Ever wondered why the company you’re working for is so complex?

Most entrepreneurial start-ups such as ours have a flat structure.

This helps build strong team-spirit and ensure smooth communication between the members of the organisation. On the other hand, the more a company grows, the less viable this structure becomes, for it is too basic to keep up with productivity. The advantage is that we are starting from scratch and have the possibility to study different processes we want to implement and thus envision possible ways for growth and future organisational charts. Such charts are very interesting when dealing with interrelationships in terms of communication, authority and responsibility.

The Web2.0 topic preferred by most people is how companies should integrate Social Media in their marcom (marketing & communication) action plan and start conversing and participating on the Internet. I also have my share of posts about the subject. Yet, another aspect of Web2.0 is Enterprise2.0, or the way companies should apply these same tools for internal use. Have a look at "Meet Charlie", a very nice presentation about Enterprise2.0.

Basically, Enterprise2.0 should help you improve productivity and become more efficient when dealing with colleagues and sharing and storing information. It is being seen as an extra layer placed on top of what already exists.

On LinkedIn we asked if people believe that Social Media might change the aspect of organisational structures. Most answers referred to companies communicating with their customers, showing again that internal use is not at the centre of attention when speaking about WEB2.0 solutions. One answer stood out: Manas Ganguly, GTM Program Manager at Nokia India, tells us that “supply chain will be radically altered by Internet which is already bringing products and experiences directly to the end consumer. This eliminates a lot of the agents in the chain between the source and the consumer. Not only does it bring direct access, it also has direct bearings over the costs of channel management and the staffing. Hence a lot of companies today are paying more heed to their online presence. Presently these would only be a supporting tool, but in days to come it will become a delivery channel. Whatever little remains in terms of physical deliveries is being outsourced.”

All answers to the question can be found in this PDF.

When dealing with the internal kitchen of a company, Six Sigma black belts and consultants love referring to this single word: process .

Whether talking about manufacturing, servicing, archiving or just internal communication, if it weren’t for processes one couldn’t expect a company to experience a structured and resourceful evolution. ERP, CRM, BI and other acronyms have become quite famous in this last decade. They all represent software solutions that help improve efficiency by defining clear processes, and have integrated and automated systems. Though all of these tools are about collaboration, none are however considered as Enterprise2.0 or Social Media for they all lack one single social facet, which is conversation.

Communication uses many channels and often goes beyond official boundaries (including procedures).
Looking back at our flat chart, we can see official communication lines in blue, and possible day-to-day ones in purple.

Since many decisions are taken and ideas developed during breaks and informal meetings, it makes sense to say that the flow of information is much wider than the controlled version.

Now, imagine the same flow in a large enterprise with a highly hierarchical matrix structure such as the following:

Cross-department communication then becomes a real ordeal and it is not unusual to see cannibalistic tendencies and conflicts happening at national and international levels and even between both. Asking such companies to review their organisational structure makes little sense if there is apprehension and no willingness to introduce change.

Social Media can become more than just a conversation tool. Just listen to Bob Pearson, VP Communities & Conversations at Dell, who was interviewed by Jeremiah Owyang. “...chapter 2, we frame it (social media) inside Dell, it’s how social media will revolutionize the business infrastructure of the company...”

By using a comparative approach to the implementation of an ERP to improve the supply chain, we can hope to find ways not only to optimise communication within the company, but also with external stakeholders such as partners, suppliers and retailers. Such integration should impact “political influences” inside the company, while empowering those who come with open, positive and effective ideas. It could also greatly help managers and their decision-making processes by virtually flattening out a strongly hierarchical structure. This means that Enterprise2.0 might bring a new evolutionary mindset to those companies accepting change. Team leaders and HR would have great use in discovering and understanding the strengths of each employee and adapt their job description.

I know this may sound unrealistic and I do not wish to be viewed as pedantic, but before a company can pretend to be customer centric, it should start by focusing on its work environment and employees. This is where Brand Engagement starts, or should we call it Brand Engagement 2.0?

Enterprise2.0 solutions might just be the little push needed to achieve greater effectiveness, productivity and accountability, while at the same time gaining in transparency and include more social values inside the company.

Do we at ZackBrandit offer such services?
We certainly share this vision and values and are willing to help pave the way with some of our own pebbles.

But what about you? Are you in this line of work? Then definitely we’d like to hear from you!  

 

I feel like being brave today! A hero is defined by his actions, hence my decision to dare make the following bold statement: Social media is all about bartering! Now I’m done for… Who will ever trust a Web2.0 company saying such profanities?

