Daniel Crag Wants A Business Partner :P
It is now well established that enterprise social media adoption is as real as it gets and its not a fad that businesses are experimenting with. Gartner’s predictions on the role of social media as a collaboration and business transformation tool are not without their own merits.
However, social media adoption in enterprises is still at an early stage and the early adopters (which I think is the FMCG / CPG sector) are experimenting with the medium and tasting success as they go.
The biggest challenge when it comes to social media in enterprises is not really due to lack of a definite answer for "What’s In It For Us’ because frankly social media is finding its applications right from marketing, customer service, lead generation etc. The challenge when it comes to enterprise adoption of social media is around the ownership and the lack of a ‘What really works in Social Media‘.
Social media is disrupting traditional marketing in more ways than one. From the consistent addition of new platforms and the best ways to leverage these platforms to making the CMO increasingly collaborate with other CXO level executives in other departments, social media is revolutionizing marketing in enterprises.
A recent CXO survey conducted by IBM Global Services including 80 Indian CMOs (overall 1700 CMOs) throws some interesting insights on social media adoption in the enterprise.
The overall study showed that the market was changing faster than CMOs felt prepared for. The factors that they said were the most important ones were surprisingly the ones they felt least prepared for.
Indian CMOs are no different and even though the general awareness around the importance of social media is there there are challenges when it comes to strategizing and executing.
Despite the high regard for social media, Indian CMOs feel more unprepared than CMOs anywhere else. This is unexpected because at any marketing forum, we talk about social media all the time
Lack of control is suggested as one of the reason why Indian CMOs have inhibitions with respect to social media. Come to think of it, its not surprising given how brand communication is a closely guarded activity in enterprises. The unpreparedness of CMOs could be due to this very face of communication wherein the communication is no more controlled and the company has to be open to retaliation on social media.
Social Media Is A Key Agent Of Change For Indian CMOs
![social media engagement channel Social Media: Indian CMOs find themselves Unprepared [Survey]](http://trak.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/social-media-engagement-channel.jpg "Social Media: Indian CMOs find themselves Unprepared [Survey] india business opportunities services making money")
As is visible from the chart, majority of CMOs are wary of the change being bought about by Social media and they find themselves unprepared. Data explosion is another key challenge which to a certain extent is a byproduct of social media. Using social media as a key engagement channel is a priority for most CXOs followed by monitoring the brand activity on social platforms.
The coverage by Business Standard has many more details on the changing marketing paradigm and CMO perceptions of Social Media including the increasing use of technology and access to more data for deriving a better ROI from marketing spends.
However, it is evident that social media is expected to remain a cause of concern for Indian CMOs and those who continue to take social media as just another channel for traditional marketing are not likely to succeed.
Do you agree that Indian CMOs at large are unprepared when it comes to leveraging social media in the enterprise?
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Turns out that Blackberry has lost its stronghold on the only niche segment that it prided itself. Yes, iPhone has unseated Blackberry as the most preferred smartphone in the workplace.
According to the quarterly mobile workforce report published by iPass,
iPhone is now the top smartphone in the enterprise with 45 market share among mobile workers, up from 31 percent in 2010. Blackberry’s market share actually dropped to 32 percent from 35 percent in 2010
The results were based on a survey of over 2,300 mobile employees at over 1,110 enterprise worldwide lending some credibility to the percentage based market share split.
Come to think of it, it is not so much about Blackberry losing significant market share (~3% down) but more about increasing market share of iPhone and Android based smartphones even in the enterprise.
What the graph also suggests is the marketshare loss of Symbian OS (Well, we knew that already) and Windows Mobile also losing market share. Well, its not so bad for Microsoft (and Nokia) since the early reviews of Windows OS based Nokia smartphones seem to positive and even the respondents in the survey (3.6% of them) are looking to buy a Microsoft Windows mobile as their next phone.
But even as the incumbents have been losing marketshare, its the growth of Android based phones that is staggering especially given the skepticism in enterprises around anything open-source. Well, kudos to Android for creating a new market more than stealing the marketshare
There are multiple reasons for this shift in smartphone preference in the enterprise.
What this means is that mobility in the enterprise is increasingly being led by the end users and not some large IT department which are often a few years behind the technology adoption curve. The only worrying aspect to this trend is the mobile security vulnerability which companies will have to work on.
