The Power Of Social Media

The Power Of Social Media

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  www.pwc.com The power of social media How CIOs can build business value using social media Social media is here to stay. Do you have a strategy?
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  Introduction What is social media? Social media refers to the use of mobile and web-based technologies to turn one-way communication into an interactive dialogue. How is social collaboration different from social media? Social collaboration is the internal use of social networking tools to create value by working together on a common goal. 2 The Power of social media: How CIOs can build business value using social media
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  Social media isflourishing. Leading While many individuals use social companies know that participation is media on a daily basis, the challenge no longer an option, but a requirement. While social media should for organizations and CIOs is that they To ensure success, entry in social media may not know how to put it to use in the not replace face-to-face must be a strategic decision. It requires enterprise. Understanding the various communication, it can enhance adequate planning, resources and applications of social media and how the overall customer experience support. While social media should not they can be used to achieve business and create new sales and servicing replace face-to-face communication, benefits is the first step. it can enhance the overall customer opportunities. Social media, when done well, can create experience and create new sales a collaborative dialogue with a very and servicing opportunities. Most large, but very specific audience – one importantly, social media is no longer person at a time. And, it’s successful considered an emerging technology – it because it breaks down formal barriers. has arrived and is here to stay! Social media provides an opportunity for instantaneous communication and promotes collaboration across functional groups and geographic regions. At its most powerful, it can bring the full weight of millions behind identified ideas and actions – within days – if not hours. PwC 3
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  Most importantly, beready to evaluate What are the challenges social media like you would any other channel or platform. Recognize where your starting point is. Can you solve and implications for CIOs? a business issue or is there a growth opportunity? Listen to what your customers and competitors are saying about your company – and what you “Social media has been described 1. Return on Investment want to achieve. as a channel, a platform – and It can be difficult to quantify the value even an online conversation. of social media – but it is worth the 2. Integration of social media Unfortunately, none of these effort. When you start considering your Social media is not something that options, take a disciplined approach to should be dealt with in a vacuum. In the descriptors do any justice to CIOs planning your investment. Identify both long run, the key to success will be your when trying to get the buy-in of customer-facing applications and internal ability to integrate social media into their colleagues. At PwC, we see social collaboration initiatives, and then your existing communication channels social media for what it is – a evaluate the benefits and costs against (e.g. face-to-face, online, telephone) business tool that can be used to your business priorities. Make sure and customer information systems. This you build a strong business case before requires sitting down with your cross- solve real business issues.” moving forward. functional leaders and engaging them in Debbie Dimoff, the creation of a strategy and governance When looking at what actually matters to Technology Consulting, PwC your business, not every metric available structure that considers the range of for measuring social media is relevant. opportunities and challenges posed by Four factors should be considered: social media. • Financial: have revenue or profits Remember: your customers expect a increased or have costs fallen? seamless experience across all of your • Brand: have the measures of brand various channels: in-store, online, phone engagement improved? and social media. • Risk management: is the Understand the costs and what it takes organization better prepared to note to scale initiatives before you implement and respond to attacks or problems them, rather than waiting for your that may affect their reputation? initiatives to grow out of control. • Digital: has the company enhanced its portfolio of owned and earned digital assets? 750,000,000 The number of Facebook users Q. What is the value of a Facebook Source: TechCrunch, 2011 customer to a retailer? A. $136* Social media and mobile * The average value of a Facebook fan takes into • There are more than 100 million individuals account variables such as product spending, loyalty accessing Facebook via their mobile phones and and reduced acquisition cost. Source: Syncapse, 2010 another one million on Twitter. Source: Interpret LLC, 2010 • Mobile users are estimated to be twice as active on Facebook compared to non-mobile users. Source: Forrester, 2010 4 The Power of social media: How CIOs can build business value using social media
