Personal Individualized Experience is the DNA of digital transformation. It refers to using an optimal mix of people and digital technologies to provide personal interactions at scale, so it is central to the mission of chief digital officers and CEOs and boards who hire them. Prior to digital and social technologies, organizations faced a trade-off between “personal” and “efficient” interactions with their stakeholders (customers, clients, employees, partners, regulators… hereafter “users”). Now this is no longer true; they can provide personal interactions at scale, once they learn how and where to interact efficiently and authentically.

Used well, digital and social technologies retain an authentic human element while digitizing key aspects to relating to people. Therefore, organizations/firms/brands (hereafter “firms”) can now provide the Personal Individualized Experience (PIE). This post explains the three components of PIE and shows how firms can use them to build and maintain authentic and profitable relationships with users.

PIE Summary

• Personal is an emotional component that denotes interactions that are based on firm employees or proxies listening, observing, caring for and interacting with users who have unique combinations of characteristics, situations and desired outcomes that distinguish them from everyone else. This is the core human element of PIE, which leverages digital social technologies.
• Individualized means offering to users a granular mix of digital services, content and other assets as a function of the firm’s knowledge of individuals, with the aim of serving them. This the technology and process part of PIE, which employs big data to automate and deliver the firm’s knowledge of user outcomes.
• Experience refers to providing robust, consistent functionality, connection and community, seamlessly, across a variety of device and communication types. This is the infrastructure part of PIE, which uses ecommerce and mobile technologies.

PIE is the goal of digital transformations led by Chief Digital Officers. It is the new bar that organizations must meet to increase or maintain their relevance to users, and social business, mobile, big data and ecommerce are the means to deliver PIE to users. Firms can develop the capability to offer PIE by focusing on its components in any combination.

PIE Repairs the Rift Between Firms and Users

PIE proactively addresses a deep rift between firms and users, who often see firms as uncaring organizations that are solely focused on maximizing profit at any cost. Although most firms have yet to fully understand it, digital social technologies have profoundly changed the relationship among firms, their products/services and users. The root of the rift is that users care about outcomes, and firms care about products. Understanding user outcomes is the key to developing authentic and profitable relationships with users.

Users rarely buy products or services because they want them; they buy the effect of using products and services to attain outcomes that are personally meaningful.

In other words, products and services are the means to the end. Outcomes are emotional even though people usually employ intellectual rationalizations.

In their interactions, firms have become increasingly disconnected from users, who are quickly changing each others’ expectations about what interacting should be like. When users interact with each other online, they interact as individuals, so firms look like hollow in comparison because their communications are focused on promoting their products and services in the effort to “sell” them to users, who rarely care. Digital social technologies have given firms a practical way for firms to understand outcomes of individual and niche users. PIE is how firms will realign with users and consequently increase their influence and profits.

The first step for firms is to shift their focus away from their products/services to helping users who are relevant to the firm’s competencies to attain their desired outcomes. The second step is realizing that creating, delivering to market and servicing their products/services has given them a unique combination of knowledge and competencies that are relevant to users in specific situations. This knowledge is valuable to users—independently of products/services.

The relationship between firms and users is shifting from “utilitarian” to “personal.” When firms make themselves more personal, they will sell more, and at higher margins.

The Personal Piece: Care at Scale

This piece refers to the human social part of the firm’s relationships with individual users. Digital social technologies, whether used through computers or mobile devices, enable the firm’s people listen and respond to users, usually in public.

Most executives don’t take seriously the concept of relating to individual users at scale because they falsely assume that they will be interacting with all their users. “We could never afford that.” However, most users don’t want individual interactions with the firm, even though they want to have the option. This assumption is very understandable; in the 20th century Industrial Economy, firms communicated with customers in a one-to-many model (mass communications). Social technologies have disrupted and weakened the influence of mass communications.

How the Network Effect Changes the Game

The network effect transforms communications because it adds tremendous leverage to online interactions, which are often broadcast to participants’ networks. Firms that understand this proactively seek to interact with niches of high-priority users. When they have such interactions in public, they demonstrate their care and consideration of users and model caring behavior. Naturally, they also respond to users who initiate interactions. By consistently going beyond expectations in these interactions, they inspire users who are inspired to interact, thereby sharing the interactions with their networks. This increases the audience of the interactions ten-fold on average. In addition, online digital “conversations” function like annuities; users can find them and reuse them at any time in the present or future, so firms’ assistance to users is immortalized.

Networked communications represent a completely new model: firms interact with the few to reach the many. This only happens when their interactions are above expectation, which is achievable when they focus on empowering users in attaining their most highly valued outcomes.

In addition, research has consistently shown that only about ten percent of users ever interacts; fully 90 percent of a crowd observes others’ interactions. However, all people are affected and influenced by the behavior they see. When they observe firms consistently supporting other users, who often have similar interests and outcomes to theirs, their trust levels increase significantly. In effect, firms directly serve the few and indirectly serve the many.

Social technologies are the most analog of the digital because people are relating using digital technologies. Big data and mechanical computerized functionality and apps add serious value, but they aren’t human. PIE results from an optimal mix of the two.

The Individualized Piece: Delivering Data and Functions

The Individualized piece maps most closely to big data and analytics. Firms have a tremendous amount of information about individual users, but few have transformed the information to make it useful to users such as customers and prospects. Firms start by using big data to develop a rich view of users based on data from purchases, mobile and web interactions and smart devices. This enables the firm’s back house to support users by offering information and products relevant to user outcomes. Well designed analytics infer users’ interests based on transaction, social and other data.

A simple example is a hardware store that uses purchase, online and customer service behavior, analyzed by geography, age and other factors, to form hypotheses about high-impact users. Then it tests the hypotheses in social networks and creates initiatives that support outcomes such as building a pool in the backyard. Social networks enable the firm to understand and test emotional outcomes that underlie the pool decision.

On another business front, many firms sell commodity products and services, and they struggle with “churn,” when customers that leave to take advantage of another offer at a competitor or substitute. Firms that assemble, integrate and deliver the information they have about individual and niche users to help them achieve outcomes will dramatically reduce this problem when they organize it to serve user outcomes.

Content Conundrum

Firms and their marketers like to believe that “content sells” because “content” encapsulates one-to-many mass communications and is fantastically scalable and effective. I write this having been at the marketing helm several times in my career. Content that “sells” has steadily lost its effectiveness, so much of it now seeks to entertain or add value in other ways. That said, the new golden age of content is coming to firms that shift their emphasis away from selling to serving. In so doing, they will sell more.

Talk and Entertainment Are Cheap But Action Is Precious

Firms’ mass marketing has promised anything and everything via advertising, promotions, packaging, loyalty programs and direct communications, but users believe firms and brands less and less. In general, as users lost credibility and responses to marketing have fallen, firm marketing has made ever more fantastic claims to try to get attention. Overall, their communications’ credibility is at an all-time low. Talk is cheap.

In 2013, marketing and advertising agencies are responding by pitching firms on the idea of “telling a story” when designing and delivering firm communications. They dream of engaging users in serial ads. This will prove to be a short-lived incremental improvement at best because it doesn’t address the core issue; it is seeking to engage a jaded audience that gives these communications little credence. Entertainment is cheap.

What agencies and firms overlook is that firms now co-create their own stories by serving high-priority users online. Interacting online is real; ads are fake. In digital social venues, firms have lost control, and hundreds or thousands of users are interacting for many reasons, but virtually none are motivated by selling product. They are more interested in helping people, building their reputations, learning about situations and having fun.

Firm images on websites, brochures, mailers and TV ads say how much they “value relationship,” but it doesn’t ring true. However, when they consistently help people in public to attain outcomes, they show that they care and regain credibility.

Conversations in which users and firms together are talking about user outcomes are the new “content.” Users love these conversations because they tend to be outcomes-focused, and they have high credibility. Smart firms love these conversations because they are public, so firms can reshare them widely.

The Experience Piece: Delivering Data, Content and Community

Here the firm uses all practical touchpoints to create a seamless experience that’s available to users under a wide range of conditions. Experience anticipates ubiquitous computing’s [links] smart devices [links] and capabilities. Experience encompasses mobile and ecommerce as well as in-store, in-device and other digital and analog spaces. The firm’s interactions are built on its beliefs and competencies, which it focuses on the outcomes of its highest priority users.

Technology and Process Elements

In Experience, the firm uses ecommerce and mobile to support users with connectivity and functionality. Experience refers to the firm’s “properties” such as websites, mobile apps and physical stores as well as its presences in the ecosystem at large. For example, a firm will have teams interacting in non-firm digital social venues in which an optimal mix of users consistently talk about outcomes relevant to the firm’s knowledge and business.

Community

Community refers to a group of people with shared mission, values and interests, and it can emerge wherever users gather, communicate and collaborate. Based on their businesses and highest priority users, firms will invest in building and strengthening communities, and they refer other users to those communities and encourage their interactions there.

PIE enables another level of community. Firms traditionally “invest” in communities in which they have physical presences by supporting the arts, policies, schools, etc. These are efforts to show people that they “care.” Digital social venues enable a much more active approach that addresses individual user challenges and opportunities that firms support in (mostly) online communities. The network effect amplifies the impact of interactions in digital communities.

“Community” can refer to blogs, forums, social network pages or any other space that supports many-to-many communication and collaboration. In addition, firms care as much or more about communities they don’t control when users show that they feel most comfortable there.

How Social Business Is Pivotal

PIE is grounded in understanding and serving individual users in public social venues, but it cannot really start until firms develop unprecedented knowledge of who their highest priority users are, what their critical outcomes are and how they are trying to attain those outcomes.

Social business interactions are the fastest way to develop in-depth understanding of user outcomes, so it’s the filling of PIE. Individualized experiences are incrementally better than what firms provide now. Personal individualized experience comes from fusing the firm’s social insight with its data and interactive capabilities.

The Social Business Accelerator

Social accelerates understanding in two ways: first, users interact with each other in digital social venues, and extensive implicit knowledge about outcomes emerges. Conversely, when firms have controlled interactions with users, as in marketing research, they set the context for the conversation. Since firms have a secondary interest in user concerns, minimal outcomes information emerges, and what does come out is usually oriented to products.

Conversely, user-to-user interactions are all about outcomes, with products playing second fiddle, and users mirror and challenge each other quickly and efficiently. Second, firms can ask questions to correct or validate their understanding of outcomes.

Millions of potential online users self-select by finding, observing and participating in conversations about outcomes. Users are far more likely to understand each other than firms, which have a totally different orientation to the situation; they usually only reference outcomes in order to sell product.

Trust Is the Key to Permission

Social is critical in another way because personal interactions are often the fastest way to develop trust with users. When firms show their consideration and care by proactively supporting users’ outcomes as their primary objective (instead of selling their products/services), they win trust. By showing that they care more about user outcomes than product sales will enable them to increase sales and profits.

Trust is also required in order for users to permit firms to use their data to add the most value. Users will object to firms they don’t trust using individual data about them.

PIE and the Chief Digital Officer

• PIE is the ultimate rationale for digital transformation. Social, mobile, big data and ecommerce are just technologies that will have a minimal effect on firm influence and profit unless digital executives ground them in creating human impact.
• Most firms and teams are built on assumptions that are less true every day, namely industrial scale, from manufacturing through communications.” Scale that is not personalized will see diminishing returns and trap unwary CDOs.
• PIE is the main ingredient of the Chief Digital Office.

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Ubiquitous Computing Primer reveals mobile’s ultimate business context and enables astute digital executives to create a whole new layer of value from their mobile investments. “Mobile” is far more important than launching smartphone and tablet apps because “smart” devices will interact with each other to provide a new level of capability and customer experience. This primer is a very brief treatment of a complex subject, so follow its links to drill down.

In 2013, smartphones and tablets imply that people are interacting with each other and “the Internet,” but “mobile” is becoming a “feature” of all kinds of devices and products in a phenomenon called “ubiquitous computing.”

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing refers to the fact that “computing” is in the process of morphing from specific device-based activities to environment-based interactions among people and devices. It uses a mobile network to enable “smart” devices to “collaborate” to serve people. For example, imagine that your “smartphone” interacts automatically with other devices such as your car, machines, appliances and ambient control systems according to your “preferences.” Now, when you customize your smartphone or laptop, you are configuring its environment. Ubiquitous computing fuses digital and physical worlds by extending the meaning of your control over your “environment.”

Smart Devices

“Smart devices”communicate with you and other devices on the network. Their “smartness” is comprised of various sensors of the environment, motion and activity as well as their software and algorithms, which analyze sensor data and activate their controls. Sensors, algorithms and interactivity with other devices enable smart devices “learn” about people and activity, thereby improving their ability to “serve” people, groups and other machines. Think of them as “agents” that increasingly anticipate what you want to do and adjust themselves accordingly. As the cost of controls and software falls, all things will be on the network and interact proactively.

• Your car “knows” who you are when you are within a short distance, so it adjusts the seat, mirror, climate control, music and other controls for you.
• Ambient systems in your workspace, home and others automatically adjust themselves to your preferences as well as the temperature, light and time.
• Office machines self-adjust to the use case based on who is in the room. This means workstations, digital whiteboards, lighting and technology services (projectors, websites, video input).
• Kitchen appliances are more proactive in terms of alerting you to inventory levels (of food items), fresh items that are in danger of spoiling and cooking. Ovens recognize tagged food items, their physical temperature, you and anticipate how to cook.
• Control systems know most people in the space and configure devices according to what kind of work those people do, what time of day it is, etc.
• Industrial control systems have myriad uses.

Ubiquitous Computing Examples

Ubiquitous computing is emerging as a function of its optimal use cases, so its immediate relevance to firms varies. However, all CDOs will do well to approach “mobile” as an intense learning opportunity to understand how people use machines to be productive and enjoy themselves. Therefore, “mobile” offers a valuable R&D opportunity as well as an ability to serve users better right now. Here are some applications and examples:

• Rental car companies’ “gold” service features cars that “know” members and adjust to them based on the identify broadcast from smartphones.
• Smart medical devices monitor patient conditions, prompt patient actions and report real-time to physicians.
• Smart HVAC systems operate as a function of external conditions, how many people are in the room and what time of day it is (its algorithms learn about activities based on smartphone activity, people’s movements in the room, time of day, day of the week, etc.
• Airplane “environments” automatically adjust to passengers as a function of their preferences.
• Home entertainment systems [ load options, games, movies and concerts as a function of who is in the room.
• Workout devices at the gym or home automatically follow people’s progress and suggest workouts, configure themselves to body types, etc.

More Ubiquitous Computing Resources

• The Ubiquitous Computing Primer is a foundation resource of the Mobile Competency Center at the Chief Digital Office.
• Find detailed examples of ubiquitous computing in retail pricing systems, workout equipment, home theater and thermostats.
• McKinsey’s A New Era in Personalized Computing (downloads pdf) offers a high-level report on several technology trends that are converging to drive ubiquitous computing.
• My ubiquitous computing links are updated constantly.

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U.S. healthcare transformation has been the subject of innumerable conferences, debates and programs for many years, and social business will play a large role. Reducing cost without sacrificing quality of care has become the common goal, so I believe social business will be a key lever because social technologies dramatically reduce the cost of collaboration.

I have monitored healthcare reform for many years, and I sense that various factions, players and special interests are finally realizing that they must change. “Obamacare,” the protracted poor economy and a rapidly aging population are forcing many players out of their comfort zones.

