaux‘s words, “It’s OK to call it [Social Media] a channel [or not], no one is going to lose an arm.” What it means: if calling Social a “channel” helps you, do it; if not, don’t. Don’t get bogged down in semantics and ideology; think about Social in whatever way helps you think about your organization and your customers.
  2. Organizations need to go beyond the Center of Excellence approach. (Chris, again): The Center of Excellence approach to social governance in the enterprise is fading away. Social needs to align itself with existing functions. Instead of a CoE, think about which social capabilities live in which parts of the organization, and how do those parts work together. More about how to do it in this Accenture whitepaper: Empowerment with Accountability: Enabling Business Growth through Social Media Governance.
    • Chris clarifies:
      • I’d like to clarify that Centers of Excellence are not necessarily fading for all organizations. CoEs are a natural and valuable evolution for many organizations. Some will continue to use them for a while — especially organizations that do not engage significantly in social media, which can be the case for a number of reasons.But organizations who seek to embed social capabilities throughout their organization — for customer care, selling, marketing, customer insight, supplier collaboration, etc. centralization quickly encounters obstacles that require a different org model.Like so many issues in modern organizations, there is no absolute answer for all firms.
  3. Enterprise social adoption is still a work in progress. Don Bulmer (Shell): “Just because you have the recipe, it doesn’t mean you know how to cook.” What it means: We know that social can deliver business value, but companies are still struggling on how that applies to them.

Resources: