There is a great blog post around some interesting findings from a survey of CIOs by Gartner over on their site. And the most shocking (to some) finding is that Social Media/Web 2.0 comes in as the 11th priority this year (not shown in the above URLs owing to the fact that it did not make it to the Top 5th or even the Top 10th). In 2010 it had the 3rd highest priority amongst CIOs.
Well, my insightful friends in the Accidental Community and some of my colleagues at the business end were quick to reason out why and ready to point out that this is after all the CIOs priorities, not a CMO or a CEO; however this was a difficult fact for technologists. And hence there was this looming question:
“Might need to be prepared for queries or challenges around this if pushing offerings to [client relationship teams] and/or client … Any thoughts or insight … [to] align our messaging around [social] being low on the CIO radar“
The apprehension is quite palpable actually, since we are predominantly a technology company and most of our relationships with our clients is via the CIO side of their business. And this was my response:
While it might be just a guessing game without having access to details about the survey or the analysis, I would like to think (& project) that:
- Speaking about technology, social media/web 2.0 is not really complex when considered as a mere additional channel (cross channel is a different ball game BTW). And thus it was easily implemented by 2010/2011 (3rd highest priority in 2010).
- The real problem with ‘social’ comes when it has to be used in the context of work that happens in any organization as well as the deluge of data that we get from these channels
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- Hence leveraging ‘social’ in workflows as well as making collaboration more social will be of higher concern for people who already have implemented and want to derive business benefits (4th highest priority in 2012; highest in 5 years)
- Hence, big data, HANA, BI/DW, etc. would be deeply impacted by the addition of this extra channel (which correlates with 1st & 3rd highest priority)
- Companies have taken a plunge into social waters, and have been experimenting for the past 2-3 years. Now is the time to get serious and ask the adult questions of business benefits/impacts and returns. Lessons from the experimental usage must educate the process of drawing up a strategic intent, cutting across the organization. This is more a business/strategy process rather than technology implementation.
And thus my suggestion was to educate our client facing teams. And socialise with our clients about our strategy workshop offering for drawing up the strategic intent incorporating social.
What do you think? What advice would you give your technologists?
