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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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Table of Contents
Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market .................................................... 4
Key Business Problems for Mid-Market Organizations .................................... 8
Social Business Is Not a Standalone Technology .............................................. 12
Secure, Compliant, and Social Business ........................................................... 14
Do Social Technologies Improve Business Outcomes? .................................. 17
Innovation and the Social Business ................................................................... 18
Customer Insight ................................................................................................... 19
Customer Engagement ......................................................................................... 19
Mid-Market Social Deployment Strategies ......................................................... 22
Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Information Management ................................... 22
Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Organizational Commitment ............................ 24
Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Tools ....................................................................... 25
Key Takeaways for Socializing the Mid-Market Business ............................... 27

Figures
Figure 1: SoMoClo: One Integrated Technology Ecosystem ........................... 12
Figure 2: Best-in-Class Value Propositions for Social Business ....................... 17
Figure 3: Mid-Sized Use of Best-in-Class Knowledge Management ............... 23
Figure 4: Mid-Sized Adoption of Organizational Capabilities........................... 24

Tables
Table 1: Key Small and Mid-Sized Business Goals ................................................ 8
Table 2: Top Challenges for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses .......................... 10
Table 3: Key Social Technologies for Best-in-Class Performance .................. 25
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February 2012

Introducing Social Business

for the Mid-Market
Over the past year, Aberdeen has studied the business practices of 229 mid-sized
companies (defined as those between 101 and 1,000 employees) surveyed for the
2011 Aberdeen Business Review and 61 mid-sized companies profiled in
Aberdeen's 2011 Social Collaboration research. Through these studies, Aberdeen
sought to discover if there were specific drivers and characteristics that made
these companies more or less likely to use Social Business. Interestingly,
Aberdeen found that even though mid-market companies are more likely than
other organizations to identify business needs that can be solved through Social
Business solutions, they are less likely to have the budget and willingness to
pursue these solutions.

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Mid-market organizations can achieve strategic benefits from optimizing their

Social Business deployments and achieving Best-in-Class status. When we
compared the top 20% of our 270 respondents in 2011 to all other companies,
we found:
59% of these top achieving companies improved sales capabilities by
improving pre-sales support, understanding the needs of the customer, and
involving appropriate employees at each point of customer qualification.
59% of Best-in-Class companies also accelerated product development from
their Social Business deployments, leading to increased revenue
contributions from new products.
43% increased lead generation through Social Business through earned
media and the ability to better understand the needs of potential customers.
This report provides directional guidance for mid-market companies to
appropriately use Social Business and achieve these business goals.

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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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2012 Aberdeen Group.

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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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Key Business Problems for Mid-Market Organizations

Mid-market organizations are often analyzed under the category of Small and
Medium Businesses (SMBs), with the assumption that their business challenges and
operational structures are similar to their smaller counterparts. Although this
broad categorization can be helpful in describing the general characteristics of
small and medium businesses, Aberdeen's recent research has focused on the
different pressures and challenges that small companies (defined in this report as
those with 100 or fewer employees) and mid-market organizations (up to 1,000
employees) face.
In the first half of 2011, Aberdeen surveyed 232 mid-sized companies and
compared their top business goals for 2011 with the goals of 502 small companies.
Small companies were focused on brand awareness and organic revenue growth
to a greater extent than were all other organizations, which naturally led them to
low-cost media investments such as ungoverned social media. As companies grow
past the 100 headcount mark, undifferentiated organic revenue growth becomes
less important, and a majority of mid-sized organizations identify profitability and
margin growth as key goals. Mid-sized companies are also over three times more
likely than small companies to identify cost reduction as a core business goal,
revealing their focus on optimizing the businesses and creating smart growth
(Table 1).
Table 1: Key Small and Mid-Sized Business Goals

Mid-Sized
Goals
Small Business
Goals

Business
Goals
Profitability/
margin growth
Cost reduction
Organic revenue
growth
Improve brand
awareness/value

Mid-Sized
Organization
s (n=232)

Small
Organizations
(n=502)

53%

37%

25%

6%

55%

70%

25%

47%

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

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Mid-sized organizations also face new challenges that small companies do not.
When asked about business challenges that they identified either as "very
challenging" or "this is our top challenge," four key areas stand out:
Increased competition;
Economic conditions;
Improving employee engagement; and
Ability to execute strategy.

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Table 2: Top Challenges for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses

Mid-Sized
Challenges
Small
Business
Challenges

Business
Challenge
Improving employee
engagement
Ability to execute
strategy
Increased
competition
Economic
conditions

Mid-Sized
Organizations
(n=232)

Small
Organizations
(n=502)

34%

17%

34%

26%

36%

34%

34%

41%

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

The first two challenges, competition and the economy, are shared among all
organizations. However, as organizations grow in size and geographic distribution,
employee engagement and strategic execution emerge as top challenges. Mid-sized
organizations are twice as likely as smaller organizations to identify employee
engagement as a key challenge (Table 2).

