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Corporate Environments
Everyone is talking but is anyone listening? Using social media to promote info services
Dec 9th
There’s no doubt that, in some quarters at least, social media are replacing more traditional methods of communication. Earlier this week it was widely reported that French IT services giant Atos which employs 80,000 people is planning to ban the use of internal emails in favour of communication via other channels such as social networks, instant messaging and microblogging.
A panel in the European Librarians Theatre at this year’s Online Information show, organised under the auspices of SLA, debated how to use social media tools to promote library services. The international panel featured Jo Alcock from Birmingham City University, Dennie Heye from Shell Information Technology International in the Netherlands, and Katrin Weller from Heinrich-Heine University in Germany.
Jo had carried out an informal survey to find out how librarians in the UK were putting social media to work, and found a trend towards consolidating accounts and tools in order to streamline the wide variety of tools and services on offer.
The panellists agreed that were a number of obstacles that could impede the implementation of social media tools. Jo noted that senior management could be cautious, particularly given the experimental nature of some social media initiatives. Implementation can be time consuming, and this problem is exacerbated when staff don’t see the importance of the project. And in some settings, access to social media is banned altogether.
Katrin echoed the focus on experimentation and trial and error – a willingness to try things out and learn as you go is key to success in social media. There isn’t a manual!
From Dennie’s point of view, making the business case to senior management was all important. At Shell, they have introduced enterprise social network Yammer to enable communication between people working in different teams and offices. By focusing on its use as an IT support tool, they were able to make a strong business case by showing that using Yammer freed up time for IT support staff.
Jo pointed out that librarians will need to exercise professional judgement in choosing the right tool for the job – for example public libraries will want to communicate with their patrons in specific ways which will be very different to the approach taken by a corporate information service; and there will be a difference between internal and external communications.
The panellists agreed that flexibility and personality were both key to the successful implementation of a social media strategy. Jo pointed out that you need to be able to adapt to changing expectations. Dennie recommended being yourself – an authentic, ‘human’ voice is much more effective than a personality-free corporate voice. For those wanting to take the plunge, Katrin suggested that you start by asking yourself ‘what will success look like’ so that further down the line you have something to measure against. This will also provide a touchstone to use when faced with choosing between the enormous range of social media tools out there.
New service models – some lessons learned
Mar 31st
Outsourcing no longer means ‘sending work to India’. Instead there are as many blended solutions and approaches as there are firms looking to change the way information services are delivered. While early attempts to outsource were focused primarily on cost containment, more recent initiatives have been focusing on value and impact.
If last night’s extremely lively SLA Europe event was anything to go by, the opportunities and challenges presented by new business models for corporate information services are exercising many minds.
The oversubscribed session, chaired by Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Phillips, heard contributions from Liam Brown (Integreon); Greg Simidian (Perfect Information); Kate Stanfield (CMS Cameron McKenna LLP) and Sarah Fahy (Allen & Overy). Each speaker presented their views and experiences of the adoption of new business models, from outsourcing and offshoring to blended approaches and questions and observations were offered by the participants. The reasons behind Allen & Overy’s recent decision to create an onshored, blended support centre in Belfast were outlined, as was CMS Cameron McKenna’s decision to work in partnership with Integreon.
The law firm perspective
Law firms are relationship and reputation businesses. They rely on high quality support services to maintain reputational capital. Quality services and high professional standards are vital to their continued success. The experience of developing new models for information provision provides opportunities for information professionals to raise their profiles – and their game.
Other key pointers from the session
- maintain contact with your users and your senior clients to help you innovate
- be flexible about what works
- ensure you solve a true business problem – and work in consultation
- focus on who has the expertise to do it right irrespective of where they are based/who employs them
- increased use of vendor capability is another form of outsourcing
- outsourcers acknowledge the need to focus on professional development
- any changed model will require significant investment of time and resources in the early stages
- information providers are responding to the high usage of products in offshored locations by providing local customer support
- ask senior level manager what works for them
- when it comes to big change programmes, remember to keep communicating with your staff and your users
Outsourcing, in its many guises, can complement a service and help deliver flexibility and value.
