GTA V (Now that i have your attention, let's look at ROI)

Hello bloggers!

Seems it has come to my final blog post pertaining to INB346 which is sad, it's been a long and fun journey learning all about Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 and how the application of various social technologies can have a huge benfit in orginisations both for the orginisation itself and the products/services they offer to the public. So today we shall talk about calculating a return on investment in an organisational project!

When a company sets out to start a new project, they have a desired outcome, a goal. Usually it always boils down to an investment, that is putting money and or resources into a project and expecting something to come out of it, example is realising profits from your investment such as increased sales, or from the profits generated internally due to a new system in place which increases employee efficiency by 35.357%.

What this process is called is ROI or Return-On-Investment, there's actually a neat formula for it too which calucates your ROI percentage!


  So we can take this formula and apply it to a known investment, which is a rather large time waster, relationship ruiner and overall great time... GTA V by Rockstar games.  

GTA V Advertisement in Hollywood, CA

  GTA V was released on Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 17th 2013, and was published by Take-Two interactive, it is open world action-adventure video game developed by Rock-star North and published by Rockstar Games.
The project was started around the end of GTA IV in April 2008, and has estimated on costing between 250 to 265 Million US dollars for production and marketing sectors of Rockstar North.
As the project is completed we now need to workout the revenue generated following release from sales and marketing.
According to sources, within 3 days of release the game generated around $1billion in sales so now we can workout if the investment was worth it or not (who am i kidding, it was SO worth it, Trevor makes it all worthwhile with his methamphetamine tweaked antics)
Applying our investment costs of $265M and our revenue generation of $1B we can workout the following:
( R1,000,000,000 - I265,000,000 / I265,000,000 ) x 100 = ROI of 277.35%
So looks like the ROI for GTA V has worked out to be 277.35% which makes it a tremendous financial success for Rockstar North and Take-Two, also it's fun.

Using tools to monitor social trends

Good Afternoon Bloggers,

To succeed in today’s connected world, you need to build a community around your company, brand, and products. Over the last decade, social media monitoring has become a primary form of business intelligence, used to identify, predict, and respond to consumer behavior. Listening to what your customers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about you is key to getting great results from your social media campaigns.

Today i have been playing around with some tools which monitor the social trends on specific entities. I tested several tools (Addictomatic, Socialmention, Howsocialable and Omgili) And out of all these i tried i found Addicomatic to be the most user friendly and effective. So let's get started on Addictomatic.


 Tools can provide details about your company on, but not limited to;

• User demographic information (Age, Language, Income Bracket, Time online per day, etc.)
• Information about the user for targetted advertising
• Information on what is being said in real time about your company (Example is a tool would find a comment posted on reddit which mentions your company)
• Where the "Likes" are coming from
• Can generate information to determine public opinion on your brand
• The list goes on

So without further adue, let's try out Addictomatic on our selected orgnisation, Dell Australia.

So as you can see in the image above, Addict-o-matic has pulled realtime information from various social technologies like FriendFeed, Bing News, Delicious, Twitter and Youtube, basically anything recent related to the company.

This tool to me was basically a larger search engine which queries most social services for relevant information, as for actual statistics Addict-o-matic does not actually provide you with advanced statistics, like Radian6 would.

My only complaint about this tool is it hasn't pulled any information from Dells Twitter page, even though it is existant, so it may be getting confused from the fact that there is multiple Dell twitter accounts.

So that was my experiance getting my foot in the door to Social monitoring tools, overall i think it was fairly brief, but i feel somewhat limited due to Addict-o-matic's feature set.

Thanks for reading, take care 346ers!

Dell 2.0

Good afternoon readers!

As you may remember last week we took a look at how organisations in the Social Sector could gain value by harnessing Social Technologies to help build additional value.

