Social Media Platforms unfolding new Avenues for Businesses

Social and Digital media have become the easiest mode of communication for people. They tend to spend a lot of time in the social and digital media platform. To reach a larger audience these days enterprises are using social platform as a tool for various activities like promotion of products, improve brand equity, easy way to connect with customers etc. This medium has created a great impact and has opened up numerous prospects for businesses. 

The social platform has not only turned into an engagement medium with customers but it also disperses information. Moreover, due to easy accessibility, people like to get information from social platforms and it also creates deeper connect with customers.              

Apart from customer connect, the enterprises use it as a tool to acquire customers. It helps the companies to identify their target audience, both existing and new. Along with identifying the target audience, it further provides an assessment of the effectiveness of the steps taken through these platforms.  

To better understand how businesses are reaping benefits from the social media platform and their strategies around it, we have garnered the views of few CIOs/CTOs on it.  

RP Rath, CIO, Quatrro Global Services Pvt. Ltd.

                Not only it is important but it is a must for the CIO’s to upgrade them as Digital CIO’s and become change agents for their organizations. Businesses need to change their traditional systems to newer technology driven platforms in order to maintain the competitive edge and be the preferred partner to their respective Customers and most importantly to sustain their businesses. To achieve this, the company board looks at the CIO’s. Technologies like Cloud adoption, Robotic Process Automation, IOT, Mobility, Block Chain, AI and BI etc. brings in huge values to many customers but usage is determined by nature of business, size, volume etc. The biggest challenge the CIO’s are set from time to time is to reduce cost and be the growth agent for the organization. In order to achieve this dual role, CIO’s today must look to Social media as an important layer to run their businesses.

                Quatrro has a taken a lead in adoption of social media platforms as a medium of connectivity and collaboration among its workforce and Client workforce. We use all prominent social platforms as an input medium to our service delivery processes. Starting with Candidate sourcing, training, evaluation, lead generation, conversion and treatment, Communication and collaboration, Input and output processing, issue logging to mitigation the entire service delivery process hugely use social medium platforms.

Amit Dhawan, Chief Information Security Officer, Birlasoft

                The paradigm shift in the technology space is redefining the capabilities that are needed to run CIO or CISO offices. No longer is the CIO or CISO required to ensure availability of systems. With huge migrations to cloud and use of RPA and other such technologies, the role now demands a better understanding of the business and requires agility of a high order. Social media, and not just the Facebooks, but the collaboration tools are slowly becoming a part of the daily work not from a need perspective but from a requirement one. The small verticals of capability and their interconnectivity to produce results are driving this change. These tools are also helping keeping all stakeholders current, spread the knowledge and foster partnerships within (and outside) the organizations.

Sanjeev Sinha, President - IT & Digital Transformation, India Power Corporation Ltd.

                Skill sets of CIO/CTO keep shifting with the role of technology in business. Not only newer technology becomes available, their need too changes with the new business requirements. Social media has become a high impact medium and has opened up innumerable opportunities for businesses. It also manages a communication medium as well as information gathering medium. Hence, social and digital strategy for 2019 aims to fulfill these need. It aims to increase social media presence, communicate more, identify target audiences (existing or new customers) and even measure the effectiveness of the steps taken through any social media monitoring tool. The overall aim of the strategy would be to serve the customer better and more effectively by understanding them better and providing all necessary information to the finger tips of the customer.

Kersi Tavadia, Chief Information Officer - Information Technology, BSE Ltd.

                BSE was the first to implement Social Media Analytics in its Surveillance function.  This has helped us immensely in fraud detection and rumour verification which was earlier very limited to manual processes.  Now the coverage and depth are extensive and we continue to add new dimensions into this function.

                This year we plan to integrate digitalization into our web-based trading platform, such as Mutual Funds, where we have been able to gain major market share.  BSE’s MF platform offers all services under one roof by integrating with respective service providers of MF industry.  The stage is set for rejuvenated launch of BSE MF mobile application during this month.

Chandra Mouli, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Sankara Nethralaya

                Our Social media strategy is oriented towards keeping the masses informed by providing better education on improving eye sight and eliminating avoidable blindness. Our social outreach programs provide a lot of information on educating about eye sight to the community at large. Focused initiatives include reaching out to poor and indigent patients on social and digital media for conduct of free eye camps and also Wellness campaigns.  This is an ongoing and sustained activity conducted throughout the year. We also regularly publish information through social and digital media for Eye donation and conduct workshops and awareness programs on the importance of eye donation and educate the public on the importance of the Eye donations and how it can help restore sight to a needy.

