What It Means To Become A Socially Enabled Enterprise (Research Study)

The past two days were a whirlwind of social business thinking, exploring and debating. The social business elite gathered together at Social Media Today’s inaugural Social ShakeUp conference in Atlanta to examine the impact of social business transformation on the enterprise. More than 500 business people held frank forums on questions such as: What does it mean to be a social business? How does a company know when it is making strides towards the transparency transformation? What are the new models for using digital to get closer to key stakeholders – customers, partners, suppliers and employees? As Andy Bowens Senior Vice President, External Communications, MasterCard put so well “How can we take the insights into the boardroom to make an impact and not just be listening voyeurs?” This was not social business 101. Congratulations to @RobinCarey CEO of Social Media Today for putting together this amazing conference.

A highlight was having an opportunity to share the early results of The Socially Enabled Enterprise – we, Leader Networks, did in partnership with Social Media Today and Oracle. I presented the findings (see below) and then an esteemed panel discussed the impact. The panel participants were Don Bulmer, VP Communications Strategy, Shell, Erika Brookes, VP, Product Strategy, Oracle Social Chris Boudreaux, Global Lead for Social Media, Accenture. This panel brought together the themes of the conference into a data-driven conversation where attendees discussed what it means to be a social business.

The Socially Enabled Enterprise Research Findings Brief from Leader Networks

Key Findings

Becoming socially enabled is a big priority: Nearly all executives (97 percent) surveyed believe it will be important for successful organizations to transition to being socially enabled enterprises. In fact, 72 percent reported that leveraging social media will be very important for their organizations to be successful in the future.

Larger organizations are leading the charge: Organizations with 50,000 or more employees are much further along the path to becoming social businesses. In fact, 46 percent of organizations in that 50,000+ employee category reported that they are already socially enabled, compared to nearly one-third of companies with less than 5,000 employees.

Transition towards a social business is not expected to be easy: 43 percent of executives stated that it would take their organizations more than a year to truly leverage social throughout their businesses.

Social plays critical role in customer care: 60 percent of respondents plan to integrate social business metrics into customer care initiatives in the next 12 months.

Social business metrics are still in their infancy, but are expected to be more operationally focused in the future: While companies consider a wide array of social business performance metrics, currently marketing metrics (awareness, customer satisfaction, and share of voice) are the leading performance metrics, followed by lead generation and sales and new product development.

U.S. lags in using social business insights: Organizations outside of the U.S. are significantly more likely to use social business insights for new product development and R&D: Non-U.S. at 38.6% compared to 29.5% for U.S.

The Socially Enabled Enterprise study gathered insights from 923 IT and Marketing leaders from 20+ industries and 52 countries in organizations employing 100 employees or more. The purpose of the study is to explore the changing role of the IT and Marketing due to the impact of social business and to explore the impact social platform adoption is having on enterprise’s operations and customer-facing initiatives now and in the future. For the study, we defined a socially enabled organization as “A set of collaborative processes that have the potential to yield improved business processes that are customer-driven such as faster time to market with new products and services, more successful research and development outcomes and refined market messages that are explicitly influenced by customer needs.” What does it mean to you to be a socially enabled enterprise? And, don’t forget to sign up to receive the full report – which is coming out in October.

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Vanessa DiMauro

Internationally recognized independent thought leader on social business strategy and operations with a specialty in online community. I help organizations drive top line growth through innovative digital strategy design and thoughtful execution. I have successfully led 60+ strategic social business initiatives for the world's most influential organizations over my 20 years as a social business executive and serve on a number of boards. My award-winning track-record is fueled by passion, experience and research.

My work has been covered by leading publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and CIO Magazine and was recently named a Social Marketing Master by Forbes. As a former Executive in Residence at Babson College, Olin School of Management, I am an engaging and informational educator and keynote speaker.

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