Five core tenets for creating a social enterprise

The Internet of Things represents perhaps the single biggest technology trend impacting businesses in the next decade.

Industrial Internet of Things — connected, intelligent products that communicate with users - creates new ways of automated and personal interaction. In this connected everything environment, social media can drive new ways of collaboration within and beyond the organization. But companies need to think carefully about how they participate and resist the temptation to go with the crowd.

Finding the right way to engage requires defining a social etiquette and protocols around what the devices collect, use, share and respond.

The best place to start is by identifying the two or three things you know about your customers that your competitors don’t. Then use that information to create competitive advantage by delivering exceptional value your customers covet.

In fact, many organizations are dramatically underserved by their levels of social investment as they continue to struggle with basic capabilities. Just 40 percent of organizations are using data gained from social media to improve their bottom line. Sixty percent are challenged to find actionable use for data collected.

If companies are not fully equipped to operationalize social across the business, they risk failing to do it right—which can have significant impact on the brand and customer relationships.

To be successful in the 21st century digital economy, companies must wholly embrace and integrate social into the enterprise, including managing fast-moving and fragmented social technologies. Some of the major challenges include:

• Operating with multiple point solutions disconnected from enterprise technology, forcing IT to maintain numerous different platforms and systems
• Maintenance and integration consumes IT leaders’ time, limiting their ability to focus on value-adding capabilities
• Security risks and data privacy issues
• Budgets, staffing, and management of social technologies and programs, with little data on the impact of social across channels

Given these challenges, getting results that deliver strategic impact requires doing social differently, instead of relying on the reactive ebb and flow of the marketplace