| Gartner Says Enterprises That Harness the Power of Collective Behaviors Will Be the Ultimate Winners With Social Media
Many social media efforts are failing, because some enterprises just don't understand how to employ social media to facilitate collective behaviors, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner conducted a 10 month effort collecting data and analyzing 200 successful social media implementations to identify how enabling collective human behaviors can lead to enterprise value.
Enterprises can employ these collective behaviors as the link between business value and social media technologies. They can use them to examine a target community and formulate new ways that people can interact to achieve enterprise value. By understanding the most prevalent technologies, collaborative behaviors, business use cases and business value for six collective behaviors, enterprises can more effectively plan for successful community-based social media initiatives. The six collective behaviors include:
Enable Collective Intelligence for Operational Effectiveness
Collective intelligence is the meaningful assembly of relatively small and incremental community contributions into a larger and coherent accumulation of knowledge. Enterprises looking to improve internal operational effectiveness through enhanced collaboration, especially around product delivery, customer service and creation of a corporate memory, should examine employing blogs and wikis.
Gartner's research indicates that pursuing collective intelligence to achieve operational effectiveness is one of the most successful social media adoption trends. Furthermore, collective intelligence is one of the earliest and most mature patterns, meaning that skills and tool capabilities are relatively widespread, and success in this pattern is proven.
Employ Expertise Location for Sales Effectiveness
Expertise location involves specific expertise from the masses of people and among the often staggering amount of available content. Enterprises seeking to improve sales effectiveness should examine the potential of social networking to enable expertise location behaviors associated with product delivery, product utilization and customer service.
Gartner's research shows a strong CRM-related social media adoption pattern in employing social networks for expertise locations. It often involves the enterprise identifying a small number of customers or prospects out of the masses in the market who can assist in enhancing a product or service or in improving the customer experience.
Unearth Emergent Structures for Operational Effectiveness
Emergent structures are structures that are unknown or unplanned prior to social interactions but emerge as activity progresses. The goal of emergent structures is to gain insight into the true "nature of things" to more effectively organize, manage or interact with a community. Enterprises advancing their use of social media should explore emergent structures as a means to better understand how organizations actually behave and accomplish work. Emergent structures is a more advanced collective behavior and is relatively less mature. Once enterprises understand the value of social media and experience some initial success, then emergent structures become more appealing, and the chances for success are higher.
Increase Sales Through Interest Cultivation
Interest cultivation is the collecting of people and content around a common interest, with the goal of growing the community of interested people and increasing their level of engagement. Enterprises pursuing social media for brand awareness and sales effectiveness should employ social media to foster mass interest cultivation. Gartner has found that enterprises that have successfully facilitated interest cultivation have experienced stronger customer loyalty and increased customer engagement, leading to better brand awareness, increased customer feedback and increased sales.
Engage in Mass Coordination for Rapid Response
Mass coordination involves rapidly organizing the activities of a large number of people through fast and short mass messaging that is often spread virally. Early adopters of social media should examine mass coordination for rapidly coordinating a mass response to a significant event. Emergency response, search and rescue, sense and respond, political activism, marketing campaigns, and management of large programs are some appropriate scenarios for mass coordination. Gartner believes that by effectively employing mass coordination, enterprises can more rapidly marshal a powerful response to an important occurrence. However, mass coordination is an emerging collective behavior and comes with the risks associated with immaturity.
Build Relationship Leverage for Brand Awareness
Relationship leverage is the seemingly contradictory practice of effectively managing and deriving value from a huge number of personal relationships. Enterprises pursuing social media for brand awareness and sales effectiveness should examine the potential of the relationship leverage collective behavior. Enterprises that have successfully facilitated relationship leverage experience benefits in brand awareness and customer engagement and relationship leverage is often a cost-effective and lower-risk social media effort.
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New Survey Finds 'Mobile Etiquette' Mishaps are Running Rampant
Texting or typing while driving. Sending emails while walking. Using mobile devices while on a honeymoon. These are among the top pet peeves cited by U.S. adults in a recent survey conducted by Ipsos and sponsored by Intel Corporation to uncover the current state of mobile etiquette in the United States.