I attended two events last week that provided interesting glimpses from behind the curtain, so I’ll share my notes here. One conference was co-sponsored by Baker & McKenzie and Deloitte, and the other was held at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Technological Transformation of the Life Sciences Landscape (Baker & McKenzie and Deloitte)

Keynote—Harry Greenspun, MD (Deloitte, New York)

Harry outlined broad trends for healthcare and life sciences transformation.

• Overall healthcare trend: the provider focus is shifting from volume to value (cost/outcome); how to measure it though?
• Need to coordinate care, share information, engage patients, use analytics to measure outcomes.
• Sharing information has never been incented in healthcare; it requires mental changes as well as technology support.
• Doctors don’t know whether they’re good or not; very little reliable information available on outcomes; New York state has a database of cardiology outcomes; it’s a rare example.
• Coordinate care; there’s no “project management” in healthcare, where patients often wander among different providers and specialists; “islands of care.”
• Big disconnect: physicians want “quality of care” information, but patients can’t provide it; patients are focused on “service experience” because they have no healthcare/medical training to assess physicians/quality of care.
• Make healthcare more social to improve patient compliance; it’s a way to reward them for compliance.
• Physicians, when appropriate, can add value by connecting patients with each other; social tools will help with patients and their families, too, to coordinate care.
• Another disconnect: patients like care, which is expensive; they report lower satisfaction rates when providers improve utilization by cutting back to save costs.
• Information/big data/analytics can change behavior, but healthcare managers don’t trust it; for example, credit scores can help predict hospital readmission rates.
• Also, big data scientists don’t like healthcare data because it’s so dirty, imperfect; healthcare is replete with “islands of automation” whose data don’t mix well.

Panel One: Privacy—Jane E. Hobson (Moderator, Baker & McKenzie, London); Harry Greenspun, MD (Deloitte, New York); Brian Hengesbaugh (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago); Dr. Thilo Raepple (Baker & McKenzie, Frankfurt)

The first panel addressed “privacy,” which is poignant in healthcare—and a huge inhibitor in sharing information to enable better care.

• Privacy a key inhibitor to sharing healthcare data, and the regulations on its use are multiplying fast, which prevents sharing.
• Worse, there’s a broad definition of “personal data” (which means very little is available to share).
• Physicians don’t like to get personal data from patients (i.e. from social media) because they are afraid it will increase their liability (for example, if they use patients’ Facebook updates they might be required to monitor it, always.
• Telecoms destroy location data for the same reason; they want to escape liability.
• Social media is exploding data on how patients use and experience medication; and regulators and government take it seriously.
• Pharma is mashing up data via analytics to craft value propositions and pitch drugs, so business is innovating (because there’s less restriction on data use for business than for care).
• In Europe, data use is very restricted; when the data is received, the purpose is specified, and companies cannot reuse it for anything else, even if they deidentify it.
• Employers are collecting healthcare data in order to reduce costs.
• In Illinois, the legislature ruled that employers cannot force employees (or prospects) to turn over their social media credentials (enabling employers to snoop).
• To use data effectively, it needs to be tracked reliably (to insure various data points belong to a person or process, required to draw inferences from it); that’s where privacy’s a problem; even deidentifying data isn’t foolproof because it can be reidentified in many cases.
• Survey: the lowest trust among patients were payors, pharmaceutical firms and employers; highest trust were providers, hospitals and government; therefore, high-trust and low-trust players are collaborating to use data to improve healthcare value.
• Mobile apps, if they are designed for medical purposes, are strongly regulated in terms of data; however, general apps that can be used for medical purposes are not; it’s a big gray area.

Panel 2:

The Extended Healthcare Enterprise—Jane E. Hobson (Moderator, Baker & McKenzie, London); Yogesh Bahl (Deloitte, Chicago); Sam Kramer (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago)

• Global sourcing creates global extended enterprises, yet privacy and compliance make things very difficult for extended life science firms.
• Part of the problem is, it’s not obvious how to define when partners are “part” of an enterprise. For example, an overseas supplier makes a faulty part and a medical device fails, who is liable?
• Cross-border is the most difficult because laws are different in various countries (medical devices often have parts from suppliers in various countries, and they sell to clients in countries with diverse liability laws).
• CRO is big example.
• Data also presents problems; pharma and providers want to improve outcomes, i.e. monitor social media for adverse events.
• In general, outsource functions/processes to partners who have their compliance houses in order; for example, CRO/medical trials require strict security.
• Pharma and medical device mergers & acquisitions are starting to consider compliance, pre-deal; traditionally, due diligence only looked at financial measures, but they have learned that acquirees might have significant compliance exposure.
• 70% of clinical trials are a complete waste (recent research).
• Shared services can add value, but be careful with respect to compliance; IT outsourcing can be a good value for life science firms, but vendors need to be first class; procedures like the “clean desk policy,” which requires the provider to put away all information it was using for one client before s/he starts on another client, to avoid commingling data, are critical.
• When conducting due diligence for a deal, check things like the acquiree’s relationship with its local government, federal regulations in its country(ies) and culture.
• Data security and privacy are not atomized, i.e. via DRM-like devices; control is still at the network access and encryption levels; therefore, each country and region has different rules, adding complexity and cost.

Trends in Healthcare Consulting (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)

Principals at four consultancies discussed their healthcare consulting businesses, client situations and opportunities in healthcare consulting. All serve provider clients (hospitals and medical groups) as well as payors (healthcare insurance firms).

Panel Discussion—Michael Valitchka (Point B, Moderator); Larry Briski (Invoyent, panelist); George Mansour (PricewaterhouseCoopers, panelist); Nick Valentino (Navigant Consulting, panelist)

• The ACA (affectionately known as “Obamacare”) has generated a lot of consulting business, and there’s no end in sight; various players want help predicting premium and cost adjustments.
• Consultancies have many needs, and you don’t need healthcare experience to enter the field.
• Healthcare payor and provider clients at PwC want to know how to optimize their operations to take into account the new U.S. (state) insurance exchange markets.
• The ACA and the economy are raising healthcare costs; Boomers are a large demographic with high healthcare needs.
• The pressure to cut healthcare costs is intense and getting worse; it’s protracted, and for the first time.
• Many patients have not had healthcare for a long time due to lack of coverage and high costs; the ACA is bringing them back into the system; many haven’t had annual checkups in years.
• The ACA affects payors and providers somewhat differently; providers need to see patients to maintain their reimbursement rates, which is inefficient, it increases volume and demand on the system while supply of providers is constant.
• Exchanges inject dynamism into the system and increase the demand on the system, in theory, but how many people will pay the minor penalty instead of buying the “mandatory” insurance? No one knows.
• Providers will depend on nurse practitioners and physician assistants to take up the slack; providers need to increase the supply of care.
• Also the ACA models are based on younger, healthy people buying in, but many may pay the penalty and avoid insurance; payors need to know how to price their policies, so consultants are very busy.
• Trends during the next 5-10 years: consolidation, horizontally and vertically, among payors and providers; payors buying providers; hospitals buying faculties at Northwestern Memorial Hospital; HCSC bought the Montana Blues plan.
• Drugstores are opening “minute clinics” manned by nurses, with physician availability by phone.
• Medicare and Medicaid have quality of care discussions, and are starting to base reimbursement on outcomes; they are starting to introduce standards of care, outcomes, for hospitals and clinics.
• There aren’t yet quality standards that can help patients select coverage and select providers; we need data on physician success rates.
• Exchanges are then focused on access of insurance and providers, not quality, because no data is available; that’s coming.
• Patients are selecting physicians based on their Yelp reviews, but of course these are all based on “service experience” because other patients can’t evaluate quality of care (in terms of outcomes); how to measure outcomes reliably?
• Cost is key; 3/10 patients need care but don’t seek it, which increases cost when they go to emergency later; that’s 50 million people in the U.S.
• We need to focus on prevention (but it’s not reimbursed).
• ACNs are supposed to address cost containment and introduce feedback loops.
• Consolidation may help; Kaiser Permanente has had some good outcomes in California, quality of care has increased due to better coordination among Kaiser providers.
• Risk is a foreign concept to providers who are being forced to assume some of the risk (reimbursed for packages of care rather than each line item, i.e. test/operation); we all remember the HMO failure; ACOs will be similar if we aren’t careful.
• ACOs work better in dense population environments (cities); large payors are moving to ACOs, they think it’s better to be a part of it and to try to influence how ACOs develop; they want to know how to do risk transfer.
• Payors are risk focused, providers aren’t, but they will have to learn; follow up with patients; physicians usually don’t because they aren’t incented to; now they are because penalties for readmissions; providers are traditionally focused on volume,
• Payors will follow up with patients to make sure they are following doctor’s orders; they want to make sure the patient gets better by improving compliance, so they are moving to manage medical conditions.
• Technology investments can help; payors are getting more information on care by following up with patients; interoperability of software and hardware is low.
• Exchanges will not help in managing risk; their main thing is access now.
• Pay for procedure has always been the norm, so providers need to learn how to optimize; providers never followed patients across the “care stream”; only their piece of it, so no one has data to inform optimal care.
• Data analytics can help, but hospitals need to learn how to use it.
• Hospitals are buying small businesses (practices); providers and payors are collaborating and sharing data to develop optimal care protocols for specific populations; payors have data on outcomes for large patient populations.
• Payors are scared of being squeezed out as hospital groups in urban areas get bigger; at a certain point it makes sense for them to process their own insurance.
• Employers have it easier; some don’t hire smokers or force them to pay higher premiums; payors look at patients as customers, not employers, as patients pick their own coverage, but they don’t know how to relate to patients; they’ve never had to before; “customer experience” is an unknown concept.
• How to incent patients to make good choices? Consultants are doing a lot of surveys and testing concepts, trying to learn what works.
• Price matters, and patients still don’t pay enough for healthcare to influence their choices better; they need to be accountable; there’s so much waste; we need to reintroduce incentives.
• The system needs diverse skills, business, technology.
• Education costs and torts are hurting the system; physicians need to make a lot to pay off their education; malpractice is very high.
• Payors are introducing models in which patients promise not to sue for lower premiums.
• All kinds of transparency are happening with mobile devices, which help patients discover pricing discrepancies, manage records and appointments, etc. Examples are Zocdoc, Patients Like Me, Facebook integration.
• Physician rating systems are affecting choice, but for experience, not quality.
• Technology enables families to collaborate to help care for members with chronic disease.
• Need to get physicians involved with data so they don’t only rely on their own experience, which is small but on outcomes for thousands or millions of patients.
• Payors and providers are starting to collaborate to determine optimal care protocols; lab expenses, consensus on leading practices.
• Payors are scared of ACOs in cities.
• Of course the government is the biggest payor (Medicare); its data will be very valuable, can change the game.
• Providers will get the upper hand eventually.

Conclusions

• It was obvious from speakers’ remarks at both events that all players in the U.S. healthcare value chain are afraid of being disrupted; no one knows how the status quo will change.
• It is debatable whether healthcare is a “business” or a public service; in the U.S., it is treated more like the former, but that is being questioned now.
• Social business can enable all parties to collaborate much more closely, so that they can coordinate care better; this can dramatically lower costs. A very small portion of the U.S. population accounts for a large share of the total healthcare costs, so cost is very concentrated. Patients at end of life and with multiple chronic conditions.
• As elsewhere, “empowerment” is adding dynamism to the system; patients are discussing their health and care with each other, thereby educating each other and formulating preferences; similarly, providers are interacting with them online.
• I have written several healthcare social business case studies; also see the Social Business Opportunity in Healthcare microsite.
• KPMG analysis of the U.S. healthcare value chain; how various players are affected by the ACA.
• McKinsey paper on using big data in healthcare.
• Access more healthcare reform papers and notable posts.

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Chief digital officers and transformation will go hand in hand as the position and its competencies take shape over the next few years. Historically, commercial, government and nonprofit enterprises, when faced with profound business change or technology disruption, respond by  elevating new types of leader to the “C” level. Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Process Officer, Chief Ecommerce Officer and the like become de rigeur for a few years and fade, either because the new disruption proved less sustainable than anticipated or because the competency became subsumed by a more core function.

I predict that the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) will play a vital role at most organizations through 2020, but the organizational role will be fleeting as a standalone. “Digital” will integrate all functions and be the standard eventually, but organizations require intense transformation to get there, so the CDO will play a crucial role. My ongoing analysis of social business adoption indicates that the market for social business transformation will hit an inflection point by 2017, as more advisors and executives see the power and results of digital communications and collaboration.

The Chief Digital Officer is a powerful locus of attention, but current thought leadership reveals a lack of clarity about “digital” and the CDO role; moreover it unknowingly discounts the transformational potential of social business, both of which I’ll address here.

The Gartner Chief Digital Officer Model

Gartner’s Mark McDonald proposed four “types” of CDOs as defined by revenue accountability and organization. He made the excellent point that the “digitization” process will vary with the type of organization, how it currently uses digital technologies and what kind of business it is/how it generates revenue. Here I’ll touch on Mark’s model for four types of CDO before suggesting how each can best use social business for organizational transformation. The “often used by” parts are my interpretation. I encourage you to read Mark’s post.

The Chief Digital Revenue (Sales, Ecommerce) Officer

• Focus: driving new and incremental sales/ecommerce revenue from digital technologies; runs the digital part of a business/brand with revenue accountability.
• Often used by: organizations that have significant digital operations that they want to expand in depth, breadth or both.

The Chief Digital Champion Officer

• Focus: disrupting a business/brand from the inside, using digital technologies, processes and programs to create new capabilities, often within a new digital unit.
• Often used by: any business/brand that wants to disrupt itself from the inside.

Chief Digital Marketing Officer

• Focus: driving new and incremental marketing/promotional revenue through other business units; uses digital technologies to create new customer experience, and has revenue accountability.
• Often used by: organizations that have significant digital marketing operations that they want to expand in depth, breadth or both.

Chief Digital Strategy Officer

• Focus: disrupting the enterprise from the inside, using digital technologies, processes and programs to create new capabilities.
• Often used by: enterprises that want to disrupt themselves from the inside.

Social Business Transformation of the Enterprise

There is broad consensus that “digital” encompasses four competencies: mobile, social, ecommerce and big data/analytics. Of course, the relative importance of each competency will vary with type of organization and the business it’s in, but I’ll argue that social, since it digitizes communication and collaboration, is the most broadly transformational competency. All organizations depend on communication and collaboration to create value, and digital social has shrunk the cost of both by an order of magnitude. Few organizations have discovered how to reorganize to unleash the power of much faster, cheaper communication and collaboration, which has kept social off the radar so far.

Since very few analysts, consultants and executives have seen digital social transformation from the inside as I have, thought leadership underweights social. Of course, by “social,” most authors assume “social media,” which is far less transformational than social business; social media simply uses social technologies as a new channel for content distribution, promotion and marketing. That is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

By prioritizing transformation and disruption, we can shrink Gartner’s four types of Chief Digital Officer to two, and I’ll propose that their differences won’t often matter in practice.

From Four Chief Digital Officer Types to Two—Then to One

By prioritizing transformation and disruption, we can shrink Gartner’s four types of Chief Digital Officer to two, and I’ll propose that their differences won’t often matter in practice. I’m not saying that the others don’t matter—all will create intense value for various organizations—only that transformation makes two of the four most relevant.

Of the four digital competencies, ecommerce, mobile and analytics are already part of digital operations at many companies, so many CDOs will be necessarily focused on evolving, scaling and managing digital operations. Their charters will be repositioning digital within the organization, making it more strategic and powerful relative to other capabilities. Any of these three competencies can drive profound transformation of organizations, depending on their business and current use of the competencies.

However, the “social” competency, since it refers to social media, addresses transformation superficially at best. Organizations aren’t even in the social business transformation ball park.

