Whitepaper - The connected enterprise

July 2012

Microsoft Dynamics

The Connected
Enterprise
Embracing social
technologies to drive
the Dynamic Business

Introduction
Today’s businesses face dramatic change The world revolves around communities. People
concurrently on several axes, including technology form and join communities to communicate and
change, generational change as Millennials enter collaborate – to get stuff done. Communities have
the workforce, and a new economic reality. In terms existed since time began: families, tribes, cities, teams,
of technology changes none has been as rapid and clubs and interest groups. Social technologies have
pervasive as social technologies. Social technologies expedited and simplified how people connect and
including blogs, forums and social networks are collaborate globally in real time.
transforming the relationship between businesses and
Advances in communication and collaboration, such
their communities of employees, prospects, customers
as radio, television, telephone, email and internet,
and partners. Let’s first explain social in simple terms.
have been a constant throughout the 20th century.
Humans are inherently social. Social as a concept Social networks, such as Facebook, are yet another
is not new – no one actually invented social! channel of human interaction; they have been adopted
Dictionary definitions* include: human society at an unprecedented rate! Radio took 38 years to
and how it is organized; the way in which groups reach 50 million users – Facebook took less than
of people behave and interact; living as part of a 9 months to reach 100 million users! The sheer scale
community or colony rather than alone. of social networks means that millions of people are
now connected globally and in real time in ways not
* Social definition: Encarta® World English Dictionary
[North American Edition] imaginable with other communication technologies.

Years to reach 50 million users:

Radio: Television: Internet: Facebook:
38 years 13 years 4 years 100 million
<9 months
Source: socialnomics.net – Social Media Revolution Video (Refreshed), By Erik Qualman

1

Introduction
However, it is important to put this technology
Microsoft is defining a connected and wave in perspective. Telephone has not
forward-looking enterprise, the successful replaced face-to-face meetings; email has not
enterprise of the future. replaced telephone; social technologies are
yet another means for people to connect and
What has prompted this mass adoption of social interact. Your customers expect flexibility in the way
technologies in day-to-day life? Leading social media they engage with you, whether that is via the web,
expert Clara Shih writes: face-to-face, phone, email and now social.

“The social Web appeals to innate human Some would have you believe that social technologies
desires for self-expression, human alone will guarantee the success that businesses seek.
connection, and a sense of belonging... The reality is, social for the sake of being social is just
Social networking captures our pictures, noise without context. Many executives view social
feelings, and relationships, and makes technologies as distractions rather than enablers for
the Web feel human again.” this reason.

How does this apply to business? Business success Microsoft has a powerful vision beyond just a
hinges on one or more of the following aspirations: social enterprise – we are defining a connected
increasing revenue, driving customer loyalty and and forward-looking enterprise, the successful
identifying new business opportunities. These days enterprise of the future; an enterprise that
everyone is looking for the silver bullet to achieve connects its employees, partners and customers
success. For years, we have been focusing on the to what they need, in the right context, using the
business benefits of increasing productivity, but device and channel they prefer. We call that the
let’s face it, your people can be communicating, Dynamic Business.
collaborating and generally doing lots of things faster,
This paper outlines how you can get started with a
but that doesn’t guarantee they are the right things.
social strategy that enhances your sales, marketing
Social technologies are becoming increasingly and service capabilities. We will articulate how social
prevalent in daily personal and professional technologies fit into Microsoft’s vision and strategy
life. Social technologies provide simple for proactive, agile and forward-looking business
collaboration for employees and new means of solutions that facilitate people getting the right things
understanding and interacting with customers. done while delivering better customer experiences.

