Accenture Technology Vision 2012: What It Means for Social Commerce

Accenture looks at the major trends driving technology over the coming three to five years—as outlined in the Accenture Technology Vision 2012—and relates them to the concept of social commerce. We explore how six technology trends will influence business over the next three to five years as it seeks to come to terms with the new reality of social commerce on its journey to achieving high performance.

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Accenture’s annual Technology Vision report provides a perspective on the future of technology beyond the current conversations about the cloud, mobility, and Big Data. This year’s report—Technology Vision 2012—outlines the trends that forward-thinking CIOs will use to position their organizations to help drive growth, rather than focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency improvements.

Now that Facebook and other social networks are becoming the primary way in which many people connect, businesses must ask: What are we doing to prepare for the new social consumer base and how will we drive “social” sales faster than our competitors can? Answers to those questions will force business leaders to rethink every aspect of how they go to market.

Read the Accenture Technology Vision 2012.

Social media have become the platform on which increasing numbers of people communicate. Companies are considering ways to use social technologies to build customer relationships at scale.

Of course, social media also presents a looming threat to business. Social networks are enabling consumers to conduct opinionated conversations about businesses and their products—conversations that are happening with no participation by the businesses themselves.

Social is not going to completely replace the need for today’s processes and approaches, but within the new segment of “social consumers,” new equations for consumer loyalty are emerging, challenging the conventional connections between consumer and provider and moving more of the conversations and factors that influence product demand beyond the providers’ control.

Accenture believes we are seeing a reprise of the 1990s, during which companies slowly came to understand what the Internet was doing, and how to make money from it.

Although it’s still early in the evolution of social commerce, patterns are starting to emerge that can help companies develop their approaches. A good way to approach social commerce is to think about how it applies to the marketing funnel.

Accenture has identified 10 things the C-suite should do now to begin coming to grips with social commerce:

• Set the priority of social strategies within the enterprise.

• Launch a “consumer interaction” inventory to capture the many ways in which consumers interact with your organization.

• Survey your company to gain a better understanding of how it already uses social and how its use compares with best practices. Initiate internal discussions to ascertain which other business functions are interacting through social media, working across business units—not only with marketing and sales.

• Get familiar with, and assess, the tools and players in the social space.

• Identify and study the best practices of social’s early adopters—regardless of industry.

• Prepare for “social listening.” Figure out what conversations your consumers are already having about your company, its products and its services and where those conversations are taking place.

• Experiment with new social interaction models to create better experiences for consumers.

• Create a strategy to identify, foster and support real advocates among your consumers.

• Identify the meaningful metrics for tracking the success of social.

• Rethink your organization’s consumer-relationship strategy in light of the new social interaction channels.