Mediaboss Marketing

Summary:Oracle's Group VP of Social Cloud talks about the social enterprise, customers, CRM, and women in STEM.

Social and collaboration software have become deeply ingrained in the fabric of enterprise technology. Both small and large and enterprise vendors have incorporated social and collaboration tools into their products.

Oracle, of course one of the largest enterprise software vendors, has pulled together a suite of offerings collectively known as the Oracle Social Cloud. The suite includes products targeted to social monitoring and engagement, social marketing and campaigns, and internal collaboration.Meg Bear (Image courtesy of CXO-Talk)

To gain insight into collaboration and social software, I invited Oracle's Group Vice President for social software, Meg Bear, to be a guest on CXO-Talk. During the conversation, we spoke about a broad set of topics including the impact of social on organizations, the empowered consumer, and even women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).

You can watch the entire 45-minute conversation and read an edited summary of her comments below.

We started with all of the component parts. Bringing all of the component parts together, putting them in with other things that we were already doing. Now, we are at the point where we can start imagining different outcomes as a result of those building blocks finally getting mature enough and available enough, and getting all of the right people involved.

I think you need to understand where your company's DNA is. Start with understanding what you are working with and where you want to go. But broadly, what I have seen work well is getting some successes on the board, building advocacy internally, and then growing out from there. The key is really defining some good and smart successes upfront, such that you can build on that momentum. In other words, if you build on successes early on that nobody cares about, the probability of other groups thinking it matters to them is very low.

First and foremost, be true to the culture of your organization. Be true to your identity but think about how transparency and the value of the global voice can be part of what you are. People think, "Well, you know I have to share everything." No, if that is not your corporate culture I don't think that is going to work; people will find that off-putting. If it is your corporate culture, you should be able to use the patterns that have been laid out there.

There is benefit for all companies to getting your employees more engaged, getting your ecosystem more engaged, getting your customers more engaged as part of your business plan. It gives you a competitive edge.

Do it in a way that is going to work for your business, because if you are just going through the motions everyone is going to know and it's not going to work. Think about where, within your personal corporate culture, can collaboration and sharing of information and working together give you the biggest benefit. Then think about what that means for your business plan and driving business results.

Read more here:
Oracle: Enterprise social must fit corporate culture