Moreover, social business, since its transformation journey involves discovering, engaging and scaling new relationships with customers, clients, partners, employees and other stakeholders, requires a significant learning curve. Its value is grounded in relating to stakeholders in new ways, not technology skills like big data or analytics. Social has the most profound disruptive potential of the four digital competencies when it is approached as social business.

Each situation is different, but generally, we can shrink the four types of CDO into two:

CDO Type One: Evolving Digital Operations

This CDO adds clarity and scale to existing ecommerce, mobile and analytics operations, whether marketing-oriented or sales-oriented—at the enterprise or business/brand level. This type corresponds to Gartner’s Chief Digital Revenue Officer and Chief Digital Marketing Officer.

Depending on the business and its experience with digital prior to hiring a CDO, any of the four can be pivotal. Social business can be profoundly transformational in any business.

• Ecommerce: CDO focuses on integrating social and mobile, mcommerce and analytics to grow the ecommerce/mcommerce business. Growing digital will be pivotal to enterprises whose non-digital businesses are shrinking.
• Mobile: can revolutionize sales, service and even product/service development, depending on the business. Discover, experiment and scale how to engage smartphone-enabled stakeholders.
• Big Data/Analytics: most organizations have been collecting digital data for decades, but new technologies are enabling them to knit data together and derive new insights into demographics and individuals. The first level of value is often creating and delivering more “personalized” marketing and sales messages.
• Social: can be approached as social media, as it is currently at most organizations, or social business. Many brands already have significant social media operations. The Upgrade Social Media use case details how to mature social media into transformational social business. The Herd the Cats use case shows how to improve business returns of several business units or brands.

CDO Type Two: Transforming the Enterprise with Digital Social Business

This CDO has an explicit transformation/disruption focus at the enterprise or business/brand level. It corresponds to Gartner’s Chief Digital Champion Officer and Chief Digital Strategy Officer.

• Gartner’s model specifies that these types “transform” the organization. Reading into the context, I’ll hazard that each of these CDOs uses social technologies to transform passive, isolated relationships with stakeholders (customers/clients/users, partners, regulators, employees, communities…) to active collaborative relationships.
• As I proposed in the Transform the Enterprise use case, explicit social business transformation operationalizes through a Social Business Competency Team under the CDO that builds social business competencies iteratively and spreads them throughout the enterprise via mentoring. Therefore, whether the CDO is housed at the enterprise level or within a business unit matters little.
• Any organization that explicitly approaches social business as transformation will not keep it within any business or brand because it is so fungible.
• Using the SBCT and transformation approach enables organizations to begin transformation anywhere and achieve enterprise transformation as a function of conditions and results. They should begin social business transformation in the optimal part of the organization, where stakeholder adoption is highest and organizational resistance is lowest.

“Social” Will Require Intense Focus to Achieve Best Results

My experience advising global businesses on social business strategy and execution consistently shows that, when organizations use a relationship-focused approach, they create new opportunities to reinvent themselves from the ground up. When they learn to use social technologies to discover, create and scale trusted relationships with stakeholders, collaboration and innovation increase sharply. These drive profit.

Therefore, it follows that It will be more difficult for CDOs to transform businesses or enterprises with social business when they have significant operations management accountabilities. Transforming with social is complex and not a part-time job because it is often disruptive, and the CDO will need to orchestrate transformation so s/he creates new profit without negatively impacting legacy revenues in the meantime.

It will be more difficult for CDOs to transform businesses or enterprises with social business when they have significant operations management accountabilities. Transforming with social is complex and not a part-time job.

Social Business Transformation for Chief Digital Officers

Here are general recommendations for how each type of CDO can use social business for transformation. All refer to the Social Business Life Cycle.

The Chief Digital Revenue (Sales, Ecommerce) Officer

• Focus on transforming your brand’s/business’s vision for “customers” or “clients” by using social to learn about the outcomes for which they buy your product or service. Strategy will provide the basis of your social business strategy, which will call for several social business pilots to test the strategy and start developing your team.
• As you learn about their outcomes, evolve your messaging from product-centric value propositions to customer outcomes, and engage with customers around outcomes. This will usually involve realigning many functions because their DNA is product-centric, and they have promotional attitudes.
• As your internal social business capabilities grow, consider “taking back” social media operations you have outsourced to your agency(ies).
• Opportunistically tone down promotional messaging and attitudes toward customers, and morph to a more collaborative stance.
• If you are having some success with mcommerce, mobile social and social media, continue these initiatives while you are evolving your customer/client relationships.
• More information in Building Post Product Relationships in the Social Channel.
• Use the Upgrade Social Media use case to begin evolving social media into social business in order to boost revenue and transformational potential. If you are in a business that has lagged its peers in social media, use the Catch the Leaders use case.

The Chief Digital Champion Officer

• Begin transforming your business/brand from the inside by developing a holistic view of stakeholders; they might be clients/customers, channel partners, employees, contractors or other influencers.
• Ground your stakeholder understanding in their outcomes, which govern why they work with you (partners) or buy your product or service.
• Conduct Feasibility, Strategy and Pilots to develop insight and build your SBCT iteratively or upfront.
• The key to mitigating the risk of transformation is developing repeatable processes with real business results as quickly as possible, scaling them and finally unplugging legacy processes when feasible.
• Transformation will enable you to redesign many of your business processes and harness new types of collaboration with stakeholders. This will lead to new sources of open innovation and profit.
• Depending on your CEO’s sense of urgency, use Herd the Cats (if your business has several social media initiatives already) or Transform the Enterprise use cases. You will find Catch the Leaders helpful if your firm has had minimal social media experience.

Chief Digital Marketing Officer

• Focus on transforming your enterprise’s vision for “customers” or “clients” by using social to learn about the outcomes for which they work with you or buy your product or service. Strategy will provide the basis of your social business strategy, which will call for several social business pilots to test the strategy and start developing your team.
• As you learn about their outcomes, evolve your messaging from product-centric value propositions to customer outcomes, and engage with customers around outcomes.
• If you are having some success with mcommerce, mobile social and social media, continue these initiatives while you are evolving your customer/client relationships.
• As your internal social business capabilities grow, consider “taking back” social media operations you have outsourced to your agency(ies).
• Opportunistically tone down promotional messaging and attitudes toward customers, and morph to a more collaborative stance.
• Consider the social business model, “Service as Marketing,” in which you collaborate with “customer service” to solve problems in public and commingle the solutions with product/service information.
• Consider the Digital Events social business model, which reinvents physical events such as festivals, trade shows, conferences or symposia.
• More information in Building Post Product Relationships in the Social Channel.
• Use the Upgrade Social Media use case to mature social media, or Catch the Leaders if your business is far behind, or Herd the Cats if your enterprise has numerous social media initiatives whose revenue contribution you want to increase.

Chief Digital Strategy Officer

• Begin transforming your enterprise by developing a holistic view of enterprise stakeholders and social business adoption across your enterprise and its businesses/brands. Stakeholders might be clients/customers, channel partners, employees, contractors or other influencers.
• Conduct Feasibility, Strategy and Pilots in the enterprise context to develop insight and build your SBCT. Launch the SBCT as early as feasible.
• Ground your stakeholder understanding in their outcomes, which govern why they buy your product or service.
• When your SBCT has run 3-5 pilots, evolved the social business strategy, built their digital collaboration space and developed some social business competencies, opportunistically engage one of your businesses/brands that Feasibility found to have high social business potential, as a function of its stakeholders’ social business adoption.
• The key to mitigating the risk of transformation is developing repeatable processes with real business results as quickly as possible, scaling them and finally unplugging legacy processes when feasible. In this case, you are scaling enterprise social business (with the enterprise as client) as well as across your businesses/brands.
• Transformation will enable you to redesign many of your business processes and harness new types of collaboration and innovation with stakeholders.
• See the Transform the Enterprise use case for more information.

Additional Resources

• References (chief digital officer and transformation thought leadership)
• Social Business Opportunity for Chief Digital Officers
• Russell Reynolds Digital Transformation

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Social business strategy is inherently transformational to large organizations whether they are in commercial, nonprofit or government sectors. All organizations are hives of people communicating and collaborating to execute business processes (“work”). Digital social technologies have reduced the cost of communication (and therefore much collaboration and work) by an order of magnitude (roughly ten times). Collaboration and innovation, before digital social technologies, were slow and expensive. Now they are very fast and inexpensive—when organizations learn how to use them. Organizations that learn how are more responsive to their constituents and customers, so the market rewards them—and will increasingly punish those that lag too far.

These use cases focus on building enterprise social business internal capability, and they are also helpful to consider when selecting social business advisors. Please consider these five as models that you can use to frame your situation and create your individual approach to social business transformation.

Social Business Strategy Use Case Summary

Each social business strategy use case has a business focus that summarizes how it adds value to the enterprise. The life cycle focus refers to the Social Business Life Cycle (see graphic immediately below). Finally, each has a social business focus.

How Social Business Strategy Use Cases Align with the Social Business Life Cycle

Social business strategy use cases map to different parts of the Social Business Life Cycle. I predict that all enterprises and businesses will eventually complete the life cycle, which describes the process of transforming legacy—i.e. non-digital-social—enterprises into digital social organizations characterized by extensive interactions with stakeholders in transparent digital social venues—and widespread collaboration for innovation. However, enterprises will use different approaches to get there.

Fix Fire Drill and Upgrade Social Media are somewhat more reactionary and tactical; they are focused on maturing promotional social media operations into trust-based, high-commitment collaboration with stakeholders. Catch the Leaders is an explicit effort to outperform rivals by superior execution and explicitly plans beyond Pilot. Herd the Cats and Transform the Enterprise add Feasibility to the initiative; it develops a comprehensive view of the enterprise and its stable of brands/businesses, and it looks to transform iteratively. Transform the Enterprise is transformational at the enterprise level as well as at the business/brand level. Here is a longer description of the Social Business Life Cycle.

Use Case 1: Upgrade Social Media

Upgrade Social Media

Upgrade Social Media applies to consumer-oriented brands or business to business firms that have been outsourcing much of their social media work to agencies. Consequently, their internal capabilities with interacting with stakeholders in social venues are quite weak. Upgrade Social Media is usually championed by a brand or business unit vice president or Director of Marketing (sometimes CMO), and the goal is to develop more business returns by moving beyond promotional social media interactions. Upgrade Social Media focuses in the Strategy and Pilot parts of the Social Business Life Cycle.

This use case applies to you when:

• Most interactions are outbound and promotional because these firms use social media as another channel for content.
• Social media has has a growing budget for several years and has a cloud of agencies servicing it.
• You “serve” customers by asking them to go offline to resolve problems, which broadcasts your lack of confidence.
• Content and messaging is oriented to products and services, not user experience and outcomes. The brand asks few questions or invites discussions.
• Social media “operations” are agency-led, and the brand has a relatively small internal team.
• The metrics used are social media metrics that are focused on brand mentions and other “appearance” numbers; they are not oriented to user outcomes and struggle to share impact on the brand’s profitability.
• Most brands have had a director of social media for 1-2 years, but they increasingly feel s/he doesn’t have the strategic management skills to build the kind of team to take social business to the next level.

Use case key steps:

1. Unless the brand/business is very unhappy with their social media results, costs or value proposition, maintain what you are doing while you develop new social business capability.
2. Conduct a social business strategy, which will analyze your ecosystem with new eyes because it focuses on user (i.e. customer/client) outcomes of using your product or service. Very few users want to buy products/services; they buy tools that help them improve their lives in some way. The strategy will also analyze your organization to determine what knowledge or abilities you have, which are relatively easy for you to share, that offer the highest value to users.
3. The strategy will recommend several pilots that average 6-10 weeks each. Usually, the goals are to test the strategy, measure success by changing trust and commitment in relationship; they lead to preference and more revenue. Another key goal is developing competency in interacting with users (“stakeholders”) so their trust in you increases. Pilots are usually staffed by volunteer employees, which is possible because their roles are specific, fun and represent small time commitments.
4. Each pilot concludes with a decision of continuing it (another pilot), rescoping/changing it or killing it. All pilots will teach your team how to interact very efficiently to increase trust, commitment and business.
5. More information about building a social business team using this use case in Upgrade Social Media [Social Business Team Building]

Use Case 2: Fix Fire Drill

Fix Fire Drill

The (social media) fire drill results when an external or internal event explodes and elevates management’s interest in social business/social media. The CMO/CEO/CLO/COO often responds in crisis mode and ends up wasting considerable resources for two reasons: they spend more than they need to and over-correct. Worse, they usually stay away from social technologies because they’ve been burned. They end up with a team that cannot produce maximum social business results because it is reactive and fearful rather than proactive and confident. Fix Fire Drill is grounded in Strategy and Pilot parts of the Social Business Life Cycle; notably, it also emphasizes social business governance, which is tackled in Scale in other use cases.

This use case applies to you when:

• Several parts of the organization have pursued “social media” independently of each other.
• The CMO wants to elevate it to the “corporate” level, but there’s a nasty power struggle among divisions, departments or brands. The CMO (sometimes the CEO) gets tired of it and wants to bring in an outsider to sort out the mess.
• A serious lapse in governance has led to significant embarrassment of the firm or brand.
• A competitor has just won accolades for their social media activities, and the firm has been on the sidelines. The board is asking questions.
• One or more senior executives have just returned from a conference where social media was emphasized. They got the religion, so now they “want one.”
• A new marketing/communications/PR executive has managed a social media effort in his/her most recent role (elsewhere) and wants to push the envelope here.

Use case key steps:

1. If Fix Fire Drill results from an external threat to the brand, management will want to bring in a crisis public relations firm. They should think twice and ask themselves how much the incident really affects the brand. In many cases, egos are wounded, and shock/anger at the slight are executives’ gut reactions. Inviting a crisis-oriented firm will only strengthen those impressions. One way to think about it is how valuable is the brand’s reputation among key stakeholders anyway? And, what’s the brand’s PR profile, does it have a history of vocal opponents offline/online? If reputation is pretty strong and sustained organized opposition is weak (the case at most brands), sometimes the best reaction is ignoring the incident. The team can save high professional services fees and invest them instead in a team that will handle any future crisis with aplomb. That said, make sure to deal with true “fires” [for examples, see: United, Domino’s, KFC or McDonald’s] before shifting to prevention mode. One alternative to calling a crisis firm right away is to tap connections in your senior team’s professional networks (i.e. executives with social business experience) to get their quick feedback.
2. In the case of a competitor winning attention, calm down and use the Catch the Leaders use case (below); you can plan to power past them by using strategy and out-executing them. As anxious or outraged as some on the team might be, it’s rarely a true fire drill. Internal struggles can be resolved by strategy that shows each team or brand where their true opportunities lie. People usually bicker when they don’t know what else to do or they are unsure of themselves.
3. Conduct a social business strategy, which will analyze your ecosystem with new eyes because it focuses on user (i.e. customer/client) outcomes of using your product or service. Very few users want to buy products/services; they buy tools that help them improve their lives in some way. The strategy will also analyze your organization to determine what knowledge or abilities you have, which are relatively easy for you to share, that offer the highest value to users.
4. The strategy will recommend several pilots that average 6-10 weeks each. Usually, the goals are to test the strategy, measure success by changing trust and commitment in relationship; they lead to preference and more revenue. Another key goal is developing competency in interacting with users (“stakeholders”), so their trust in you increases. Pilots are usually staffed by volunteer employees, which is possible because their roles are specific, fun and require small time commitments.
5. Each pilot concludes with a decision of continuing it (another pilot), rescoping/changing it or killing it. All pilots will teach your team how to interact very efficiently to increase trust, commitment and business.
6. Fix Fire drill can also involve some aspects of the Scale part of the Social Business Life Cycle. Pilots have taught your small team reams about how to interact to increase trust; you can often reuse your insights into what makes stakeholders tick to scale new pilots within businesses, enterprise functions or brands.
7. More information about building a social business team using this use case in Fix Fire Drill [Social Business Team Building]

Use Case 3: Catch the Leaders

Catch the Leaders

In Catch the Leaders, the enterprise is in a regulated industry or often has a very conservative culture or some other reason for having avoided social media experimentation during the past five years. However, in 2013 many management teams worry about being left behind. Such a firm gravitates to advisors that mitigate risks while leading the firm to overtake the leaders by outperforming them across the life cycle. This is the “tortoise wins the race” use case: by using social business strategy, the firm can outperform rivals by focusing on the quality of interaction, efficiency and focus. Since few firms know how to use social technologies to develop relationships and drive increased business or cut costs, outperforming rivals is usually realistic with a good strategy and consistent execution. Catch the Leaders focuses on Strategy and Pilot parts of the Social Business Life Cycle, and it extends learnings into Scale.

