What is Jam and what it eat

From the eighth to the tenth of February 2011, IBM, together with 2,700 people from various corporations, educational institutions, non-profit and government organizations, held another Jam , this time called Social Business.

Participants from 80 countries of the world talked for three days on key topics of social business, discussing its problems and influence on the conduct of business itself today and in the coming years.

The main ideas were formed in the following directions:

• Building a social business of the future
• Formation of collective organizations through the introduction of social technologies
• Using social media to understand and attract customers
• Determining the implications of social technology for IT
• Identify risks and provide guidance

By the end of the discussion, more than 2,600 posts were left and about 600 tweets were sent. We would like to summarize the results of this multilateral dialogue, to make key intellectual results derived from the comments of participants. It is important to say that these results are far from always reflecting IBM’s position on business socialization, but they may be interesting for people and organizations that form social business strategies.
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First of all, it's worth telling about what Jam is, because it is both a means and a process and, in a sense, a goal. Under the cut a serious analysis of what happened and the conclusions made by the participants in the discussion.



Jam as a tool is an online platform for brainstorming discussions. The goal of the assault is always the same - to get new ideas about the problem and the task, to develop effective ideas focused on important business issues.

Historically, this is the fifth jam, held by IBM. The first was held in 2003 and within its framework 300,000 employees of the corporation participated in the first and largest revision of the company's values. Two more jams - this time innovative, took place in 2006 and 2008, respectively, in which customers and business partners of the company participated, as well as independent stakeholders. Following these
Discussions in the company have several new business areas. The penultimate one was held in 2009 and was held within the framework of the “Smarter Planet” program - students, professors and
teachers of various universities in the world, business professionals and industry experts.

Why did the need for Social Business Jam? There are several reasons.

First, over the past few years, networking tools have significantly changed communication, collaboration, and people's work. Entire product lines emerged, and companies reached a turning point in the way they do business — all because of the influence of the social component. And although today the most effective ways of using social networks are marketing activities, most companies are still trying to understand how to master and use in their own interests the benefits of business socialization.

Building a social future for business

This is by far the broadest area and was the most popular in the framework of the discussion; it touched upon the following issues: problems of e-mail, promoting information sharing, participation of the state in socialization and much more.

The key problem in this part of the discussion was the assessment of the company's return on investment in the social direction. In terms of doing business, this question is generally
is one of the most acute, as it is easy to spend huge amounts of money, and not everyone can adequately measure the impact of acquired decisions. Of the Jam participants who are not IBM employees, more than a quarter reported that the level of implementation of business socialization practices in their organizations varies from weak to medium, with concern
quantifying the profitability of investments in social instruments.

Most participants confirmed that the use of social media is completely quantifiable, but requires a new set of indicators to track. I would even say a new generation of such indicators:

• The frequency of mentioning the brand (s) in social media
• How often attracted customers comment on the brand or share information about the brand
• How many clients are covered by messaging
• How many customers are active brand promoters
• What are the results of these promoters in terms of new customers or increasing traffic
• How many problems were successfully solved and how quickly
• What is customer satisfaction and what kind of feedback do they provide

As in life, there was another side to this discussion - some participants noted that calculating the profitability of social media investments is the wrong approach to solving the problem. According to them, successfully
You can measure the profitability of such investments only by first understanding the needs and motivation of the audience to participate in communication. Another point of view was that no one is trying to calculate the profit from investments in e-mail, instant messages, even telephony
- instead, overall indicators are measured that are consistent with business goals.

Another issue that has been widely discussed is the integration of social activities and business processes. Participants agreed that it was necessary to concentrate efforts in three areas: the company's management should stimulate the initiative to use various social tools, staff should support the necessary cultural changes and be flexible enough to accept them, and IT
the unit must provide and manage the necessary company tools. The combination of these measures may lead to the emergence of a new variety of processes - this is a collective style of work, higher awareness of the processes, the work itself will become more dynamic.

Social business is also a modification of the forms of personnel management that exist today even in the most progressive companies and organizations. According to the results of Social Business Jam, it was determined that
Each employee has his own personal brand, existing inside and outside the business. A company needs to realize that it does not own these brands, only “renting” them for workers' working hours. Existing social tools already provide enough ways to cope with this task.

Most likely, in the near future the corporate culture is waiting for a fundamental change - if the main form of communication is email, then the information in it can easily be erased, and
Negotiations - slow down. One of the Jam participants suggested that the manager should encourage subordinates to refuse mail in cases where it makes sense. They say: "Email is
the place where information goes to die ”, this saying perfectly illustrates the fact that forcing knowledge into a single channel leads to losses.

