Social Business = Business Enablement

Real change requires the ability to manage processes to deliver tangible results while being flexible to outside forces. Bringing high level strategy to the ground level and effectively executing requires structure, accountability and nimbleness.

Improving upon the performance of today’s processes, how they can be evolved tomorrow and how quickly the change can occur, all play into business enablement. Success is largely the function of coordinated effort and communication of groups from across an organization focused on the core process change.

Social business requires the same strategic elements to effect change, namely a well coordinated interplay between people, process, tools, technology and experience. Related to business enablement initiatives in sales, marketing, digital communications, customer service and HR/recruiting, social business has become an amplifier for some firms and a juggernaut for others.

3 Simple Social Business Truths

• The time to create a social business strategy has passed. The majority of businesses are now playing catch up with the market leaders and the growth curve requires a multi-year plan with affordance for learning. A sound social business strategy grounded in management, metrics, accountability and agility are mandatory to compete.
• Social business isn’t simply about technology. Social business technology is an accelerator of good planning, frictionless process and sound execution. The latter must proceed the former. Organizations cannot “buy” their way out of the social business and digital deficit they have created which is why many organizations are falling further behind.
• Managers and line-of-business employees look upward for an example, but leadership isn’t representative of what ‘good’ or ‘great’ looks like. Rather than getting bogged down in the flood of consultant speak, employees and organizations need to get back to basics, roll up their sleeves and focus on learning and action. The example must be set from the top down and social business pilot programs need to be initiated to get the ball rolling.

5 Benefits of Social Business

1. Engaged employees
2. Retention/attraction of talent
3. Customer satisfaction and advocacy
4. Increased marketing reach and engagement, and
5. Larger sales funnel, more leads and greater sales velocity.

3 Social Business / Business Enablement Take Aways

• Provide social business and digital communications training to employees without the goal of reciprocity. Helping employees develop their business communications and social media skills becomes a career asset and a catalyst for employee engagement in the workplace. Employee advocacy will also be a business enabler with leadership starting at the top.
• Consider outsourcing currency of knowledge and skills, but own and evolve the social business competency internally. Invest now to develop social business competencies and systems of accountability while remaining adaptable to change based on data-driven results.
• Embrace change as a constant – being in a perpetual state of evolution is the new norm. Budgeting, planning and execution in today’s marketplace require new models and leadership perspective. Social business is one spoke of the new wheel that begets business enablement.

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