Social media's impact on business is far-reaching, transforming industries and rendering some companies obsolete in a matter of months, yet enterprises are lagging behind this trend.
So says Tom Eggemeier, Alcatel-Lucent senior vice-president for sales in Europe, Middle East and Africa, discussing the company's plans to roll out a new social media service.
The company has added a social media component from Bell Labs to its software to enable customers to identify the impact social media has on its customers, determine who the social media influencers are in their customer's business, and how enterprises can best use social media to drive business value.
He says companies assess a customer's influence in social media and determine if that person can be a brand advocate. For instance, a person with 2 000 Twitter followers has a broad reach and becomes a valuable customer to the company in terms of marketing.
He says the reason why enterprises are falling behind consumers when it comes to the adoption of social media is because of the generation gap in large organisations.
“Digital natives using social media are generally under 40 years of age, while chief executives are generally older and have not grown up with the technology.”
The second reason he adds is that new technology has come into the enterprise and businesses are reluctant to take advantage of social media tools using these new technologies.
The decision to roll out the service locally comes as more opportunities emerge on the continent, due to improved broadband infrastructure. “We think Africa is a market that's taking off and technology spend will be higher than Western Europe in terms of growth,” says Eggemeier.
Share