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Recruiting is a time consuming and expensive business.
Companies have always looked at the personal networks of employees in order to find new candidates, but they haven’t quite been able to access these networks in an efficient way.
What if there was a way of gathering the overall social networking and address book contacts of all employees into one… virtual environment? Would that work better for HR departments? Our theory says yes.
If we start with the statistically demonstrated fact that each employee nowadays has, on average, 600 friends and business partners (Facebook, LinkedIn, Address Book, etc), then a company of 100 employees will have at least 50.000 contacts.
Accessing and understanding these 50.000 contacts makes the recruiting process much easier and the best thing about hiring people through these networks is that you deal with references from people within the company that you actually trust.
Check out our latest Infographic below or on visual.ly to understand better how it works.
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Privacy is a hot topic again these days.
Twitter has acknowledged that after iPhone users opt to have the app search their contact list, the company stores names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers on its servers for 18 months.
Google made Wall Street Journal’s front page on Friday, after journalists finding out that a secret code in it’s ads tricked “Apple’s Safari web-browsing software” into allowing Google to monitor what iPhone users were doing on the internet. The search giant disabled the code after receiving a call from the WSJ.
And NYTimes.com publishes here an extensive feature on how companies learn your secrets.
Don’t panic
Now, before panicking, let’s take five minutes to consider some facts, in order to look at the whole picture…
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…looks like this…
…and like this:
(ok, things might have grown a bit in the last 2 months, but still…)
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According to Gartner, the CRM global arena is a 10 billion euro industry, with an annual growth rate of more than 25%. In total, it is estimated that more than 1 million companies use a CRM system, which also means there is vast potential for the years to come.
That’s a big market.
But how will CRM look like in five years from now? Well, that’s a question for analysts to ask (check out here an interesting piece from Software Advice), and for key players or influencers to answer.
The trends highlighted by Lauren Carlson with expert advice in the article from Software Advice relate to the following…
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If you were to ask anyone these days to give you a brief history of Social Networks, they would most-likely think about Facebook, then do a bit of research and come up with this:
1971 – the first e-mail is sent (and no, the text was not some inaugural speech, it was something more like QWRTYDHS – a test between 2 computers over ARPANET, a network of computers preceding the Internet)
1997 – the birth of the instant message, thanks to AOL
2002 – Friendster – the network that connected online real-world friends
2003 – MySpace – a Friendster clone, is born.
2004 – Facebook enters the market
2006 – Twitter is launched.
Well, that’s all fine, but there’s more to it…
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Networking is a lot like PR. In order to be successful at it, you need to be the best you can be.
At first, I wasn’t going to go into the advantages/benefits of good networking, because stating the obvious is not something we’re used to doing around here. But once in a while – 2 days before New Year’s Eve, for example – it’s good to take a step back and remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. And I’m not talking here about the usual reasons, because those answers are easy (finding a new job, meeting new clients, etc.), but I’m talking about the kind of motivations that are even more obvious:
Why Network?
- Because we’re social animals and networking feeds this natural need for all good people. If you have doubts about this, ask Tom Hanks why he felt the need to make friends with Wilson in Cast Away.
- Because your friends / network say as much about you as your clothes do. “Tell me who you’re friends with and I’ll tell you who you are” didn’t just come out of thin air.
- Because networking brings out the best in people. Unless you’re Michael Jackson material, you can’t afford to be “bad”. Not these days…
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The long lasting debate over Social Media at work just got fueled. Again.
Yet another study by Cisco revealed that “56% of twentysomethings would refuse to work in a job denying them access to social media or would attempt to sidestep the rule”. More than this, one in three respondents ranked social media access on the job as more important than salary and according to another study, 46 percent of teenagers aged 18 to 24 prefer Internet access to having their own automobile.
Now, these findings sound like huge alarms all over the world. Pessimists are already heralding the end of the world “as we know it”, teachers will probably try to ban smartphones from classes and automakers will have to try and change the 100 year-old concept of delivering to people some metal on rubber wheels. If they want to keep up productivity and sell cars to young people, they will have to deliver them a whole new experience, one that integrates the natural movement from A to B with every other gadget out there.