This use case applies to you when:

• The “social media red herring” has wrapped social business in a promotional cloak, and this has put off conservative organizations that squirm in the face of overt promotion.
• Firm principals’ excuse #1: “we’re a regulated business!” But they can’t explain why pioneers in their industry have won accolades for years. They are often ignorant of pioneers’ social business initiatives.
• Excuse #2: “our clients aren’t on social media,” but principals flash you the deer-in-headlights when you ask for details of their due diligence behind that conclusion.
• Clients and patients increasingly ask law/accounting firms and medical offices to communicate using digital social venues, but partners and physicians hang back. The real reason: they’ve never learned how.
• Young partners and physicians at professional services firms, insurance firms, financial advisory firms and medical offices practice social business privately.
• You have such a punitive social media policy that professionals ignore it; they contact Marketing for social media advice, but the policy prevents them from helping, so professionals are left to their own devices.
• Independents push the envelope in these industries because they keep within regulators’ rules but they needn’t contend with over-cautious compliance departments.
• B2B marketers boast how their staff tweets links to firm seminars, conferences and white papers. But when you ask them about how their social business interactions are changing trust and increasing commitment, they are clueless.

Use case key steps:

1. By definition, most of these businesses have significant constraints imposed by regulators, cultures and traditions. The exciting thing is, all businesses face very similar conditions, but the biggest limitation is a lack of imagination and ignorance of pioneers that have learned how to push the envelope within constraints.
2. Conduct a social business strategy, which will analyze your ecosystem with new eyes because it focuses on user (i.e. customer/client) outcomes of using your product or service. Very few users want to buy products/services; they buy tools that help them improve their lives in some way. The strategy will also analyze your organization to determine what knowledge or abilities you have, which are relatively easy for you to share, that offer the highest value to users (stakeholders).
3. The strategy will recommend several pilots that average 6-10 weeks each. Usually, the goals are to test the strategy, measure success by changing trust and commitment in relationship; they lead to preference and more revenue. Another key goal is developing competency in interacting with users (“stakeholders”), so their trust in you increases. Pilots are usually staffed by volunteer employees, which is possible because their roles are specific, fun and require small time commitments.
4. Each pilot concludes with a decision of continuing it (another pilot), rescoping/changing it or killing it. All pilots will teach your team how to interact very efficiently to increase trust, commitment and business. All help you to refine your strategy.
5. Catch the Leaders outperforms because it’s explicitly designed to use a strategy based on comprehensive due diligence, which it tests and adjusts through rapid iterations (pilots). It aggressively scales pilots that work and powers through the Scale part of the Social Business Life Cycle. Pilots have taught your small team reams about how to interact to increase trust; you can often reuse your insights into what makes stakeholders tick to scale new pilots within businesses, enterprise functions or brands.
6. More information about building a social business team using this use case in Catch the Leaders [Social Business Team Building]

Use Case 4: Herd the Cats

Herd the Cats

The enterprise CMO or CDO (Chief Digital Officer) usually champions Herd the Cats when s/he discovers that many business units or brands in the enterprise portfolio have social media presences that have minimal business results to show for their investments. The CMO/CDO has two goals: to use strategy to develop good practices and help inform corporate strategy, addressing issues as diverse as corporate citizenship, community, health or policy. Second, s/he often wants to create a social business “center of excellence” to serve several businesses or brands, leveraging enterprise resources to improve social business performance and business contribution. Herd the Cats requires comprehensive due diligence during Feasibility, strong focus on Strategy, and mentoring in Pilot and Scale parts of the Social Business Life Cycle.

This use case applies to you when:

• The corporation or enterprise has a minimal interactive presence; its typical profile is its agencies tweet press releases about volunteering, annual reports, equal opportunity initiatives, similar content is pushed to its Facebook Page and YouTube channel, and there’s a nominal effort to recruit via LinkedIn. However, none of their presences have trust-based programs that measure changing stakeholder relationships based on interaction.
• Brands and businesses in the portfolio act in isolation from each other; each has its own agencies, and most have social media directors that focus on coordinating reports from agency activities.
• None of the brands have specific business cases for social business; their goals are oriented to brand, reputation and public relations goals, not business returns. ”Metrics” are grounded in promotion; Facebook likes, Twitter followers, retweets/shares, Pins, etc. Very little specific ties to increased revenue or decreased costs to serve.
• There are no enterprise standards for social business. Most brands and businesses have their own social media policies.

Key Steps

1. Herd the Cats begins with the enterprise phase in which it uses Feasibility, Strategy and Pilot parts of the Social Business Life Cycle to develop extensive social business competency; pilots enable the corporate center to engage high impact stakeholders meaningfully, often for the first time.
2. In the second phase, the enterprise invites one or two of its brands/businesses to collaborate on maturing their social media; Feasibility has identified brands with the most business potential (based on their stakeholders’ interactions in social venues); for these, the enterprise conducts the Strategy process (social business strategy) for each, and it mentors them through pilots. Notably, the enterprise shows brands how to focus on serving people, not promoting/selling; it guides them through a major mindset change.
3. Both phases naturally seed the enterprise Social Business Competency Team (SBCT). The SBCT produces Social Business Competencies (SBCs, good practices); after collaborating with one or two business/brands, the SBCT codifies its learnings about improving brand performance and scales by approaching other brands in the portfolio.
4. The SBCT reevaluates social media policies and transforms them into empowering social business policies.
5. The SBCT advises the brands in taking back outsourced social media work; it leverages SBCs and mentors brands on realizing business value.
6. More information about building a social business team using this use case in Herd the Cats [Social Business Team Building]

Use Case 5: Transform the Enterprise

Transform the Enterprise

Transform the Enterprise is almost always initiated by the CEO’s office, the CDO, the board of directors or other strategic body. Its defining characteristic is enterprise transformation, using social business as a key enabler. Some of its common business contexts are: the hiring of a (new) CDO (Chief Digital Officer), which is itself a commitment to use social business for transformation; a merger, major acquisition or sale whose focus is to redefine the enterprise; “pervasive social business” that results when several of the enterprise’s brands have had some social business success that the executive team wants to scale; scaling enterprise 2.0 social collaboration technologies; self-disruption to create a new level of competitiveness.

This use case applies to you when:

• Senior management of an enterprise with maturing brands/businesses wants to leverage digital social business to improve performance; its stable is filled with legacy businesses whose growth has stagnated. They hire a CDO to spearhead digital and social business.
• Senior management is considering a shift in corporate strategy, often involving transactions (merger, acquisition, sale) involving a portfolio brand/business. They want to use social business to pre-validate stakeholder value assumptions (usually in stealth). Often hire a CDO to use digital to either transform businesses, knit them together to create more corporate value, or both.
• Senior management has decided to go “21st century global” and directly enter geographies/cultures in which it has had no previous presence, so it uses social business to centralize a “center of excellence” for engaging directly with stakeholders to plan, test and scale business digitally.
• Senior management has decided to spin out a business or brand, and its management wants to go digital/social immediately.

Distinguishing features:

• Transform the Enterprise is defined by its explicit corporate transformation. Herd the Cats is a more incremental approach to transformation that involved four of the five parts of the Social Business Life Cycle because it approaches social business with the option to stop at any point; transformation is based on the results at several milestones along the way; Transform the Enterprise involves the entire life cycle.
• Like Herd the Cats, Transform the Enterprise usually includes improving trust and collaboration with corporate stakeholders; however, Transform’s focus is strategic from the corporate perspective.
• Transform the Enterprise calls for comprehensive due diligence in Feasibility, a strong focus on Strategy, extensive mentoring in Pilot and extended guidance in Scale & Integrate.
• Unlike any other use case, the CDO organizes and charters the SBCT at the beginning of the initiative and usually hires a vice president or equivalent to run it; they preinvest in the collaboration platform and governance issues like policy(ies) that may need reworking. I rarely recommend looking at policy until Feasibility and Strategy are complete. It can be concurrent with Strategy.
• Transform the Enterprise often intends to reach Scale and Integrate parts of the Social Business Life Cycle as soon as possible.

Key Steps

The variables are deep and wide here, so please consider the following a very loose description.

1. The CEO, CDO or Board of Directors hires an advisory firm to partner with the sponsor, with the consultant taking the lead and mentoring enterprise executives and staff. The consultancy can explicitly mentor the CDO in social business transformation during the engagement.
2. Transform the Enterprise, like Herd the Cats, begins with an enterprise phase in which it uses Feasibility, Strategy and Pilot parts of the Social Business Life Cycle to develop extensive social business competency; pilots enable the corporate SBCT to engage high impact stakeholders meaningfully, often for the first time. The SBCT often mentors and seeds a small corporate social business team as its focus is driving adoption, not ongoing operations.
3. In the second phase, the CDO invites one or two brands/businesses that will be directly affected by shifts in corporate strategy to collaborate on driving strategy with social business; Feasibility has identified brands that are most relevant (based on their stakeholders’ interactions in social venues); for these, the SBCT conducts individual Strategy process (social business strategy), and it mentors them through pilots. Notably, the enterprise shows brands how to focus on serving people, not promoting/selling; it guides them through a major mindset change.
4. Both phases naturally drive development of the corporate Social Business Competency Team (SBCT). The SBCT identifies and organizes Social Business Competencies (SBCs, good practices); while collaborating with one or two business/brands, the SBCT codifies its learnings about improving brand performance and scales by approaching other brands in the portfolio.
5. The SBCT reevaluates social media policies and transforms them into empowering social business policies.
6. The SBCT advises the brands in taking back outsourced social media work; it leverages SBCs and mentors brands on realizing business value.
7. As a function of corporate strategy, the SBCT leads the scaling of pilots into ongoing programs in Scale. Unlike other use cases, the CDO often wants to pilot and scale initiatives as soon as possible in order to do Integrate, which is focused on replacing legacy business processes with digital, where feasible.
8. The CDO and SBCT are often involved with mentoring brand/business CMOs, vice presidents of marketing or Ecommerce/Digital leaders on transforming their approaches to stakeholders in two steps. First, they reimagine the brand’s role away from a product maker/service provider to an experience enabler focused on stakeholder outcomes, not product/service features. This is “front house transformation.” Second, they coordinate collaboration among stakeholders, users and product development/service delivery to evolve and design new products and services. This is “back house transformation.” See Building Post-Product Relationship in the Social Channel for background and a step-by-step outline.
9. If the brand/business is very large, complex and mature, the enterprise CDO mentors the brand/business CDO.
10. More information about building a social business team using this use case in Transform the Enterprise [Social Business Team Building]

Conclusions

• CDOs, CEOs and Boards of Directors can only choose how they will evolve their organizations, not whether they will evolve. Read the Social Channel Executive Summary to appreciate the shifting sands on which your organization stands.
• CMOs, CIOs and CTOs can play major roles, but they will not lead social business transformation in most cases; social business transformation is a full-time job, and these executives must keep legacy processes running smoothly while transformation unfolds. They will have major roles and may even begin the process. Since transformation isn’t explicit in the Upgrade Social Media and Fix Fire Drill, they can be led by executives with large businesses or functions. For general recommendations, see:
  • The CMO’s Guide to Getting Serious About Social Business
  • CIOs’ Emerging Social Business Opportunity

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This post originated at CSRA's blog. Please share your thoughts and comments here. Thank you.

In 2013, digital marketing and firm executives are thinking about building their internal teams to provide more continuity and scale. Transform the Enterprise also focuses on the right side of the Social Business Life Cycle, specifically on Scale and Integrate. At this point, the enterprise usually has a panoply of social business or social media resources that it wants to knit together into a cohesive team, but according to emerging, networked organization, not hierarchal.

Transform the Enterprise is the five-part social business team building series The series describes team building in the context of various scenarios in which firms build social business capability, step by step, while investing wisely. Social Business Strategy Use Cases outlines and compares all five use cases while Social Business Team Building gives general guidance for how to create social business teams as well as recommendations for what characteristics leaders have, so I recommend reading them, too.

Prepare to Build a Social Business Team

Of course, social business enterprise transformation is a complex process that involves myriad variables and multiple engagements, so please consider these points as general observations and recommendations. If you have questions or would like more detail, please use comments or contact me.

Insights

• Like Herd the Cats, Transform the Enterprise’s purpose is to create an enterprise layer of social business value, but its focus is at the corporate strategy level. Herd the Cats gives the enterprise its own interactions in social venues that are distinct from those of its brands/businesses. Its interactions may address: profit contribution, “corporate values,” communities around offices or plants, health or environmental concerns or even policy or government issues.
• Herd the Cats also usually involves building a Social Business Competency Team iteratively, where Transform the Enterprise formalizes social business competencies at a higher level and knits various teams together.
• Transform the Enterprise is more market-focused, but from the corporate strategy perspective. In this case, corporate strategy calls for realigning the enterprise with its markets in some way, so social business supports that goal. Of course, the way in which all the moving parts fit together varies considerably with circumstance and culture.
• In all cases, the enterprise wants to leverage social business’s strategic value to test, validate and execute key aspects of corporate strategy as a function of evolving relationships with stakeholders. It may well mean engaging new stakeholders to test proposed value propositions.
• In most cases, the enterprise has already gained experience with digital social initiatives and has developed some social business good practices that it has begun to share across businesses/brands. If the enterprise has relatively little direct (i.e. in-house) social business experience, it would start with another use case or create a hybrid. The enterprise’s businesses/brands often have a patchwork of social media resources.
• In Transform the Enterprise, the team building focus is leveraging enterprise social business people resources by collaborating with business/brand teams to improve social business performance—in support of corporate strategy. A common example is mentoring social media teams to relate to stakeholders and boost engagement through interaction with key stakeholders, not content.
• Unlike other team building scenarios, Transform the Enterprise usually hires a small group of high-octane people before pilots kick off. The enterprise intends to invest significantly in social business, and the board has hired a CDO with a mission and budget for enterprise transformation. That said, I recommend that the CDO avoid unnecessary “large-scale” initiatives in favor of agile management (as small and flexible as feasible, scaling by iteration).

