To preface this post, be very clear that the participants are the owners of the community. I write this in context of who within an organization is spearheading and leading the community business program. This post is really aimed at those in the corporations who are leading the social media program from within and have to wrestle with confused management, doubtful colleagues, and the majority who want to keep status quo.
I’ve served in web teams in both IT and on the Business side, so I find this topic interesting.
IT or Business
Yesterday I had a call with a client who was leading the social media/community charge at his IT related company. Nothing unusual for me, but in this case, he was in IT. Most of the time, when we hear of customer facing community programs or social media programs they are being lead by Marketing. In any case, I’ve got to applaud him for taking the challenge, as for customer facing community programs they usually require a business sponsor.
Business Sponsors help things go smoother
Why is a business sponsor needed for community program today? At least two reasons:
1) A business champion makes it easier: Evangelizing a community program and launching it within an enterprise requires interface with many business units. Marketing, Product Development, Product Support, Communications, PR, and other client groups are often impacted. Having a business champion (that will convince each of these groups) that will address the business objectives, mitigate risks, and define how it’s aligning with the corporate objectives are key.
2) They often control a bucket of money: Most of the time, business units have the budget issued to them from the budget committee, which will fuel the spend for development with either a vendor or with IT. This is not to suggest that IT departments don’t have budget, but when dealing with a customer program like community, the plan will need to gather requirements from the business who understands customers.
The ‘relationship ownership’ plague
Everyone wants to feel protected and safe, and in many corporations, the ‘ownership of relationships’ are present to keep things organized and also to assert some control. PR ‘owns’ the relationship with the influencers like press, media, and analysts, support ‘owns’ the relationship with customers, and sales ‘owns’ the relationship with prospects. So who ‘owns’ the relationship of a community that consists of all of the above constituents?
What really matters
In the end, it doesn’t matter who runs the social media program (IT or a Business unit) what really matters is that the program is customer centric and designed around delivering an experience that lets customers self-support each other, or communicate with the company and other members. Not to forget to mention that the most sophisticated IT departments have become business units, not ‘technology support’.
When these tools normalize, the walls drop
Looking to the future, the argument of ‘community ownership’ will be moot, just as email has normalized as a communication tool present everywhere in the enterprise, the same will be true of the social media tools. just take a look at the youngest graduating class to see how ubiquitous these tools already are.
Good post Jeremiah. So the key point to consider is like you say, not who runs the social media program, but that the teams involved (IT, support, marketing, etc) work together to facilitate the customer experience – customer-centricity, customer self-support, etc. And the business sponsor (champion) plays a key role in enabling this cross-departmental group to work together.
Everyone involved must feel empowered to respond to conversations taking place within the community.
Jeremiah – One of the other issues with IT running the show is that in many big organizations, CIOs and CTOs are paid to be risk averse. As we all know, the concept of “risk aversion” is somewhat antithetical to community cultivation. For that reason (other than developer communities,) I’d be surprised if there are many sucecessful communities rolled out in the future by IT.
BTW, I like what Melany says in her comment, irrespective of who rolls it out, the teams (IT, marketing, support, product) all need to work together. @astrout
Jeremiah,
The question of sponsor is a key element of any change. The adoption is made possible by having people with influence supporting it.
The spread of Enterprise 2.0 makes this point clearer that the one of web2.0 but there is no real surprise.
Experience shows that effectively it is people from business who traditionally lead “Enterprise2.0” projects. They have special needs in engaging conversations with customers or facilitating social interaction to make structured process work. IT people focus on data, security and big processes like ERP, CRM and Emailing systems. As a consequence they often put communication and knowledge sharing issues on the back burner. Add to the fact that traditional software editors and IT consultancies – their natural contacts – are out of the picture in terms of social computing (partly because they see no way how to make gooood money out of it) and you get a pretty decent picture.
Now there is another element we have to take into account. If media announce it’s going mainstream, organisations are still exploring the impact and benefits of social computing. Passion and exploration still are the main factors for real adoption. Simply because passionates are the ones these days who know how we can make things happen in real life. And on this one, it is not question of whether one is young or old, whether one is on the business side or the IT side of the organisation.
Jeremiah, in our experience the only social programs that get launched successfully have the support of Business first, then are “knighted” by IT. Not just someone in the Business Group, but the president or VP – the person with the budgets and authority. Now of course this is our unique situation of coming in as an outside vendor, and not an internal champion.
We partner with a number of large public relations and marketing agencies, and the issue they always face is the lack of technology knowledge. As discussed any community related social programs will eventually run through IT, and once IT gets a whiff of the PR agency being the catalyst for the program – it becomes a bunker mentality. As Aaron mentions it gets stalled or killed in the risk aversion stage as marketing and PR can’t refute or guide a risk averse IT team.
In addition, we have found the key to selling in social media programs is the ability to track and analyze ROI on the effort. For years we’ve been selling social media programs into the business group, but until we were able show the ability to measure ROI, it was always one of those “Trust us, you should be doing this” pitches.
Being on the other side of the fence (I’m in IT)and also trying to kick start a social media movement withing the company, I am torn by both sides of the argument. Aaron, you hit one of the main issues that I am struggling with – “risk”. It’s no secret that risk and security are hurdles to overcome from the IT perspective. For example, MySpace and Facebook have both taken headlines for security related exploits and that needs to be taken into consideration. They are also a hotbed for social engineering and Facebook Apps doesn’t help things out either. IT has a responsibility to safeguard a companies data, property, brand, employees, etc, and ensurethat employees are enabled and productive.
