A lot of mention has been made of Social CRM lately, the transformation in customer facing process transparency and new levels of customer engagement it can bring and much the same has been said of Social BPM and how internal collaboration can speed up process discovery and the distribution of that process knowledge in the enterprise. But where does MDM (Master Data Management) and the catalyst that started it all, Social Media/ Networking fit into the ever growing equation ?
Let’s examine Social Media and Social CRM together first of all. Consumers are becoming aware of the different channels of communication available to them and how businesses intend to leverage them however most new entrants to the scene approach this in a haphazard way. Pushing out messages via Twitter and other media is really a basic approach and what needs to be considered is how to capture the engaging customer information when they interact and respond in this way. Although an organisation’s focus may be on using Social Media Monitoring as a way to measure their own brand effectiveness and reputation there is a clear advantage of using it to track customers directly using the same means. Much in the same way that reward cards capture the type of purchases you make that allows retailers to target specific campaigns so monitoring how a customer uses social channels and the type of content they both talk and subscribe to can help business target that market segment more accurately. Obviously a customer is required to ‘opt in’ much in the same way they do for any other communication which is why social media strategies really need to be thought out to the fullest but the potential is huge.
Master Data Management, at it’s simplest level, is creating that Golden Record for the Customer from many separate sources, that Single Customer View or profile of it’s dealings within an organisation and any social profiles which the customer allows a business to interact with them with should be contained within that record also. The same customer profiling that takes place when monitoring should also be included in their master record because this will drive the effectiveness of any CRM and automated business processes that take advantage of this new subset of customer information. In this light there are three tranches of BPM happening with Social; the internal collaboration for process discovering, the transformation of the enterprise to a flexible design and the usage of customer driven social network information as data within automated processes.
In the last post I made note of Attensity’s recent acquisition of Biz360:
The key information we need to focus on is how using social media monitoring can empower customer facing decisions internally in the enterprise. Essentially what this could mean is that BAM and BI come of age by taking real-time insight from external feeds and mixing it with internal data. So again we’re faced with the current definition of Social BPM constraining what it can really achieve and that it goes beyond discovery and management of unstructured processes. Social means open collaboration, whether internal or external.
Due to the open nature of some of the social channels it would be deemed inappropriate to target customers with open messages about their dealings with the organisation (for example, case by case updates) however by using internal Social Enterprise Software platforms, developing and extending their use to the customer base who want to make use of that channel there is a secure option available.
This is a pretty broad brush and high level view but you can get the idea of how far reaching change can be made with the right approach and strategy in mind, not to mention understanding that Social concepts and ideologies are quickly forming the foundation for technology sectors to come together rather than remain apart.
