Business and the Social Enterprise - Sponsored video

The Annual Review

(This post has been sponsored by Salesforce, but all thoughts are my own)
If you've ever worked in a business which has an HR department, you will know what the annual review process is like. You get 'official feedback' about your performance throughout the year and you work on a plan to improve your performance. Your review might last an hour if you are lucky. An hour of your time to get and give feedback on the year.

It's not only an insult; it's totally ineffectual for you and the organisation. You need feedback much more regularly than that and you need to receive and give feedback more precisely so that you can improve your performance and the performance of the business. That's never been more necessary than today in the digital age where competition for business is global, intense and changing rapidly.

The Social Web

Companies connect with their customers through social media today in ways that, ten years ago, were not even thought about. A business today can get direct feedback about how well or badly they are doing for their customers through social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn at such speed that they have no other option but to be prepared to listen to their customers' opinions.

It's not just their customers' opinions that they need to think about. It's their employees opinions that they need to listen to and act upon regularly and quickly if they are to compete effectively. Getting feedback once a year from employees is a practice which will leave many businesses behind their competitors.

Salesforce and the Social Enterprise

That's why when I came across the current campaign from Salesforce in conjunction with two of their customers, namely Spotify and Burberry, that I was intrigued to see how they were embracing the practice of being a 'social enterprise'. Being a social enterprise, for Burberry, means being an entirely digital business, meaning that they adopt digital technology and social media at every stage of their business processes.

 
For Spotify, being a 'social enterprise' means taking and giving feedback from their employees and acting upon it on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to ensure that they are adapting their business quickly. As one of their directors says 'music is social' so not to be a 'social enterprise' could have a devastating impact on the fortunes of the business. Their customers share their music tastes through social media, so Spotify has to keep up with their tastes as quickly as they share their lists.

Spotify and Burberry both use the cloud-computing CRM solution, Salesforce, to help them help their customers and employees.

Salesforce has produced videos with Burberry and Spotify which clearly explain how they are approaching social media and the social enterprise. You can see them below (remember - these are sponsored videos, but I would not have put them here if I didn't like them):
http://unr.ly/RjZPYD - The Spotify Video about Social Enterprise
http://unr.ly/RjZTaL - Salesforce's Rypple product about collaborating and working as a team more effectively.
http://unr.ly/RjZPYF - Salesforce's YouTube Channel

Interestingly enough, here's a news item about Salesforce and their wishes to trademark the phrase "social enterprise", which shows how importantly they are taking it:

Salesforce Bows To Peer Pressure, Withdraws 'Social Enterprise ...
techcrunch.com9/4/12
In a victory for all of us who find the idea of trying to trademark generic-sounding terms tedious -- and a victory, too, for those who actually work in the world of social enterprise -- Salesforce.com has announced that it has ...

And, here's what Google is doing with regard to the "social enterprise":

Google Enters The Social Enterprise With Public Debut Of Google+ ...
techcrunch.com8/29/12
Following moves that began last October, when Google began allowing Google Apps users access to Google+, the company announced today several more features which are aimed at pushing Google-branded social ...