Ideas for business innovation:

• Reduce email dependency at all corporate levels, master social tools and measure the effectiveness of their use
• Provide incentives to employees who take full advantage of social networking.
• Engage former employees and use their connections and experience

Creating collective organizations with social tools

How can social media help create a dynamic and collective business? This issue was the main part of the discussion, where problems related to the integration of social technologies into existing business processes were discussed.

The result of the discussion:

At present, the evolution of the middle management is taking place - it may soon disappear. The reason for this disappearance is simple - social business opportunities are so great that they
provide access to various networks, increase transparency and increase the speed and democratization of the working space, making the hierarchical structure of a complex organization more flat. Modern managers understand that the level of competence of an employee is not necessarily the result of his being in a certain position, but is a combination of his skills and experience. And although no one knows the future for sure, most likely the responsibilities of a manager will vary depending on the specific task - this is the main difference from a permanent duty, which is determined
job role. Although undoubtedly in order to effectively perform various tasks, a person must be sufficiently flexible and interested in what is happening.

The participants of Social Business Jam also discussed a very interesting category of users of the social space, the so-called “silent” (lurker) - passive users who only
watching their social network, not taking part in the discussion.

The idea that users often subject themselves to self-censorship due to fear of disagreement with other people, thus not expressing their own opinion, is also closely related to the silent phenomenon. People who are easily identifiable (for example, in the company's social network),
tend to keep the golden mean and not to express controversial thoughts, although a truly social business should encourage authenticity, diversity of opinions and a healthy attitude to conflicts and innovations,
which are often the result of conflict resolution. Such an environment is formed on the basis of inclusion in its composition, and not exceptions. Compliance with full transparency in social interaction becomes a self-regulating and self-supported norm, that is, every modern person familiar with social media knows what information he should flaunt, and what not, so he acquires a certain immunity and the ability to handle confidentiality as an employee the company.

A reasonable assessment of your company's “soft” and “hard” assets is also important. It’s simple to separate them: “soft” infrastructure is people, processes, problem-solving procedures, and “hard” is tools, functions, and technologies. For social business, by far the most important asset is the first part, and the style of doing business, as well as its goals, must be calculated with this factor in mind.
The introduction of social technologies through concentration on a single platform or function is an erroneous approach; instead, it is much better to focus on a specific value or get a result. Absolutely each technology requires a certain time to go from the stage of research of its capabilities to the actual practical application. The participants in the discussion talked a lot about Twitter, which went from a “I eat a sandwich” type of messaging to an instrument for saving lives and implementing state-wide transformations, without any help itself, by evolving within oneself. Therefore, it is important to understand that social tools have ceased to be niche - today it is the power that allows businesses to interact, introduce innovations, create values ​​and solve real problems in real time.

Ideas for business innovation:

• Focus on a flexible infrastructure and concentrate on creating value or getting a specific result, not technology as such.
• Do not be afraid of conflicts, encouraging open and honest discussion - this will improve the decision-making process
• Make confidentiality a priority — it increases the level of user comfort by encouraging open and free conversation.

Using social media to understand and attract customers

Main ideas in the section:

It is necessary to build a customer-oriented business. An approach was even proposed whereby an organization is fully open, and its participants are given the opportunity to interact with customers - this is an absolutely unconventional approach. But the social model, unlike the model of a supplier of products or services, puts the client’s needs first.

One way or another, all Jam participants point out that those companies in which internal and external social tools are used interconnected have noted an exponential improvement in awareness and increased productivity. In addition, the coordination of internal and external programs realizes the true value of the model, focused primarily on the client.

Understanding the meaning of data coming into the company from various social channels is an integral part of social business. We all know what a huge amount of information is generated in social media and various networks, but it is extremely difficult to apply it without a proper filtering system. The company should monitor what is happening, analyze the data and then send it to people in need of this kind of information.

Knowledge of the context in which a person is located is also of great importance for an organization - thanks to it, it is possible to find an answer not only to the question “why?”, But also “why now?” And “how?”.

Social media is primarily a means of influence, and therefore interaction with the consumer at each point in the purchase cycle will improve services and their perception by the client. One of the participants in the discussion said that many corporations view social media only as another channel for broadcasting targeted marketing messages - although this is not so.

Ideas for companies:

• Build a customer-oriented business. Social tools will help move to the service provider model, not the product
• Evaluate each customer touch point - open the interaction process for all employees and consult with them to improve the quality of services.
• Reconcile internal and external social initiatives to improve awareness and increase process productivity.