For this week I will be talking about how organisations in the professional service sector can build value by harnessing powerful social technologies such as Blogs, Microblogs, wiki's and internal websites (share-points)

Before we start let's take a look at what types of orgnisations are in the professional services industry, thanks to the McKinsey Global Institute, 2012, which has outlined these types of orgnisations as falling under the professional services category:

• Accounting
• Advertising & Marketing
• Architecture
• Managment Consulting
• Engineering
• IT
• Legal
• Scientific Research Services

So for my discussion today I will be analysing how Dell inc could leverage value by adopting social technologies.

Dell are in the IT organisation and specialise in commercial and home and office computing systems and services. Dell sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and also electronics built by other manufacturers.

They are listed at number 51 on the Fortune 500 list and employee more than 103,000 people worldwide.

Dell currently have a well established presence in the social technology community in the form of a Facebook, Twitter and official Tumblr, with a profile on LinkedIn also.

By their current presence they could lever the following value:

• Improved Collaboration
• Market research and customer insights
• More targeted recruiting efforts leading to
• better task-employee matching

Dells main social portals are via there blog and Facebook page, using these they can potentially communicate ideas and insights through their use and through doing so they could lever value from market research and employee recruitment.

Dells Twitter and Facebook page provide a useful portal for customers to come and discuss products, relays insight and get in touch with dell – it allows a conversation to take place, providing customer insight and market research at a very low price.

Dells LinkedIn page could lever value by improving recruitment, potential employees could visit the page and could be referred by “contacts” adding value to employee recruitment.

Another cool thing dell do is "Ideastorm", this is an online community where you can submit ideas and product personal reviews to dell, which dell can then use for market and product development purposes adding huge value - Check it out some time, it is VERY neat.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Enterprise 2.0 and the RSPCA!

Hello readers!

Over the past few weeks i have been talking about my research on how organisations are going about implementing enterprise 2.0. So for this week i will be talking about some of the value levers which we can associate to an organisation.

This weeks activity is to identify and discuss any value levers which could be applied or are already in place in an organisation in the social sector, specifically a NFP (not for profit) organisation. Plenty of examples came to mind and funnily enough all of them had a presence in the standard gamut of social media (Facebook, twitter, etc.), organisations such as Red-cross, RSPCA, UNAIDS all are examples of NFP organisations working in the social sector.

I have chosen to scan the RSPCA for my task and to identify value levers from the McKinsey Global Institute Report

Some of the levers the McKinsey report identifies are;

1. Collect Information and Insights:

1. Gather Information
2. Crowd-source Resources and Solutions

2. Mobilize Resources:

1. Fund-raise
2. Create and expand volunteer network
3. retain support

3. Execute Mission:

1. Educate the Public
2. Engage supporters

4. Organisation-wide Levers

1. Improve collaboration and communication
2. Rapid organizing

The RSPCA is a animal and wildlife protection service formed in 1824. RSPCA stands for "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals"  It is the oldest and largest animal welfare organisation in the world and is one of the largest charities in the UK, with 1,453 employees.

The RSPCA has a foot in the door of social media, with a Facebook, Twitter and Blog all available to the public - So they currently do implement some social technologies to lever value.

Some of the value levers I have found during my scan of the RSPCA are

2.1 Fund-Raise

• By having a donation link in their Facebook they are able to gain increased amounts of donations, as the McKinsey report shows, on line donations are usually more frequent and greater in size than traditional "phone call solicitations"
• Could get more donations with ease

2.2 Create and expand volunteer Network

• By having an online presence they could reach more people and thus gain greater support from and gain more volunteers.

3.1 Educate the Public

• They could educate the public about the signs of animal abuse, such as seeing a neighbour abusing an animal.
• They could keep the public informed about how to get in contact with the RSPCA to report indidents

There are more that could be applied, but these are the immediate levers i have found in my search.

Thanks for reading, comment and check out my other blogs.

Social media risks of a poor or non-existent social media policy.

Good morning Bloggers!

Today I am Blogging about the Social media risks which can happen as a result of having a poor or no social media policy at all.

