5 ways businesses embrace the Social Revolution

Over the past year, we've witnessed a convergence of social, mobile and cloud computing prompting organizations around the globe to evaluate how they embrace the growing social business market. "Social" has become essential for organizations that want to remain competitive.

Reflecting on the clients I've met across 66 countries, five things surprised me about companies embarking on the social business journey.

1. Germany leads the pack. Germany stes the bar in social software adoption, with major deployments at companies like BASF, Bayer, GAD, Sennheiser and more. The pattern of success is that they began with a business process and inserted social to make the process more competitive.

For example, Bayer added social to their patent process, enabling the exchange of ideas to accelerate patent development. They added social to their collaboration processes allowing them to solve problems faster across national borders. Lastly, by adding social to their client insight process, feedback from customers circulates throughout the company with open communication.

Lesson Learned: Don't keep social over to the side, embed it into the heart of your processes, so that it impacts your workflow.

2. Internal Deployment is Outpacing External Deployment. According to the IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report, internal deployment of social business has for the first time outpaced external deployment. With all the initial focus of social media in demand generation and awareness, I was surprised by how many companies are leveraging social internally to learn the rules while they leverage strong ROIs to become more competitive.

Companies like IBM, Lowe's, Cemex and others are driving adoption first with their employees before tackling outside the company walls. Cemex was recently awarded Harvard Business Review's Management 2.0 award for changing the way employees work by leveraging social inside the organization to foster innovation, increase collaboration, and open the creative and strategic arena to all levels of the company.

Lesson Learned:  Start internal deployment to engage your employees and drive higher return on investment (ROI).

3. Financial Services and Government are going for the gold.  Conservative organizations are leading the social charge. Eighty-four percent of the Top 35 banks now have a social strategy, according to the 2011 Social Media Banking Sector Survey. Likewise, all of the G7 are now working on Government 2.0 social projects.

For example, the USDA is using social to connect with people in ways that are most convenient and effective for them. Banks like HSBC, bank New York Mellon, National Australian Bank and more are leveraging social across a number of key business processes. While regulations are behind the times, new software allows for e-discovery and real time monitoring to ensure that FTC, SEC, and other core regulations are met.

Lesson Learned: Don't let the regulatory environment stop your company from beginning in the social journey. The first mover advantage is big.

4. Culture eats strategy for lunch. Culture is one of the top critical success factors in determining whether a company will be successful with social. While technology is important, the backbone of a successful social business transformation must be grounded in behavioral change. If a culture is right, an organization can tackle any other challenge, whether it's the technology platform, workflow processes, re-architecting legacy applications, etc.

TD Bank recently spoke on stage at IBM's premiere social business conference and discussed how their cultural foresight has helped them execute social listening and customer service in the marketplace. This cultural change means that new roles  like community managers and social analytics managers will emerge and play a role in that oranizational transformation, and ultimately positively affect the bank's bottom line.

Lesson Learned: In the Social Revolution, culture and technology play equal roles in success.

5. Ideas come from the strangest places. I knew that collective intelligence was valuable but I didn't imagine that crowdsourcing new ideas would become so influential for organizations. In IBM's CEO study, creativity was identified as the single most important leadership quality. Standout organizations practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their company. Creative leaders take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

For example, Lowe's Home Improvement, a major US-based chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores, leveraged social to create a community with over 11K members to identify and create new features and enhancements to it's iPhone application. China  Telecommunications leveraged social by engaging with its clients to help identify new 3G offerings – with the first suggestion coming in in less than 10 minutes!

Lesson Learned: Collective intelligence produces profitable ideas.

It's clear from these social business surprises that “social” has become essential for organization's that want to remain competitive. Companies of all sizes -- small, medium, and large and in every industry , B2B and B2C -- are seeing the value and impact of social. The opportunity for social business to transform how people and processes are connected, and to increase the speed and flexibility of business is limitless. Don't be left behind while the competition forges ahead.

Photo Credit: nopporn/Shutterstock

Sandy Carter is vice president of Social Business Evangelism and Sales for IBM. She is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Business School and is an accomplished author, including "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0" and "Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business".