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  Social media strategy considerations How do I get started? There are a number of considerations when creating How do I scale? How do I integrate? a social media strategy, such as customer expectations, operational integration, the value of social media, and risks. Customer Business Case Operational Risks Expectations • What’s the Integration • Complexity • Choice value? • Technology • Control • Convenience • People • Real-time • Seamless • Process • Security experience • Trust To be successful, you will also need 4. Learning what works to make an investment of time and resources. Successful execution of a Social media is an evolving concept; the social media strategy requires training only way to gain expertise is to experiment and education so that you can rely on with various applications. You do not have your employees to present messages that to build a presence on the same social are consistent with your objectives, brand media platforms as your competitors. There and guiding principles. is no magic formula for success—most companies are still experimenting with trying to determine what works and what 3. Employee access doesn’t. Consider creating processes that Many of your employees are already support just-in-time learning and don’t be using social media outside of work afraid to stop doing something if it doesn’t – to network, research, and share meet your needs or the needs of your information. What you don’t know is employees and/or customers. whether they are saying anything that could pose a risk to your organization. 5. Becoming the role model By developing social media guidelines, you can mitigate security and risk Chief Information Officers and Chief issues without jeopardizing your brand Technology Officers have a fundamental reputation. Guidelines will help ensure role in leading the charge with respect to your employees know what they can and social media. Take the initiative to uncover can’t do, where they can communicate, the value of social media and then become and what information is privileged, a role model for your organization by private or confidential. You can’t prevent demonstrating understanding and usage. employees from engaging on social Make it your job to bring the leadership media, so make sure they are doing it team up to speed in social media literacy properly. and explore collaboration tools with them. Be proactive in identifying, assessing and developing a plan to mitigate risks so that you can move forward with confidence. PwC 5
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  What are thebenefits? “Creating an ecosystem of ideas and From a customer-facing With respect to your employees, relationships is what social media perspective, social media can social media can help you… help you… is all about. Enterprises need to • Build a dynamic and creative work understand this concept and how • Enhance and protect your personal environment to capitalize on it.” and corporate brand reputation • Instantly take the pulse on critical • Expand your reach to new customers organizational issues Albert Silverman, Technology Consulting, PwC and territories and increase access to • Enable virtual workplace solutions just-in-time information and trends • Promote internal communications and • Create unique solutions and dialogue experiences for your customers • Provide increased transparency with • Enable the distribution of real time respect to information information, where required • Attract and retain top talent • Tailor products and pricing based on interactive customer feedback 6 The Power of social media: How CIOs can build business value using social media
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  What are therisks? Any new activity poses a risk to • Growing too big, too fast: Most “You can no longer abstain from organizations – social media is no companies want their social media social media, but before you exception. What’s important is that you campaigns to go viral, but few are dive in head first, make sure you know what the risks are and that you prepared for the increased demand have addressed all of the security have a plan to manage them accordingly. once they do. Before you engage concerns. The last thing you want Potential risks and risk mitigation tactics in social media, make sure you associated with social media include: understand how usage can grow is to leak intellectual property and what is needed to scale up and because you did not manage risk • Content created outside your scale down initiatives. Start with a firewall: Train your employees so they appropriately.” understand what information can be contained pilot so you can learn from your experience before deploying Salim Hasham, shared. Develop controls and policies Technology Consulting, PwC social media across the organization around the release of information. This as a whole. includes user-generated content. • Rising customer expectations: • Communications contrary to your A response within 48 hours from business position: Incorporate social your customer service department media into your communications just doesn’t cut it anymore. Your strategy so that everyone understands customers want – and expect – instant the message and how it should be responses. Listen to what they are delivered in different circumstances. saying online, empower staff with the • Losing control of a situation: authority to resolve issues and ensure Recognize that issues involving social that your social media channels are media interactions can snowball integrated with the existing customer quickly. Develop a plan so that when support framework so that online an issue occurs, you can address it conversations can be quickly and quickly and with confidence. The easily resolved. faster the issue can be controlled, the less of an impact it will have on your organization. A balanced approach to information security We believe that businesses should adopt technology and processes. Policy, too, must a strategy to safeguard their corporate delineate the types of social media accounts networks and data focusing on three that the company sponsors. aspects: processes, people and technology. Business should also consider security This remains a complex issue. Technical products or services that actively scan and defence is vital to protect against negligent monitor traffic for malware, data leakage and malicious acts. However, there is also a and other suspicious activity. Possible human element – negligence, ignorance or solutions include multi-layered security even curiosity can give rise to incidents. at the gateway and end points, content classification, content filtering and data- What is required is a program designed loss prevention. Identifying the right mix of to raise security awareness and influence these tools can be daunting because of how the behaviours of all those concerned, and rapidly technology is evolving. balanced against continued investment in PwC 7