2

Business
Opportunities
with Social Regardless of your role in an organization,
there are constant demands to contend with. The Dynamic Business places customers’
Marketing professionals need to tap into the wants and needs at the center of everything
voice of the customer and broaden the reach they do.
of their marketing message. Sales professionals
need to easily keep track of the network of people They expect business software that enables them
and business events that are relevant to closing deals. to connect, communicate and collaborate as easily
Service professionals need to identify and resolve as they do via social networks such as Twitter
customers’ issues through an ever-increasing array of and Facebook.
communication channels.
We now have a new category of customer: the
The Dynamic Business places customers’ wants and social customer. These are businesses and consumers
needs at the center of everything they do. They rally who use social technologies to get their questions
their people, processes and technology around this answered, problems solved, contribute ideas,
objective. It starts with people. People make things complain, praise and endorse whenever and from
happen through the communities they participate wherever they want. According to a recent survey by
in. A Dynamic Business manages relationships across IAB and Lightspeed in the U.K., over 44% of adults
internal and external communities. now use the web to share grievances about products
and services, and 1 in 5 consumers who complain to
Millennials entering the workforce are driving new
brands via Twitter or Facebook want a response within
expectations of business software. Millennials have
the hour. Businesses need to provide flexible and
grown up with computers, software, the internet,
convenient ways of listening to and engaging with
intelligent devices and constant connectivity.
these communities on their terms.
They approach business software through a consumer
lens; they expect simplicity and instant results. Paul Greenberg, a respected authority on the use of
Their networks and communities will come with social technologies, articulates a social strategy as
them to work, blurring the lines between personal “the company’s response to the customer’s control of
and professional relationships. These individuals the conversation.” In other words, a Dynamic Business
want to quickly and easily ask questions, find listens and engages with customers rather than
expertise, keep up to date on events that affect just talking at them. External communities control
their role and have their achievements recognized. the perception of products, services and brands, not
the business. Social engagement is about starting a
dialog with your communities.

3

Business
Opportunities
Given these realities, what are the business opportunities
with social technologies?
with Social
Listen Listen, monitor and dissect social conversations to uncover trends and key influencers.

Engage Conduct a dialog with stakeholders to inform, respond and influence.

Amplify Utilize communities to broadcast your message and drive awareness.

Solve Harvest and reuse community knowledge and connect customers to solve problems.

Innovate Identify business opportunities and ideas through crowd-sourcing communities.

Analyze Measure buzz, calculate stakeholder sentiment and determine impact.

Adapted from various sources, including William Band, Ray Wang, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

During the course of this paper we will demonstrate business strategy. Businesses who have successfully
how you can seize these opportunities to create your employed a social strategy found executive
Dynamic Business. sponsorship and employee buy-in crucial.

Knowing where to begin may seem daunting. Many “To win clients, we have to show that we
businesses are wrestling with this dilemma. The can seamlessly connect to the people and
good news is, there are many things you can start the data we need to get the job done. With
with today and there are a broad range of tools from Microsoft social networking and search tools,
Microsoft to assist you from a technology standpoint. it’s a done deal.”

It is also important to note a social strategy is —Chris Miller, Senior Director, Accenture
contingent on culturally embracing the concepts
in conjunction with the software tools themselves. Let’s now delve into specifically how a social
No amount of technology can compensate for a lack strategy can positively impact your sales, service
of cohesive planning in how social fits into your overall and marketing processes.

4

Social
Marketing
Marketing strategies can benefit greatly
from the use of social media as an additional Public social networks provide marketing
channel to broadcast announcements, organizations with a direct and immediate
messaging and offers. You have the line to their customers.
responsibility to keep the content you share
relevant and fresh; use the same principles you apply Marketing via social networking sites does not
to your web site content – if you don’t keep it current replace traditional marketing; it should reflect and
you risk losing the attention of your social customers complement those efforts. Lori and team should
and with it, credibility. participate in campaign planning and execution to
know what and when to broadcast, as well as how to
Start simply! meaningfully engage via social media.
Let’s say we have a marketing manager, Lori, who
Public social networks provide marketing
has a passion for social media and is an active social
organizations with a direct and immediate line to
customer herself. Step 1 is to empower Lori and others
their customers, providing them with new insights
as social community managers to start the social
into customer perceptions of brand and the products
conversation. Open an official YouTube channel,
and services that you (and your competitors) offer.
Twitter account or Facebook page and empower
On social networks such as Twitter, people are
people like Lori to use these networks to broadcast
typically blunt in their feedback and opinions. All of
announcements and content and share business
these conversations are going on globally, 24 hours
achievements. Lori’s objective is to drive interest and
a day. It is important to listen and analyze how your
social commentary on your organization. Lori and
brand is resonating. Armed with this information, you
team have to be active in the community – they need
can fine tune or course-correct as needed. Microsoft
to start a dialog.
provides tools for this purpose, such as Analytics for
Twitter and FUSE Labs.

