Social business experts name 4 trends to watch in 2013

Orlando: While the majority of the attendees at IBM Connect 2013 this week are presumably keen on the idea of social media in the workplace, there are still plenty of businesses out there still looking to catch up--or hoping this will all just fade away.

The reality of the situation is that social media will not fade away. What remains to be seen is how long it will take businesses to understand and implement social in a productive, profitable method.

Attending powwows like Connect could certainly help in terms of advice, and IBM (and plenty of other tech giants) would be quick to tell companies that it has the resources to set it all up for you--much like with the cloud over the last two years.

But education (and a dose of caution) would also be in order, based on a panel discussion on Monday with Beverly Macy, CEO of consulting firm Gravity Summit, along with Sandy Carter, vice president of sales and evangelism for IBM's Social Business group.

The two women outlined the following four themes that they deemed most relevant for anyone curious about the social business bonanza.

1. Beyond marketing

While social business is still in its infancy as a strategy (and arguably as a concept and term itself), Carter said we're now seeing social moving beyond the marketing department into the intellectual capital area. She added that this is "great for marketers because they're starting the trends and teaching colleagues" at the same time.

This asks the question about whether or not CMOs should start hashing out a "shared social agenda" with CIOs given the technological resources needed and being used to accomplish this. Macy added that with the cloud, the CIOs will be playing an even bigger role with social business as "data management is coming back to data centers."

Nevertheless, she acknowledged that a lot of companies "haven't even mastered social-media marketing yet," adding that the idea that "every functional area of your business is going to be affected by social is a big pill to swallow for a lot of companies," including every department ranging from sales to legal to R&D.

"It means that companies have to start thinking about policies for engagement, both internally for employees and externally for customer relationships," Macy said, adding that the hard part is to make sure this doesn't get out of control.

2. Social + analytics + cloud + mobile = success

"On the business side, people don't take smoke breaks anymore. They take Facebook breaks," Macy remarked.

A big point that IBM wants to make at Connect this week is that social business is just about collaboration. It's being defined as an entire framework of moving parts involving the cloud, mobile devices, and data analytics as well as social media.

Carter remarked that if your business is already separating the mobile and social teams, you're basically already on the wrong path, arguing that doing this "doesn't make any sense."

Estimating that nearly 70 percent of social-media activity today is conducted mobile, Carter asserted that companies can learn about the combination of these two being applied and leverage those influencers.

Macy suggested how the combination of mobile and social, among other technologies, have changed behavioral trends.

"On the business side, people don't take smoke breaks anymore. They take Facebook breaks," Macy remarked.

By extension, she suggested consumer expectations have evolved too, describing that the ability for marketers to take advantage of or "to be literally in step with their consumers is exhilarating."

"The concept of social analytics in the cloud on mobile, from a shopping standpoint, with good predictive modeling--I can be delivered the coupon I want as I'm walking up to the door," Macy explained.

She admitted that this can be "also a little scary to some people." But from a business standpoint, Macy predicted that's the kind of thing we're going to see regardless.

3. Social business architecture & alignment

"I think our responsibility is to help the CEO," Carter said. "Social signifies the rise of the CIO--if they accept social and enable the CEO."

Just like with cloud adoption, we're seeing plenty of different types of social business/enterprise-type implementation models floating around.

But both Macy and Carter seemed to agree that if you don't have the right model for your business set up, then your employees won't use it.

Carter estimated that 57 percent of social business tries fail because of lack of adoption. To target this problem, Carter highlighted IBM's new best-practices scheme IBM Adopt+ Methodology, announced earlier on Monday, on how to create a new way of working, leadership examples, and how to sustain that engagement.

The right social-adoption techniques need to be applicable (and customizable) to employees at every level of an organization, from bottom to top.

"I believe that in five years, if you're not a social CEO, boards won't hire you," Carter said simply. "It's all about your digital reputation. I think, today, we have a lot of CEOs that need baby steps."

Carter offered a few suggestions on how to help CEOs wary of these changes, ranging from dictation software to something as simple as a one-click email-to-blog function.

"I think our responsibility is to help the CEO," Carter said. "Social signifies the rise of the CIO--if they accept social and enable the CEO."

4. Social business education & skills

Macy concluded, "We'll need a whole new workforce. It's super exciting, but we're going to hit a bit of a gap because we're not quite there yet."

Younger generations entering the workforce are thought to be a lot more tech savvy--sometimes going head to head with legacy infrastructures and older employees who don't embrace the social tools at their disposal.

On this, Macy stressed the need for education, explaining that this is much more than setting up a Facebook page.

"Think about strategy, about why they need to think about this," Macy explained. "Companies just have to decide they're going to do it. Top management must adopt in a way that works for them."

Describing it as a "counter-intuitive" forecast, Macy predicted that we're going to see a hiring boom soon--but we won't have enough qualified applicants to fill those posts, which will demand skills and an understanding of social, big data, and more.

"LinkedIn has 200 million amazing profiles of people that are ready to work and companies are finally realizing that they cannot shrink their way to greatness, and they're going to start hiring," Macy commented.

To cross this hurdle, Macy argued we're going to need thought leaders to take us there and people who can "tactically implement," such as CIOs along with IT and mobile analytics specialists.

She concluded, "We'll need a whole new workforce. It's super exciting, but we're going to hit a bit of a gap because we're not quite there yet."

Related stories:

• IBM relying on more cloud services, software to accelerate social business
• IBM makes aggressive push for social business as future of work
• IBM execs discuss software acquisition plans, targeting C-level gaps
• IBM suggests how social business can work for healthcare, retail, gov't
• Q&A: IBM's GM of social business on C-level strategies, Microsoft, and Oracle
• IBM extends SmartCloud infrastructure for SAP alliance, global coverage