The Importance of Social Technology for IT

The creation and expansion of an existing business to a social one is accompanied by changes not only in culture, but also in infrastructure - that is why the IT department of your company today must be flexible and reasonable. Jam participants discussed some ideas concerning the development of the computer part of the business.

The main conclusions are as follows:

The IT department of your company has traditionally been the “decisive word” in all technical aspects of the activity, but due to the advent of social tools and third-party applications for the general mass, it will have to become more open to innovative strategies.

One of the participants suggested that in many organizations, the IT infrastructure does not respond quickly enough to the development of the social part of the business, and in fact the modern user already has
fantastically accessible technology for personal use.

IT needs to either bring these massive functions to the corporate level, or prepare for the widespread unauthorized distribution of these consumer technologies within the company.

Today, IT infrastructure can play a key role in building social business, with the help of social integration. tools into corporate processes and applying a flexible approach to project management. As Jam’s participants noted, modern people are constantly in a “learning mode”, so IT professionals can provide the necessary training templates. Restricting the functionality, the prohibition of access or the use of controls at the stage of mastering social tools will cool the ardor of people and weaken their creative potential.

Further, it is from the IT department that there should be an incentive for innovation. We ourselves see today with what incredible speed smartphones and tablets spread, thanks to which the penetration
Social media in our lives is becoming stronger.

Interacting with end users is a must, but often corporate IT professionals are not ready for this, although their task is to develop various ways to support enterprise growth.

These methods can be very diverse, for example, providing employees located outside the office with more convenient opportunities to interact with the company's office network. A reasonable and flexible strategy for mobile devices is another way to stimulate the growth of a company and increase the percentage of using social tools.

Another key point, as already noted, are the analytical tools used in the company - to deliver their task is IT. These tools should identify influential individuals and leaders, create taxonomies that improve the context of the incoming information, and allow the necessary data to be extracted. Using these tools, you can create patterns of customer behavior and use them to further improve the assessment of brand perception in real time.

The ideas for innovation are as follows:

• Do not make a rival from the IT department of the company - it is worth building deep partnerships with it to implement a comprehensive and reliable infrastructure for social business.
• Create a mobile strategy that balances the level of security with the needs of users.
• Use analytic tools to identify patterns of behavior for both customers and employees.

Identify risks and provide guidance

How to manage a social business? Many companies are only looking for an answer to this question, and in this section security and interaction issues were discussed.

The conclusions are as follows:

It is necessary to create new strategies for content management, taking into account the social component, since the old (roughly speaking: paper) media is not enough today. In a modern active company so
a lot of incoming data through a huge number of devices that need to be taken care of and security requirements.

Everyday business communication today can be social - for this you need to integrate communication flows into business systems, as well as into content management tools.

Authorize your employees. To create competitive services, your employees need to understand what their customers want, what their business goals are and how they can
bring real benefits - the use of social tools allows you to more effectively spread this knowledge throughout the organization. Moreover, it is important that employees feel trusted.
from the management, and did not feel like laboratory rats.

You should not sit and wait on the sidelines until all competitors introduce social tools into their work - instead, it is necessary to identify all possible negative consequences for the company, classify them and
eliminate these problems in advance. Contrary to the generally accepted opinion, the fear of shifting the social activity of employees is often unjustified, as the management of companies often underestimate
sanity and character of its employees.

But at the same time, we should not forget that, on the other hand, the active supporters of your social policy will increasingly associate various values ​​with customers. What happens if such an employee leaves the company? Some of the participants noted that today a single message on Twitter can shift the attention of absolutely the entire public from one company to another, since the focus is not on the company, but on the author of the message. Such a social status of a person can be a new sign of highly qualified specialists of the next generation.

Ideas for companies implementing social tools:

• Do not be afraid of communication transparency; it is better to open access in advance and encourage communication transparency by providing people with tools for social interaction.
• Do not underestimate people, most likely the sanity of your employees will be the best protection against risks.
• Manage content by implementing a system for organizing and distributing the entire array of incoming information.

This ends the problems that the participants of Social Business Jam tried to solve, and work begins on creating effective tools and techniques at IBM, always the first to adopt
innovate experience.

It was nice to see how this year experts and leading representatives from the social business world, including 45 specially invited professionals, participated in the discussion with great enthusiasm.

As you can imagine - Jam is just the beginning. IBM hopes that you, like the participants in the event, will extract positive energy and find ideas for concrete actions that will make the whole business
the planet is more social.

Information obtained from the discussion is available for download and study, as well as an overview of the concept of social business, presenting the point of view of IBM. A detailed report is available here (PDF), if your company is going to take some action based on ideas developed during the competition process, visit the IBM website .

Information about IBM Jam events: collaborationjam.com