Insider View on the Social Economy

Right now, the Social Business industry is buzzing with information pouring out of the recent McKinsey report, “The social economy: unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.”

Some of the most interesting stats in the report include:

• The annual value that can be unlocked by social technologies total between $900 billing and $1.3 trillion.
• Over half of each work week, ~ 28 hours per week, is spent by knowledge workers writing e-mails, searching for information and collaborating internally.
• 20-25% potential improvement possible in knowledge worker productivity by utilizing social technologies
• There is 2 TIMES potential value from better enterprise communication and collaboration compared to other social technology benefits.

To get a better understanding of the current state of social, I sat down with Jive’s CMO John Rizzo.

What is the #1 factor of success for building a next generation company?

As the economic realities of today continue to be uncertain and turbulent, companies must extract maximum amounts of business value from their number one asset: their employees.  Today, about 40% of enterprise spending goes to employee costs.  According to McKinsey, knowledge workers in the enterprise spend 28 hours a week doing email (invented 40 years ago in 1971 and I doubt we’d find anyone today that loves email), searching for information (does anyone really like the way that enterprise document search works?), and collaborating internally.  If companies can surface just one day more a week of productive time by cutting those 28 hours to 20, then we can create hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity.

Next generation companies are trying to unlock their most valuable assets – their people.  By using social business technologies, they can accomplish this goal as well as have greater sales growth, more innovative products, and better customer relationships at a lower cost.

What is the #1 trend you are seeing in the Social Business industry today?

We’re crossing the chasm.  The early adopters are now truly able to show how social business technologies, like Jive, derive massive value. Overall, we’re shifting from an early stage market to a mainstream one.

In one word, how would you describe the future of Social Business?

One word: Yesterday.  Social business is SO 2011. At Jive we’ve moved far beyond talking about Social Business as a technology and are now moving onto mainstream usage where massive business value is unlocked.  This is not about social anymore.  It’s about taking what we’ve learned by being out in front of creating this market and being focused on technical features,  and unlocking employee productivity and value in ways that hasn’t ever been possible until now.   Social is yesterday.  Value is today and tomorrow. And Jive is the only one with proven value.

Comment below to ask John Rizzo your social business questions.