What about a sales pitch? Wouldn’t you say that it is the result of marketing research and not really a part of a sales transaction? In any case, we shouldn’t forget that selling and trading are social activities to start with. Strange world indeed; things are not what they seem to be…

All this comes to show that social media could bring sales and marketing a step closer to a tighter synchronization, thus potentially creating real synergies. The purpose of this post is to share with you one specific thought:

Not only online sales activities are compatible with conversations when dealing with social media, but they also should be developed and implemented with this connection in mind!

Humans are social beings with a need to interact, and some have a stronger need than others. Even in Hollywood movies we can find a glimmer of true social awareness. “Cast Away” and “I am Legend” are such examples. Tom Hanks found a silent friend in the volleyball, Wilson, while Will Smith had a very strong affinity with his German Shepherd, Abbey, and with the many mannequins used to recreate pretence of human interaction. Both examples show our need to interact with others. Interaction is a necessity and for some, is also a proof that we are alive and have a reason to live.

Our society has been built brick by brick based on the enlightenment of some unique personalities. Before marketers, philosophers have tried for many years to study human behaviour and what it means to be human, through the ways we interact among ourselves and with others. In this respect, Phenomenology has probably had a very strong impact during the last two centuries.

It all starts with our Ego and self-consciousness. From the moment we realize we are, we develop a relationship external to our mind and body. With self-consciousness comes bodily self-awareness. The first-person point of view of the world is always defined by the situation of the perceiver’s body, which concerns not merely location and posture, but action and interaction with other people. The body provides the egocentric spatial framework for orientation towards the world and the constitutive contribution of its mobility. In other words your five senses help you grasp and experience reality; while your mind helps you understand and structure this experience. Nevertheless, though our body contributes to our interactions and its mobility, it still has physical and sensory limitations.

Web2.0 technology is not a revolution of its own accord. However, it is a means to further develop our mobility and in a sense outgrow our physical limitations. Hardware such as mobile phones and computers support our need to interact with an environment that our body does not perceive in its proximity. Social Networks go a step further by helping us get in touch with people all over the world with no time immediacy. Blogs, aggregators and search engines help us gather a huge amount of filtered or unfiltered information wherever we are, when connected.

Although today we live to grow much older than our ancestors, our life is much more fast-paced. We want things quicker and we get bored faster. Many of us have access to technology, clothes, housing, art, but we want to be accepted, reassured and even more, stand out. To do so, some of us invest in expensive trinkets, others come up with an Indie look, and more recently others yet have started blogs or joined an online social club. The most prominent social trend of the last ten years is self-potential, uniqueness and self-branding.

A hero is defined by his actions and when on the Internet, it is all about sharing and being visible, thus selling yourself, trading the image people should have about you. All those are marketing efforts moulded into a long term personal transaction – “I get your attention and you get to know me” (which ideally should be a win-win situation). Social networks such as LinkedIn are used to transform this personal transaction into a professional one, thus enforcing the commercial perspective to the exchange.

The actual social media philosophy has one advantage above all other communication channels when properly used: it will not differentiate sales from marketing.

Let us envision this from another angle: the mission of a company is to increase its revenue and create value for the shareholders by selling products or services. Whenever a person gets in touch with a company, be it through a sales representative, customer service, a forum or the company’s blog, this action revolves around the idea that this person is interested by the brand and its products, and might make an acquisition (or has already done so).

When a potential customer has a conversation with a company representative, he expects to receive information which will help make a decision. Nobody enjoys listening to sales pitches; we all prefer an honest, spontaneous and authentic dialogue. From the moment you give value to the received information you can call it sales, purchasing, bartering or any other word that makes sense to you.

We asked on LinkedIn if experts believe companies should differentiate between their sales and marketing activities online when using social media or if the voice of the company could wear both hats at the same time. We had about 50 answers and 60% believe there are ways to combine both efforts while being open and transparent. It has to be subtle, passionate, humane and authentic.

About 30% of the answers stress the importance of control. The Brand should be open for conversations, but has to protect itself from potential undesired and harmful events.

Luigi LoPresti, SVP, Senior Interactive/Creative Strategist at Draftfcb, tells us that “the outlying personality of the Brand is a dynamic thing that is now, more than ever before engaged in active dialogue with the consumer. A lot of traditional business constructs, like "Advertising", "Marketing" and even "Sales" are merging into holistic business systems that affect one another, and are hinged on each other. A Semantic Business technology would show Management the joining between these things and allow them to continually monitor and adapt the business entity in real time. I see less and less barriers between the traditional constructs and more fluid and seamless relationships between Brands and Consumers.”

