Companies need to become customer-centric to meet new market expectations.
This is one of the messages from an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, IDC MaturityScape: Social Business, designed to help companies assess competency and maturity in the use of social business tools and capabilities.
“As the level of acceptance of social technologies has increased over the past few years, the way we think about social business has undergone rapid change,” says Vanessa Thompson, research manager: enterprise social networks and collaborative technologies at IDC.
“This change also comes with the confluence of a number of intersecting market trends — cloud, mobile, and big data. This exacerbates the ways we can use these new communication and collaboration channels to connect with employees, customers, partners, and suppliers in order to meet future needs.”
Although organisations are currently focused on meeting customer expectations, employees, partners, and suppliers are also a critical component to on-going success. However, organisations do not control these interactions – users do. Companies must become customer centric while meeting changing user expectations at the same time.
Organisations that do not face the current change cycle risk being left behind by competitors that more rapidly leverage the power of the social workflow and the change in customer behaviour.
IDC research shows that the fundamental way for an organisation to support this customer centricity is through an enterprise social network (ESN) that serves as a backbone of communication inside the organisation.
IDC anticipates that the notion of a social business and social workflow will become inherent in the way we think about interacting with other users inside and outside organisations.
A broader shift to a sense and respond business model when coupled with a succinct and clear social business strategy can drive a more connected and responsive business. This ultimately leads to a greater level of satisfaction among customers, partners and suppliers and delivers competitive advantage.
