Beyond the balance sheet: How Social Contributes Real Business Value

©2013, Cognizant

How Social Contributes Real Business Value

Beyond The Balance Sheet

In collaboration with

| ©2013, Cognizant 2

Content

2 Introduction3 What is Your Social Quotient? 4 The Three Stages 16 How to Make Your Social Strategy Work17 Case Studies


Cognizant partnered with INSEAD to examine the social quotient of enterprises

Findings show five potential business impacts of integrating social technology in the enterprise:

• Better information flow – sharing of skills and knowledge

• Better collaboration – greater interconnectedness,within and across teams

• Greater innovation – driving employee empowerment

• Increased co-creation – particularly by bringing customers and partners into internal processes

• Increased agility – the ability for organizations as a whole to refocus on new opportunities more quickly.


What’s your Social Quotient?

The combination of social media uses and companyenablers impact business processes and deliver

organizational benefits

Drivers for organizational change


How Do You Get There?

Stage 1

• Identify activities that social technologiescan enhance

Stage 2

• Identify the major target audience for social media

Stage 3

• Improve the company’s social quotient

Following a three stage process for planning and implementation of an enterprise social media will

maximize benefits.


Identify activities that social technologies can enhance

Six basic activities of organizational operations

Think:Strategy development and management

Report:Finance and accounting

Run:“Back office” functions

like IT and HR

Sell:Client management, marketing and sales

Design:New product or service development

Build:Production or service delivery

Business Process

Stage 1


Connect with customers for co-creation, with employees for collaboration and with other companies for innovation

Our survey made it clear that, regardless of industry or corporate strategy, it’s the sell activity involving client management, marketing communications and sales that can benefit most, particularly for companies in high-touch industries such as retail, consulting and banking.

Uses of social media Sell Think Design Build Run Count

Employees + + +

Customers +

Suppliers and service providers

Other companies in the industry

+ + + +

Field specialists

Stage 1


Recommendations

• Allow employees and customers to participate in the product development process.

• Make sure that social media is implemented with clear objectives.

• Gradually provide teams more participation indecision-making process.

Stage 1


Identify Target Audience for Social Media

Adoption by target constituencies

24.6 % of companies

surveyed use a hybrid approach

Customers

Employees Partners

8.4%5.4%11.3%

24.6%

14.3%20.7%

15.3%

Stage 2


Choice of audience co-relates to benefits achieved

Organizations targeting both internal and external audiences achieve better results because they have invested more in maturing their social media competencies

Percentage of companies that realized benefits from social media with each target constituency

Better internal information

flow

Better Collaboration

Greater internal

innovation

Increasedco-creation

Increased agility

Employees only 52% 48% 35% 22% 26%

Partners and customers

27% 21% 21% 30% 33%

Partners, customers and employees

52% 52% 31% 28% 46%

Stage 2


Success depends on engaging your users

The mark “+” indicates in which business processes the different uses of social media bring a meaningful improvement, based on the survey data evidence

Think Design Build Sell Run Report

Employees only

Customer

Other companies in industry

Stage 2


Recommendations

• Start with the challenge you want to overcome or area you want to improve.

• Experiment with a particular problem or department such as the helpdesk, for example, rather than starting a social media initiative without a mission in mind.

• Establish a social platform that allows you to aggregate all interactions between employees and interactions with customers, in one place.

Stage 2


Improve the Organization’s Social Quotient

Integration of Social Media Technology with Company’s core information systems is a key step in achieving better information flow across functions.

The Survey found that more organizational decentralization makes companies more likely to report benefits in terms of improved information flow, more collaboration and, most interestingly,

more employee innovation.

Stage 3


The best uses comes from users when social tools are tailored to specific business needs

Percentage of Companies ReportingBusiness Process Benefits by Type of Deployment

Think Design Build Sell Run Count0

20

40

60

80

100

Bottom-up (organic growth) Company-wide initiative (top-down) Combination of both

(%)

Stage 3


A Top Down Approach is More Beneficial for Information Flow across Company whereas the Hybrid Approach brings in More Business Agility

Percentage of Companies ReportingOrganizational Benefits By Type of Deployment

Better information knowledge flow across teams

Better employee collaboration

within and across teams

More employee innovation

Customersco-creation

(e.g. product development)

More business agility

0

20

40

60

80

100

Bottom-up (organic growth) Company-wide initiative (top-down) Combination of both

(%)

Stage 3


There is more than one way to implement

• Differentiate in the market by educating and empowering employees to use social technologies in specific ways.

