By bringing stakeholders together on a common platform, companies can drive innovation, co-creation and productivity.
The rise of technology and social media has enhanced companies’ ability to drive greater collaboration and communication, and in turn made them indispensable tools for innovation and enhancing productivity.
“Working ‘smart’ is a business imperative, and not just something that is nice to have,” says Ms Janet Ang, Managing Director of IBM Singapore. “As businesses, as leaders, there must be a strategy to harness technology to drive innovation
and co-creation.”
Ms Ang suggests that by empowering employees with the right tools, a company can develop into a social business – one that leverages social media technology to innovate its processes and the way it interacts with its employees, customers
and partners.
Sparking new ideas
Social media technologies can range from something as simple as a blog to more complex systems that allow for sophisticated collaboration. An internal blog, for example, can be a valuable tool to encourage sharing of ideas and develop new ideas among employees.
“These sorts of tools give SMEs a way to drive ideation without having to turn to the ‘traditional’ experts, which they may not be able to access given their limited resources,” notes Ms Ang.
Taking this technology a step further, real-time community collaboration can bring people together to contribute ideas on topics such as product development. Most importantly, this does not have to be confined to internal stakeholders
but can also include partners and customers.
“By bringing many parties together on a common platform, ideas take shape and grow more quickly, driving innovation and co-creation,” says Ms Ang.
Indonesian restaurant chain Bumbu Desa is a good example. Using IBM’s SmartCloud Engage platform, the company has been able to drive internal collaboration as well as reach out to customers for feedback. Suggestions from customers are quickly and easily shared among the chain’s restaurants across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The new insights and ideas are also refined through online discussions.
Improved processes and efficiency
Social media technology plays a key role in boosting productivity. “By delivering information through a common platform, less time is needed to locate it,” says Ms Ang.
For Bumbu Desa, the introduction of technology enabled its restaurants’ managers to share menus, new recipes and best practices. It also helps in the dissemination of corporate materials and the sharing of the company’s strategy and vision.
The new system has also improved the reporting process, by replacing faxes and phone calls with online updates. Better communication has also helped Bumbu Desa to reduce travelling expenses by 25 per cent.
Going social
The technology for companies to become social businesses exists, and it is now a question of how they will adopt it to empower employees and drive innovation and growth.
“Strong support and direction from the leaders are required to drive change in an organisation’s culture,” says Ms Ang. “While this can be a transformative tool, there must be a clear strategy driving the adoption of social media technology so as to bring about the desired changes.”
Reproduced with permission from SPRINGnews January 2013 Issue. Published by SPRING Singapore.