The CDO

• Since profound enterprise change is its primary distinguishing feature, Transform the Enterprise usually requires a CDO or equivalent. Although it’s an emerging position, the CDO is a “C” position because it requires the authority to interact with enterprise chief executives as an equal, the ability to act strategically and to make optimal decisions at the highest level. More important than the title is the level of recognized authority by the champion of Transform the Enterprise (usually the CEO or Board of Directors).
• To understand the context of the CDO and Transform the Enterprise, reflect on what it would mean to transform all communications and workstreams, within the enterprise and without. Social business drastically reduces the costs of communicating and collaborating. It’s a gut rahab that minimizes negative impact on core business processes even while it transforms many of them. That’s why it requires a CDO role.
• The CDO will organize a team to conduct Feasibility and Strategy, which will specify how the enterprise can relate to people who matter most to its existing businesses, brand portfolio or a proposed merger or acquisition.
• Few enterprises have advanced social business expertise in-house, so the CDO will engage one or more external partners who lead Feasibility and Strategy. The partner(s) should focus on mentoring the CDO team during the engagement. Strategy will specify pilots that test, validate, iterate and reject market propositions by engaging and building collaborative relationships with key enterprise stakeholders. See this report on how to select a social business advisory firm.

Steps

1. Conduct Feasibility and Strategy in the corporate strategy context; unlike Herd the Cats, this can include proposed as well as existing business concepts. For example, it can test social business adoption in adjacent markets to the enterprise’s existing businesses’.
2. Launch the SBCT with 2-3 experienced social business staff; it is often seeded with external consulting resources because in-house resources are usually oriented to social media and do not understand business transformation, especially by using social technologies and business processes.
   • The SBCT writes its charter and contributor documents (Champion, Manager, Contributors).
3. Launch a virtual collaboration space right away or concurrently with the first pilot. Make sure to select software with robust data export capabilities, so if you subsequently select another one, your data is portable. I often use WordPress; many people are familiar with it, it exports in xML, it’s free and its pages, posts and plugins give you extensive flexibility, especially when you host it yourself (i.e. not wordpress.com).
   • Do not automatically select an “enterprise collaboration” package with an existing vendor unless you have used it successfully for collaboration among volunteer team members whose jobs are not to use the package.
   • In most cases, make sure the package has excellent mobile functionality because it decreases the cost of collaboration.
4. Create the first iterations of the SBCT’s training and certification programs that will be used and iterated during pilots. Organize them in the collaboration space. Include templates for pilot charters and contributor role definitions.
5. Review social business policies and guidelines in high-impact businesses/brands, and recommend redoing those that are too one-sided, restrictive and paternalistic. Only propose policy reviews with businesses that showed high potential in Feasibility. See Herd the Cats for more detail on this (Prepare/Steps).

How to Build a Social Business Team

Insights

For illustrative purposes, here are some examples of Transform the Enterprise scenarios that can drive the need for pilots:

• Rapidly evolving a brand or business from product/service focus to post-product relationships with their markets, which requires rethinking all phases of product management and customer management life cycles.
• Proposed merger or acquisition to build a new capability to address key markets; corporate strategy and market research have concluded that the acquisition could make the brand/business more relevant to key stakeholders, but the SBCT runs one or more pilots to test the value proposition in the context of stakeholder outcomes, adding intelligence to pre-merger/acquisition due diligence. This can predict which high-value clients will tend to leave due to the merger, so the enterprise can address before the transaction is announced.
• Involving stakeholders in product/service innovation; this scenario creates far more value than “product innovation” efforts practiced by most brands because it focuses on stakeholder outcomes, not products/services.
• Market entry into new geographies and cultures with which the enterprise has not yet had direct experience. See The Global Social Channel: How to Compete Globally.
• Transforming cost-managed customer service into profit-managed marketing/new revenue. Its first stage is redeploying select customer service processes in public where the brand creates a collaborative community to resolve customer challenges. In the second stage, it republishes challenges and resolutions, commingling with product information.
• Designing/launching a B2B client community. Business bankers/insurers/etc. operate in the same ilk as professional services “trusted advisors,” but they operate in the dark ages. Business banks can add more value and create unprecedented stickiness by launching trusted online communities in which clients can help each other, efficiently facilitated by bank experts. They can do this in a surprising way.
• Designing/launching a bank branch client coworking space. Bank branches are headed for disruption as they are expensive street presences with high employment costs, and most are oriented to core bank transactions. This scenario launches social network-enabled work and collaboration spaces high-value mobile business and consumer clients and prospects.
• For other examples, see Social Business Models.

Steps

1. The CDO will choose a vice president/managing director level social business leader who has as many of these characteristics as possible to head the SBCT.
2. The SBCT will scope and launch pilots that test various proposed corporate strategy initiatives; when a pilot involves a proposed business that’s not currently addressed by an existing enterprise brand, the SBCT runs it themselves.
3. When pilots do involve existing enterprise businesses/brands, the SBCT will collaborate with/mentor their social business team(s).
   • The SBCT often helps businesses to “take back social media” initiatives that they had outsourced to agencies in order to increase quality of interaction and collaboration with stakeholders as well as to develop internal competency. Nike is a current example.
   • The SBCT will mentor businesses in the two phrases of Strategy, the Ecosystem Audit and the Organization Audit (see below).
4. The SBCT’s supports business/brand social business teams in executing successful pilots. It takes the lead in gathering Social Business Competencies (SBCs), training/mentoring other teams and engaging brand teams in the virtual collaboration space.
5. The SBCT runs sensitive pilots, often in stealth. They hire external consultancies to execute initiatives that are too sensitive or difficult to cloak, but consultants collaborate with the SBCT behind the firewall.

 Good Practices & Pitfalls

• Shifts in corporate strategy increase risk and reward, but social business can significantly reduce risk by “pre-testing” stakeholder-oriented assumptions, based on real, in-context interactions with stakeholders. Since social business focuses on stakeholder-to-stakeholder interactions, its insights are usually more “true” than are surveys or interviews in which the enterprise or a proxy asks stakeholders explicit questions. Stakeholder-to-stakeholder interactions are rich in implicit knowledge and they add powerful value to other due diligence.
• The CDO will be a pivotal role during the next ten years, but demand will spike in 2015-16 because the need for explicit enterprise transformation is immense. In the fading Industrial Economy, enterprises were more competitive when they focused on themselves, their back office, which was possible because customers/stakeholders were invisible. In the rising Knowledge Economy, a world-beating back-house is table stakes, and differentiation is front-house, in the Social Channel. This is the root of the profound, global business, culture and societal change that the world is experiencing. Successful CDOs will make this shift actionable at the enterprise level.
• I recommend doing social business strategy in two stages: the first, the Ecosystem Audit, is externally focused. Be careful here; social media monitoring platforms are very immature and not focused on user outcomes (even though they have pretty charts), so this goes far beyond a few Radian6 reports. For best results, identify the optimal social venues in which to interact; I define this as your doing less talking in favor of facilitating others’ conversations. Interacting in these venues increase your efficiency, performance and ROI.
• The second stage is something few firms or consultancies do. The Organization Audit is internally focused. The Ecosystem Audit gives you have a clear picture of what your social ecosystem looks like, what key stakeholders value and what outcomes they pursue, so you then evaluate your firm’s knowledge and capabilities in terms of stakeholder outcomes. The social business strategy suggests pilots that perform at a different level.
• The best analogy for the SBCT is “social enterprise architecture team.” In most organizations, the SBCT plays a mentor/diplomat/champion role with the much larger social business teams within the enterprise portfolio.
• Most businesses will choose to execute a large portion of their social business initiatives in-house, once they learn the importance of collaborative relationships with key stakeholders, and the outsourced social media/agency model will fade—unless agencies develop centers of excellence grounded in intense domain knowledge. The puck is moving from “content” to interaction, which makes outsourcing less attractive.

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This post originated at CSRA's blog. Please share your thoughts and comments here. Thank you.

Anonymity, Marketing and Predicting the Future shows that, although each culture has its own concepts of “anonymity” and “marketing,” anonymity will prove to have been a temporary phenomenon in most human cultures because communications technologies are counteracting it. Moreover, based on my studies of and experience with sociology, evolutionary psychology and technology, I observe that 20th century marketing is grounded in anonymity, so we can predict the future of marketing by exploring anonymity and its relationship to marketing.

In brief, marketing’s influence is most poignant when anonymity is high and the marketing “target” is ignorant of the product/service and how to use it. In this scenario, the target is most open marketing’s influence. Read on to learn how marketing is related to anonymity, where anonymity is going and how marketing can transform to strengthen its influence.

Marketing organizations that do not transform will be sidelined because anonymity is dissipating fast.

Marketing Processes

For our purposes, I’ll call out these marketing processes:

• Marketing is the practice of trying to increase demand for a product or service.
• Marketing uses numerous tactics to attract potential buyers’ attention and to influence behavior by increasing buyers’ perceived relevance of the product/service or by decreasing their perceived barriers to purchase.
• Marketing mechanizes communication in several ways: it studies behavior by researching various swathes of target populations (“demographics”), designs messages and uses one-to-many mechanized communications to reach potential buyers (broadcast media, Internet adverts, social media content…).
• Conventional business wisdom holds that the future of marketing is based on optimizing scale and personalization. “Big data” is the most recent incarnation. It mechanically assembles and analyzes data relevant to individuals in order to, mechanically, deliver individualized messages and offers.

How Marketing Is Based on Anonymity: A Simple Use Case

Increase demand and influence behavior have been effective in an environment of high anonymity in which potential buyers had few relevant sources of information and advice about outcomes they wanted to achieve. An important false assumption of 20th century marketing is that people want to buy products and services. They do buy, but only because products and services are enablers of outcomes that people want. The marketer loves products and services, but the user/buyer doesn’t care, with very few exceptions.

To see how this works, let’s think about a common use case. Think back to your first car, which you want to keep shiny, so you are a prospective buyer of waxing products. You have a kind of decision making funnel that helps you create a predictable outcome with the least amount of risk. The funnel has many shades of gray, but at its simplest it looks like this:

1. The “tried and true” is the process/products you’ve used before. The least risk because you have used it before and attained a result. This is white anonymity (none).
2. Getting advice from the highest trusted authority available. Here, you ask a friend who always has a fantastic looking car and does her own washing and waxing, which is the same process that you want to use. Quite low risk, but higher than the tried and true. Gray anonymity; its shade varies with how well you and the authority know each other (trust and the authority’s social knowledge of your personality and abilities).
3. Getting advice from a low-confidence source, either a person you barely know, or a website or other third party. This is the highest risk. Black anonymity. This is where marketing influence lives.

Number one is the most preferred source, number three the least.

Enter Digital Social Venues

Digital social venues straddle the second and third parts of the funnel. They are a completely new source of information and, even better, interactivity. Anyone can ask questions of the community, which may be quite large. Here are three examples for our use case.

I analyze behavior in thousands of interactions on client engagements, and I’ve learned that digital social venues are breakthrough because they provide information integrated with social context. Most people don’t think about it, but at some level they know they want outcomes, and social context is the channel for outcomes. Talking about “the situation” naturally is social.

Study the three examples for our use case. People who choose to participate are passionate or knowledgeable or both, and their many-to-many interaction quickly provides the social and contextual information that confers extensive authority, even though you often don’t know any of the people personally.

No brand can compete with this because none of these people have anything to “gain” by misleading you, where the brand is hardly an impartial trusted source. True, people may mislead out of ignorance, but because they interact in the group, ignorance quickly becomes apparent in most cases. Having observed and analyzed thousands of such interactions, I predict that 20th century (mass) marketing will see diminishing returns to scale. People will believe it less and less, and its ability to influence will fall. It will be disintermediated by digital social venues.

Big Data—Why It Won’t Be a Marketing Panacea

Mechanized communication and Optimizing scale/personalization will continue to create efficiencies, but their impact will disappoint because they are still in the third part of the funnel. They are doing more of the same, more efficiently. And prospective users will increasingly ignore the third part because superior information is available via their tablet or smartphone, instantly, anywhere.

As a three-time marketing executive myself, I would think this last assertion preposterous if I hadn’t subsequently experienced sociality in digital social venues. Think Yelp for anywhere you want to do business, or Amazon for any product you are considering online.

Further, I have spent most of my career entertaining a belief that most marketing still harbors: “customers use facts to make rational decisions.” What I have learned is that “outcomes” are grounded in emotion, and facts are supporting actors, even extras. The stars are emotional experiences that outcomes help people have. Clotaire Rapaille has done pioneering work in decision-making in the context of marketing and global brands. Here’s a nugget of Rapaille’s thinking that helps to explain the confusion:

People don’t admit they make decisions based on emotion, so marketing research that asks people about their decisions is usually misleading. People fake it; they rationalize their decisions because they want to believe that they are governed by rationality. They are not.

Moreover, when people are talking with each other, socially, the outcome naturally emerges. That doesn’t happen when people communicate with brands because brands ask the wrong questions, they are focused on products, not outcomes.

Marketers will ask, “Why won’t big data save the marketing status quo? What could be better than individualized offers based on people’s unique data?” Response: personal attention by a group of other people.

Big data will add incremental value—individualized communications and offers are more relevant than generalized—but it won’t prevent 20th century marketing from losing influence. Remember, prior to digital social venues, people had two main types of information: other people with whom they had some kind of personal connection (few and hard to access practically) or commercial/third party factual information (i.e. Consumer Reports) or brand information. These latter sources are generalized and do not take into account the user’s individual needs; moreover, they are not interactive, which prevents the user from getting clarification.

Big data continues along the impersonal marketing scale vector, so even its “individualized” offers and communications, although incrementally more relevant, will be less emotionally attractive than human interactions in digital social venues for most users. In addition, because it is mechanized, it will commoditize relatively quickly; it will become table stakes and its differentiation will be fleeting.

How Anonymity and Ignorance Are Dissipating

Human beings don’t like risks, and we share our dislike of risk with other animals. In other words, it is written into animals’ DNA because higher risk threatens survival. Since we have a strong preference for predicting outcomes, anything that helps us to do that will be extremely attractive at a deep level.

• The forum discussions in the above use case served as a simple example of collective risk mitigation. Other prevalent examples are reviews on Amazon.com and Yelp.
• Anonymity means uncertainty. Human beings never lived in anonymity before urbanization led to the rise of large cities, beginning with mercantilism (trade is necessary for cities). This represents a very short interval in our 250,000 year history.
• Digital social networks counteract ignorance and anonymity. Sociality is primates’ (and human beings’) key survival strategy, so I predict that digital social networks will continue to grow—and digital sociality uses any available technology. In 2013, “social” features are being bolted onto every software product because sociality is critical to relevance and viability.
• Even though people prize anonymity—it is strongly related to what we currently call “privacy” (many cultures almost equate it with “liberty”)—I believe it will continue to lose to our desire to be connected to mitigate our risks. As I argued in The Big Switch review (see “Privacy”), I think we will discover that anonymity (privacy) was not “natural” for humans. We will seek a new synthesis that optimizes sociality and privacy.
• The bottom line is that more social networks mean more relevant information infused with social context from (relatively) impartial third parties (other people interacting voluntarily). Marketing, since it is practiced by firms making products or delivering services, will always be trusted less than impartial people.
• Marketers who don’t get this shift will end up like the unsecured creditors, standing behind a long line of secured creditors. Marketers will earn smaller and smaller crumbs of attention and confidence because more reliable sources are exploding. This won’t be obvious at first because large portions of populations are still learning how to use social technologies, but the latter are steadily making their way into people’s lifestreams, how people live and do things. Generations of marketing and conditioning are firmly embedded in older strata of populations, and this temporarily dampens the effect.

Looking at the situation another way, 2oth century marketing is no longer needed because personalized recommendations are increasingly available anywhere, anytime.