I understand that there is a need to assume some of the risk in order to reap the benefits of Social Media, but where is the tipping point between acceptable risk and success? Is that something that can even be defined?
IT is traditionally considered an enabler. It allows the enterprise to function through the use of technology. Times are changing. IT needs to move away from being an enabler to being a contributer playing a key role in business strategy. Why IT? In my situation, all heads are turning to IT for the answers because the perception is that Social Media is married to the Web, information systems, various software and applications, etc, all of which are managed under IT. Generally speaking, users expect transparency from the IT organization. There is no desire to understand even at a fundamental level how IT and business strategy are coming together. Users just want the tools. I think this is another hurdle that needs to be overcome. As the separation between Business and IT continues to close, there needs to be a general understanding across the board of how it all ties in. Perpective: We all understand the value and benefits of our autos. We all also understand the risk of driving recklessly. We are not all auto mechanics, but we know enough about them to realize the risk and dangers when abused.
This is by far one of the most difficult challenges I have faced in IT, but also one that I am excited to face.
Excuse my rambling..
Ed Stafford @pixel8r
Thanks Ed
Is the web really tied to technical systems? Or is it really just an easy to use platform for anyone to publish their thoughts and share with others.
It’s quite possible, and we’ve not even discusses this here, if the new web is really about people, then perhaps HR is a big stakeholder.
Great topic – Thanks for posting.
I agree with all sentiments. In my experience, it was the business who started the buzz. We created a small and simple platform just to test the water. With immediate adoption, it was evident that we as a company *needed* this.
Executive sponsorship on the business side was key. Especially in big companies, a strong voice to advocate for the need can help work wonders as you work through traditional processes and obstacles.
A strong partnership with IT is equally important. As noted in this post, IT has much to gain from centralizing a Web 2.0 offering. After six or so months, we’re in the fortunate position of having complete buy in from IT (in fact, they now want to create an IT centric community for 1k’ish people), strong business support (our new SM offering was just highlighted at a global management mtg) and a very vibrant and active community that’s growing leaps and bounds everyday.
I believe the business needs to spearhead the effort – but cannot do so in a vacuum and needs to partner tightly with IT. While a point person in the business needs to serve as lead, it’s imperative that the voice of the community help drive the overall direction.
“Is the web really tied to technical systems? Or is it really just an easy to use platform for anyone to publish their thoughts and share with others.”
Maybe not in a direct sense. That’s why I say the “perception” of our employees is that it is. When you consider applications like google docs and MS Office Live that enable employees to work and collaborate outside the traditional isolated environment, and expect IT to adopt and support them, then yes, I think from that perspective the web does become a part of a technical system.
Good point on the HR comment.
Nice post Jeremiah! And many great comments already. I echo James’ comments of “have the support of Business first, then are knighted by IT”. And I certainly echo the need for a senior business champion.
To illustrate this, one example I can think of is a Fortune 1000 enterprise software and services firm that I work with. This firm is organized along major solution areas. Each area has the usual functional units – marketing, sales, support, etc and these units report into a senior executive.
This same senior executive also has reporting to him a customer organization and the activities of this group touch upon all the customer facing functions of all the major solution areas. One of the goals of this group is on customer maintenance and retention.
Social software to them is being considered in the context of the desired results of enhanced customer engagement. The social tools selected really are based on how appropriate a means of communication they are for the task at hand. Once the strategy is set, the technology is then validated, selected and implemented with IT’s help.
It’s not to say that this is as smooth as I’ve described it – the ‘customer organization’ is only just emerging so processes and policies are still in their infancy along with the usual office politics. But the point I’d like to make is that social tools are meant to complement and enhance the programs and activities of the customer organization e.g. on maintenance and retention.
And it’s the business side of the enterprise where this begins with IT its traditional ‘enabler.’
Thank you for posting on a central issue in business – ownership. I have longed believe that it’s not about a department, but about responsibility. It shouldn’t matter which department or team “owns” the task. All that matters is that it is done in a responsible manner, that represents the company in the most accurate light to the message that all understand, in a way that the “market” understands. If the IT department understands the tools, and can do so, then they have a responsibility to use them to communicate. However, if the marketing department prefers to do this, and they have the udnerstanding, then working together, the IT department shold help them learn the ways.
Why do we always seem to fall back to territories? Isn’t it time we all grew up in business and learned that the most successful entities are those that harnassed the skills in a way where EVERYONE contributes and advances? When will some people learn it’s not about dogs marking their corners?
(Sorry – you touched on a frustrating issue in my professional life.) Thank you for bringing this up. I hope people will listen to the cooperative vocie.
Jeremiah, in our experience the only social programs that get launched successfully have the support of Business first, then are “knighted” by IT. Not just someone in the Business Group, but the president or VP – the person with the budgets and authority. Now of course this is our unique situation of coming in as an outside vendor, and not an internal champion.
We partner with a number of large public relations and marketing agencies, and the issue they always face is the lack of technology knowledge. As discussed any community related social programs will eventually run through IT, and once IT gets a whiff of the PR agency being the catalyst for the program – it becomes a bunker mentality. As Aaron mentions it gets stalled or killed in the risk aversion stage as marketing and PR can't refute or guide a risk averse IT team.
In addition, we have found the key to selling in social media programs is the ability to track and analyze ROI on the effort. For years we've been selling social media programs into the business group, but until we were able show the ability to measure ROI, it was always one of those “Trust us, you should be doing this” pitches.