The mobile workforce report also points out an increasing adoption of tablets emerging as part of enterprise mobility tools with iPad being the leader with Blackberry’s Playbook with around 4.8% marketshare.
Guess it never hurts to have a sizable installed base to sell your new shiny product even as the existing one is fighting a lost cause.
Overall enterprise mobility space is evolving at a rapid pace. There is a clear shift in the demand side preferences and the supply side is hard at work to WOW this ‘I decide my mobile work device’ workforce.
One thing is however clear, iOS and Android seem to be the way forward be it enterprise mobility or general consumer preference. The others can fight for the third spot!!
Your thoughts?
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From brainstorming to crowdsourcing, more and more companies are looking to tap into the collective intelligence of masses to solve their business problems.
Lufthansa Cargo has taken crowd-sourcing a step further and has created a public co-innovation platform primarily targeted at finding innovative solutions for its supply chain.
Lufthansa Cargo has launched Air Cargo Innovation Challenge and is inviting people from across the globe to submit their innovative ideas around key supply chain processes like Green Solutions, Add On Services etc. and even general process improvement ideas
The innovation challenge is essentially a crowdsourcing platform wherein Lufthansa Cargo is asking brilliant folks to think up innovative ideas to improve Lufthansa’s operations and get rewarded in return. The central theme of the contest makes me think that crowdsourcing could actually help the company find some real strategic ideas to implement.
I am firm believer in the power of crowdsourcing and if executed right the same can provide tangible benefits to businesses of all size. There are too many success stories which highlight the power of crowdsourcing be it Unilever’s Pepperami campaign, Lays Ad campaign and even IBM’s translation project
Green solutions and Add-on services are two primary ideas wherein a larger set of people can participate and emerge with brilliant solutions. For Green solutions, the company may not have the best ideas emerge in-house but if there is a thought leader around Green solutions, he /she can submit their idea and Lufthansa can tap into a subject matter expert at minimal cost.
The same goes for ’Add on services’ wherein forget a large audience, the existing customers can themselves suggest new services and service improvements that they encounter on a daily basis while working with either Lufthansa Cargo or other carriers.
The contest which started on 1 Nov, 2011 is already seeing decent interest and as many as 31 ideas are submitted by various people. The overall community engagement is also rather positive with lots of comments and messages happening on the site.
What is also interesting is that the rewards are non-monetary in nature. The company is going to invite the top 3 winners to present their ideas to the corporate team at Lufthansa Cargo and provide a guided tour of the operations center.
So, the company is not going for too many idea approach (in lieu of rewards) but has rather tailored the contest to ensure that people who are passionate about the contest topic only submit their ideas.
What are your thoughts on Lufthansa Cargo’s innovation challenge? Are you going to be a part of this crowdsourced initiative
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I guess it is true that you can take an Indian out of India but you can’t take his / her love for India. The traffic statistics for leading Indian local news sites does suggest that no matter which part of the world they are, Indians love catching up with what’s happening in India.
![image28 Indian News Sites Seeing surge in International Traffic [Comscore]](http://trak.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image28.png "Indian News Sites Seeing surge in International Traffic [Comscore] growth")
Comscore recently published a report on visitation to local Indian sites highlighting a key trend especially when it comes to leading local news portals in India,
Among the top local news destinations in India, most brands saw non-residents contribute a significant share of global visitors
Leading new sites like Times Of India has an international traffic amounting to as much as 36.2% of the total, while 31.76% of OneIndia’s traffic comes from outside the country. Mid Day.com and DeccanChronicle.com seem to be getting as much as 45% of their total traffic from an international audience.
