Tools for Social Business Success
Social business is about people, process and platforms, right? When implemented correctly it can transform the culture of a business, unifying both the social brand and social enterprise to become more connected, more social.
This is true, but at some point you need to have a discussion about technology to find vendors and tools that can make your plans a reality. To facilitate this transformation you need to invest in enterprise tools.
In my experience both agency and client side, I’ve noticed that there are many vendors which provide top notch tools that can be applied to either the social brand or the social enterprise, but rarely do they transcend both segments. By this I mean Radian6, Sysomos and Buddy Media are fantastic for marketing, public relations and customer service activity, but you’d turn to Yammer or Podio for internal collaboration and likewise Salesforce or DataHug for sales. There’s not one vendor which has a tool that can be deployed across the entire social business.
In a world where the single-client view represents nirvana, finding a tool that brings everything together in one dashboard is hugely valuable.
So just who is best placed to provide social business tools? It’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Undoubtedly it’s a question that will be answered differently by each organisation depending on its requirements and budgets, but I’m increasingly beginning to think Salesforce is currently the strongest candidate in this space.
Salesforce owns Radian6 and Buddy Media, and Yammer can be integrated into its software. For me, Salesforce has both strength and depth; it boasts cutting edge technology which can broadly be applied across the business.
But where is social business going? To me the whole social business space is ripe for innovation and some automation. For those reasons it’s the kind of area you could see Google, Oracle, IBM or HubSpot make a play into.
Building upon Edelman’s existing thinking I’ve listed some tools essential for social business success.
What tools do you use for social business?
