How Social Provides CEOs With a Quick Win on Their Digital Transformation Journey

Interesting article, which is mainly a quote from Lisa Heneghan from KPMG.  Totally agree that when you are talking tech like artificial intelligence, IOT, that you probably need to take your time.  I do wonder though that might be KPMG "selling" a long project.  Afterall the AI available today, will be different from the AI available in three years so surely, the last thing you want to do is have a project that provides 3 year old AI in 3 years?  Anyway we are here to talk about social and how it can be a quick win.

Let's look at the enterprise today, social is used right across the business, marketing, sales, customer service, procurement, supply chain, finance, in many companies (like ours) it's totally replaced email.  The problem it is only used tactically and in many cases without the C-Suite / Board realising.  The good news is that it's the employees that have chosen to use it, so getting employees to use more of it won't be the problem like so many change programs.

The first thing is that the C-Suite / Board need to understand the business benefit, the competitive advantage and the business case from using social.  This isn't about teaching the CEO how to use Twitter, that's way down in the weeds.  This is a business process conversation between the board and here's a crucial part.  With people who have done this before in other organisations.

Of course, you would hire people to do this that haven't had done it themselves.  You would only hire a thing personal trainer (PT)?  Just check out the people's social profiles.

This can be done quickly and the business can soon start to accelerate and see the business benefit, for example the 30% increase in sales, the reduction in the marketing budget.  More for less, no less.  We are seeing massive savings and massive increases in revenue, so much that the project should be self financing.

So Boards and C-Suite should expect quick wins in the digital transformation process and gain accelerated business benefit, not bt navel gazing at tech, but by using the people and processes that the business already has.  Just some change management is required.