Social media is an untapped resource, but is poised to deliver transformative business insights.
So said Kaveer Beharee, founder and principal analyst at Ubiquity Consulting, speaking at the ITWeb Social Business Summit in Johannesburg yesterday.
Social media technology is advancing at a staggering pace with technologies becoming incredibly powerful and getting cheaper, said Beharee.
He pointed out social media adds information that is largely untapped by most organisations, which should be factored into decision-making processes.
Every company has some sort of social media presence and the question most organisations are battling with is how to translate this into business outcomes, he added.
Integrating social data is becoming much easier, said Beharee, adding over the past two years data and technology costs have been reduced by more than 60%.
Today, social media, big data technology and data science provide organisations with new tools to gain even deeper insights, said Beharee.
However, social analytics is not delivering meaningful value to companies, he added.
According to a report by World Wide Worx and Fuseware report, Social Media Landscape 2014, In SA, 95% of all companies invest in social media, with 91% believing social has the potential for building a business.
Yet, just 19% of companies believe they are getting as much value from social media as they could, it adds.
Globally the picture is better, says Beharee, adding 55% of companies globally measure social media, but are unable to tie it in with business outcomes.
Some 29% understand the link between social media and business outcomes, 11% integrate social media with other data streams, while 5% integrate or view all social data with other enterprise data streams, he said.
According to Beharee, the main issues limiting the value of social media are that the data from social media is unique and unstructured, social media is not widely understood and the social media technologies are black boxes.
To deliver meaningful value to companies, organisations should integrate social media data for business decision-making and predicative analytics, said Beharee. He pointed out companies can use social media to predict business outcomes and planning.
Companies have always wanted to get close to their customers and social data provides a good opportunity - its metrics are infinitely more powerful than focus groups, said Beharee.
Big data technology opens the aperture to stakeholder insights, enabling analysis of vast quantities of data, both reliably and timeously, says Ubiquity Consulting.
"Remember the value of data is not the data itself - it's what you do with the data. For data to be useful you first need to know what data you need, otherwise you just get tempted to know everything and that's not a strategy, it's an act of desperation that is doomed to end in failure, advised Beharee, quoting data expert Bernard Marr.
According to Beharee, social media enriches domain ontologies, but requires a huge effort to filter meaningful, relevant data.
Mining social media data requires a structured approach. It's not about analysing 100% of data, but the right data to deliver rich business ontologies, he said.
Beharee points out harvesting value from social media requires active social media strategies, collaborating with domain experts - in line with governance structures, processes and procedures.
Ownership or control of social data is key, said Beharee, adding data ownership is the only meaningful way organisations can verify results.
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