Many things have been told and invented in the 2.0 field since the word was coined in the internet world and become trendy in the business world. With more or less success. Sometimes it was great step in conceiving new models for operations, sometimes if was only a smoke cloud aiming at making people forget that the previous smoke cloud failed.
Internally (enterprise 2.0), we suffered a lot from the black box syndrome. First becaue projects were mainly internal while enterprise 2.0 is about ecosystems and both external and external stakeholders. Second because social activities were cut off from the operational reality, from the real business, preventing it from demontrating any business value.
Externally (web 2.0), we have to admit that things quickly turned into noise and smoke through clumsy use of social media by marketing departments that did not get what the chage was about and were trying to do business as usual. Of course, there were valuable things, mainly in the crowdsourcing field, with tangible benefits, but too few compared to all the mistakes that were made in the marketing field.
Sometimes, we can see the emergence of really sensible things. That’s the case with “social CRM“, which is, according to me, the best thing that happened in the 2.0 world these last months.
Why ?
– because “social” est much more meaningful than 2.0, because social means concrete things to enterprises, things they’re already doing, obviously tied with value creation.
– because it reconciliates internal with external and makes it possible to embrace a three-levels ecosystem logic : internal, external, dual. It’s a part of the enterprise 2.0 paradigm that was often neglected but may take an increased importance in 2010, what is confirmed by McKinsey.
– because the link with value creating activities is obvious.
– because it forces de facte to rething operative models and will prevent from wasting time without rethinking the way people work.
– because the corporate logic comes before the tools, what will prevent from putting the cart before the horse
– because it will make businesses conscious that, in a 2.0 era, marketing is not about making hot air to or lead generation only but also fueling the business with added value information.
– because it reconciliates many fields that were treated separately till then, without coherence nor integration : marketing, innovation, communication, product direction, support etc…
I’ll conclude with this superb chart from Dion Hinchliffe and advise you to read some related bookmarks I found interesting.
PS : last minute stroke of inspiration, this excellent “social approach to social business strategy” that perfectly demonstrates how aligning marketing with operations matters.