21st Century Marketing: Making the Transition

When read from the perspective of 20th century marketing, the above is admittedly a grim scenario, but there has never been a better time to be in marketing—for marketers who practice some mental jujitsu to transform their practices and earn new relevance. Here’s how:

• Let go. No, it won’t happen overnight in most brands and industries, but 20th century marketing will disappear because machine-created messages will be increasingly ignored.
• Bank on the lack of anonymity. Assume that all aspects of your actions and conduct will be shared by everyone and will influence buying decisions. You won’t. Marketing was able to influence large portions of populations living in anonymity because, in many buying situations, no greater authority was practically available. Understanding and accepting this shift is the first step.
• Trust and respect the users of your product or service to know what is best for them. Trust their friends and advisors, too. Remember, now they increasingly have many advisors whom they trust more than strangers. Therefore, don’t try to “sell” or “market” your product or service.
• Accept that your users don’t like your product nearly as much as you do. They use it to produce an outcome, some improvement in their lives. People buy holes, not drills.
• Shift your resources to focus on user outcomes by interacting with users in digital social venues and serving them. Actively assist them to have their desired outcomes without focusing on your product or service. For more on this, see Building Post-Product Relationship in the Social Channel.
• I believe that serving people is the new “marketing.” Moreover, because digital social venues are highly networked, when you serve the few, you influence the many. For more on this, see Customer Service Is the New Marketing.
• Mine and deliver your firm’s/brand’s knowledge to market to build influence by serving people online. To make this practical and efficient, you need to conduct a strategy to make explicit what users (stakeholders, customers, clients) you want to service in what contexts). Then optimize the most valuable information/expertise you have with your ease of sharing.
• Prior to digital social technologies, marketers had a valid excuse for being out of alignment with their users. Communication about outcomes was too impractical, expensive and distorted. This is less true every day now. Rather than focusing primarily on your product or service, focus on user outcomes. Firms/brands that do this will lead. Others will perish.
• Open and maintain conversations with your users to study how they are using your product and what outcomes are most important. This will help you (longer term) to design new products/services by collaborating with users. Being engaged with users of your product/service will give you real-time information about outcomes and is the aorta of relevance and profit.

I’ll go as far as saying that, in 20 years at the outside, marketers will look back, scratch their heads, and wonder how 20th century marketing and product development could possibly work without continuous collaboration with users/customers. Exactly.

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[Updated] The (social business) fire drill is sparked by an external or internal event that suddenly creates a sense of urgency and elevates management’s interest in social business/social media. They often respond in crisis mode and end up wasting considerable resources because they spend more than they need, they stay away from using social technologies to relate to stakeholders (they’ve been burned), and they hire a team that cannot produce maximum social business results because it is reactive and fearful rather than proactive and confident.

Fix Fire Drill is the second of the five-part social business team building series The series describes team building in the context of various scenarios in which firms build social business capability, step by step, while investing wisely. Social Business Strategy Use Cases outlines and compares all five use cases while Social Business Team Building gives general guidance for how to create social business teams as well as recommendations for what characteristics leaders have, so I recommend reading them, too.

Prepare to Build a Social Business Team

Fix Fire Drill applies to an organization or brand that may or may not be active on the social web. Fire drills that arise from external sources of urgency are usually more disruptive because the organization has less control. Executives’ biggest fear is that a serious lapse in governance leads to significant embarrassment of the brand [see United, Domino’s, KFC or McDonald’s). Slightly less frightening is when a competitor wins accolades for their social media activities, the brand has been on the sidelines, and the board is asking questions.

Three common examples of internally-driven fire drills are: power struggle among various functions that want to "own social" and leads to a stalemate. A Conference gives senior executive(s) the social religion, so now they "want it." Also common is the case when a new executive has managed a social media effort in his/her last role and wants to push the envelope in his/her new role.

• The lapse in governance situation usually compels management to bring in a crisis communications firm, or they may use the brand's existing public relations firm, which will function as the first social business team. Their goal will be stabilizing the situation. However, also ask them to prepare a detailed post-mortem report whose specifics will help you to put processes and a team in place to help prevent recurrences.
• When the competitor wins accolades, leadership often loses confidence in the leader who was ostensibly "in charge," so they often bring in a consultancy to help "figure it out." The consultant is often a social media or social business firm that will help the brand understand what happened and recommend a strategy and execution plan. That will organize the organization's first team.
• The internal examples may be less dramatic, but they are still fire drills that usually result in hiring an outside firm, which fixes the immediate problem or guides the team in addressing an opportunity.
• In most cases, all the fire drills except possibly the first one are less dire than people think, and they can save considerable fees and management time by reacting with calm. The perceived need to "do something" is usually higher when there is mistrust or discord within management.

As with "disaster recovery," fire drills can be prevented by recognizing the risk ahead of time and preparing for it. By definition, that has not happened here. Once the situation is stable, the focus shifts to preventing a recurrence.

• Social business strategy is the first step determining post-crisis direction. The guiding principle to strategy is that you need to be focused on who you are trying to influence and why. Strategy will diligence and define stakeholders and key social venues where you can interact meaningfully and efficiently.
• Stakeholder (user) outcomes are the key to engagement; when you are relevant and add value, stakeholders want to relate to you. Most social media today lacks the outcome focus, so its relationships tend to be relatively circumstantial and shallow.
• The strategy will provide a clear vision for what "relating" means because you will study how your stakeholders are relating among themselves. Make sure to involve people in your firm who have [offline] rich interactions with stakeholders to help you develop a vision for what the most fruitful relationships are. Then you can develop some pilots to test it out and begin your learning process.
• Once you have tested different ways of interacting with stakeholders in several pilots, you will be in the position to know what kind of team you need to build.

How to Build a Social Business Team

• Make mentoring/team building a key selection criterion for the external firm you hire (lapse in governance a possible exception). Most social media and public relations firms operate an outsourcing model in which they provide services on an ongoing basis. This is counterproductive in social business in most situations.
• The best teams coalesce while doing social business pilots. Most firms, if they structure pilots’ roles right, can staff them with existing employees; they need not hire right away. If you need to hire, contract while you do pilots. Don’t contract through your marketing agency in most cases because their core competency is creating and delivering content, not relating to individual users.
• There is a huge difference between relating and promoting, so don’t automatically staff social business pilots from marketing or PR either. When evaluating staff, look at their track records for interaction and their desire to help people with complex issues. Insist on seeing this online.
• Choose a social business leader who has as many of these characteristics as possible.
• Depending on your social business strategy, you may not need an executive right away. The CMO/digital executive could hire a more junior person to run pilots and develop people. If you choose this path, a director or manager should have most of the above characteristics, minus the executive skills.
• I do not advise outsourcing your firm’s social business interactions long-term, but using external resources can be useful for short periods.

Good Practices & Pitfalls

• The key to preventing “fires” is to develop public, interactive relationships with key stakeholders, which will improve your reputation with the people who matter most. Then, when problems arise, they won’t affect you much.
• Social technologies are “21st century dial tone” because they help people socialize more, and socializing is one of the most important human activities. Therefore, organizations need to develop competency in using digital social venues to relate, and there’s a significant learning curve because interactions are public. Think of “social” as being as core as talking on the phone. Every employee that relates to stakeholders will have to do it, and well, because that’s the brand.
• Sorting out internal conflicts is quite doable once everyone realizes that they will all be involved (21st century dialtone). Social business strategy will determine what competencies and offerings the organization has that are most relevant to stakeholders. That will help to create a collaborative effort among “departments” or functions.
• I cannot overestimate the importance of relating over marketing in all firms. The focus of relating is users while marketing’s focus is the brand. This is a profound mindshift for virtually every brand and firm, especially consumer-oriented brands which sell kagillions of mass produced products to demographics. The firms that get the shift first will change the game because they will be head and shoulders more relevant.
• Plan to encounter resistance from your team, contractors and agencies. Pilots are important because they are relatively small, quick investments that aim to test the strategy and generate real data to show results. This will help with the mindshift.

Humans are hooked on relating. That not only means stakeholders, but your team. Once they learn to focus on users, they will be happier after the mindshift takes place. Relating gives people meaning.

• When you interact with the few, you influence everyone. Most executives don’t understand how the network effect makes relating ultra-efficient. More on this in Network v. Mass Communication.
• The process of creating a robust strategy and running several pilots need not take more than several weeks. Depending on the skill of your consultant or in-house talent, a robust strategy should take 4-6 weeks, and pilots are typically 6-10 weeks each. Of course, pilots may be run concurrently.
• I recommend doing strategy in two stages: the first, the Ecosystem Audit, is externally focused. Be careful here; social media monitoring platforms are very immature and not focused on user outcomes (even though they have pretty charts), so this goes far beyond a few Radian6 reports. For best results, identify the optimal social venues in which to interact; I define this as your doing less talking in favor of facilitating others’ conversations. Interacting in these venues increase your efficiency, performance and ROI.
• The second stage is something few brands or consultancies do. The Organization Audit is internally focused. Now that you have a clear picture of what your social ecosystem looks like, what key stakeholders value and what outcomes they pursue, you then evaluate your firm’s knowledge and capabilities in terms of stakeholder outcomes. The social business strategy suggests pilots that perform at a different level.

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Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 is a research survey that looks at social business advisory/consulting firms in a new way. Using quantitative methods, I compared consultants according to the needs of clients who want to transform their organizations with social business. The twelve metrics measure firms’ performance in business impact, sociality and transformation areas and rank firms within firm categories and overall.

Now prospective clients can compare Strategy firms, Big Four firms, Agencies, Analysts, Enterprise I.T. firms and Pureplays quantitatively. Moreover, consulting firms can use these metrics for guidance in building out their social business practices.

I launched CSRA in 2006, and we have always practiced social business as transformation. Client work in social business transformation enables me to see where the market is going, so this survey considers social business firms from that future state.

[UPDATE 8 Mar] Now available: “Executive Briefing” is even more summarized (14-slides) in two versions: Guidance for Clients and Guidance for Firms. Research survey results will be most useful if you follow the links to understand the survey design and methods.

Research Survey Outline [Updated 11 Mar]

Background

• Background outlines research survey design principles, mission, method and definitions.

Rankings

• Top10 Social Business Overall Rankings shows firms across categories according to their overall scores; Overall sums Practice and Leadership scores, which are more useful guidance for selecting an advisory firm/consultancy.
• Top10 Social Business Practice Rankings compares firms in two areas of practice: their social business transformation services and how they use social business themselves.
• Top10 Social Business Leadership Rankings reflects firms’ commitment to social business as transformation based on their thought leadership, case studies and other artifacts.

Interpreting Results

• The Social Business Life Cycle shows the different phases of clients’ adoption of social business for transformation. Advisory firms are strong in some parts of the life cycle and weak in others.
• Social Business Use Cases are business situations in which most clients find themselves; different use cases also map to different parts of the Social Business Life Cycle.

Using Results

• Guidance for Clients gives summarized guidance to executives of commercial, nonprofit and government executives for evaluating advisory firm categories and individual firms.
• Guidance for Advisory Firms summarizes recommendations for developing a firm’s social business practice and competencies to be aligned with the market.

Research Survey Executive Summary

Background

(UPDATE 11 Mar] I am accommodating the excellent feedback I’ve received by tweaking the structure of this Executive Summary and adding to it slightly. This will help most first-time readers to understand the rankings better.

Mission

• Educate clients and firms about the importance of social business 
Practice in firms’ ability to guide clients’ social business-led transformation
• Introduce metrics for social business that distinguish it from social media
• Highlight the growing need for organizational change to unlock organizations’ value from social business

Method

• Designed metrics to measure firms’ capabilities in advising clients on social business-led transformation of organizations
• Created assessment workflow and use case in which a client team evaluates advisory firms for their ability to advise on social business-led transformation
• Selected firms based on public commitment to social business as transformation
• Applied workflow and metrics to evaluate firms’ main domains, linked social presences, and related public data
• Analyzed data, and created Overall, Practice and Leadership rankings
• Interpreted rankings and wrote advisories for clients and firms

Definitions

• Leadership rankings show firms’ commitment as reflected by their public content
• Practice rankings emphasize firms’ social business practices

More

• Survey design explains how I designed the research survey, my and how it works.
• Point of View makes explicit my interpretation of how the social business transformation is developing as a practice.
• Definitions for a fundamental concepts such as “social business” and “social media” and Rationale explains how they are treated.

Top10 Social Business Overall Rankings

Overall scores combine Practice and Leadership scores, which are then ranked here. Due to its importance in the mission, Practice is weighted more heavily than Leadership (has more points). Overall is useful because it reflects firms’ overall investment in social business as transformation. This is important because most clients and advisory firms still practice “social” as marketing and promotion.

Dell, Forrester and Salesforce.com hold the Top3 Overall scores. The Top3 all practice social business on behalf of themselves, which is important because social business is integrated into their cultures and creates a well of potential expertise. However, that does not mean that they are effective advisors of other firms. For example, Analysts, as a firm category, are limited to addressing Feasibility and (some) Strategy parts of the Social Business Life Cycle, so Forrester, IDC and Gartner will not be relevant for most social business initiatives. Analysts produce extensive research on social business and transformation. They understand and write about organizational transformation.

Note that Pureplay firms’ strong representation here is mostly due to their strong Practice scores, while Analyst and Enterprise I.T. firms are largely driven by Leadership scores. The maximum possible score was 97, so the top scores fell one third short of it. Much of the Top10 barely made it halfway. There is room to grow.

The prospective client’s business context is a major determinant of ranking advisory firms, and it will be discussed below in terms of social business use cases and the Social Business Life Cycle. For example, a prospect that seeks an advisor for organization change would have a different Top3. Dell is a poster child for practicing social business itself, and it has explicit “social media professional services” that currently focus on Pilot, not transformation. To Dell, “transformation” means I.T. spend first, which may well not be appropriate for some clients. Salesforce and Infosys have similar profiles to Dell’s—without the explicit social business consulting services.

Accenture and IBM house independent management consulting practices with deep and broad expertise, so they would be alone in the Top10 if the client needs heavy lifting management consulting, as “transformation” implies.

SideraWorks, Dachis Group and SxD (SocialxDesign) are social business Pureplay firms that were launched to help clients use social technologies to interact more meaningfully and transform. They could be top picks for clients that want to “try social business” (without transforming) because pureplays are limited in the depth and breadth of their services. In addition, Pureplays’ Practice scores are some of the best, and they are more likely to be using emerging techniques than established players, which can be relevant to some firms’ stakeholders.

Top10 Social Business Practice Rankings

Top10 Practice reflects advisory firms’ prowess in two key areas: the maturity of their stated social business advisory services and their observed skills with using social business themselves. Its metrics are: Practice Definition, Social Business Life Cycle, Sociality, Point of View, Leader Blog, Interactivity and Personability. These metrics quantitatively evaluate advisory firms and roll up to the Practice score.

Note that Pureplay, Enterprise I.T. and Strategy firms were the dominant category in Practice. I hypothesize that this stems from how these firms monetize: Enterprise I.T. is focused on pull-through of their legacy products and services; Pureplays focus on social business advice; Strategy firms understand enterprise transformation due to market change, so they perceive an opportunity to grow their business transformation services.

Dell and Dachis Group tied for #1 in Practice, with Pureplay firms Sidera and SxD hot on their heels. Forrester and Salesforce trailed further but made up the #3 score. Salesforce’s Practice ranking is artificially high because the firm has no social business transformation services; it does have a partner network that includes most of the other contestants here. It has the right point of view and messaging and practices social business well itself. Dell does a fantastic job of integrating customer-centric forums into its main domain, where prospective and existing clients can see them. IBM has excellent interactive blogs and forums, too, but they were not available to this research survey’s user, so they didn’t count. Pureplays had some of the best descriptions of social business-oriented transformation as well as their services to address it.

