Yes, you are right: social business is a buzzword. It is omnipresent and it is trendy to proclaim “it’s not about social media anymore but about social business.” However, social business is not a hype, on the contrary.
Last week I stumbled upon a blog post by Gerardo A. Dada on MarketingProfs, titled “What Exactly Is a ‘Social Business‘?”
It occurred to me that many people are indeed talking about social business, without realizing what it really is and that those who have to make it “happen,” get left behind since we fail to focus on what matters for them.
I feel it’s time to discuss what we mean by social business and see five reasons to do so:
- The term social business is often used too much in a restricted way, depending upon the background of those using it.
- I see a large gap between the reality of social business, what consultants say about it and what practitioners do.
- Managers risk getting lost again in the unfortunate phenomenon whereby we ‘invent’ new terms, while forgetting that those who actually want to ‘do’ it, drown in a tsunami of consultant speak.
- Although we like to say social media is “passé” and it’s time for social business, we still focus a lot on the technologies and forget it’s about business, while it’s not about the technologies.
- Social business doesn’t mean a business is social, as some think. Business is business. Social is social. Allow me to elaborate on that later.
Anyway, this post is not only an attempt to clarify what social business is – in a rather exhaustive – way. It’s also a call for collaboration. Collaboration is one of the ideas we encounter a lot in a social business context. However, in this case, I call upon YOUR collaboration.
This morning I launched the idea of creating a collaborative (e)Book on social business on Twitter, it seemed to interest people, despite the day and time. Why do that? First of all, to show the power of collaboration. Secondly, since social business is about ALL business functions and few people are truly ‘specialized generalists’ as I call them. Finally, because this initiative might be the spark for a multi-disciplinary group blog or community and it the end, that’s where value can be created.
If you are interested in participating, let me know please (all details at the end of this post). The deadline for submissions is June 22nd. It is short notice but do read the details below.
The rest of this – long – blog post looks at 1) how we define social business, and 2) what business functions and processes are affected. Feel free to skip the definitions and move to a quick summary of business functions and processes.
In next blog posts, I will focus on 1) why the term social business is misleading 2) why your business will never be entirely social (yes, you read that right) and 3) why tests to gauge how social your business is, really don’t matter.
How social business is usually defined
I have to thank Gerardo A. Dada for his article on MarketingProfs since, besides defining what he feels is a social business, he looks at how others have defined it as well. I’ll add some more definitions.
For the record, as we did with the term ‘social marketing’ (which was originally meant to describe the use of marketing for ‘social good’), by using the term social business as we do today, we are killing the original meaning of a social business as defined by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus (just so you know).
Time for definitions. You can already note this: there is no perfect definition, social business really means many things. The reason is simple: business is about many things, processes, stakeholders, functions, goals, ecosystems and people (yes, the famous fifth “P”) as well. Imagine the impact of social in all that. Furthermore, note that social business, as a reality, not as a term, will not die if tomorrow Facebook or Twitter stops existing.
Social Business according to Peter Kim
Peter Kim (from Dachis Group and co-author of Social Business by Design): “A social business harnesses fundamental tendencies in human behavior via emerging technology to improve strategic and tactical outcomes.”
Gerardo A. Dada writes this is typically something a consultant would say. However, Gerardo left out the explanation of the definition Peter gives on the page where the definition can be found, mentioning consumer participation, organizational aspects, workforce collaboration, consumerization, the workplace and more.
Social Business according to IBM
Next Gerardo A. Dada quotes IBM and the company’s definition of social business: “IBM defines social business as an agile, transparent, and engaged organization,” rightfully adding that IBM sells collaboration, community, and social-listening tools, although that doesn’t really matter when talking about the essence.
I looked up the IBM definition myself and found that IBM has defined three characteristics of a social business: engaged, transparent and nimble. This is IBM’s definition: “Social Business is about moving beyond the social media tools you’re currently familiar with to unlock the potential of the people and gain a competitive advantage. Today, by combining social networking tools—internally and externally—with sophisticated analytic capabilities, companies are transforming their business processes, building stronger relationships among their employees, customers and business partners and making better decisions, faster. This is what makes a social business—embracing networks of people to create new business value and opportunities.” You find it on the bottom on this page where IBM describes its take on social business.
Social Business according to Gerardo A. Dada
Gerardo has a definition himself: “Being a social business is not about having a team of people monitoring LinkedIn, Twitter, and (if you are in the “leading edge”), Google+ and Pinterest. Those are tools and communication channels…Running a social business has a much deeper meaning. I say “deeper” because becoming a social business requires a fundamental culture change that spreads across the business and changes the way the business operates…To be a social business, a business must be sincerely interested in listening to customers and empowering employees to have an open conversation with them”. Next, Gerardo develops a “test” to check whether you’re a social business or not. It’s mainly about customers, listening and employees. These are all very important but social business is more.
Social Business according to David Kiron
David Kiron is the Executive Editor of MIT Sloan Management Review’s Innovation Hubs. I mention them because they did quite an exhaustive survey on social business with Deloitte.
