Social Media in Information Systems / Enterprise Social Networks and Knowledge Management

Social Media Information Systems & Knowledge Management

What is a Social Media Information System (SMIS)?

• Use of IT to support content sharing among networks of users.

• Enables communities of people related by a common interest.

• Social media (SM) supports sharing of content among networks of users.

• Social media information system (SMIS).

Social Media Active Users

• Facebook has the highest number of active users, followed by Instagram.

• Other platforms include Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

• The U.S. population is also shown for reference.

How Facebook and Google Profile You

• Links to YouTube videos explaining how Facebook and Google profile users for advertising and data collection purposes.

• Reference to "DuckDuckGo Ad" for privacy.

The Social Dilemma

• Recommendation to watch "The Social Dilemma" documentary on Netflix, which discusses the impact of social media.

Three SMIS Roles

• Social Media Providers: Platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.- Attract and target specific demographic groups.

• Users: Individuals and organizations.

• Communities: Groups with mutual interests that go beyond familial, geographic, and organizational boundaries.

Social Media Application Providers

• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google.

• Sponsors might pay a fee, depending on the application and its use.

• Creating a company page is free on Facebook, but advertising to communities that "Like" the page incurs charges.

• Custom-developed SM for companies using SharePoint for wikis, discussion boards, and photo sharing.

• Note: Some companies hire low-cost labor to "Like" pages of competition.

Five Components of SMIS

How Do SMIS Advance Organizational Strategy?

• Strategy determines value chains, which determine business processes, which determine information systems.

• Value chains determine structured business processes.

• The constantly changing nature of SM means process flows cannot be designed or diagrammed.

Organizational Strategy Determines Information Systems

• The slide illustrates how industry structure, competitive strategy, value chains, business processes, and information systems are interconnected, including:- Industry structure influences competitive strategy.

  • Competitive strategy shapes value chains.

  • Value chains determine business processes.

  • Business processes dictate the requirements for information systems.

• The diagram includes elements such as bargaining power of suppliers and customers, threat of new entrants and substitutes, and rivalry among existing firms.

  *Support activities: includes firm infrastructure, human resources, technology development, and procurement.

  *Primary activities: inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service.

SM in Value Chain Activities

Social Media and the Sales and Marketing Activity

• Dynamic, SM-based CRM process.

• Social CRM: Each customer crafts relationship.

• Wikis, blogs, discussion lists, FAQs, sites for user reviews and commentary, other dynamic content.

• Customers search content, contribute reviews, ask questions, create user groups, etc.

• Not centered on customer lifetime value.

• Not structured and controlled like traditional CRM.

Social Media and Customer Service

• Relationships emerge from joint activity; customers have as much control as companies.

• Product users freely help each other solve problems.

• Risk of peer-to-peer support: loss of control.

Social Media and Inbound and Outbound Logistics

• Social media is used to provide numerous solution ideas and rapid evaluation of them.

• Suppliers and shippers work with many companies.

• Facilitates user-created content and feedback among networks needed for problem-solving.

• Loss of privacy is a significant risk; problem-solving happens in front of competitors.

Social Media and Manufacturing and Operations

• Designing products, developing supplier relationships, and improving operational efficiencies.

• Crowdsourcing: The process of employing users to participate in product design or product redesign.

• Widely used in business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships to market products to end-users.

Social Media and Human Resources

• Employee communications using internal personnel sites (e.g., MySite and MyProfile in SharePoint).

• Finding employee prospects, recruiting candidates, and candidate evaluation.

• Place for employees to post their expertise.

• Risks: Forming erroneous conclusions about employees.

• Becoming a defender of belief or pushing unpopular management messages.

How Do SMIS Increase Social Capital?

• Investment of resources for future profit.

• Capital:- Physical capital: Produce goods and services (factories, machines, manufacturing equipment).

  • Human capital: Human knowledge and skills investments.

  • Social capital: Social relations with the expectation of marketplace returns.

• Types of business capital.

What Is the Value of Social Capital?

• Value of social capital:- Number and strength of relationships, resources controlled.

  • The WHO you know….

• Adds value in four ways:- Information: Opportunities, alternatives, problems…

  • Influence: Influence decision-makers

  • Social credentials

  • Personal reinforcement: Professional image or status

Using Social Networks to Increase the Strength of Relationships

• Strength of a relationship: The likelihood other person or other organization will do something that benefits your organization.

• Examples: Write positive reviews, post pictures of you using the organization’s products or services, tweet about upcoming product releases, and so on.

• Organizations strengthen relationships by asking you to do them a favor.