5

Social
Marketing
Analytics for Twitter allows Lori to query Microsoft FUSE Labs works in partnership with
Twitter directly from Microsoft® Office Excel our product and research teams to ideate, develop
2010. Lori can easily understand who are the and deliver new social, real-time and media-rich
top Tweeters, what #hashtags they are using monitoring and analysis. FUSE Labs solutions give Lori
and do they have a positive or negative tone new ways to create, connect and collaborate with the
or sentiment. people, information and ideas that matter to her.

Figure 1: Analytics for Twitter Figure 2: FUSE Labs Montage

Microsoft provides you with the tools to monitor,
understand and participate in customer conversations.

6

Social Sales
The average seller spends too much time on non- Microsoft provides micro-blogging tools for this
selling activities.* Salespeople are constantly looking kind of simple collaboration in both SharePoint and
for answers and expertise to close more deals faster. Dynamics CRM.
In our personal lives it’s incredibly easy to find
people and information we need through search
engines and social networks. It makes sense to
introduce consumerized social experiences into
business solutions.

Micro-blogs allow people to send short messages
(posts) including questions, answers and comments.
Other people can respond enabling simple,
streamlined collaboration. A salesperson, Terry,
could post that he is looking for expertise to help
on a big deal. Jill, a technician, can respond with Figure 3: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds
a simple post to let Terry know she can help out.
This avoids multiple emails. In this way, Terry and Ask any salesperson how they meet revenue targets
Jill (who may not even know each other) can easily and they’ll tell you it’s all about how they can stay on
connect and collaborate across organizational top of the situation. How does Terry cut through the
boundaries to drive a successful sales outcome. clutter of daily business and listen to what’s going on
in the context of his specific accounts, leads, contacts
and deals? Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides
It’s incredibly easy to find people and Activity Feeds presenting a simple timeline
information we need through search view of what’s going on in the business based
on what’s important to Terry – it is the same
engines and social networks.
concept as the Facebook Wall.

* http://blog.sellingpower.com/gg/2011/02/how-much-time-do-your-salespeople-spend-selling.html

7

Social Sales
into customer connections, preferences,
Microsoft provides you with tools for your behaviors and sentiments, which can lead
sales teams to bring simple social principles to more productive sales engagements.
into how they communicate and collaborate. Microsoft provides the Outlook Social
Connector that allows people to manage
All Terry has to do is follow the people, organizations their social networks and stay up-to-date directly in
and events he cares about and his timeline view Outlook. With this tool, Terry can see social profiles
reflects that. He can review this no matter where he is, from LinkedIn and Facebook and interactions such
at his desk or out of the office on his mobile devices. as emails and documents exchanged. He can also
see appointments attended all without ever leaving
Terry is results-oriented. He likes to have his
his Inbox.
achievements acknowledged (and broadcast).
Activity Feeds can be configured to automatically
post updates when events occur, such as closing a
deal. When Terry closes a deal the system has now
informed the world that Terry is a star. Not only does
Terry’s boss get the news, but also the VP of sales.
The system has become a promoter of Terry’s actions
– he doesn’t have to worry about sending out that
bragging email anymore.

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM social capabilities
make it easier for our teams to communicate
and collaborate quickly and simply... Our
users love the ability to follow all relevant
activity across the accounts they own.” Figure 4: Outlook Social Connector

—Brian Gabriel, Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft provides you with tools for your sales
FM Global
teams to bring simple social principles into how
Salespeople constantly need to make decisions about they communicate and collaborate, as well as
the deals and people they work with. Public social harness external social networks for new ways to
networks such as LinkedIn provide additional insight find, connect with and understand customers.