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Stumbled upon an interesting blog post the other day on Software Advice.
After a sit down with Brian Solis, a rather careful consideration of some Razorfish studies and some common sense observations about how the interactions between companies and customers have changed over the years (first of all because of the internet and lately, because of social media & mobile devices), Lauren Carlson points her story at the 6 Rules of Engagement, or what we can basically call the Solis definition of engagement, as the next level of relationships between companies and customers.
According to this, consumers in the Egosystem want value, efficiency, trust, consistency, relevancy and control from the companies they interact with. And if this is what the customer wants, then that’s what most socially aware companies will try to give them.
But that’s only part of the problem, solved. Because after figuring out what the customer wants and what to give him, the next step – equally important, I might add – is to find out the best way to deliver all these things. Most companies that realize the importance of reaching their customers through social media already have the usual channels at their disposal. They will have a Facebook page or a Twitter account in play, only there’s more to Social CRM strategies than business pages on these websites.
The Satisfaction – Engagement Loop
In order to properly engage the customers, companies have to consider two things: first of all, the technological side – the platform that actually supports the engagement – and then the cultural climate of the organization itself, which has to be the actual resource of the engagement. As long as the people behind the company understand and relate to the cultural obsession towards the customer, then things are bound to move in the right… engaging direction. The only thing that remains is now to properly close the circle and provide the users inside the organization with the proper technological tools to keep the customers satisfied. But how?
Integrating Companies with Social Media. Or the other way around.
Now, after understanding the Satisfaction – Engagement Loop, there’s two ways companies handle the social appeal to customers. There are those who look at their business and then start acting on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube or LinkedIn, and there are those who first of all develop a Social CRM and then try to connect with the customer through social media platforms.
What we have found out developing the Clintelica Network CRM application though, is that Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Youtube or LinkedIn are all amazing in themselves, but they are also distinct communities where not only the the way of engagement differs, but also the response of the customer (if any) is different.
So, in order to properly engage an organization with it’s customers (especially when we’re talking about 100+ employees, hundreds or thousands of customers and suppliers), you need to have a powerful CRM system that works in a perfect, traditional way, offers features that enable you to manage & understand huge amounts of information (Newsfeed), and then gives you the the opportunity to use Social Media to reach the connected customer, keeping him satisfied through Networking and understanding his Feedback instantly.
OK, boundaries are changing every minute, mobile gadgets are becoming socially acceptable in Theaters and probably tomorrow reading Zite stories on your iPad in a face-to-face meeting will not be considered rude anymore. But in order for the customer engagement to be meaningful, it’s becoming more and more clear that social media platforms should be the tool and not the purpose.
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Socializing as a Group
When people first find out about Clintelica and our focus on networking, one of the first reactions we get is “Oh, so you’re a kind of LinkedIn, aren’t you?”. Well, NO.
Until we define our under construction FAQ section, let’s make it clear here and now.
Clintelica’s philosophy, the basic idea behind our patent pending solution and our main goal is to increase and properly use the overall connections of a group of people. While social media / networking as we know it so far is about the individual, Clintelica’s networking approach is all about the group.
Be it companies, departments, alumni classes, business networks or simply groups of people that share a common interest, we can connect not only the individuals within each group, but also each individual to the group’s overall connections. The resulting potential reach increases exponentially with each new individual.
We’re in the Army Now
Now, if Clintelica works for companies, then it most definitely can work for BizNet’s as well. But if it works for Business Networks, then it will certainly work for any network.
We are now in a beta test phase with the fine people that have served in the Swedish Navy. We’re talking here about at least 5.000 people, ex-Marines, who have been through the same stuff. These are people who obviously have great respect for the job, for each other, and who will from now on have the possibility to get interconnected based on the fact that they went through the same military education.
By all accounts, getting these people connected through the Clintelica application will create a network of about 2 million people, accessible to any of the members in two or maximum three steps.
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