Turning social media into a business advantage

The huge proliferation of social media and mobile technologies is fast becoming a game-changer for Australian organisations and their relationships with customers. This explosion in data, from consumers who are continuously connected, is now viewed by many companies as essential for effective customer engagement.

Since legacy customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) systems were never designed to satisfy the needs of 21st-century consumers, the challenge now is to manage the sheer volume, velocity and variety of data flying their way.

It is no longer sufficient to examine internally sourced data such as sales reports or internal customer ticketing systems. Organisations must be able to capture external data flowing across social networks and digital channels, and then merge it with their existing intelligence to understand their customers in real-time. This requires strategic information and analytics solutions capable of converting massive amounts of data into real business value.

Survey shows big swing to BI integration

An international market IT survey has provided an insight into current thinking among major companies towards BI and social media solutions. Nearly 600 organisations from a wide range of industries were surveyed globally in 2011.

The survey found that 89% of respondents in Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) considered BI systems were important. However, less than a third believed their current systems met their business needs and less than half felt their existing business intelligence solutions could handle large data sets.

The value of capturing customer commentary from social media channels also rated very highly, with 79% of APJ companies saying the information should be tracked. This was more than the global average which stood at 68%.

Significantly, nearly two-thirds of APJ respondents indicated that over the next 12 months they are planning to integrate social media with existing business intelligence data and 54% will require outside assistance to achieve their goals.

Existing BI systems not up to the task

The survey results show that despite heavy investment in BI systems in recent years, organisations are not achieving the results they anticipated. For the most part, this is due to the lack of an enterprise strategy to gain maximum business value from the captured data.

Many organisations still use enterprise data warehouse (EDW) solutions that capture data from multiple sources during the day. However, this data may take up to 24 hours before it is accessible to analysts. The delay this approach introduces is now unacceptable.

For example, news media organisations need instant access to online story consumption and resulting social media interactions in order to prioritise content and maximise readership. Many publishers now actively track social media posts related to competitors in order to preserve readership and create ‘Fast Follower’ or ‘Catch Up’ stories based on topics they’ve missed. This is only possible when social media and internal data streams can be combined and accessed in real time.

However, this integrated and real-time access creates headaches for companies that often have insufficient governance structures. Rather than an organised plan to prioritise their BI efforts that are aligned with business goals, many organisations have ad hoc solutions developed in response to urgent business needs for more information.

These issues are further exacerbated with increases in available data. Organisations are finding it harder than ever to manage the influx of social media data and exploit it for improved customer experiences.

The simple fact is current architectures were never designed to handle all this information.

Australian enterprises must ensure that their solution to managing social media data fits with any broader BI plan because a disjointed approach will just propagate their current woes.

Chief information officers (CIOs) should be aiming for the following:

Fully integrated solutions that span the organisation

The incorporation of social media into an organisation’s customer relationship strategy requires new technologies and workflows across business units. Organisations that successfully exploit social media understand this and update their workflows to be customer centric with multiple feedback loops designed to minimise cycle times. This means that business and IT must work closely together to share all data from all sources when designing a social media engagement and BI solution.

Systems that prioritise customer understanding not just system performance

Sourcing data from multiple sources is just the start. If the wrong questions are asked of the data, particularly ones for which no action can be taken, then the investment made is wasted. Organisations must ensure the data enables direct actions that improve basic customer metrics such as engagement, churn and desired-action completion. This means any solution deployed must be flexible enough to ask a variety of questions as well as provide the means to effect changes based on the answers to those questions.

Big data in real time

Social media happens in real time, and so should an organisation’s response to it. As a result, a key part of a successful social media strategy is the capability to understand and act in real time. However, the implications of this flow through to system design. To be successful, organisations will require high-speed databases capable of ingesting multiple high-volume real-time data flows, such as Twitter’s firehose API, while simultaneously providing access to the data for both automated and manual analytics. With technology purposely developed to analyse large volumes of unstructured data in real time, organisations are better equipped to effectively respond to market movements with practical and actionable insights.

Multi-layered reporting

A key part of any successful social media strategy is the ability to propagate relevant insights and performance metrics to people on the basis of their role. The popularity of wireless tablet computers has made it easier than ever for people in the boardroom down to the data centre floor to access performance data. This in turn has created demand for multilayered reporting whereby people are individually presented with customised views into what is happening on the basis of their role. The deployment of multilayered reporting also reinforces customer-centric behaviours and an organisational focus on what is important.

A closer relationship with the chief marketing officer (CMO)

Finally, the incorporation of social media into an organisation’s customer engagement strategy fundamentally changes the conversation between the CIO and the rest of the organisation. Whereas the conversation in the past may have been one involving larger, longer projects with reasonably well-defined requirements, the integration of social media, which forms part of an organisation’s marketing efforts, changes the cadence to involve short cycles and a much closer partnership with the chief marketing officer.

Gaining an insight into customer trends

Companies that successfully create an agile and fully integrated social intelligence environment can create a distinct marketing edge.

They can move beyond simply ‘listening’ to comments on sites such as Facebook and Twitter and incorporate sentiment analysis to provide real context to the ‘noise’ on social networks. A keen insight into ‘likes’, ‘dislikes’ and trends means they can deliver new products and services aligned with their requirements. Once they start engaging with customers through social media channels, they are in a position to influence their decisions. They can also proactively protect and enhance brand reputation and empower frontline workers to respond to customers with relevant offers and good service.

For example, mobile phone network providers are increasingly using social media in the management of their mobile networks. Widespread usage of smartphones and tablets drives massive increases for data and with it localised congestion where network capacity is insufficient to meet demand. Some operators now track Twitter specifically looking for complaints about coverage dropouts. They then marry the complaint data with additional information about the complainants (eg, number of followers) to determine the impact of network problems and where to prioritise repairs or network upgrades.

Additionally, a fully linked intelligence environment with real-time advanced analytics can also be part of a broader enterprise-level system to help companies make the right business decisions. Not only can information be converted to identify trends within the organisation, social media metrics can also be used to gain insights at the competitor and industry levels.

Delivering a competitive edge

In summary, organisations throughout Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region are aware of the importance of incorporating social media into their CRM and BI systems.

With legacy CRM systems incapable of handling the huge volume of traffic, the pressure is on to develop more effective programs and architectures - and it needs to be done quickly to avoid falling behind.

Social media must be incorporated into existing contact centre channels for a complete view of customers and the rapid delivery of new products and services aligned to market trends. This solution must fit within the broader business intelligence plan to ensure long-term business value and avoid compounding existing inefficiencies.

Those that succeed with an integrated social media strategy - supported by high-performance information processing and analytics technology - will establish a solid competitive advantage.

Image credit ©iStockphoto.com/Evgenij Mymrin