This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.
Here is Jon Mell. Jon and I first met when we were both speaking at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese in Italy back in 2008. He was in IBM, after that leading sales for Headshift, before going back to IBM to be their Social Business Leader UK and Ireland. Back in February Jon was keynoting at the Paris edition of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit. He’s a social collaboration expert who has been around in this space for a long time and brings a practical perspective to using social to drive business.
Watch the video, but here are some highlights:
I think it’s going pretty well
companies aren’t thinking of it necessarily in terms of social, they’re thinking in terms how do they improve their customer care process, how do they get products to market more quickly, how are they looking at recruiting and on-boarding new talent and they’re looking at social as a way to do that
they’re not looking at social as something in its own right
I don’t think they’re necessarily concious that they’re even thinking about social business
when an organisation looks at how do they attract the right talent, how do we break down silos and barriers in our organisation they’re thinking about solving those problems, they might use social to do it but they aren’t waking up in the morning and thinking “I want to collaborate using social business”
how can they get closer to their customers, how can the be more valuable in their marketplace and they’re looking at social as a way of doing that
we’re seeing a lot of interest from internal communications, we’re seeing a lot of interest from CHROs, but also lines of business, heads of sales, heads of R&D
how can I increase the innovation pipeline and get new products to market more quickly
seeing smaller companies get involved, using social as a way to punch above their weight
If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. More information here.
More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.