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Social Business Is Not a Standalone Technology

Social and collaborative technologies support employee productivity, improve
employee engagement, and keep employees focused on key corporate goals. Thus,
Social Business solution deployments must be seen in the context of multiple
technology trends: localization, contextualization, mobility, and cloud.
Social, Mobile, and Cloud become an integrated technology ecosystem built
around the needs of the individual. To describe this integrated ecosystem,
Aberdeen uses the term SoMoClo, which portrays Social, Mobile, and Cloud as a
single trend (Figure 1).
Figure 1: SoMoClo: One Integrated Technology Ecosystem

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

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At the edge, individuals use mobile devices to interact on a localized,

contextual, and job-specific basis.
These interactions are shaped through the social channels that they use to
communicate with trusted communities, organizations, and systems.
All of this information is stored, processed, and analyzed in the cloud to
provide contextualized information and guidance. Big Data and business
analytics are vital tools for understanding and fully supporting a Social
Business initiative.

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Social technologies let individuals and organizations share information more

quickly to support both innovation and collaboration. These traits have grown
increasingly important as consumers become more educated, product and market
cycles accelerate, and key resources are geographically dispersed.

Secure, Compliant, and Social Business

The desire to share both externally with partners and customers and internally
with other employees must be tempered by security and governance, risk
management, and compliance (GRC) concerns. Mid-market organizations have
significant room for improvement in this area.
Security and GRC efforts associated with social are complicated by the fact that
social is not a standalone technology, but part of a SoMoClo environment. Social
networking technologies are often hosted in the cloud, which presents enterprises
with opportunities and causes for concern. This delivery method allows
organizations to provide and support technologies in multiple form factors and
locations. Cloud services offer more continuity for key information, processes,
and collaborative environments.

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As companies pursue these solutions, they must keep their own interests in mind.
Sixty-one (61) mid-sized organizations provided insight on their security and GRC
efforts associated with social collaboration in Aberdeen's Social Collaboration
study. Less than half (46%) had secured all their social networking and
collaborative technologies, and only 26% had social environments that were
considered compliant with all corporate and industry standards. Although social
media and networking are cutting-edge technologies in some respects, they must
be treated as business tools, and subjected to the same due diligence as more
traditional communications tools such as telephony and email.

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Do Social Technologies Improve Business Outcomes?

When Aberdeen compared the value proposition of Social Business in Best-inClass organizations to Laggard organizations and the typical mid-market
organization, we found that social applications were more wide-spread at top
performers than all other companies. The top four value propositions identified by
Best-in-Class organizations were associated with line-of-business responsibilities.
Social Business was more likely to create value when sales, marketing, and product
development departments were directly involved in improving customer
awareness, customer experience, and the ability to purchase desired solutions
(Figure 2).
Figure 2: Best-in-Class Value Propositions for Social Business

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

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Innovation and the Social Business

Mid-market organizations tended to be much closer to a Laggard performance
than Best-in-Class performance in all of these areas. This indicates that midmarket organizations are struggling more than their smaller and larger
competitors to extract value from Social Business, and are at a competitive
disadvantage as a result. Closing this competitive gap could offer significant value
to the mid-market and support key strategic initiatives such as disruptive and
enterprise-wise innovation efforts.
Although a majority of mid-market organizations had formal innovation efforts,
they tended to be incremental or operational in nature. Aberdeen found that
Best-in-Class organizations were over 50% more likely than all other organizations
to pursue a disruptive innovation initiative designed to supersede an old business
model with a new one. These business-wide innovation models affect every aspect
of the organization from product development to service to sales. To successfully
transform, these disruptive organizations require cross-functional collaboration
and strong alignment with the voice of the customer to successfully innovate.
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To understand how Social Business technologies support business capabilities,

consider Figure 2 from two different perspectives: customer insight and customer
engagement.

Customer Insight
Social media and social networking communities give companies an opportunity to
monitor and interact with current and potential customers. When sales and
product development teams understand what customers want, and when they are
seeking new solutions, they can plan their activities accordingly.
Sales and product development teams can also share appropriate information with
internal personnel, ranging from pre-sales engineers to subject matter experts
who can become more proactive in anticipating the needs of primary sales and
product development teams. By assisting in both internal and external
collaboration, Social Business can drive product and service innovation and
accelerate revenue contribution.

Customer Engagement
It is no longer enough to have an owned-media strategy based solely on
interaction with branded communities and outbound communication. Although
both remain important aspects of social engagement, today's organizations must
also have an inbound and earned media strategy, where customers independently
mention brands in their own social networks. Only 5% of mid-sized organizations
saw social media as a strategic marketing goal, but 27% saw customer retention
and loyalty marketing as strategic. In truth, these actions go hand-in-hand, as
organizations seek not only to manage their owned media but to gain "earned
media", trusted referrals, and meaningful interactions.

2012 Aberdeen Group.

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2012 Aberdeen Group.

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2012 Aberdeen Group.

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Mid-Market Social Deployment Strategies

Like all organizations, mid-market companies struggle in three key areas: tools,
processes, and internal buy-in.

Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Information Management

Best-in-Class organizations take advantage of real-time content creation
capabilities to work simultaneously on a single, living document. This is a
competitive advantage in new product development, marketing campaigns,
advanced case management, and wherever content-intensive, collaborative
brainstorming and creative activities are critical.