Tony Barr, Founder, Managing Member at BrandReasonality , suggests “to guard ourselves from brand schizophrenia which can confuse the audience” and as Mike Rowlands, President at Octopus Strategies Inc, says “subtle is the name of the game, and the control should be left in the hands of the customer.”

All the answers are to be found in this PDF.

Indeed, social media helps to develop a holistic approach to the brand/customer relationship, but it has to be truthful and should reposition control and monitoring in the company’s strategy.

To summarize, we believe there are ways to integrate direct sales activities within the social patterns found in social media, and we are planning to develop a platform supporting this. Social media is a bartering environment, where giving to the community can be seen as part of the trade.

Do you think we’re on the right track or are we too bold?

In his post about cloud computing, Hutch Carpenter tells us that “it’s not the database software that matters, but the data that it holds, and the services that can be built against that data”. We have seen that the way we communicate depends on the technology used. Whether a text message from a mobile phone forwarded through Twitter or an inmail in a social network, we adapt our own language to the software. With Web2.0 and social media, platforms have been developed to bring people together, have them join tribes that exchange information and share all they want.

Until recently, all these platforms have been functioning as islands, separated from each other. Most have started seeing the potential in converging and integrating those different services. Yet, we are far from the promises of Web3.0, where connectivity between software platforms, language and hardware will provide more relevance to the given content. If information has become central today, it will be king tomorrow.

Our belief is that there is still a long way to go and that we will increasingly work with connected clusters. A cluster can be defined as a group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together. In physics, the term clusters denotes small, multi-atom particles. Gradual development of collective phenomena, such as the color of a body, its electrical conductivity and its ability to absorb or reflect light, and magnetic phenomena, can only develop through the aggregation of a large number of atoms. In other words, clusters or a collection of clusters could change the physical form of the whole, even transforming gas to liquid or solid state.

The clustering concept in business was made popular by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter. Clusters are geographic concentrations of like-minded interconnected companies or institutions that manufacture products or deliver services to a particular field or industry and are willing to work in a complementary manner.

We can simplify this by stating that a cluster is a connected network that elevates all its members to another level. The virtual quality of the internet provides us with tools to conceive such clusters without any geographical constituencies. Let’s use LinkedIn as an example to explain what is possible today and to where we are heading.

LinkedIn has created groups to which people can join for several reasons. One can join for knowledge, another for the network and self-promotion, or even for recruiting purposes. A group therefore contains a heterogeneous mix of members. But such groups have to provide an added-value otherwise people will not join. Interested members can join discussion threads and ask questions, share news items, or reflect about a given topic or share their insight. Although we consider these as conversations, half the time they are a collection of monologues, where each person has provided an opinion but does not necessarily build on others.

Each discussion topic or news subject is a cluster. Both are part of a larger cluster which is the group, and in turn, this group is part of a larger one which is the LinkedIn network. Today, there are no connections or bridges between those clusters, except for members joining several of them. This means that a cluster has a “physical” limit.

By complementing our blog posts with answers from our LinkedIn group questions, we create an external bridge for the information contained. As our blog can be perceived as a nod or as a little cluster of its own, we have provided some interactions between two independent platforms.

Click image to enlarge Companies have started to understand the importance of integration and multiple platform connections. This is why LinkedIn added the applications feature very recently. It is possible now to include blog posts and presentations in the profiles, but even more interesting are the applications that provide collaboration tools. This actually creates new layers and new clusters inside LinkedIn. Yet, even though we have those new applications, there is still no real interaction with the outside world.

An IBM survey from 2006 found that 80 percent of senior managers say that it's imperative to share information with people outside the business, yet fewer than half say they are equipped to do so. Enterprise 2.0 is the step taken by those who understand the importance of clustering and the creation of bridges between those clusters, whether they’re part of a company or represent an external stakeholder, such as a partner, supplier, retailer, customer, etc.

Business collaboration platforms such as Jive’s, feedback platforms such as Feedback2.0 or crowdsourcing such as NameThis or Kluster (clever name), are paving the way forward. The idea of building new clusters and creating new categorization models are the logical step. With cloud computing, semantic web and other Web3.0 features, we might expect to see bridges erected that interrelate those clusters, once again creating new layers of exchange.

How will this all be done?

With insight, a lot of negotiations and coding!

 

There will be different solutions and we hope the one we wish to provide will support this vision.