8

Social
Customer
Service The service professional plays a critical role in
driving positive customer experiences. Many The proliferation of mobile devices allows
times the service professional is the only customers to air their thoughts “in the heat of
human touch point to the customer. Their the moment.”
responsibility is to turn customers into
loyal fans. In our example, Ken, the service manager, what #hashtags they are using, and even drill into
has this responsibility. For Ken, it’s about finding new individual tweets to engage directly with that
ways to engage customers and respond quickly to individual. In real time, Ken can gauge whether there
their concerns and comments. is cause for deeper research.

The social customer will use social networks to air When Ken identifies an escalating issue, he needs
their opinions and lay down the gauntlet for an to be able to work with marketing to determine an
organization to listen and respond, quickly. The appropriate response plan. If the issue has been
proliferation of mobile devices allows customers surfaced via social media, then one of the response
to air their thoughts “in the heat of the moment.” channels has to be social media itself. Businesses gain
This presents both a challenge and an opportunity kudos and credibility from their social customers by
for Ken. The challenge is, how does Ken’s team trawl acknowledging and responding to problems through
thousands of conversations on social networks like social channels. Social provides an opportunity for
Twitter and Facebook to identify people who are the business to proactively address issues at scale. The
detailing problems they want fixed? The opportunity business can quickly reverse a negative situation.
is to respond in real time and demonstrate that they
Kudos received by handling an issue proactively also
were heard; you can turn a negative experience into
has other positive effects. Social customers who have
a positive one and win your customer’s trust.
great service experiences will publicize them via
Furthermore, Ken can analyze these opinions and social networks. Most customers listen to and trust
views providing a valuable “early warning” system peers above anyone else. A glowing recommendation
to identify emerging problems before they become is incredibly powerful in sustaining customer loyalty,
larger in severity and scale. building equity in your brand and strengthening
your community. In essence, your social customers
Microsoft provides tools that assist Ken in social
can become an extended service community for
listening and analysis. Ken can use the same tool
your business.
as Lori from marketing: Analytics for Twitter. Ken
can analyze the top Tweeters rated by sentiment,

9

Social
Customer
Additionally, Ken can use the social tools
from Microsoft to identify advocates and Social communities represent a constant
source of real-time feedback that previously
Service
champions and work with marketing to
incent influential customers to be brand would have taken considerable time, effort
and service “ambassadors.” and expense to collect.
Another significant investment from Microsoft is a Because Ken can identify the most talked-about
cloud service from Microsoft SQL Azure Labs. This issues, he can feed this data back to the business
pre-release service, Microsoft Codename “Social to improve future products and services. Social
Analytics,” allows you to easily integrate social communities represent a constant source of real-
information into your business solutions. This service time feedback that previously would have taken
aggregates social media content from many sources, considerable time, effort and expense to collect.
including Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums.
“Sharpening our organization, creating
It also provides sentiment analysis capabilities on
transparency, and improving access to our
the social content.
intellectual assets [people] could only increase
our flexibility and responsiveness.”

—Ed Coleman, Chief Executive Officer, Unisys

When all is said and done, social networking is
another engagement channel your customer service
organization should take advantage of. However,
Ken needs to ensure his team’s efforts are embedded
in the everyday processes of the customer service
organization to ensure consistency across all channels
Figure 5: Microsoft Codename “Social Analytics” of customer engagement.

10

How Do I
Get Started?
Define and prioritize your Plan your approach
social objectives
Nominate the communities you will serve. Determine
the organizational implications of social technologies.
Is it even appropriate for you to utilize social
If you are looking at providing social collaboration
technologies in your business strategy? There
tools internally, then define their purpose and scope.
needs to be executive support or sponsorship and a
If you will be listening to and engaging with external
cultural willingness to embrace social technologies
communities, then who will take ownership for
for real business value. Social is not an individual
response plans and escalations when they
departmental initiative – it takes true cross-business
are required?
commitment and resourcing. Prioritize your objectives.
For example, do you want to start by providing Ensure you have a governance model in place to
simpler communication and collaboration for your set out how you will use social technologies – when
teams, or is it initially more important to listen to are they an appropriate engagement tool versus
external communities of customers and influencers? other traditional channels such as web, email and
Whichever is your initial goal, the key to success is to telephone? Change management is a critical factor in
start simple and build from there. any social strategy. There needs to be clear guidance
to employees and customers about which business
processes will utilize social technologies, and under
Define and prioritize what circumstances. Like any other technology
your social objectives investment, if social tools are deployed to users and
customers with no clear guidance, then there is a

