Business partners, suppliers, and external experts such as consultants have benefited from the adaptation of social technologies, including:
1. Increasing speed to access knowledge
2. Reducing communication costs, and
3. Increasing speed to access external experts/consultants
One of the main technologies that has given these benefits is Voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP), which is used by Skype and Google Hangout—two free services that can be used to facilitate meetings and interviews, which can replace expensive and outdated legacy phone systems. The ease of use of this software can facilitate collaboration with your business partners, consultants and suppliers no matter where they are.
Although the adaptation of social technologies to ease business processes is something businesses are doing more and more, there are still a few challenges ahead. For example,a revised Facebook algorithm determines which content makes it to the top of the news feed and which content doesn’t. If you have 100,000 likes on your Facebook page, only 10,000 might see your posts—that’s a reach of only 10% at best! Even though you might have a strong social media presence, there is really no choice but to consider the option for promoted posts so that all your fans can see what your company is up to.
Adaptation to social technology is beneficial to your business because it can cut costs and create goodwill with your current customers, and even attract some new ones. In addition, your business processes will be more streamlined and you can use the time (and money) that you used to spend worrying about how to reach out to and communicate to customers and business partners and use it on other areas of your business that need improvement as well.
