Lamar Morgan 954-603-7901 | | Progress does not seem to stop - even in financially difficult times. Believe it or not, I am reading on the Net that the way we use the Internet is going through a major transition...right now!
What I am reading is that we're in the early stages of a significant business transformation brought about by and through the social web. The change is being driven from several different converging factions. For one thing, customers are demanding that companies interact with them in new and different ways. Meanwhile, employees are frustrated by enterprise software and processes that are less than comparable to their personal online experiences.
I read that Web 2.0 started this change with new concepts like user generated content, wisdom of crowds ( netweaving), transparency, shared control (mutual collaboration), real time online conversations (Skype), etc. Believe it or not, the recent economic downturn is credited with accelerating this change. Some say it even added to the need for change. Companies are concerned with customer retention, increasing productivity or doing more with less. Global competition, and in general challenges to their outdated industrial age processes and systems in an information driven reality has also added to this paradigm shift in the way we GTD (Get Things Done).
I am really pleased to read that throughout the Internet age the concept of mutual collaboration has haunted businesses. Tools to enable more effective communication has slowly gained adoption. Email, the grand online replacement of snail mail and once the golden way for people to share ideas and information has grown into an almost unmanageable tool. Spam chokes our inboxes. Some studies place spam at more than 80% of all email. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that email marketing - once a great new way to reach prospects and customers - is now mostly ineffective. In fact, it has become a big part of the noise that makes email so difficult to manage.
I read that instant messaging is not much better than email, but disagree. However, I agree that other team collab tools have made much better attempts at breaking down silos inside most businesses. I point to Twitter and its many third-party apps as well as clever multi-faceted partnerships like carrotmob and foursquare.
All of these areas - Web 2.0, mutual collaboration, the social web, social networking, social media, social CRM and even areas like enterprise search and content management - are converging into one significant business movement that is starting to drive real cultural change inside and outside the business organization. This movement to social business is not about social media, social networking,mutual collaboration, Web 2.0 or even Enterprise 2.0, although all of those have added to the knowledge base. Each can be can be leveraged to build out the social software that will be required to make the new social business function and scale. This whole movement is based on the fundamental cultural shift that leads to engaging customers, employees and partners in new and different ways.
In this new era of information old restrictive hierarchies left over from the industrial age are flattened and silos of information are set free. While this way of doing business may be as old as the Bible, if has a new feel to it. This is people-centric business, or to say it another way, people become the business platform.
Yes, people become the business platform. The business of life is all about US (plural) - not just about you (singular). That is why the third-party referral has so much power - even today. What's needed is for more people to be forming small groups and brainstorming on ways to better help each other out. This process is what I have referred to as "clustering." There is even a network here on Ryze dedicated to it. You will find that network here on Ryze at Lamar Morgan's Ryze Clusters.
This change impacts every area of the business, sales, marketing, product marketing/development, product design, customer service, operations, finance, human resources, management, etc. We're still defining and redefining "social business" but the basic concepts are finally in play and businesses are starting to make real attempts toward transformation. As we come out of the current economic downturn it's not about recovery, we're not going back to where we were, it's about reinvention. Question: are you ready and willing to do NEW things? I do believe they are coming your way.
Lamar Morgan
CDMM - Synergistic Business Marketing
(707)709-8605
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