The second tier of Practice scores was led by two social business Pureplay Analyst (i.e. not management consulting) firms, Altimeter Group and Constellation Research Group. As Analyst firms, they focus on researching, interpreting and advising clients on social business transformation, but their services aren’t relevant past Strategy. They both practice social business well.

Six firms tied to take the last place in the “Top10,” which actually numbers 14 firms. Interestingly, Strategy firms McKinsey, Booz, BCG, and AT Kearney showed through their though leadership that they understood the transformation context. This matters because they have some of the best enterprise transformation practices in the world, so they understand clients’ needs and realities like no other advisory firms can.

Edelman is the lone MAP firm (Marketing/Advertising/PR) to make the Practice Top10. Although its core business is communications, Edelman has invested early in social business as a concept and has significant thought leadership focused on transformation. Moreover, Edelman is the best practitioner of social business in its cohort. Capgemini is an Enterprise I.T. firm with a good mix of blog integration with its main domain, interactivity and demonstrated understanding of social business transformation.

Top10 Social Business Leadership Rankings

Top10 Leadership shows advisory firms’ understanding of and commitment to social business transformation as reflected by its metrics of Momentum, Collaboration, Case Study, Tools, Firm Posts and Influence. Since its metrics emphasize content and reputation, let’s observe that it scales in a “traditional” way, thought leadership and marketing. Also, I was not surprised to find that the three dominant firm categories also monetize social business most easily: Enterprise I.T. (legacy pull-through), Analysts (research products) and Big Four (risk management services). Pureplays are far less funded, and they are newer, two facts that make them weak Leadership performers here.

Leadership is important for two reasons: First, these artifacts reflect organizational investment in thought leadership and outbound communication, which is an indication of commitment. Second, Leadership reflects perception of competence, but it can be a false indicator, especially in 2013. Talking about social business transformation shows that some people at the firm understand the context and some of the concepts. However, advising clients on the Social Business Life Cycle requires conceptual and hands-on expertise in Practice. Firms that rank high in Leadership and low in Practice will be limited to the early part of the Social Business Life Cycle.

Keep in mind that Leadership scales in a more traditional way: most of the Top10 are Enterprise I.T. and Analyst firms, with two of the Big Four muscling in. All these firms are large businesses with well funded thought leadership and marketing programs. Analysts’ core competency shows here: they are strongest in research and communications.

IBM took the #1 spot, falling only two points short of the maximum. In many ways, IBM has been the key pioneer and champion of social business for many years, so this finding was not a surprise. What did surprise was its relatively weak showing in Practice, which results from the use case. That said, the use case is valuable; it assumed the prospect had no prior knowledge of any advisory firm and judged them on a level playing field.

Accenture trailed IBM by only two points and has a sea of thought leadership on social business transformation. It lost points due to a weak showing in Practice. Accenture’s definition of “social media strategy” services was one of the best of any firm studied in terms of addressing the social business life cycle with high credibility. IBM, curiously, had a very scant definition of its services.

Analysts Forrester, Gartner and IDC are very strong in Leadership, where their core competencies shine, especially in Feasibility and some Strategy parts of the Social Business Life Cycle.

Deloitte tied IDC to make it into the #5 slot. It led the Big Four by a significant margin. Dell and Salesforce rank relatively low in Leadership, which reflects their late entry into social business as transformation. They do not have the “strategy and research” gene as prevalently as Analysts, Big Four and Strategy firms. IBM and Accenture both have large strategy firms, which enabled them to surface the social business transformation trend earlier, so they responded, and their results show it.

Infosys bears special mention because the firm has no discernible social business (or even social media) services, but it walks the walk. Its blogs are well integrated with its main domain, and consultants and partners are approachable in their interactions. They also took the medium score in the Collaboration metric, which measures how many of their people address prospects’ questions in a third party forum. I predict that Infosys will formally launch social business services in 2013.

Interpreting Results

Social Business Life Cycle

Clients’ needs for advisors is a function of the social business (adoption) life cycle (Here is a longer treatment):

1. Feasibility—is a rigorous analysis of market, industry and stakeholder adoption of social technologies as well as enterprise readiness. Usually used to baseline and prepare for aggressive enterprise scale social business.
2. Strategy—is more granular than Feasibility. It diligences/prepares the business’s optimal plan for interacting to achieve business-relevant outcomes. Often conducted for a brand or business. Social business strategy requires in-depth knowledge of how to measure trust, relationship and optimal interaction. Assesses organizational competency and recommends several Pilots.
3. Pilot—tests the strategy and builds organizational competency in interacting to build relationship and achieve business goals. Features mentoring in all facets of sociality. Pilots are killed fast or mature into ongoing initiatives via iteration.
4. Scale—expands pilots into larger, ongoing initiatives and builds social business infrastructure. Where Pilot is focused on tactical outcomes, Scale has a greater organizational context.
5. Integrate—reevaluates the organization’s legacy business processes in light of social business results, so it requires deep business process and transformation expertise at the organization level.

In 2013, no advisor category addresses the entire life cycle; advisors gravitate toward one or more parts of the life cycle:

• Analysts are limited to Feasibility and minimal Strategy.
• MAP falls between Strategy and Pilot and does not fully cover any phase of the life cycle.
• Strategy and Big Four firms can cover Feasibility and much of Strategy as well as part of Integrate, but they have little/none capability in Pilot or Scale.
• Enterprise I.T. and Pureplays fully cover Pilot as well as part of Strategy and Scale.

Social Business Use Cases

Client use cases are crucial considerations when selecting social business advisors. Here are some common ones:

1. Fix the Fire Drill—an external event suddenly propels social business up the priority list of a business that may have social media experience. It gets embarrassed in public, a competitor has a major social media win, or a major business deal gets affected. Leadership wants to “fix it,” so it doesn’t repeat.Strong focus on Strategy and mentoring in Pilot.
2. Upgrade Social Media—the business has been practicing social media for 1-4 years and has seen promotional results but little substantial business returns. Leaders want to reevaluate their efforts before diving deeper.Requires strong focus on Strategy and mentoring in Pilot.
3. Catch the Leaders—the business has a very conservative culture, so it has avoided using public social technologies; now it worries about being left behind. It gravitates to advisors that mitigate risks while leading the firm to overtake the leaders by outperforming them across the life cycle.Strong focus on Strategy, and mentoring in Pilot and Scale.
4. Herd the Cats—leaders suddenly realize that their various businesses have diverse social media presences without much apparent direction; they want to use strategy to provide a keel that resonates with corporate strategy and brand and create a social business “center of excellence” to serve several businesses.Requires due diligence during Feasibility, strong focus on Strategy, and mentoring in Pilot and Scale.
5. Transform the Enterprise—management wants to restructure the business to boost profits, so it evaluates social technologies as a potential lever. Comprehensive due diligence in Feasibility, strong focus on Strategy, mentoring in Pilot and strong guidance in Scale & Integrate.

• Fix Fire Drill and Upgrade Social Media are usually more tactical and don’t require Feasibility but do require Strategy and Pilot.
• Catch Leaders has a controlled sense of urgency, aims to outperform rivals by executing better.
• Catch Leaders, Herd Cats and Transform Enterprise are more strategic and address more phases of the life cycle.
• Fix Fire Drill and Upgrade Social Media will eventually extend to Scale and Integrate, which are out of scope for these use cases.

Using Results

Guidance for Clients

The purpose here is to illustrate how the rankings work; each business’s circumstances are different, and the selection of an advisory firm should be made of the basis of the team it proposes rather than the firm’s name or category. That said, the probability is that category rules are true more often than not.

• The Social Business Life Cycle is the best reference point for 
knowing what kind of advisor you need because it’s grounded in your situation.
• When your business intends to do Pilot and Scale, consider advisors with the highest Practice rankings: Dell, Dachis, SxD and Sidera.
• The context of Strategy varies with the use case: in Fix Fire Drill and Upgrade Social Media, it is focused on specific brand or business unit goals, and Pureplays should be strong contenders. Catch Leaders and Transform Enterprise demand more rigor, so look at IBM, McKinsey, Accenture, Booz, AT Kearney or Deloitte.
• Remove Analysts from consideration if your business is doing Strategy or after. Forrester would be a strong choice for independent Feasibility work.
• Remove MAP agencies from consideration for most social business initiatives; with the possible exception of Edelman, they show little awareness of social business transformation, and they have low Practice rankings.
• Analysts and MAP could be relevant to any use case but would require complementary advisors.
• In 2013-2015, pioneers will have to take a “best of breed” approach and use different advisors at various parts of the life cycle, although I expect Pureplays to build capability quickly as demand grows.

Teams are most relevant to your results, so allow for exceptions to rankings; however, teams generally reflect their firms and categories.

• Use Practice metrics to study IBM, Accenture, McKinsey, AT Kearney,
 Dell, Deloitte & Dachis; compare their social business services. Accenture has the best description of its social business services.
  • IBM has many presences & thought leadership on social business transformation.
  • Dell leads in integrating forums and client/customer voice into its website.
  • Deloitte has a nice mix of social business services and thought leadership, but it drops the ball in relating; this is the rule for firms, not the exception.
  • Dachis has an active blog with relevant topics and discussions.
  • AT Kearney features little social business content and no services, but leading partners show that they understand social business transformation, and they are approachable yet credible.
  • McKinsey has invested in social business thought leadership for years, and its “The Social Economy” is best in class. Read it. Thoroughly. Note the transformation argument, rationale and call to action.
  • The Social Network Roadmap addresses the entire social business life cycle.

Also learn from firms’ weaknesses, which are indicators of their ability to serve you effectively. Most lose points because they don’t address the Social Business Life Cycle, services are scattershot, and they have minimal leaders relating online and thus no credibility. Most cling to firmspeak, which shows that the firm doesn’t understand the new environment.

• Use Leadership metrics to start your short list of firms committed 
to the idea of social business transformation of organizations.
  • Most firms start talking before they have much competency; however, if they aren’t even publishing blog posts, papers, services frameworks and other tools, they aren’t in the game; let them learn with someone else.
  • Social business is about interacting online to communicate your community, priorities and beliefs. Therefore, firms that talk about social business and don’t show they “walk the walk” through their partners’ and principals’ interactions will be very limited in their ability to help you.
  • Make sure to recognize the distinction between talking about social business (Leadership) and doing it (Practice). All firms have smart people who understand certain concepts; however, successful social business is based on action and understanding the many nuances of sociality. What can a firm tell you about “creating relationship” if its people can’t show they do it themselves?
• Get more in-depth advice in firm category reports, via the research survey home page. Also use the Executive Briefings as introductions to this Executive Summary; they are slide decks that introduce the key ideas here (14 slides) and available as Guidance for Clients and Guidance for Firms.
• As you may have guessed, CSRA addresses the entire Social Business Life Cycle; I invite your inquiry about the survey’s detailed reports; you can commission a report on any firm as well in case you are considering advisors not included here. Likewise I can change the basket of metrics used to fit your goals.

How advisors and use cases map to the Social Business Life Cycle:

Guidance for Advisory Firms

Your firm is undoubtedly at some stage of evaluating social business, perhaps as a potential service offering to your clients, but certainly for your own use, and likely both. If this research survey’s philosophy and approach resonate with you, your firm can use rankings as tools for building your capabilities to address the expanding social business market while avoiding the deflating social media market.

• Study this research survey’s six reports, which analyze Strategy, Big Four, Enterprise I.T., Analyst, Pureplay and MAP firms (Marketing/Advertising/PR). Access them via the research survey home page. Read a couple of them to learn how the rankings and metrics work. Note that all include separate advice for clients and firms.
• I have repeatedly seen in client work with global firms that social business has a strong defensive aspect. Clients discover that, when they open spontaneous, continuous communication with stakeholders, they have a better grasp of emerging market developments that affect their legacy businesses. Offensively, they can launch new offers and make legacy offers more relevant.
• Examine the Social Business Life Cycle. I have chosen it as the substrate for the research survey’s interpretation because it reflects organizations’ reality, and I serve them, as do you. What parts of the life cycle are most relevant to your firm and your related practices? You can start and expand.
• Inventory and evaluate your partners’ and principals’ presences in social networks, forums, blogs, microblogs and others. Who is already having substantial interactions in which s/he is serving others, with a professional-yet-personal demeanor? You can start with a few highly motivated people; motivation and skill counts more than position in your hierarchy.
• Although not required to start, it will be helpful for you to choose one or more leading partners as champions. Champions need not be strong social business practitioners (although that helps), but they do need to understand and commit to its value proposition to clients and your firm. One of them at least needs to be a visionary.
• Use Practice metrics as lenses through which you study IBM, Accenture, Dell, McKinsey, Deloitte, AT Kearney and Dachis, and compare your firm to theirs in two ways: 1) how you/they use social technologies and 2) social business service offerings. All these firms have strengths and weaknesses:
  • If you dedicate the time to find them, IBM has many presences & thought leadership on social business transformation.
  • Dell leads in integrating forums and client/customer voice into its website.
  • Deloitte has a nice mix of social business services and thought leadership, but it drops the ball in relating; this is the rule for firms, not the exception.
  • Dachis has an active blog with relevant topics and discussions.
  • AT Kearney features little social business content and no services, but leading partners show that they understand social business transformation, and they are approachable yet credible.
  • McKinsey has invested in social business thought leadership for years, and its “The Social Economy” is best in class. Read it. Thoroughly. Note the transformation argument, rationale and call to action.
  • The Social Network Roadmap addresses the entire social business life cycle.
  • Learn from firms’ weaknesses. Most lose points because they don’t address the Social Business Life Cycle, services are scattershot, and they have minimal leaders relating online and thus no credibility. Most cling to firmspeak, which shows that the firm doesn’t understand the new environment.
• Use Leadership metrics for guidance in how to communicate and project your point of view on social business and how you relate to adoption. Leadership should be less important to you until you have a strategy for your firm’s social business services.
  • Firms that project Leadership ahead of their ability to deliver (Practice) lose credibility with astute clients/prospects. Most firms that led the survey in Leadership had woefully scant descriptions of their social business services.
  • Practice trumps Leadership because it delivers; firms need to show their competence through their partners’ and principals’ online interactions.
  • Watch Analyst firms, especially Forrester, Constellation Research and Altimeter. Although they do not field substantial transformation services, they understand the social business value proposition, and all use social technologies very well.
  • Leadership should be less important to you until you have a strategy for your firm’s social business services.
• I invite your inquiry about the survey or findings. You can commission a report on any firm and learn more detailed findings. I also advise firms on building practices.

Social business will eventually transform all organizations, but leaders have more choice about how it happens. Pioneers move early and set the table for laggards, who reactively get sorted out by the market.

Additional Resources

• The research survey home page contains all public artifacts, and I’ll update it with additional links and resources.
• For more detailed guidance, clients and firms can turn to firm category reports (Strategy, Big Four, Analyst, Agency, Enterprise I.T., Pureplay).
• You can also commission individual firm analyses or research surveys. I advise both firms and organizations on maturing their social business practices ahead of the market. Contact me to explore.

The post Executive Summary: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 appeared first on Christopher S. Rollyson and Associates.

This post originated at CSRA's blog. Please share your thoughts and comments here. Thank you.

Pureplays address social business as transformation by definition because they have been launched to address emerging market needs that established players either do not yet understand or have yet to organize to address. Moreover, Pureplays are not adding social business to their existing services; they have been formed to practice social business. They are a small cohort in this research survey because they were constrained to social business and transformation as were advisory firms in other categories.

