LiquidHub Blog

Jerry Smith

Social media adoption has seen an exponential growth over the past few years.  YouTube is now the second-largest search engine on the Web; 50 percent of its 300 million users visit the site at least once a week.  Facebook usage is up 40 percent over 2010, with 65 million users accessing their pages through mobile devices and 2.5 billion photos being uploaded to Facebook each month.  Nearly 96 percent of 18- to 35-year-olds in the U.S. participate in some form of social network, with one in five Americans in that age bracket using Twitter.  Finally, 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, driving user-generated content accounting for 25 percent of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands.

These impressive, as well as amazing, statistics are now driving the way businesses are looking at social media.  Two years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find any large-scale corporate implementation of social media.  Today, companies like Best Buy and Jet Blue are more than leading the way; they have clearly defined how to perform at scale through transforming customer sentiment into profitable top-line revenue.

Social media is now turning into social business.  Through geographically-based push technology, businesses are looking over the next 12-18 months to Foursquare for their consumer-oriented products/services, proactively pushing real-time, instant-access sales.  With 70 percent of organizations banning access to outside social media networks, in 2012 we will see the mobile platform (smart phone, tablet) establishing its dominance as the connected mesh that keeps the social/business network together.

Social Media is more than just a trend.  What we are seeing is the emergence of stable and mature capabilities (business process and supporting technology) that are driving real, measurable business value.  It is an ideal time to start looking into social media strategies and policies, and to take advantage of the innovation and early adopter efforts that laid the ground work for Social Media 3.0.

The Missing Link:  Enterprise Architecture

Typically, most organizations link strategy to execution using the following 3 management disciplines and process.

1.  Strategic Management

First, executive management defines the strategy.  Typically, the business strategy is captured via a collection of the following: vision statement, mission statement, statement of principles, enterprise objectives, core competencies and a strategic plan.  Ultimately, strategy is about winning in the competitive marketplace.

2.  Portfolio Management

Second, after the organization’s focus is established and understood, projects are selected, prioritized and resources are placed where it matters.  The selection and prioritization process is called portfolio management.  This discipline is concerned with:

• Strategic Alignment.  Does the project fit within the focus of the organization?
• Valuation.  What is the usefulness and value of this project?
• Diversification. How does the project relate to the enterprise’s collective portfolio and how can the project mix be optimized?

3.  Project Management

Third, after the portfolio of projects is selected, the enterprise needs to do the work.  In this phase, project management disciplines such as the PMI framework or SCRUM are applied to direct the firm’s capabilities – its coordination of skilled people, processes, information technology and other assets to accomplish project objectives.

The Missing Link:  Enterprise Architecture

Unfortunately, many organizations fail to synchronize these 3 critical management disciplines.  What they are missing is a holistic, strategic management discipline or uber-framework to link them (please refer to Figure 1).  Enterprise Architecture is such a method.  However, despite its upcoming 25 year birthday, it’s enigmatic to LiquidHub why so few firms have infused this way of thinking into their organizations?  We collectively wonder what the reasons are for its lack of adoption.  Any thoughts?

Figure 1

If you read my last blog post, you can view the first of three crucial Enterprise Mobility trends.  The third is as follows:

Not Your Father’s ERP: The Criticality of Social – The explosion of interest and adoption of Social Networks including Facebook, SalesForce Chatter and now Google+ is a clear signal that social and group-based interactions are hugely important factors for Enterprises to consider.  Traditional, hard-coded roles and processes are truly giving way to the notion of well-informed individuals and natural teams who can form a group to create, analyze, and accomplish work, and then (re-)associate their knowledge in unexpected ways for the greater good of the enterprise.  Furthermore, the high growth in startup companies that are leveraging mobile, location, analytics, and Cloud resources will be both a growth engine for new ideas as well as a continuing source of opportunities for aware CEOs, CIOs, and Enterprise Architects.

Key Focus Areas: Social Incubators, Clarity in Corporate Social Policies, Privacy Concerns

Consumer devices mixed into the enterprise, running standards-based components to enable “business social” interactions:  this rate of change truly seems to be at yet another new peak, as the tools and technologies have never been richer or more capable.   But more important than this is the simple fact that an enormous number of people (individuals, groups, departments, companies, municipalities, and even countries – witness Egypt and Libya) finally have the tools and skills to independently assemble and harness bits and pieces of the global Internet for their self-directed good.  Ubiquitous broadband, capable devices and a measure “platform” and location truly have combined to enable new ways of interaction.  It is a fascinating time to both contribute to these new ways, as well as help shape them to meet more of our business and personal goals.  We may find that many of our long-held perceptions of what “applications” and “systems” currently are will quickly give way to new interaction models that more close follow the ways we humans prefer to be.