Nine out of ten American adults claim they have seen people misuse mobile technology, and 75 percent say mobile manners are becoming worse compared to just 1 year ago, according to the survey.
As the number of Internet-connected mobile devices continues to grow, awareness of how people use mobile devices around others is on the rise. A 2011 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project states that 85 percent of U.S. adults own a cell phone, 52 percent own a laptop computer, 4 percent own a tablet, and only 9 percent do not own any of these or other devices covered in the study. As the innovator behind the processors, or "brains," and complementary technologies that power many of today's mobile devices, Intel taps its team of social scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and industrial designers to provide a glimpse into how people use, will use or would like to use technology, including mobile devices, well into the future, across different cultures.
Key Survey Findings
While connectivity at one's fingertips has enabled people be more productive, how people use technology in the presence of others can lead to frustration. The majority of U.S. adults surveyed (92 percent) agree that they wish people practiced better etiquette when it comes to using their mobile devices in public areas. Roughly one in five adults (19 percent) admits to poor mobile behavior but continues the behavior because everyone else is doing it.
The desire to be more connected to family, friends and co-workers, combined with devices that are "always on," contributes to an innate need to have mobile devices available all day, every day, from early morning to late night. In fact, one in five adults admits to checking their mobile device before they get out of bed in the morning.
With a choice of sleek, small and powerful mobile devices on the market, people can easily take mobile devices with them wherever they go, making it easy to commit "public displays of technology." The survey revealed that U.S. adults see an average of five mobile offenses every day and top mobile pet peeves remain unchanged from Intel's first examination of the state of mobile etiquette in 2009. The top mobile etiquette gripes continue to be the use of mobile devices while driving (73 percent), talking on a device loudly in public places (65 percent), and using a mobile device while walking on the street (28 percent).
As mobile etiquette guidelines continue to evolve, Post offers these tips to those who use a variety of mobile devices on a daily basis:
- Practice what you preach: If you don't like others' bad behavior, don't engage in it.
- Be present: Give your full attention to those you are with, such as when in a meeting or on a date. No matter how well you think you multi-task, you'll make a better impression.
- The small moments matter. Before making a call, texting or emailing in public, consider if your actions will impact others. If they will, reconsider, wait or move away first.
- Talk with your family, friends and colleagues about ground rules for mobile device usage during personal time.
- Some places should stay private: Don't use a mobile device while using a restroom.
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Survey Shows CRM Software Spending Is Expected to See the Largest Increase of all Application Software Markets
Spending on customer relationship management (CRM) software is expected to see the largest increase of all the application software markets worldwide in 2011, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Overall, 31 percent of respondents expect an increase in application software spending in 2011.
In comparing their 2011 fiscal budgets with 2010, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they expect to increase spending on CRM in 2011, compared to 39 percent on office suites and 36 percent on enterprise resource planning (ERP), which ranked second and third, respectively.
Gartner conducted an expansive primary research survey of more than 1,500 IT leaders of organizations in 40 countries, which concluded in July 2010. The goal was to determine software spending allocations for IT budgets in 2010 and predictions for 2011.
Gartner added that buyers of CRM continue to focus on investments that promote customer retention and enhance the customer experience, and they are increasingly interested in technologies that encourage development of customer communities and social networks. SaaS adoption continues to be a key driver. SaaS within the CRM industry is expected to exceed $4 billion in total software revenue in 2014, representing more than 32 percent of the overall CRM market. Marketing automation remains the market segment with the strongest growth, with the greatest demand coming from campaign and lead management and analytics.
Worldwide application software spending is expected to increase 31 percent in 2011, up 9 percent from last year, and emerging markets are planning for higher budget growth. Asia/Pacific is expected to have the largest increase, at 37 percent in 2011, up from 14 percent growth last year, followed by Latin America and EMEA showing an increase of 35 and 27 percent in 2011, respectively.
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