Pureplay firms are often smallish startups, so they are quite limited in some areas when compared to established legacy firms as in this research survey. From a market and client perspective, Pureplays represent a vital part of the market and can offer unique capabilities; however, clients need to approach them with “eyes wide open” because the way they serve clients varies considerably.

There are thousands of social media advisory Pureplay firms that are focused on marketing and promotion. Pureplays’ capabilities are largely colored by their founders’ backgrounds. Dachis Group, SideraWorks and SocialxDesign directly address social business as transformation. StrawberryFrog is an outlier in that is was founded in 1999, but it approaches transformation from a very social perspective. Its overall focus is creating “social movements,” but it’s a global firm with a fairly broad set of services. It does show up in social business and transformation searches, hence its inclusion here.

Advisory and Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 is a research survey that evaluates and quantitatively ranks the maturity of agency and consultancy social business practices. The survey ranks Strategy firms, Big Four, Marketing/Advertising/PR agencies, Analysts, Enterprise I.T. firms and Pureplays on their social business practices, service offerings and leadership—specifically according to their relevance for leading client organizations’ transformations to more human entities that are grounded in listening and responding, not marketing.

Capabilities

Social business Pureplay firms are focused in the middle of the Social Business Life Cycle. Their websites, like most advisory firms studied, are short on specifics on their social business services, but their message is social business with a transformational message, and several explicitly address culture change.

As do all boutiques, Pureplay firms have varying capabilities as a function of their founders. According to the use case, I assessed them based on the facts given or observed.

• Feasibility is a comprehensive assessment of the adoption of social technologies by a client’s stakeholders as well as certain aspects of the client organization. The Pureplays studied presented their services in the context of projects, not the enterprise. No firm showed that they understood the importance of engaging specific stakeholders to increase trust and business, although they mentioned this in passing. Their firm category has a capability higher than None, lower than Low.
• Strategy focuses on identifying the optimal social venues in which to engage, determining the client’s highest impact assets and designing pilots to execute the strategy. Firms conduct granular analysis of social venues, stakeholders’ social actions and client assets and business processes. A valuable social business strategy requires strong knowledge of social business practice, and Pureplay firms exhibit relatively high levels of social business practice. They have a Medium capability because their focus is organizational change and they claim to address the life cycle.
• Pilot involves guiding clients’ execution of social business strategy, and Pureplay firms have a considerable experience in social business practice. Dachis, Sidera and SocialxDesign partners were all interacting publicly in meaningful ways, and firms used social platforms seamlessly. Their lack of specificity when describing their services prevents them from scoring higher than a Medium capability.
• Scale focuses on forging mature social business programs by expanding Pilot; however, its requirements for expertise are even higher since the effort is more mature and the investment higher. Scale requires a higher order management consulting expertise and was not addressed by any Pureplay firm, but since they are strong in social business practice, they rank Low, not None.
• Integrate evaluates mature business processes in light of social business and integrates them or replaces the mature process with a social business process. The competency required is shared between social business and legacy, and Pureplay firms show little higher order consulting expertise, so they rate None.

Overall Score Distribution

Social business Pureplay firms have high scores in Practice as a group, coupled with low Leadership scores. Since Leadership results from thought leadership, marketing, public relations and overall reputation, it is difficult to imagine a Pureplay firm with high Leadership scores because they lack the infrastructure. This, along with high Practice scores, is one of Pureplays’ key defining patterns.

Dachis, Sidera and SocialxDesign have Practice scores within three points of each other. StrawberryFrog does not fit the model in several ways: it was founded in 1999, but it positions itself as a firm that “creates cultural movements,” which lies at the heart of social business and transformation. The firm also has an explicit service offering that I expect to go mainstream in a big way, “Cultural Anthropology & Research.” Another Frog difference is that it presents itself as an agency. I include it in Pureplays because it is focused on deep understanding of stakeholders, whom it seeks to motivate and support in collective action. Its social context is brand, but its skills could be applied to enterprise social movements, too.

Dachis Group was one of the first social business Pureplay firms and has seen several social business thought leaders pass through its doors. Unlike the others, it is venture-backed, which undoubtedly affects its business strategy and focus on applications, not services. Dachis has innovated a “Social Performance Monitor,” which purports to use numerous quantitative metrics to assess the effectiveness and maturity of social business investments. It also offers “Brand Performance Reports,” an analytics service, and “Social Brand Strategy & Execution.” However, its site would be more compelling if it offered more specifics about its services. It has a strong blog.

SideraWorks is laser-focused on social business and as organization transformation enabler. Its Overall score edged Dachis by a point due to its relatively detailed description of social business services that addressed many parts of the Social Business Life Cycle. Although founded in 2012, the firm has a relevant blog with good interaction. Based on my analysis of its site, firm principals understand the social-business-as-transformation proposition, but its services seem to be mostly training and seminars, which may indicate a lack of depth in its management consulting services.

SocialxDesign was also founded in 2012 as a spinoff of PR firm Eastwick. It presents itself somewhat more like an agency, but its focus is clearly on designing organizations to unlock the sociality that’s enabled by digital social technologies. As with other advisory firms, its services have scant descriptions, but they address strategy and execution. SxD explicitly states that the firm will execute the (social business) plan. Like other Pureplays, this holds some weight since the firm shows it can use social technologies well and founders have significant experience.

StrawberryFrog might be termed a “social agency” because its website and services are designed in the agency mold. However, its raison d’être is creating social movements, not producing, delivering and managing content as most MAP firms do. Frog lost points relative to other Pureplays due to the use case, which is social business transformation. As an agency, it isn’t explicitly focused on organization, but brand. It features a playful engagement model: “Ready, Set, Leap.” Notably, it lost important Practice points due to a weak blog for this use case. Frog uses Tumblr, which lacks categories, tags and comments. It presents numerous examples of its work that include some specifics. Finally, Frog had very low Leadership scores, even though it has existed since Web 1.0; its messaging and positioning clearly is not transformation.

Recommendations for Pureplay Clients

As reflected by analysis under Capabilities and Score Distribution, Pureplay firms have uneven capability in social business. Dachis has some interesting intellectual property around metrics, Sidera has excellent focus but limited services, SxD appears to address the middle part of the Social Business Life Cycle fairly well. Here is my guidance for considering a Pureplay partner for social business initiatives that emphasize organization transformation.

Engaging a Pureplay Firm for Social Business

• When considering a Pureplay firm, it is critical to be specific about your goals and requirements since capabilities of Pureplay firms tend to be unusual and uneven. Practice scores, for example, show that Pureplays’ Top3 outscored the Top3 scores of all other advisory firm categories. Pureplays walk the walk, which is sorely lacking at other firm categories.
• Pureplays understand social business as transformation, but they may lack the depth to guide organizations’ transformation across the Social Business life Cycle. When considering a Pureplay firm, you will need to mitigate that risk with rigorous due diligence. As with all professional services firms, your strongest determinant of success is the team you have, not the firm. With Pureplays, the team may not be much bigger than the firm, depending on the size of your engagement.
• Pureplays are most likely to practice leading edge social business techniques. Due to their small size, they adjust their approaches and services quickly as a category. Be ready for this, and use it to your advantage.
• While Pureplays’ messaging was on-point, their descriptions of social business transformation services were only incrementally more compelling than top ranked Strategy, Enterprise I.T., Big Four, Strategy and MAP firms. The reader could interpret this as the firms’ lack depth, or their “services” are changing too quickly to make descriptions practical.
• Firms’ published Point of view, Practice definition and thought leadership are important signals of firm organizational commitment. As the Capabilities section indicates, Dachis, Sidera and SxD can address the Strategy and Pilot phases of the life cycle, although you should assess their depth in these areas.
• Pureplays excel precisely at the weakest point of most other firms, humanness and sociality. Each advisory firm category had at least one or two firms with strong Practice scores, but Pureplays as a category are strongest.
• There is more awareness of sociality in Pureplays than at any other firm category. Humanness is something people “practice” largely unconsciously, so it represents implicit knowledge and skills. To leverage its power, organizations and individuals must make it explicit to speed their learning process, so Pureplays have an edge here.
• Early adopters that practice social business and have explicit knowledge of humanness are your best leaders. Look at Pureplays’ principals’ blog posts: does a healthy portion deal with humanness, relationships, trust and sociality? My analysis indicated that all Pureplays had relatively strong native abilities.
• This research survey’s Practice score is much more valuable than its Leadership score because it’s a better determinant of the best advisors; it houses the lion’s share of differentiation.
• Keep in mind that one of the biggest risks of social business is companies thinking they are taking advantage of social technologies when they are not. The Pureplays studied would be less likely to lead clients astray on this point, based on my analysis of their messaging and services. Many of the social media early adopters who emblazon the covers of publications and conference podiums have succumbed to this pitfall. Social media is relatively empty calories when compared to building relationships.
• Most important, own your organization’s journey, don’t abdicate to any advisor. Pureplay firms have narrow capability in social business transformation, so they could be valuable partners if the team were right for your needs and you plan for their weaknesses. As Score Distribution indicates, think to use Pureplay firms during Strategy and Pilot, where their capabilities resonate strongest with the Social Business Life Cycle.

Beware These Risks

• Since Pureplays are strong in sociality, the rarest competency, their principals are very mobile, and their depth of services and client organizational knowledge is questionable. You can mitigate the risk that a large part of your team walks before the end of your engagement by addressing in your consulting services agreement.
• Pureplays are likely to be oriented to marketing and PR and can be limited in their knowledge of accounting, finance, I.T., H.R. and other enterprise functions.
• Pureplays’ services delivery methodologies may not be formalized, so you may find variance when hiring them for similar engagements several months apart. This may not be a bad thing, but be aware of it. Pureplays as a category have weak controls when compared to established firms.
• Principals can lack objectivity and assume that everyone should “get social” (because they understand it so well). Mitigate this risk by selecting principals with experience at Strategy or Big Four firms.
• Few organizations appreciate the necessity of practice. Look for individual strategy consultants who put themselves out there, usually via blogs, but also in Google+, Twitter, on YouTube and on social networks.

Learning more

• Visit the Advisor and Service Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 home page to keep apprised of additional inquiries and insights
• The CSRA blog is long form; subscribe to the whole thing, a category or even a tag via RSS or email. See: http://rollyson.net/social-business-resources/#subscriberonly
• Get a more “stream of consciousness by following my Google+ profile: 
http://google.com/profiles/csrollyson

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis can be a useful tool to understand advisory and services firm strengths and weaknesses, especially to executives and professionals who have used it, so I have prepared Big Four firms’ SWOT analysis in the table.

Strengths of Pureplay firms address the middle of the Social Business Life Cycle, namely Strategy and Pilot, where their strengths with social business Practice distinguish them. They have native skills with using social technologies to develop relationships, although no Pureplay was observed focusing on trust and relationship development as a critical part of its practice. Unlike MAP firms, Pureplays emphasize transformation. More than any other category, they are likely to be innovating and practicing leading edge techniques and strategies.

Weaknesses stem from Pureplays’ immaturity and small size. Their Leadership scores were universally low, even StrawberryFrog, which was founded suring Web 1.0 and isn’t focused on enterprise transformation. In most cases, you are hiring their partners because firms are not substantial. As assessed, none of the Pureplays are focused on the full enterprise life cycle, which includes Integration on its back end.

Opportunities are virtually unlimited for Pureplays because they are in the forefront of a massive shift in society and economy, and they have the best understanding of the tools in the Social Channel. This can work to clients’ advantage when they benefit from using leading edge practices. It can be a disadvantage when Pureplays make abrupt changes in their structures or services.

Threats have to do with Pureplays’ fast growth. Their founders deliver most of their work, manage client relationships and necessarily manage firms’ growth. This can lead to a lack of consistent focus when founders are pulled in several directions. Since they are defining the market in important ways, they do not face threats from disruptors in other advisory firm categories, but rather from the growth in their category. In addition, as adoption of social business moves from Visionaries to the Early Majority, the latter will often prefer to work with established advisory firms to mitigate risk. However, the market will growth considerably, so Pureplays will face few market threats is founders manage firms well.

Recommendations for Pureplay Firm Leadership

Social business is transforming society and business because it changes the economics of relationships, what people do and how they do it. Pureplay firms are more likely to understand this shift and are prominent in a market that will see limitless expansion for the foreseeable future.

Using Social Business to Strengthen Pureplay Firms

• Obviously these are general recommendations, and each firm is different.
• Most Pureplays are limited in size and the services they can offer. The market is still focused on social media, which is where the budgets are. One of Pureplays’ biggest threats is not appreciating that social media, although it will continue to grow, will steadily shrink as a portion of the social business market.
• If principals do not plan for the market shift away from social media, their firms will face declining margins. Many aspects of social media services are already commoditizing.
• It is difficult to overstate the profound change that is upon individuals and organizations. We primates are profoundly social; sociality is arguably our defining trait. Making sociality digital will change most human structures, organizations, patterns and habits.
• Therefore, focus your firm on helping clients to lower their costs across the relationship life cycle. The bar is far higher for using social technologies to develop trust and relationships, but firms that develop these competencies will see better margins and more visible work over time.
• Most firms say they focus on relationship, but their observable actions do not reflect it.
• Lead clients in this direction. Even B2C firms whose marketing has been long on legacy strategies and tactics, will benefit from showing people they care, really, because they can only tap social technologies’ potential by earning access to stakeholders’ networks.
• Make the churn at your firm your advantage. Pureplays’ consultants are “knowledge workers” in the extreme, and most team members have individual reputations. You will be better able to engage them long-term if your firm redefines itself as a platform for individuals to develop their careers. Optimize your roles to empower individuals. Most will return your commitment to them when they leave by being advocates for the firm and/or principals.
• Careful management will be critical in Pureplays’ success; their biggest challenge is managing growth. Hire an operations heavy as soon as you can.
• The market for social business services grounded in relationship will see steady growth for years to come, and you can exploit the vacuum of social-focused expertise. MAP agencies understand people much better than any other legacy firm category, but they are unaccustomed to relating to people. They sell to them.
• Strategy and Big Four lag significantly and have cultural barriers to adoption. Enterprise I.T. firms are coming on strong but may not be truly committed to “relationship over selling.”

Beware These Risks

• Beware the social media red herring, and manage your social media services as short-lived cash cows. Social media, because it emphasizes content creation and distribution over relationship, requires lower skills and has fewer barriers to entry. Your social media services can be profitable if carefully managed, but you will likely see shrinking margins as services commoditize.
• Most Pureplays will take the easy social media path to money, but their profits will be ephemeral. Obviously, individual firm results will vary, but as a category, this will hold.
• Don’t allow yourself to be led by clients. The market overall validates social media because it hasn’t discovered social business yet. Sociality, relating to people, is far more complex and nuanced than promoting things to people. Make sure your firm appreciates the difference. Position yourself purposefully.
• Client expectations are rising quickly. Pureplays that do not develop depth in organizational transformation risk losing relevance. Once clients see that relationship-based social business makes them money, they will want to expand and reevaluate their organizations. Most Pureplays do not have the ability to help them. Opportunistically develop strong competencies in business functions outside of marketing and PR.

Learning More

• Visit the Advisor and Service Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 home page to keep apprised of additional inquiries and insights
• The CSRA blog is long form; subscribe to the whole thing, a category or even a tag via RSS or email. See: http://rollyson.net/social-business-resources/#subscriberonly
• Get a more “stream of consciousness by following my Google+ profile: 
http://google.com/profiles/csrollyson

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