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Figure 3: Mid-Sized Use of Best-in-Class Knowledge Management

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

To gain feedback for new projects and corporate efforts, Best-in-Class

organizations were over three times as likely as mid-sized organizations to use
ideation modules to transform socially initiated ideas into corporate projects.
Best-in-Class organizations also put special effort into knowledge management
capabilities including search, archiving, and contextual tagging of all key information
(Figure 3).
By accumulating the wisdom of the masses via social tools and incorporating them
into searchable taxonomies, organizations maximized the value of information
gained through ideation and social networking. Mid-market organizations were, on
the whole, close to Laggard status in their adoption of these capabilities.

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Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Organizational Commitment

Social Business success is not just a matter of purchasing the right technology; it
requires a commitment to creating an open and cross-functional environment.
Best-in-Class companies supported social endeavors with organizational
development. Although 65% of top performers have executive champions, they
also have broad, organizational commitment to Social Business in operational roles
(Figure 4).
Figure 4: Mid-Sized Adoption of Organizational Capabilities

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

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Most Best-in-Class companies include veteran employees and line-of-business

feedback in their social efforts. This allows key employees to act as social hubs for
propagating Social Business solutions. Less than half of mid-sized organizations
surveyed have tenured employee (or line-of-business) feedback integrated into
their collaboration efforts.

Mid-Market Gap Analysis: Tools

Four social networking and collaboration tools particularly distinguished Best-inClass performers from Laggards: Group Chat, Collaborative Content Creation,
Ideation Tools, and Activity Streams.
Table 3: Key Social Technologies for Best-in-Class Performance

Group Chat Solutions

Real-Time
Collaborative
Content Creation
Idea Creation and
Collection Module
Activity Streams

Best-in-Class
(n=54)
65%

Laggards
(n=82)

Mid-Sized
(n=61)

29%

44%

50%

15%

21%

41%

10%

12%

33%

6%

10%

Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

Each of these tools plays an important role in helping employees work

synchronously, collaboratively, and productively. Group chat offers a continuation
of instant messaging capabilities. Nearly 70% of Best-in-Class companies have
group chat capabilities, compared to only 44% of mid-sized organizations. Activity
streams played a similar role in the more advanced organizations surveyed,
although for the mid-market, the complexity and intense resource drain of
threading and sorting activities means these streams are typically just archived for
future use.

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Key Takeaways for Socializing the Mid-Market Business

Technology, organizational capabilities, and key processes are all necessary to
optimize Social Business in mid-market organizations. To get the most value from
social technologies, Aberdeen offers the following suggestions:
Align social efforts to cost reduction and profitability. Social
outreach should be a cost-effective way to accomplish business goals, and
can be used to replace a portion of more expensive or outdated customer
outreach and feedback methods. However, it is important to remember that
social is only one weapon in the communications arsenal. The top goal for
social networking with customers should be to create a more personalized
and loyal relationship with the customer.
Start with product development, sales, and marketing
departments. These departments had the highest levels of social adoption
among top-performing organizations. When these groups can collaborate to
support customer engagement, Social Business will rise from a technological
curiosity to become a bona fide contributor to key business goals such as
fostering disruptive innovation and supporting profitable growth.
Archive and curate social content. Once employees, customers, and
partners have provided social feedback, it is important to be able to find this
information on an ongoing basis. By archiving social content, companies are
better positioned to re-use that content, and use it in the future.
By aligning business goals to the capabilities available through Social Business, midmarket companies can position themselves to achieve Best-in-Class information
sharing and social ROI.

2012 Aberdeen Group.

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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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2012 Aberdeen Group.

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Introducing Social Business for the Mid-Market

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For more information on this or other research topics, please visit

www.aberdeen.com
Related Research
Three Gifts of SME Collaboration:
Business Optimization through
Innovation, Revenue, and Workforce
Integrated Communications: In the
Readiness; January, 2012
SoMoClo (Social, Mobile, Cloud) Era;
December, 2011
Understanding Social Media in
The Aberdeen Business Review
Consumer Markets through Advanced
Monitoring Tools; January, 2012
Reveals; June, 2011
Author: Name, Hyoun Park, Research Analyst, Collaboration and Integrated
Communications (hyoun.park@aberdeen.com), Russ Klein, VP Research
Strategy, (russ.klein@aberdeen.com)
For more than two decades, Aberdeen's research has been helping corporations worldwide become Best-in-Class.
Having benchmarked the performance of more than 644,000 companies, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to
provide organizations with the facts that matter the facts that enable companies to get ahead and drive results.
That's why our research is relied on by more than 2.5 million readers in over 40 countries, 90% of the Fortune
1,000, and 93% of the Technology 500.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeens research provides insight and analysis to the Harte-Hanks community of
local, regional, national and international marketing executives. Combined, we help our customers leverage the
power of insight to deliver innovative multichannel marketing programs that drive business-changing results. For
additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 854-5200, or to learn more about
Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.
This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies
provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless
otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be
reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by
Aberdeen Group, Inc.

2012 Aberdeen Group.

www.aberdeen.com

Telephone: 617 854 5200

Fax: 617 723 7897