People do business with people—and getting social is the way forward. The need of the hour is to build in your team’s DNA the culture to connect, engage and develop the ‘social quotient’, writes Raghu Raman
Some say that the Indian smartphone market is approaching the tipping point and others feel it has arrived. Various sources suggest that in 2011, 10m smartphones were sold at USD 190 or more. It doubled to 20m in 2012 when prices of phones in the segment dropped to USD 150. Around 45-50m smartphones are expected to be sold in 2013 with prices expected to fall sub USD 100. Price, form factor and apps availability are critical drivers for growth of smartphones and tablets.
Having said that, of the 110+ million Internet users, India has recently recorded that around 80m (71%) of “active” internet users are in cities. The second-screen phenomenon is taking root in India led by tablets and smartphone user. According to StatCounter data as of March 2013, mobile Internet usage (54.4%) has overtaken use of the fixed-line web (44.6%).
Smartphone adoption and connectivity have fueled social networking in India. According to a Nielsen-AbsolutData survey, Indians spend more time on social media than using personal email. Of the 71m India Facebook users, urban India – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai & Kolkata – leads the pack. According to ICube 2012v Mobile Internet report, around 15m users from the Top 35 cities in India access social networks from mobile.
Evidently, availability of 3G services, low cost smartphones and reduction in data charges drive the social media adoption. Another emerging trend has been the SMBs adopting cloud based solutions as it requires a much lower adoption cost and go-live is just matter of hours.
Irrespective of size or the business you are in, build social infrastructure that lets your team collaborate. Enterprise social networks can help you activate workforce to improve productivity and customer satisfaction, resulting in increased revenue.
Start out of the box
Get your teams to use tools to collaborate. Like I heard the day before, “The world is flat, so are the organizations”. Reaching out across enterprise to get the best possible solution should be the norm. Build in your team’s DNA the culture to connect, engage and develop the ‘social quotient’ within the firewall that is required to make them successful.
Enterprise Social Networking Software (#ESN) should have familiar, intuitive interface to make adoption easy. However, it is the responsibility of the corporate management to set guidelines for the end users to make best use of the social network. One key benefit is moving away from traditional email/cc culture to a democratized collaborative environment.
Besides, it encourages teams to ideate, share know-how (knowledge), blog and get interactive responses from communities that follow particular subject or from SMEs whose opinion matters a lot. Be it sharing a status update, a file or running a poll on the fly, social networking makes it all the more interesting.
As business complexity intensifies, change will be marked by a mobile field force connected to teams spread across geo and time zones through ubiquitous networks. This underscores the need for an enterprise social software. This will be a journey that’s just begun!
Raghu Raman leads the Enterprise Social Collaboration Business for Tibco in India.