A quick recap on what a social media policy is, courtesy of Dundas Lawyers

"A Social Media Policy (SMP) is a document that supplements a contract of employment to be legally enforceable by an organisation on its employees. The aim of an SMP is to clearly communicate what is acceptable conduct on Social Networking Sites by an organisations employees and contractors and what conduct is unacceptable and would make an employee liable to dismissal.
An SMP is distinct from an organisations Social Media Strategy (SMS) which is a high level document that communicates how an organisation plans to participate in social media."

Various different organisations and company structures are open to different types of social media risks, some house highly confidential personal information which could be leaked internally to the external environment, others could be open to defamation in the case of on-line retailers or sectors where intangible assets are the most valuable - so clearly a highly resilient and bulletproof SMP is essential to ensure that social media is correctly handled in the organisation to ensure a positive outcome.

For our analysis i have chosen Westpac Banking Corporation, more common just know by the big red "W" or "Westpac". This group is a banking organisation founded 1982, it currently participates in social media by having a Facebook, Twitter and a Linkedin page.

As a banking corporation employees would house highly confidential information on customers, such as tax file numbers, account numbers, financial details and personally identifiable information, which having a loose unenforced SMP could result in information being divulged internally to externally, like the company tweeting "we don't like this person, here is his account number, pin and tax file number" extreme example, but similar things have happened. Here are some analysed risks for Westpac which i have identified that they could be open to for participating in social media

• Defamation
• People could go to the page and make abrasive comments tarnishing the brand, weather the comment is true or false
• Poor policies in place to deal with complaints handled via social media could tarnish the brand, it would show they are not active in the social world
• Loss of Confidential Information
• A rouge employee or intern could accidentally or purposely release company information
• Including but not limited to: Customer information, business strategies, employee information, details on the recent lay-off of 50 people which was meant to be kept company-secret
• Rouge employees could release information which competitors could use for their own gain
• Reputation Risk
• Any one of these breaches which occurs in social media and is visible to the public could have a devastating effect on the companies intangible assets, take the Dominoes Pizza "Dirty Incident" for example, in this case the wake was huge, as was it a massive dent to the companies image for quality and trust
• If the social media application is not properly moderated by an accompanying social media policy, anyone who has the password to the application in the organisation would have control of it, so there is no way of getting back control of the application if the employee resigns or is terminated, so "smear" campaigns are possible, the employee could go on a personal vendetta tarnishing the image with abrasive comments or revealing information on company executives, customers or employees

These are risks i have identified in Westpac participation in Social Media, with many thanks to Dundas Lawyers page on various types of social media risks

With the proper social media policy in place for westpac it would ensure comments and queires are handled in a timely manner when made on a social application (e.g. customer asking for support information on the official facebook page) and ensure that any defamatory comments are quickly removed or moderated from the page to ensure the companies intangibles are not tarnished in any way. A social media policy could also help for internal sitautions where the SMP is integrated in the terms of employeement the employee signs, so if the employee breaches the SMP he or she is liable for dissmissal or worse, legal proceedings against them. an SMP would also have a net effect of reducing all risks of reputation damage to the company logo by ensuring nothing slanderous, defamatory or illegal is posted on the social media application.

Social media policies are crucial to ensure social media is handled properly in an organisation, without a social media policy there is really no legal pavement in place for legal action to be taken on an internal individual e.g. dismissal or employee, policies in place to hand over rights to the social media application, etc.

Thanks for reading, please comment if you liked reading my Blog.

Value levers associated with E2 at PC Case Gear

Good morning Bloggers!

Today I'm going to discuss various value levers which can be associated to companies embracing Enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0 technologies in there on-line digital presence.

In todays example I will be talking about the on-line PC hardware and software mega retailer PC Case gear, known as "PCCG" for short. Since PCCG operates as an online entity there online presence could immediately benefit many levers of value such as

• Marketing & Sales
• By getting feedback from customers on a facebook page or twitter feed they could better cater there services to what the customer wants, providing a wider gamut of useful products the customer will likely buy
• Improve sales by offering promotions on a social media site such as twitter or a facebook wall page
• Customer Support
• Customers could quickly get support from the company through a facebook wall
• Could get information from the company without having to call up or email
• Operations & Distribution
• Could get statistics from facebook about who, where, why and when customers visit there page, to better determine where there physical presence in australia would benefit (e.g. store locations, distribution centers, etc)

Currently PCCG has an online digital presence in a enterprise 2.0 technology which is a facebook page community. As shown they have already demonstrated they have an enterprise 2.0 approach by showing the customer service value lever:

As you can see a customer has come to the page, stated that his product which he purchased form the company was faulty and sought information on how he could go about rectifying the situation, the company replied in a short time advising the customer how they could go about gaining support from the company which was via email.

