Pureplay Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012

Pureplay Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 Pureplays address social business as transformation by definition because they have been launched to address emerging market needs that established players either do not yet understand or have yet to organize to address. Moreover, Pureplays are not adding social business to their existing services; they have been formed to practice social business. They are a small cohort in this research survey because they were constrained to social business and transformation as were advisory firms in other categories.

Pureplay firms are often smallish startups, so they are quite limited in some areas when compared to established legacy firms as in this research survey. From a market and client perspective, Pureplays represent a vital part of the market and can offer unique capabilities; however, clients need to approach them with “eyes wide open” because the way they serve clients varies considerably.

There are thousands of social media advisory Pureplay firms that are focused on marketing and promotion. Pureplays’ capabilities are largely colored by their founders’ backgrounds. Dachis Group, SideraWorks and SocialxDesign directly […]

Enterprise I.T. Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption

Enterprise I.T. Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012[UPDATED] Enterprise I.T. vendors are chiefly product businesses that specialize in large-scale “solutions,” and all contenders in this research survey field large services businesses. They are a diverse group that was selected based on their public activity relevant to social business transformation. For example, Salesforce.com is a leading cloud infrastructure and services provider that sells organizational flexibility, which synergizes with social. IBM, Dell and Hitachi are large product vendors, although IBM’s services business is now larger than its product divisions. Accenture, Infosys, Capgemini, TCS and Cognizant are large outsourcing providers, although Accenture’s roots are management consulting, and it subsequently developed a large outsourcing business. BearingPoint is regrouping after bankruptcy; its origin, like Accenture’s, was an audit firm spinoff (KPMG and Andersen respectively).

As you evaluate advisory firms that are moving into social business, it is useful to refer to their DNA. Enterprise I.T. firms scale largely by selling products or productized services. Many have “collaboration” solutions, and they tend to approach social business within the context of product strategy. Product […]

Big Four Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption

Big Four Firm Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012[UPDATED] The Big Four accountancies have been rebuilding their advisory practices for the past several years, and social business transformation fits with their core competencies in important ways. Like Strategy firms, they have been watching adoption and producing thought leadership on various aspects of social technologies’ relevance to business. Their approach also resembles that of strategy firms in that they have relatively low evidence of social business practice.

Big Four firms are well positioned to evolve into social business consultancies because they have core competencies in business strategy and business process transformation. However, they will be challenged by their relative lack of core communications skills and awareness of “soft” social, people and behavioral knowledge.

Deloitte has been an early adopter of social business as a concept, perhaps because it did not shed its consulting practice in the early 2000s as all others did. PwC acquired boutique social business consultancy Ant’s Eye View in 2012, which shows its intention to integrate social business more deeply into its Customer Impact practice.

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Agency Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012

Agency Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012[UPDATED] Marketing, advertising and public relations (MAP) agencies have comprised the largest share of the “social” advisory and execution firms for many years. Most of the other advisory firms are relative late entrants, with the exception of some Analyst and Enterprise I.T. firms. Communication forms the core of social technologies, and MAP agencies have been pivotal in leading the growth of social media activity in their clients, many of the largest brands in the world.

However, this research survey argues that, although social media will remain an important portion of the total economic value produced by using social technologies, it will devolve into a minority portion. Collaboration and pervasive innovation will be the majority, which will require enterprise business process transformation. MAP agencies lack competencies in management consulting and enterprise transformation, so they are in an ambiguous situation, being the leaders in social media, a shrinking market in the medium to long term. This report shows how agencies can navigate these rapids and how their clients might best partner with them […]