Sayed Peerzade, Group Chief Information Officer, Reliance Big Entertainment

                I think it is essential for anyone aiming for a c-level position to have a core competency. General management skills must be built around a core competency be it finance, sales, marketing, IT, HR or operations. Social media or digital strategy played major role in bringing your products near to user. We realised it long back, that’s why when we started thinking of digital strategy, its complete SMAC stack we thought of not part of it. We integrated all of our products to social media, most of them online products. We created a separate business arm for digital strategy and marketing to make all of our products, be it Films, TV, Web streaming content, Games, OTT. We are very aggressive on this.

Sanjay Chowdhry, Chief Information Officer, Hamdard Laboratories India

                Our Organization will be evaluating team collaborative tool for our organization running on social platform.  We have been into existence on social platforms for last so many years for improving brand image and getting customers feedback. In 2017 we had run online health engagement sessions on Facebook Live by having direct interactions between doctors and patients. Similar engagements may be held in the coming years as well. Brand management through social media pages will be continued in the next year also.

Sandeep Patnaik, Head - IT, BSS & OSS, ONEOTT INTERTAINMENT LTD.

                Being a wired internet service provider, most of the sales come from a Push model where our sales force will acquire the customers in connected buildings.

                For the coming year, we would like to improve our acquisition via digital channel by targeting customers with hyperlocal social channels which will allow us to get qualified leads and improve our conversion. Also, we intend to have a social media policy which covers the Dos and don’ts for our employees who engage with customers on social media.

Lakshmana Vadaga, Head - IT,  Adlabs Entertainment Ltd.

                We have implemented IoT in our organization for Chabot. We are sending notifications to the guest, who is passing through the nearest area. Ticket booking queries are happening through Chabot. We are developing In-house Merchandise application for new parks and also for existing park. This will save cost and transaction time.

Sanjay Gharde, Head IT, JK GROUP

                Social and Digital strategy aims for integrated lifecycle of marketing. Using social media and digital marketing without a strategy is quite common; such initiatives might be getting responses but more than that they must be missing opportunities. A lot of research should be done before planning a Social/Digital strategy as digital has become the core activity of marketing for rapport building of an organisation. All social platforms are giving prospects to businesses to connect customers directly, improve brand equity, complaint Redressal etc at ease.

Nitin Kumar Rohilla, Vice President – IT,  Adani Electricity Mumbai Ltd.

                AEML understands the role of social platform in customer communication. Considerable numbers of AEML customers are active on mobile and social media, it’s likely that they would like to get information from a social network quickly. Hence, apart from a having traditional forms of customer service, AEML is continuously updating its customer service framework to factor in social interactions. As per AEML’s strategy few more social and digital channels will be integrated with its customer service framework with the help of new /modified processes, platforms, tools. This will enable AEML to establish deeper connection with customers & achieve customer empowerment.”

                For the coming year, we would like to improve our acquisition via digital channel by targeting customers with hyperlocal social channels which will allow us to get qualified leads and improve our conversion. Also, we intend to have a social media policy which covers the Dos and don’ts for our employees who engage with customers on social media.

Sourav Das, CIO,  Aditya Birla Group - Essel Mining BUSINESS

                This is a continuous evolution – we do have IT Talent Council at a Business and Group Level, and along with our Learning & Development teams, define the IT Skill Matrix along with possible Roles & Responsibilities. Most common are the following 3 strategies – for certain skill gaps, they are bridged through Training, while for certain skill gaps, we decide to outsource, and finally for certain, we insource through fresh talent, or borrow know-how from someone at a Group level. We also build champions for specific technologies – for example with lot of Cloud migration happening, we identified, trained and are building Cloud Champions in each of our businesses.

Prakash Kumar, Head – IT,  BMW India Pvt. Ltd.

                Understanding customer is core to a strategy. Today’s customer expects a personalise treatment and also expects that organisation customises products to meet its specific needs. Considering this we are working to use the social media and other public spaces not only to offer our campaigns or promotions but to do analysis of the unstructured data at all these places and devise our strategies with specific customer in mind. Extensive use of analytics is immediate focus.

Vijay Sethi, CIO, CHRO & HEAD CSR,  Hero Motocorp Ltd.

                I do not see any major change in the strategy – the fundamentals remain same – how social and digital medium can be used not just to enhance customer experience but also a source for the feedback to the organization to enhance its products and processes and become more agile and customer centric. As the new technologies evolve, the focus on analytics increases.

Dhananjaya Arvind Tambe, DMD & CIO, SBI

                As more customers are moving to the digital space, and the younger ones are spending most of their time on social media, considering this the Bank adopted a strategy of being present on all the popular social media. We have been leveraging Facebook, Twitter etc. as an engagement medium with the customers while YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest pages are positioned more as information dispersing tools. We are also present on LinkedIn to connect with the demographic present there.