Early Adopters Cross Through Five Phases Of Social Business Maturity
Interviews with over 100 early adopters of social business (i.e. social crm, E2.0, social media marketing, etc.) reveal 5 phases of social business maturity (see Figure 1):
- Discovery. A few individuals begin the process of discovering new tools. Individuals identify consumer tech innovations that impact enterprise business processes.
- Experimentation. Small teams experiment with new tools. They fail fast on experiments, learn, and move on.
- Evangelization. Small department leaders seek repeatable processes and begin test pilots of technology. Momentum begins to build for projects.
- Formalization. Successful evangelization leads to enterprise wide acceptance. Processes become repeatable and predictable
- Realization. With a successful project at hand, the enterprise seeks to expand the usage to ecosystem stakeholders. Suppliers, partners, and customers are brought into the fold.
Figure 1. Software Insider’s 5 Phase Social Business Maturity Model
Key Challenges Align With Social Business Maturity Phases
As organizations face challenges in adoption, leaders face key challenges that align with Social Business Maturity (see Figure 2). The 10 challenges Line of Business executives, CMO’s, CIO’s, Social Strategists, and COO’s include:
- Discerning hype from reality.
- Garnering executive support.
- Fostering internal collaboration.
- Choosing the right tools.
- Incorporating social into existing business models.
- Identifying meaningful metrics.
- Scaling to match demand.
- Ensuring long-term funding.
- Keeping up with social innovations.
- Developing social business governance.
Figure 2. 10 Key Challenges Align With Social Business Maturity
(right click to view full image)
The Bottom Line: Early Adopters Can Anticipate Challenges By Social Business Maturity Model
As with Social CRM adoption, social business adoption will face similar stages of adoption and early adopters should focus on change management and business process design before beginning vendor selection. In the 2010 State of Social Business survey, 45 early adopter indicated challenges with Level 1 issues (see Figure 3.) When asked to list their top 3 social business challenges, 93.33% of chose identifying hype from reality while 80.00% focused on garnering executive support. A little over half the respondents prioritized identifying meaningful metrics. Preliminary results from over 100 interviews in the 2011 State of Social Business survey, hint to a shift to Level 2 issues.
The final findings will be released in a Constellation Research report on the State of Social Business available to clients and selected members of the media.
Figure 3. 2010 State of Social Business Survey Shows Most Challenges Aligned Level 1 Issues
Your POV.
Having trouble convincing management its time for Social Business? Looking to build out a Social Business strategy? Hoping that we’ll write a piece of research you’re interested in? You can post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.
Please let us know if you need help with your Social Business efforts. Here’s how we can help:
- Assessing social business/social CRM readiness
- Developing your social business/ social CRM strategy
- Vendor selection
- Implementation partner selection
- Connecting with other pioneers
- Sharing best practices
- Designing a next gen apps strategy
- Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
- Demystifying software licensing
Resources And Related Research:
- Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
- Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
- Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
- News Analysis: Jive Fills Warchest, Ready to Battle Enterprise Software Giants And IPO?
- Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
- News Analysis: Lithium’s Acquisition of Scout Labs Ups The Ante in Social CRM
- News Analysis: Biz360 Acquisition Signals Attensity Group’s Move Into Social CRM
- Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
- Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
- News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position
- News Analysis: Jive and Radian6 Partner – Great For Business, But Could Fragment IT Systems
- Event Report: Salesforce.com Pushes Social CRM Technology — But Don’t Expect Companies To Be Successful With Tools Alone
- Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
- Personal Log: Altimeter Group – Helping Organizations Bridge The Technology Obsolescence Gap
- Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps
- Best Practices: Debunking Eight CRM Myths
Reprints
Reprints can be purchased through the Software Insider brand or Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact r@softwareinsider.org.
Disclosure
Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.
Copyright © 2011 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.
13 Comments »
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tatyana Kanzaveli, R Ray Wang, Esteban Kolsky, LouisColumbus, Rawn Shah and others. Rawn Shah said: RT @rwang0: Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges 2 #Socbiz Maturity Models http://bit.ly/efiUrT #socialcommerce #scrm #ci … [...]
[...] (Read the full article @ A Software Insider’s Point of View) [...]
[...] Constellation Research, a leading social business consultancy, recently published an entry titled Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges to Social Business Maturity Models in his Software Insider blog–Mr. Wang is also a fellow blogger on the Forbes CIO Central group [...]
Hi Ray -
The maturity model above is interesting but it is pretty universal to any process/operational innovation. Maybe I am missing detail that makes this specific to social business maturity but just wanted to drop our point of view on this. We build the Community Maturity Model which is intended to be used to ope rationalize social/community structures across an enterprise and included the competencies we think are necessary to focus on to do that. See: http://community-roundtable.com/2009/06/the-community-maturity-model/
Regardless of the model, it is good to see people thinking in this direction!
Rachel – good point. as many readers know, maturity models aren’t anything new. what we’ve found are a few factors that challenge social business adopters that tie back to the model. More interesting, our survey results reflect this in the next report. Thanks for sharing your link! We should all move in this direction as a tool and framework! – Ray
[...] Note: R. “Ray” Wang’s recent blogpost identified challenges to the social maturity model. Here is the relevant [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by R Ray Wang, Steve Lazarus and Sloane Scott, Constellation RG. Constellation RG said: RT @rwang0: Research: Applying #socbiz Challenges To #socbiz Maturity Models http://bit.ly/ieHVT1 #ibm #socbiz #lotusphere #ls11 [...]
Hi Ray
Really interesting findings. From the work I’m doing in the UK I’ve not encountered anything that would generally run counter to your findings.
With regards to point 2 – garnering executive support. What I am seeing signs of is not necessarily a lack of support, but almost too much support that doesn’t actually result in any actions. People going round and round discussing big concepts like ownership. Departments want to own social, almost like putting it on their bookshelf, and once it’s there, discussions stall and the next barrier is raised. All the while, customers merrily Tweeting away.
The one thing I might add in, although you may group in under one of your existing points, is the need to address a company’s culture. I think this is a fundamental question that often gets ignored in favour of focussing on the social toolset. Opening a Twitter account doesn’t suddenly make a company open. A transition needs to take place within the company. Openness and being social in many ways starts from within an organisation.
guy
(@guy1067)
Guy – excellent point. this will require organizational transformation for success. culture is key here and culture takes time. Thanks for your input. What are others seeing? – Ray
Interesting article and maturity model. Perhaps you want to add it to benQt: the E-Business Knowledge resource for maturity models?
Hi. feel free to add the link to your knowledge base. Cheers – Ray
Ray,
Great findings. I enjoyed reading your maturity model. I am a firm believer that for any business to fully “transform” to a social business there has to be a complete change of culture starting with at the very top with the leaders of company. I wonder where that dynamic, which I think is the most important, fits into your model?
Michael
Michael – thanks for the kind words. we often see this happen when organizations create offices of innovation or transformation. This is a top down and bottom up change. What do others think? – Ray
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