Enterprise Transformation: Social Media Meets Unified Communications

At the recent Sirius Decisions conference, marketers from all over the United States talked about how they are trying to reach customers through social media. With tools such as Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter, companies have so many more channels to interact with their customers. In fact, I recently read about a consumer who “tweeted” regarding an ongoing Dell (News - Alert) computer problem. Dell immediately responded to the consumer’s request, resolved the customer’s problem and probably earned his continued loyalty through social media.

But the exciting opportunity that social media offers isn’t just about another contact center channel but how social media and unified communications can work together to transform enterprise processes. You may remember that in past columns, I mentioned the four destinations of the UC journey — and the different benefits associated with each phase:

1. Individual Productivity.
2. Workgroup Productivity.
3. Communications-Enabled Business Processes.
4. Enterprise Transformation.

This phase looks outside the company to enhance communications and collaboration with customers and partners. It enables new ways to collaborate through both business and Web 2.0 tools to increase sales and improve service, accelerate the creation of new products and services, or globalize and virtualize the business.

Forward-thinking companies are setting up websites to ask customers to vote for favorite promotions or products, creating online communities through social networking websites for consumers to share their experiences. The natural extension is to enable communication directly between especially influential consumers and company employees (e.g. product management) in real-time using presence and collaboration. Now the customer is in real-time directly engaged in product development! And that’s just one example. Critically examining every process that touches customers and determining how best to employ social media tools and UC will be a mandate for many IT and business process owners in the near future.

Reaching this final phase of the UC Journey can help you company uncover new capabilities that can bring you good fortune in the form of more efficient business processes and increased ROI from a UC strategy.

Mike Sheridan (News - Alert) is Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing, Aspect (www.aspect.com). With more than 20 years of experience in telecommunications and technology, Mike serves as a key strategist for Aspect (News - Alert), a unified communications solutions provider. Follow Mike on http://twitter.com/thetravelingCMO.

» Internet Telephony Magazine Table of Contents