艱苦時世、社交技術與創新型的CIO

只需做一個小小的轉變，社交技術就能區別與現有的社交媒體用途，帶來黃金萬兩。關于這個問題，隱藏著一個秘密，一個投入不多卻能帶來一本萬利的秘密方法
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艱難的時世再加上高速成長的社交技術，使得具備創新型精神的CIO將迎來一段美好的時光。因為社交網絡技術正好可以在艱難的時世中派上用場。

誠然，創新對業務的作用，變得比以往增添了更多的風險性，但如果以往的業務運作得不好時，創新卻可能帶有更小的風險性。這其實并不難理解，如果你什么也不做就會被擊敗時，嘗試新事物就有了足夠的理由。這兒有一個我曾努力過的創意，你可以不需投入多少錢就可以把它付諸實行。利用它可以建立你作為創新型CIO的名聲。

Gartner和麥肯錫最近的兩項研究都為這個創意的成功提供了基礎。下面讓我來詳細解釋一下吧。

Gartner關于2012年IT組織的預言中表明，到2015年公司的首席營銷官（CMO）將擁有比CIO更多的技術預算。云計算的普及和消費型IT意味著IT組織內部需要進行一場變革，IT組織必須由以往只負責采購和運營IT系統，轉變為直接關注整個業務組織的運營和贏利。

麥肯錫則在一篇名為“社交網絡技術如何延伸進組織”的報告中，將社交技術定義為社交媒體、SaaS應用、消費級IT設備和云計算的綜合體。他們認為許多公司正在試驗把社交技術與公司運營系統相整合的方法，但至今為止成功的案例并不多。麥肯錫強調他們并不是關注這些公司如何進行這些試驗，而是關注到了這樣做的公司比他們的競爭對手獲取了更多的利潤。

這也正是我想要強調的。眼下，一些公司運用類似于Facebook、Twitter或者YouTube一類的社交媒體，主要發送他們的廣告信息，但這樣做的后果實際上浪費了這些社交媒體的潛在作用。社交媒體真正的潛力在于，可以通過將社交媒體整合進企業內部的信息系統，實現下訂單、客戶服務、購買或者商業智能等一系列應用。當這一切實實在在地發生以后，實時的雙向溝通就在公司和更廣闊的價值鏈或者說是業務生態系統之間形成了。

如此之小的轉變卻帶來了如此之大的創新。

小轉變的實質就是：不要再把社交媒體看成是單純的傳播平臺，而將其看成是與潛在客戶的交互平臺。當公司進行這種交互而非單純的傳播時，公司與顧客和業務合作伙伴之間，就建立起了實時的協同、反饋系統。率先應用它的公司將獲得更敏感的市場觸覺，對機會的把握也就變得更加高效和敏捷。

我來深入解釋一下這是如何發生吧：我拿一個批發商來舉例，你可以根據公司的實際情況而在此基礎上進行調整。
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The combination of tough times plus the spread of social technology makes this a great time for the CIO who has some innovative ideas about how to use the latter to respond to the former.

Sure, innovation is more risky than business as usual. But when business as usual isn’t working so well, then innovation is actually less risky – because you know you’re going to get clobbered if you do nothing – so there is every reason to try something new. Here’s an idea I’ve been working with. You can put it into practice quickly without spending a lot of money. Use it to build your reputation as an innovative CIO this year.

Innovators Harness Trends and Turn them into Solutions

Two recent studies from Gartner and McKinsey provide the foundation for this idea. Let me explain.

Gartner, in their top predictions for IT organizations in 2012, says by 2015 more than a third of IT spend will happen outside the IT budget and the chief marketing officer (CMO) could well have a bigger technology budget than the CIO. They say the spread of cloud and consumer IT means in-house IT groups will need to change from traditional functions of purchasing and operating IT to something more directly related to how the company operates and makes money.

McKinsey, in a study titled “How Social Technologies are Extending the Organization”, defines social technology as the combination of social media, SaaS apps, consumer IT devices and cloud computing. They say lots of companies are experimenting with ways to integrate social technology into company operations, but only a few so far are figuring out how to make it work. They don’t say how these few are doing it, but they say those companies that are report improved operating margins – they’re making more money than their competitors.

Here’s how I see it. At present companies use social media like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube mostly to deliver advertising messages, but that misses their real potential. The real potential is to combine social media with relevant in-house systems like order entry, customer service, purchasing and business intelligence. When that happens, real-time two-way connections are created between companies and the wider value chains or business ecosystems that they operate in.

Big Innovation comes from a Small Shift

The small shift is this: Stop seeing social media as a way to broadcast or “talk at” people; use it as a way to communicate or “talk with” people. When companies use social media for two-way instead of one-way communication with customers and business partners it creates a real-time collaboration and feedback system that did not exist before. Companies can sense and respond to new opportunities faster and more effectively.

Here’s how this can happen. I illustrate the idea with a wholesale distribution company; you can modify it to fit your situation.

Let’s imagine a wholesale distributor called Super-Duper Company invites the companies (not the individual people) it does business with to friend it on Facebook. Its suppliers and customers friend Super-Duper on Facebook and then they all use Facebook to create a multi-media real-time collaboration platform (it will cost almost nothing to set up and operate) to work together on a daily basis.

People in all these companies can now communicate with each other and share text, pictures and video to plan and coordinate new sales campaigns, or educate customers on new products, or handle any number of customer service activities. The diagram below shows how it works.

Once the Super-Duper Company has created a social business network like this, the next step is to connect selected social media apps with relevant internal systems at the company. This is illustrated in the next diagram.

This social business network offers big benefits. People already know the user interface for these social media platforms so the learning curve is not hard. The new social business network you just created will run on all sorts of mobile devices like iPhone, Android and iPad, and will stay current as new devices come out because the social media vendors (Facebook, Skype, Twitter etc.) do that job for us.

Social media has well defined application program interfaces (APIs) so it is a straight forward task to connect them to relevant in-house systems and to company web sites. And because the data sent to and received from these social media applications is well defined, companies can apply appropriate security screening to the data as it moves back and forth through these APIs.

Remember, people on this network are not just chatting with each other to while away the time, instead they are enthusiastically engaged with each other to collaborate on a daily basis to accomplish specific goals that are important to their different companies. This use of social technology is a big part of how the new game of business will be played and how success will be achieved.

You can put this idea into operation quickly (use an agile approach with 30-day iterations). It won’t cost much. Get the first version into operation in 30 - 60 days. Then see what people say and what happens next. You can take this basic architecture in any number of directions as events unfold.

They’ll call you innovative. Tell them you planned it that way.