If you build it, they won't necessarily come

I’ve been meaning for a while to write something on a subject dear to all procurement managers’ hearts:  how to use the wonders of social media to exchange gossip – sorry, valuable market and supplier intelligence – with peers and colleagues in reasonable privacy and security.

And I still am planning to write about that – it’s just going to have to wait for next time.  Because this week I want to pick up on Steve Hall’s recent Procurement Leaders blog, in which he got straight to it and argued that social media isn’t catching on in Procurementsville because it’s pretty useless to non-marketers.

Now, I don’t blame the more hardened cynical brethren among you in the procurement jury for being… well, cynical about social media.  It’s new, young people like doing it, and it’s on TV all the time.  Sounds dodgy already.

But let’s look at Steve’s case for the prosecution, which is:

a) a witness (a friend who apparently knows a lot about social media) who has tried several new tools and then stopped using them after a couple of weeks because they don’t generate enough value.

b) a claim that suppliers and buyers already have adequate tools to communicate – social media doesn’t offer anything new

c) an argument that social media ROI is too hard to calculate unless it’s directly linked to sales

d) the concern that social media isn’t interesting or powerful unless it’s open to all-comers (which would make closed loop or internal-only tools pretty pointless)

(Is that a fair summary, m’lud?)

First off, the defence is quite worried about Steve’s witness – his social media friend.  You MUST have a strategy before you rush off adopting any tools.  What (and whose) problem are you trying to address? Is social media the answer to the problem? Then decide which tool would be the best solution. And finally – what’s your implementation plan? Who will participate? Do you need a facilitator, manager or moderator? How will you sell it in? What management support/internal policy do you need to encourage participation? How can you integrate it with offline and face-to-face communications? Is training required?

Without any of this, I am not altogether surprised that Steve’s friend had a rather lonely and unsatisfying experience trying out some of his new playthings.  Social media is by its nature social – you need other people to come and play. And two weeks is not nearly long enough to lure sufficient people to play with you to make it interesting – let alone to know whether it’s going to be useful.

Secondly, I am far from being sure that suppliers and buyers already have adequate tools to communicate.  Just ask any supplier who’s wrestled with entering data into a screwed-up  (insert name of most hated software here) RFP template whose fields are completely inappropriate for his industry at 11pm the night before submission deadline.  Or a buyer sick of answering the same questions about the screwed up RFP template 12 times from 12 different bidders.

Or a buyer in one small part of the public sector who has no way of knowing whether anyone else in the public sector is experiencing the same problems with sourcing an item/dealing with supplier X/adapting that template.   Social media tools can offer solutions to all these common problems and more.

And how do you know if it’s working?  You’ll know.  But if you need to prove it, which often you do, ask.  Collect feedback through the social media channels themselves. Add a question to 360° CAFs and feedback surveys on communication, information accessibility and relationship quality: has it improved since the introduction of social media tools?  Look at the data, too: sign up and participation rates, both to the tools themselves and also to the initiatives, meetings, conferences, collaborative deals, white papers they promote and develop.

And there, because this is only a blog for the defence, my case must rest for now.  I’d love to know what you, the jury think.

(Some will notice I haven’t tackled Steve’s final point: can and should social media ever be private? I’ll be addressing that in my next post, I promise.)

Faddish CEOs and hulahooping apps: how procurement can dodge common social media bullets

BAM!   A BA Highlife magazine lands on your keyboard.  You eye it warily…it’s rather dog-eared and you don’t even want to think about whose sticky, germ-ridden in flight fingers have handled it for the whole month of February….

“I was reading about this social media stuff on the plane back from Belarus/Brussels/Bogota,” says your Highlife-lobbing CEO over her shoulder, as she heads into her office in a whirl of Burberry trench coat and cabin baggage.

“ Tweeting.  Yammering.  Or is it Hullabalooing?  Anyway… it seems to be huge. What are we doing about it?  And ‘apps’, for instance: it sounds like we should definitely have some of those.   Sort it out, would you, old chap – sounds like an IT sourcing one! ”

Your heart sinks.  As if you didn’t have enough on your plate already. You haven’t got a clue what yammering is, but you’re pretty certain it isn’t included in scope of your current exhaustive and exhausting negotiations with your biggest software provider.  You consider the odds that your boss will have forgotten all about hulahooping apps by the time your team has researched them and identified some potential suppliers… but you have a sneaking feeling that it’s just the sort of “innovative” thing she likes to mention in quarterly results calls ….

In just about any other category of spend, such a random, unstrategic nightmare would be unthinkable in a professional self-respecting organisation.   But when it comes to social media, this scenario is played out every day in corporate HQs across Europe.   An unholy mixture of media hype, peer-envy, panic and a huge dose of blind ignorance in the C-Suite can conspire to trigger investment in social media “initiatives” which never really catch on.   Eighteen months and significant sums of time, money and credibility expended later, it’s tempting for exasperated CIOs, CPOs and CMOs to mutter under their breaths, “Well it wasn’t MY idea…”

But it doesn’t have to be this way.    Don’t be discouraged by your apparent ignorance of social media. Regardless of whether you know what yammering is at the start of the process (see below if you are curious to find out!), insist that your organisation applies strategic, rigorous discipline to these decisions.  What business problem are we really trying to solve, and for whom?  What are the strategic options?  Is a social networking or social media approach one of them?  (Beware of social media agencies telling you that social media is always the answer – when you are a hammer, after all, everything looks like a nail).

What criteria will we use to evaluate these options?  And then – and only then – which social media tool/s might help us deliver, and how do we evaluate these?   This involves, very simply, a crystal clear understanding of the end user’s real needs and very firm discipline when it comes to value for money, total cost of ownership, ROI measurement and risk management: habits which should be second nature for any good procurement manager.   Do you really need to build or buy an expensive customised enterprise platform, when a Google product provides the same benefits instantly, more simply, more accessibly, and for free?


**Jargon guide**
Twitter:  free micro blogging service, open to all to “tweet” on it .  Extremely interactive and flexible: great for real time news, external and internal comms, customer service, feedback, research, content sharing.  Capability limited for highly confidential information exchanges.

Yammer:   micro blogging service designed for internal corporate use.   Offers more security than Twitter.   Freemium model (monthly fee per user charged for full service).

Audioboo (referred to by Peter Smith as “Hullabaloo”):   Mobile app and website which allows very easy recording, posting and sharing of audio files.  Freemium model.

App:  piece of software, often designed for a smartphone, which helps someone achieve a specific task, eg check-in for a flight or scan groceries to a list.