Plan your approach
your plan constantly

strong possibility of poor adoption.
Review and refine

Determine
success criteria

11

How Do I
Get Started?
Determine success criteria Review and refine your
plan constantly
Determine the metrics that you will measure to
define success with your social strategy. Will it
Don’t be afraid to change course as you need to.
be based on the usage volume of internal social
Remember that this is a marathon not a sprint. The
collaboration tools? For external community
social technology landscape is constantly evolving.
engagement, will it be based on the number of
Social networks will come and go. Look at the rise
followers on the corporate Facebook page or the
and fall of MySpace and the challenges that Facebook
volume and sentiment of tweets about your products
meets to remain relevant and commercially appealing.
and services on Twitter? If you are taking a customer
New ones will arise as new concepts are discovered –
service focus, are you considering metrics such
for example, Pinterest.
as response times for issues raised, or volume of
customer issues resolved. There will be times when you need to look at your
governance model and your social commitments.
Your initial objective when engaging with external
As you meet your success criteria for adoption, then
communities is to establish sincerity and credibility.
start to look at other measures such as customer
If you are seen to be engaging and listening to the
satisfaction, sales win rates and brand sentiment.
community, then the community will engage and
listen to you. Social isn’t about lip-service; you won’t
get any credit for opening a Twitter account and
Enjoy the journey.
then not engaging through it – inaction can lead
to a negative impact on your social credibility and
potentially your overall brand sentiment. Conversely,
listening and establishing an open dialog with
customers through social channels can significantly
boost credibility and sentiment.

12

Conclusion
The surging popularity of social
technologies is indisputable, yet many Success will land with those businesses who
organizations continue to struggle to harness can integrate the wealth of data, feedback
them for real business benefits. Microsoft and conversations from social technologies
technologies fuel the Dynamic Business. It’s a into their business initiatives and processes.
broader vision than just a social enterprise.
We are defining a connected and forward-looking Many business solutions available today only focus
enterprise, the successful enterprise of the future; on one aspect of social, such as internal social
an enterprise that connects its employees, partners collaboration, but neglect other equally valuable
and customers to what they need, when they need it, external communities. Ultimately, success will land
using the device and channel they prefer. with those businesses that can integrate social
technologies’ wealth of internal and external data,
feedback and conversations into existing business
initiatives and processes.

Remember that the Dynamic Business is one that
includes social technologies as one of several channels
to engage with key stakeholders – it is one component
of the way you do business but not the only way!

The most important components of any social strategy are:
Defining your social objectives and the communities you will engage.

Ensuring you have executive sponsorship and cultural willingness in your business.

Aligning your resources to support social in the fabric of the way you do business.

Outlining a clear goal-oriented plan and constantly reviewing and refining it.

Flexible software tools to support your plan.

13

Conclusion
At Microsoft we spend over 9 billion dollars per year on research and development.
Continuous investment in social technologies is central to our mission and business
strategy. We have multiple ongoing social investments across our business and consumer
products, including Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, Office, Bing, Windows Phone,
Xbox and many others. In fact, Microsoft is accelerating our investment in social
technologies for business with the announcement on June 25, 2012 of the acquisition
of Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks. Microsoft will continue to
build on our proud tradition of tools that drive productivity and insight to deliver rich
integrated social experiences for your employees and customers. Just like social needs
to be woven into the fabric of your business processes, Microsoft is weaving social
capabilities into our software – both today and in the future.

Microsoft is making the Dynamic Business
vision of tomorrow a reality today.

14 © 2012 Microsoft Corporation

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Whitepaper - The connected enterprise