When asked what social business is, this is what David answered: “My short, quick answer is that social business is “social” in the sense that it (a) enhances modes of collaboration that already exist in an organization (e.g., high definition video conferencing adds another social dimension to teleconferencing); and (b), enables new modes of collaboration (e.g., technology enabled crowd sourcing or collaborations in virtual reality). In other words, I’m suggesting that the “social” in social business reflects differences of degree and kind from traditional approaches to business collaboration…I wouldn’t say that an organization that fails to engage in social business is nonsocial. Rather, such a company would be stuck with traditional, low-tech approaches to collaboration.”
Social Business according to David Armano
Edelman’s David Armano is a smart chap. He looks at things in perspective (that’s also why I stole one of his illustrations for this post). At least, he took the effort to look at the bigger picture, mainly from a historical “technology and social computing meet business” perspective.
David: “Despite much of the chatter around “social business,” the reality is that most organizations are currently dealing with the realities of social media and only a few truly recognize the potential of social business. Not unlike how digital media evolved into digital business—social business takes the foundation of social media and begins to build new economic models on top of it.”
Social Business - by David Armano
Social Business according to Deloitte
Deloitte is very involved in the whole social business topic, as are companies such as IBM, so it’s hard to overlook them.
Here is Deloitte’s definition: “Social Business is a concept that goes beyond the buzz of social media networks; it’s a practice that can enable more efficient, effective and net-new connections inside and outside your organization to drive performance. The organizations that discover value are doing so with a layered approach that crosses organizational boundaries, functions and services. While this may be alarming for many executives, the new world of transparency, knowledge flows and democratized opinion-making is rife with opportunities.”
Watch the video with Deloitte’s Chris Heuer (also co-founder of Social Media Club) below. “In the future, social business will be business.”
Social business undefined
There are more definitions regarding social business, much more. I could write an (e)Book just quoting them. But, again, much depends on the background and viewpoint of those who define it.
Another good source of information is this page on the Social Business Forum website, where you find plenty of models such as the one below, originally posted here) and, indeed, a definition: “An organization that has put in place the strategies, technologies and processes to systematically engage all the individuals of its ecosystem (employees, customers, partners, suppliers) to maximize the co-created value”.
A Social Business Maturity Model by Emanuele Quintarelli
Brian Solis has been writing a lot about social business and will be talking about it later this month at one of our events. In his foreword of Michael Brito’s Smart Business, Social Business, Brian wrote “A social business is one with its communities, wherever they reside. As customers view businesses as one brand and not as a series of disconnected units or departments, a social business is connected, engaged, and adaptive. United on all fronts, a social business connects the dots between value and customer experiences as it heralds a new era of relationships and operates under a banner of transparency and open leadership”.
Olivier Blanchard has been covering social media from the viewpoint of different business functions since the very beginning, probably without ever really using the term social business but emphasizing the role of social across the organization as you can read and see here.
Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant did a great job in identifying key drivers in social media and applying them to business and management, while defining key characteristics in their book Humanize (open, trustworthy, generative and courageous). Jamie and Maddie, however, also talk about the people-centric organization and the human business, while still others prefer to talk about the humanistic business.
The Four Pillars of the Social Organization by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant
In the end, it doesn’t matter. There is a bunch of good thinkers, smart people and great practitioners out there that are all understanding the same four things:
- Business is changing and we feel it everywhere.
- Consumer behavior is changing and people don’t want to be treated as, well, consumers.
- Technology disrupts business, faster than ever. Disruption is good if we want to and dare leaving the comfort zone.
- We have great opportunities here (and if we don’t act upon them we’ll have a problem, Houston).
So, maybe it’s not that important to define social business. Then, what is?
Social business in action
It’s far more important to understand how your business can evolve by effectively embracing the fundamental principles of a business era in which social technologies and sociological changes affect the ways in which organizational success and ‘customer’ success is achieved. And this goes for ALL business processes.
Yes, it’s about collaboration, transparency, being nimble, engaging employees, lateral models, managerial changes, peer-to-peer, people, and so much more. However, most of all it’s about identifying the opportunities, regardless of business function, that these changes enable.
Here are just a few of them:
- New ways of internal and external collaboration.
- Changing working models: consumerization, BYOD, agile working, etc.
- Opportunities for Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability (case).
- New financing and crowd funding models.
- Changing HR and employee engagement approaches.
- Different channel models in partner-based go-to-market ecosystems.
- Strategic transformation opportunities.
- Social learning, knowledge management and knowledge-sharing models.
- R&D, innovation and design possibilities.
- Customer & business intelligence, data, analysis, wisdom, decision-taking
- Crowd sourcing, tribe sourcing, community sourcing
- Removing destructive silos and barriers towards efficiency
- New and better aligned or integrated and social customer-facing processes (pre-sales, sales, post-sales, marketing, customer service,…)
- Information and content creation
- Etc.…
The list is really endless. That’s what I would like the (e)Book to be about: how can – and do – organizations use changing paradigms TODAY throughout every single process and business function, without the hype or buzz?
Please do collaborate on this one. Deadline for submissions: June 22nd. Approximately 2,000 words per submission, depending on how much you would like to share. Have existing texts and cases? Don’t write in English? No worries, we’ll repurpose the best contributions and translate as many contributions from as many languages as we possibly can, obviously avoiding too many overlaps.
Pick your topic and get in touch for the collaborative (e)Book on social business. Mail me, connect on Google+ or leave a comment.
Featured illustration by Dachis Group
