Businesses can leap ahead of their competitors by
combiningsocial networkingandcustomer relationship managementto
help them develop innovative products, research firm Gartner has
said.
The opportunity for social software in enterprise or "Enterprise
2.0 technologies" lies in capturing informal customer comments
about products, said David Cearley, research fellow at Gartner.
"This includes opinions, comments, descriptions, labels,
preferences, observations, likes and dislikes, and predictions as
raw material for building valuable information resources," he
said.
The key advantage of Enterprise 2.0 technologies is that they
make customer patterns visible to the business over time, said
Andrew McAfee, associate professor at Harvard Business School, on
his blog.
Starbucks', for example, is using a social networking
application to refine its products. It encourages customers to
submit ideas to the mystarbucksidea.com website - an online
suggestion box. Customers can discuss and vote for the best ideas,
which are passed on to key decision-makers. They can get the kudos
of seeing their idea put into action.
"Establishing a participation platform - the mechanism by which
user contributions are pulled together - can reveal patterns and
relationships and provide a shared repository of information that
can deliver business value," said Cearley.
IT managers should look at a range of collaboration software and
see how they can be configured to aggregate interactions between
the customer and the business, he said.
Mayank Prakash, CIO at Sage, said that the combination of Web
2.0 technologies and CRM offered businesses the chance to work with
their customers to develop products and build stronger
relationships with them.
"Social networking technologies allow a business to aggregate
customer feedback and to build a conversation and relationship with
a customer over their competitors. When a customer makes a decision
to buy a product, it is the strength of this relationship that will
determine who they deal with," he said.
Gartner predicts that by 2010 the concepts, language and
technologies of consumer social software, such as Facebook and
Myspace, will become part of mainstream business software.
The entrance of digital natives - people younger than 28 by 2018
or who have grown up surrounded by digital technology - into the
workplace will influence the take-up of social networking
dramatically.
This web-savvy generation will form a substantial share of a
business's customers in the future. Companies will have to develop
channels such as blogs and wikis to capture feedback and maintain
customer loyalty, said Gartner.
Enterprise IT managers need an appreciation of consumer social
networks, and should try them out to find out what works and what
does not, said Gartner analyst Donna Fitzgerald.
"Experiment with social software on the web for your
understanding and personal benefit. LinkedIn or Ning - where you
can build your own network - are good choices," she said.
Businesses can build their competency with social networking
software by running pilot projects to capture employee knowledge
over the company intranet, for example, an employee suggestion
styled application aimed at networking comments.
However, IT managers must gauge whether their organisation's
culture is geared towards supporting collaboration before deploying
software.
"Executive support is necessary to begin building a
collaborative culture. Top down support validates the entire
Enterprise 2.0 initiative, confirming that the organisation takes
collaboration with customers and employees seriously and is
committed to doing it better."