In another example PCCG is using social technologies to use the Marketing and Sales value lever (Specifically elements 5, 6 & 7 from this table in section "Marketing & Sales") by running a competition to "guess" the amount of Smarties in the jar to win various products

So we see that companies having an on-line Enterprise 2.0 presence can provide a very powerful way for the company and customers to either gain support, view the latest products and win goodies in promotions.

Thankyou for reading my Blog post, be sure to comment and subscribe!

Web 2.0, What, Why and How?

Introduction:

Hello readers, welcome to my second blog post, in this article i want to go into discussion about what is web 2.0, how can you use it and what benefits can arise from doing so. But before i go into deep detail, firstly i would like to answer a question which may or may not be in your minds...

"..Just what is Web 2.0?"

Web 2.0 is a term coined to describe the massive boom in online social technologies which has arisen in the passed decade, there is no solid definition, but the most widely accepted description is:

a second generation in the development of the World Wide Web, conceived as a combination of concepts,trends, and technologies that focus on user collaboration, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking.

So when you look at various examples of things you use on a daily basis, Facebook, Twitter or any other socially enabled application, you are using something based upon Web 2.0.

In my day to day duties i use several Web 2.0 applications to assist me in production, keeping up to date with the latest trends in politics and watching what my friends have done in the week on Facebook. I find Facebook a great experience and i only recently got into it when i started my University degree - it just makes keeping up to date with group work and assignments so much easier. I also use LinkedIn to keep me up to date on what my coworkers are doing and to keep "online" for career purposes. Another great service i use is called "Mapmyrun", it is a GPS smartphone application which tracks you when you go for a jog or light walk and then shows your status' and routes for which you can share with others, there are even options to have "track records" for certain routes you create.

So here are some examples of what i do on Web 2.0 applications, but there are plenty more out there that people use.

All examples of (but not limited to) various web 2.0 enabled socially enabled sites.

How can Web 2.0 applications benefit the average Joe:

There are many ways in which you can benefit from social media these may not always be fully realized, you may not think so but when you think about it there are so many things you do with your web 2.0 application that if it didn't exist... how would you do this task differently?

Share a photo with a family friend?

Keep in touch with people you went to school with?

Share information in an open Wikipedia of information?

Food for thought.

Types of Web 2.0 Enabled social sites/services:

• Social Networks - Services that allow you to connect with other people of similar interests and background.  Usually they consist of a profile, various ways to interact with other users, ability to setup groups, etc. The most popular are Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Bookmarking Sites - Services that allow you to save, organize and manage links to various websites and resources around the internet.  Most allow you to “tag” your links to make them easy to search and share.  The most popular are Delicious and StumbleUpon.
• Social News - Services that allow people to post various news items or links to outside articles and then allows it’s users to”vote” on the items.  The voting is the core social aspect as the items that get the most votes are displayed the most prominently.  The community decides which news items get seen by more people.  The most popular are Digg and Reddit.
• Media Sharing - Services that allow you to upload and share various media such as pictures and video.  Most services have additional social features such as profiles, commenting, etc.  The most popular are YouTube and Flickr.
• Micro-blogging - Services that focus on short updates that are pushed out to anyone subscribed to receive the updates.  The most popular is Twitter.
• Blog Comments and Forums - Online forums allow members to hold conversations by posting messages.  Blog comments are similar except they are attached to blogs and usually the discussion centers around the topic of the blog post.  There are MANY popular blogs and forums.

Thank you for reading.