• Plan awareness campaigns to inform employees how social technologies brings value to their daily activities.

• Embrace bottom-up social initiatives taken by individual teams and units only if the company has company-wide processes for information sharing to avoid creating organizational silos.

• Balance empowerment (encouraging individual creativity) and accountability. Establish an individual recognition system.

Stage 3


How to Make Your Social Strategy Work

Be clear about your motives

• Start by asking yourself why you want to adoptsocial technologies

Experiment to find your perfect fit

• Test the viability of social platforms and needs they should address

Engage with usersand respond totheir feedback

• It is not enough to simply deliver – constantly review and adapt.

Get senior managementinvolved

• Employees respond to change better when their business leaders are onboard

Give usersfreedom

• Users need guidelines but they also need freedom to express themselves


Case Studies


Turning disruption into productivity

Business Challenge

Managing change resulting from decentralization of organizational structure of a large Food Processing Company

How was this addressed?

• An enterprise wide social platform of 30,000 members across 400 communitieswas developed

• The platform allowed distributed global teams to share best practicesand avoid duplication of effort

Key Success Factors

• The launch was decentralized so it could be adapted to global needs.

• Training assets are widely available to raise awareness and encourage uptake.

• All users are treated equally to invite collaboration


Supporting employee well-being

Business Challenge

Responding to social need by extending social platform internally to improve employee well being by a Global Telecommunications Provider


• Developed communities with both business focus and employee interest resulting in 35,000 members in 38 countries

• Increase in information sharing in communities helped strengthened“collective intelligence” within wider team and improve staff morale

Key Success Factors

• Focus on social rather than economic performance measures to drive adoption.

• Promote personal connections as much as professional ones.


Valuing everyone’s contribution to innovation

Business Challenge

Promoting information sharing of technical and commercial information and improving collaboration by an Energy Services Company


• Company wide platform was deployed to encourage knowledge sharing on key business topics resulting in 3,000 members across 65 communities

• Business is more agile as a result of improved access to specific expertise and knowledge sharing among international teams

Key Success Factors

• Adopt a bottom-up approach to implementation to increase participation.

• Focus on the needs of the employees so that the network benefits regular users.

• Find a sponsor in senior management to ensure project receives full support


Building a platform for self expression

Business Challenge

Employees wanted a way to share best practices and promote innovation

across multiple business units within the Global DIY Retailer company.


• The company adopted social technologies to increase employee well being, drive collaboration and improve innovation.

• Social platform helped break down internal silos between teams across group companies and fostered a spirit of collaboration and promotes sense of “one team” on a global scale.

Key Success Factors

• A corporate culture that supports collaboration helped promote widespread adoption.

• Delivering training that focuses on the benefits of using the tool.

• Reassuring employees rather than trying to control them.


Harnessing employee insight to solve business challengesBusiness Challenge

To enhance global communication by engaging externally with customers as well as internally with employees in a Financial Services Company


• Employees are encouraged to actively contribute to internal blogs, forum discussions and ‘idea incubator’ for problem solving and idea sharing

• The company benefitted from combined knowledge in the workforce, culture of innovation and helping monitor employee engagement on key initiatives

Key Success Factors

• Focus on social rather than economic performance measures to drive adoption.

• Promote personal connections as much as professional ones.

• Keep Governance light


Unifying operations for equality

Business Challenge

Supporting the corporate brand and mitigating communication challenges between business units as a result of company’s growth through acquisitions in an International Bank


• HR team communities were launched with access to 3,200 HR employees for creating corporate content and information exchange was enabled through forums and wikis

• All members of HR community have direct access to international co-workers and working practices and access corporate resources from a central platform.

Key Success Factors

• Don’t be afraid to experiment to find the best solution.

• Develop the platform in response to user feedback to improve adoption rates.

• Make sure platform is user-friendly and easy for non-technical people to use.

©2013, Cognizant

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