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Selected Newspaper Sites in India by Total Unique Visitors (000) |
||||
| Total Unique Visitors in India (000) | Total Unique Visitors Worldwide (000) | % of Global Unique Visitors in India | % of Global Unique Visitors Outside India | |
| The Times of India | 7,871 | 12,336 | 63.8% | 36.2% |
| Oneindia | 4,449 | 6,501 | 68.4% | 31.6% |
| HT Media Ltd | 4,393 | 6,109 | 71.9% | 28.1% |
| India.com Sites | 3,786 | 4,737 | 79.9% | 20.1% |
| NDTV | 3,558 | 5,756 | 61.8% | 38.2% |
| The Economic Times | 3,169 | 4,340 | 73.0% | 27.0% |
| IBN Live | 2,355 | 3,562 | 66.1% | 33.9% |
| The Indian Express Group | 2,022 | 2,961 | 68.3% | 31.7% |
| The Hindu Group | 1,885 | 2,850 | 66.1% | 33.9% |
| Bhaskar.com | 1,672 | 2,105 | 79.4% | 20.6% |
| Navbharat Times | 938 | 1,081 | 86.7% | 13.3% |
| Dnaindia.com | 743 | 1,129 | 65.9% | 34.1% |
| Mid-day.com | 450 | 821 | 54.8% | 45.2% |
| Maharashtra Times | 395 | 446 | 88.6% | 11.4% |
| Financialexpress.com | 384 | 460 | 83.4% | 16.6% |
| Dinakaran.com | 297 | 417 | 71.2% | 28.8% |
| Deccanchronicle.com | 293 | 583 | 50.2% | 49.8% |
| Deccanherald.com | 286 | 461 | 62.0% | 38.0% |
Interestingly, almost every news site gets high double digit traffic from outside India. One clear explanation for this is the fact that these news sites become a window to millions of Indians residing abroad into what’s happening in India.
What is even more interesting is whether these news sites are aware of this trend and more importantly whether they are doing anything specific to cater to this audience. For example, the recent trend of reverse brain drain among senior executives is one example wherein these news sites could further the cause and awareness by reporting on the emerging opportunities in the Indian marketplace etc.
Another angle to this contribution from international traffic on local news sites is monetization strategy. I recall my conversation with a friend working with the internet ad sales of a leading news daily and she did suggest that a variety of advertisement options are used along with a fixed price model based on total traffic numbers- irrespective of audience segmentation.
However,most leading dailies seem to extensively using the contextual advertisement via Google Adsense which works well to monetize both local as well as international audience.
If Comscore’s numbers are true the advertisers might be better off working on a audience segmentation pricing approach (if they aren’t already). Additionally, marketers can also consider the local news sites a vehicle to target a fast increasing international audience as well instead of solely focusing on the domestic audience
What are your thoughts on the growing international traffic on local news sites in India?
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Well Played Samsung, very well played!! Gamifying a corporate website takes lots of courage and vision especially when no one has tried it ever before. Samsung US has gone ahead and tightly integrated Gamification in its corporate website.
Samsung Nation is the gamification engine aimed at building a community and increase engagement on its website. The simple principles of activity based reward mechanics are at play where users get badges to complete certain actions on the website and certain badges then result in real rewards for users
We have a lot of coverage of gamification and one can argue whether gamification is a smart business strategy but from the looks of what Samsung is trying to pull here, gamification looks like a winning proposition. Samsung might be the first corporate to have taken to gamification in a big way by implementing it on its website itself but we have seen enterprises toying with gamification earlier as well.
Chances are that if you have ever played the Farmville’s or the cityville’s or you are an active user on Foursquare you have seen gamification at play. The gamification framework promises a variety of benefits depending on the type of application but one aspect comes out for sure whenever we talk of gamification – increased user engagement.
Be it the forcing users to perform actions via time-bound actions (e.g. crop to be harvested in 4 hours as in Farmville) or be it the community building (e.g. sending virtual nothings to friends in order to unlock special items) all platforms / application leveraging gamification lead to increased user activity.
There is no better place for users to engage than on company website itself!
Samsung is striving to make its website the go-to place for Samsung and non-Samsung users by rewarding one and all for spending time on the website and performing actions. Be it really simple ones like ‘spending 15/30 seconds on the website’ to ‘watching a video on the website’ to ‘contributing to the Q&A’ section, Samsung is using gamification to entice everyone to engage with its corporate website like never before.
Some of the noted industry analysts have voiced their concerns on enterprises investing too much resources on building communities on Facebook and directly / indirectly sending users to their Facebook page instead of bringing them to their own website.
Come to think of it, it does make some sense because despite Facebook’s reach and the viral quotient, the end goal has to be increase activity on the website and not Facebook. Then, there is the fact that Facebook is not a platform you control unlike your website.
It might be still early days when it comes to enterprise flirting with gamification but boy it does seem exciting and something that has the potential to make their corporate websites super effective. For e.g. Consider a non-Samsung user ‘watching a video’ on the company website (thereby unlocking a badge) and actually discovering that the product demo in the video wins him / her over thereby converting into a purchase!
