Blogs

The new wave of smart mobile devices that's taking the industry by storm is doing far more than just making data and applications available anywhere. As new mobile platforms such as iOS and Android mature into enterprise-class offerings, they are introducing fundamentally new paradigms for how organizations work with and provide business solutions with computing devices. Combine the ubiquity of mobility with the power of social business and endless possibilities begin to appear.

Mobility First: New Opportunities
Dion Hinchcliffe
Executive Vice President of Strategy, Dachis Group
Wednesday, March 20. 5:00 PM

Follow Dion: @dhinchcliffe

Duhon: Is social at risk of collapsing under its own weight (how do you keep it from getting hijacked by marketing hacks)?

Hinchcliffe: I think that certain individual social efforts in the enterprise might collapse under an inability to engage, but social media itself is something that's become a sort of universal medium and isn't going anywhere.  Adoption of social tools will always happen virally, ad hoc, bottom-up, and by addition -- via software vendors and cloud services -- to existing solutions. Instead of weighty collapse, I think the issue is the perfect storm of all things becoming more social. It can be quite challenging to create a coherent strategy in the midst of the many changes taking place now.

Duhon: How important is mobile penetration to becoming a social business?

Hinchcliffe: Mobile first seems to be the new rallying cry. If you're not aiming your social business strategy at smart mobility, you'll end up behind the curve. The data increasingly shows that mobile is ultimately the next primary focal point for customer/worker interaction and engagement.

Duhon: Managing all of the content for mobile delivery isn’t easy; what tools are needed on the back-end to make the “simplicity” of delivering content to a consumer look so simple?

Hinchcliffe: There are no simple answers for this yet. Native apps are becoming very important for mobile delivery but are based on largely proprietary platforms today. Solutions for unifying the approach, often called MEAP for short, all have limitations in the long-term but can help companies deal with mobile delivery now while they wait for mobile content management issues to sort themselves out and mature. In the end, all companies should have mobile websites that work well on touch-based devices, but the real power often comes from native apps that can fully take advantage of the potent features of the latest smart phones and tablets.

Duhon: I find it fascinating that you mention real-time OCR as a mobile feature that can be used for competitive advantage. How?

Hinchcliffe: A good example is WordLens, an iPhone application that can read signs in a foreign language and translates them in-place to your local language.  This is a perfect example of using the processing power and sensors of new smart devices to perform highly useful functions that just aren't possible with older devices that have fewer capabilities.  Business card scanning apps like CamCard is just another example of many.

Duhon: We constantly hear the “What’s the ROI?” mantra from those who remain negative towards bringing social into business. What’s your favorite and/or most interesting ROI metric/story that you’ve encountered?

Hinchcliffe: I see the fastest bang for the buck for social right now in customer care. Companies such as Intuit, Pitney Bowes, Best Buy, and many others are having significant success in driving down support costs and increasing customer satisfaction using social media as a support channel. While there are good case studies across the full social business spectrum, I find that the so-called Social CRM use case is the easiest and least challenging, with the more rapid access to bottom-line benefits. I explore some of these examples and their ROI stories in our new book Social Business By Design, out from Wiley this May.

Duhon: What do you find most fascinating about the intersection of “social, local, and mobile”?

Hinchcliffe: That it will almost certainly make our communities more connected, sustainable, and productive. This convergence is about much more than just finding good restaurants in your neighborhood that your friends recommend. The SoLoMo trend means that businesses and other organizations can reach out to new customers and engage with existing customers in highly valuable relationships that aren't just based on simple transactions (trying to sell you something.) Instead, better community ties can be established and sustained that will lead to some compelling outcomes, especially in shared value creation.  I'll be exploring stories that illustrate that this is starting to really happening in my blogs this year.
 

Don't miss Dion, or anyone else, register for AIIM Conference 2012 today. Limited seating left. Don't miss out.