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  What is theevolution of social media? “All enterprises need to know what their customers are thinking and how they feel about their products and services. Using social media is a very different statistical method that can only result in increased profitability against market competitors.” Richard Jhang, Technology Consulting, PwC As your social media strategy evolves, so does its complexity. From there, you can begin to identify and engage with online However, this creates additional opportunities for engagement influencers. The key is to filter out channels and users that are of and the possibility for a greater return on investment. limited impact and focus your efforts on value-add activities. In this stage, your goal should be to drive traffic from your website Social media is about building and strengthening relationships to social media communities and vice versa. over many conversations and over time – you can’t simply leapfrog others, but you need to get in the game now. Start today to solve a Finally, over the long term, you can take your engagement to business issue, develop on enterprise strategy and then launch a the next level and begin to influence the purchase decisions small, focused pilot to learn—with a plan to scale up. of your customers. Organize discussion forums to make it easy for customers to provide feedback and rate and review In the short term, explore and build your social media presence. your products. Word-of-mouth marketing is a key driver of Also, monitor what your customers are saying and be ready to increased sales. You should also establish ways to showcase respond, if necessary. your collaborative efforts, such as creating customer-designed products and/or promotions. Facebook users spend (on average) $70 more on products for which they are fans of the brand. Source: Syncapse, 2010 8 The Power of social media: How CIOs can build business value using social media
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  Social media success How can we help you stories build value? Dell “The role of the CIO as a business leader is to drive Dell’s outlet store began selling products directly through its business value. It is imperative that CIOs leverage Twitter feed. At the end of 2009, more than US $6.5 million in social networks and create actionable knowledge.” products were sold. Philip Grosch, National Leader, Technology Consulting, PwC Gap Our PwC Technology Consulting team can work with you Gap partnered with community coupon site Groupon and to understand the opportunities and address the challenges offered a $50 gift certificate for $25. More than 440,000 presented by social media. We can help: certificates were sold and at one point in the day, approximately • Define your social media strategy: Working with you, 10 were being sold every second. we will outline a set of social media initiatives that will contribute to your business priorities. Intercontinental Hotels Group • Design your social media experience: We provide you IHG launched a crowdsourcing initiative through social media with the ability to develop unique customer experiences involving 300 Elite Priority Club Rewards members. It was able that will differentiate your products and services. to achieve more than $250,000 in incremental revenue from a single test promotion in just six weeks. • Drive social collaboration adoption: We will help support the success and sustainability of your social collaboration initiatives. • Create an integrated operational roadmap: We can develop a framework that identifies business and Social media in B2B technology gaps and then identifies the best solutions for your company. PwC recently worked with a global consumer goods company to use social media to recruit and train sales • Execute and evolve social media programs: We can representatives, aid them in building their business assist you with the implementation, management and online and creating a supportive and collaborative measurement of your social media program. community. PwC defined the market, formed a community management team, and developed a global approach for content creation. The social community was launched in two markets in August and September 2010 with 22% of representatives taking part. Don’t doubt the power of social media • Facebook surpassed Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. in 2010. Source: Experian Hitwise • YouTube is the second most-used search engine globally. Source: comScore PwC 9
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  Our PwC TechnologyConsulting team Our dedicated team of Technology Consulting professionals has experience in helping a wide-range of companies develop, implement and manage their social media strategies. Combining deep technical knowledge with expertise in business transformation, stakeholder engagement, and business strategy, we find the right solutions for your business needs. Scott Likens (312) 298-6893 [email protected] Phil Garland (703) 918-4523 [email protected] PwC Technology Consulting Services www.pwc.com © 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. In this document, “PwC” refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an Ontario limited liability partnership, which is a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each member firm of which is a separate legal entity. 1343-01-0711