What are your thoughts on Samsung’s gamification of its corporate website? Do you think its a winning strategy and more enterprise will adopt game mechanics in the future?
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Despite the success of the movie, Slumdog Millionaire did portray India in a light that many did not like which however at some level which was true. Most notable being slum dwelling in India. Majority of the Indian cities have their share of slum dwellings not to forget Asia’s largest slum. Slums are a major hindrance towards urbanization and Indian government is now embarking on new schemes to make India Slum-Free.
Government of India has launched new scheme for where in the government will provide new dwelling units to slum dwellers on payment of a part of the cost
Essentially, as part of the scheme government will bear 40% of the cost of these dwellings while the rest of 60% needs to be paid for by the slum resident. Commendable initiative but i wonder if the government will also provide credit/installment options for the slum residents because even though the price of these dwellings is on-cost basis, a 60% payment in one go could prove handful for a large majority of the target base.
This is however not the first initiative by the government to create a slum-free India and affordable housing for slum dwellers is pretty much the objective of Rajiv Awas Yojna as well with projects already initiated in Surat.
While affordable housing is a step in the right direction, i hope these initiatives are also complemented by educational/vocational training programmes so that these dwellers not only have decent clean living environment but also a shot to live a better life. But as they say, One Step At A Time
What are your thoughts on government’s initiatives to make Indian cities slum-free ?
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Ok, the last part of the title might have been a cheap shot but I thought it was necessary for my thoughts later in the post.
On to the matters of more importance now. Bharti Airtel has chosen to implement a new customer experience management (CEM) platform provided by Nokia Siemens Networks. With the new solution, Bharti Airtel expects to enhance the customer experience across multiple touch points and also provide the company with real-time insights into customer usage patterns.
The management speak sure seems to suggest that the solution is exactly what Airtel needs to keep its customers happy in the wake of company’s massive expansion, challenges in the Indian Telecom sector and not to forget the company’s notorious distinction of being the leading operator in consumer complaints. Here is the statement from director of network group at Network Group,
The implementation of CEM is an added impetus to our constant endeavor of offering best in class service experience to our customers across GSM, EDGE and 3G networks. It will enable us to identify the root cause of a problem and rectify the same before the subscriber experiences any impairment in service delivery
I dug around a little into the CEM solution offering and the “real-time” and “proactive” approach that the solution promises could indeed be beneficial for mobile operators.
For example, NSN proposes that its CES solution can automatically flag and correct data access configuration settings for a subscriber in the event of subscriber failing to access data on his mobile. Now, wouldn’t that be great for a subscriber.
More than that, it will be great for Bharti Airtel because automated fault detection & remediation could free the company’s resources to focus on more strategic issues. After that, that has been the proverbial use case for outsourcing network operations et all to third-party providers till now.
With real-time systems also comes the power of getting a peak into subscriber usage patterns and Bharti Airtel is expected to use these insights to create better experiences for customers.
However, given the current state of affairs, I guess subscribers will be more than happy to get uninterrupted access to traditional voice & data services and if possible- workable solutions from customer care executives.
This brings me to introducing twitter complaints in the title of the post. All said and done, I wonder what is stopping Bharti Airtel to implement a decent Social CRM solution (please let me know if they already do).
More and more people are ranting about their frustrations about their mobile operators (Airtel is the not the only one) on twitter only to be slapped with template messages such as ‘Please DM us your number’ etc.
May be the operators have outsourced their social media to agencies but having a CRM system with interface to social networks atleast presents an opportunity to capture the customer complaint in the right fashion. So while, Bharti Airtel can implement n-number of technology solutions, it will have to take a more “hands-on” approach towards delighting the customer.
It will be another story if the new CEM solution is so robust and fail proof that customers will not have any reasons to complaint and voice their frustration on twitter or elsewhere but then who are we kidding here…
Do you think adding a customer experience management solution to its arsenal will help Bharti Airtel make the customer experience better leave side delighting the customer?
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![luftansa air innovation challenge 300x103 Lufthansa Cargo Wants To Crowdsource Business & Process Innovation [Contest]](http://trak.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/luftansa-air-innovation-challenge-300x103.jpg "Lufthansa Cargo Wants To Crowdsource Business & Process Innovation [Contest] aviation")