• Note: Some organizations pay folks to review their products.

Revenue Models for Social Media

• Advertising: Pay-per-click.

• Use increases value: As more people use a site, the more value it has, and the more people will visit.

• Freemium revenue model: Offers users a basic service for free and charges a premium for upgrades or advanced features.

• Sale of apps, virtual goods, affiliate commissions, donations.

Managing the Risk of Employee Communication

• Develop and publicize a social media policy.- A statement delineates employees’ rights and responsibilities.

  • Organizational messaging is now dynamic.

• Intel's Three Pillars of SM Policies:- Disclose

  • Protect

  • Use Common Sense

Intel's Rules of Social Media Engagement

• Disclose- Be transparent – use your real name and employer.

  • Be truthful – point out if you have a vested interest.

  • Be yourself – stick to your expertise and write what you know.

• Protect- Don't tell secrets.

  • Don't slam the competition.

  • Don't overshare.

• Use Common Sense- Add value – make your contribution worthwhile.

  • Keep it cool – don't inflame or respond to every criticism.

  • Admit mistakes – be upfront and quick with corrections.

Internal Risks from Social Media

• Benefits from SM, but also risks/costs.

• Seemingly innocuous comments can inadvertently leak information used to secure access to organizational resources.

• Don't tell everyone it’s your birthday because your date of birth (DOB) can be used to steal your identity.

Internal Risks from Social Media (cont'd)

• Employees may increase corporate liability when they use social media.- Sexual harassment liability, Leak confidential information.

• Reduced employee productivity.- 64% of employees visit non-work-related websites each day.

  • Tumblr (57%), Facebook (52%), Twitter (17%), Instagram (11%), and SnapChat (4%).

Social Media Plan Development

1. Define Your Goals

2. Identify Success Metrics

3. Identify Target Audience

4. Define Your Value

5. Make Personal Connections

6. Gather and Analyze Data

Common Social Media Strategic Goals

Social Media Success Metrics

• Hard part in identifying success metrics is identifying the right ones. The right metrics help you make better decisions, while the wrong metrics are meaningless.

• Vanity metrics sound good but don’t improve your decision-making.

Common Social Media Metrics

Make Personal Connections

• 62% of Americans say social media campaigns have no influence on their purchase decisions.

• 81% of respondents said social media posts from their friends directly influenced their purchase decisions.

• Informed, useful interactions that help solve particular problems and satisfy unique needs.

What Is An Enterprise Social Network (ESN)?

• Specialized enterprise social software is designed to be employed inside the organization.

• Blogs, microblogs, status updates, image and video sharing, personal sites, and wikis.

• The goal is to improve communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Organizational Information Systems

• Content management systems:- Store, manage, and deliver documents.

• Collaborative knowledge management systems:- Share knowledge through communication technology.

• Expert systems:- Codify human knowledge into rules.

  • Process rules to give advice.

What Are Content Management Systems?

• Information systems that track documents, Web pages, and graphics.

• Do not directly support business operations.

• Not part of the operational system.

• Used to create, manage, or deliver documents.

• Example: a closet.

What Are the Challenges of Content Management?

• Functions are complex.

• Databases are huge.

• New and changed content daily.

• Documents do not exist in isolation.

• Refer to other documents.

• When one changes, others must change.

• Document contents are perishable.

• Become obsolete.

• Need to be altered or removed.

• Documents must be translated into all languages before publishing.

• Example: closet or collections.

Knowledge Storage

• Data stored 'properly' (structure and relationships).

• New data added 'properly' (validation).

• Database.

Resistance to Knowledge Sharing

• Inhibiting human factors:- Employees reluctant to exhibit ignorance.

  • Fear appearing incompetent.

  • Employee competition.

  • Shyness.

  • Fear of ridicule.

  • Inertia.

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Structured Knowledge: Documents, reports, presentations.

• Semistructured Knowledge: E-mail, voice mail, brochures, bulletin boards.

• Network Knowledge: Experts in well-defined knowledge domains, FAQs.

Structured Knowledge Systems

• Main problem: how to create an appropriate classification scheme to organize information so it can be easily accessed.

• Tag/coded.

• E.g., KPMG’s KWorld is one of the largest structured knowledge systems.- International tax and accounting.

Semistructured Knowledge Systems

• Digital information that does not exist in a formal document or a formal report.

• 80% of an organization’s business content is unstructured.

• E.g., folders, memos, e-mails, presentations.

• Now required to track and manage, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

• E-mail/phone conversations, 5 years.

Knowledge Network Systems

• Tacit knowledge residing in the memory of expert individuals.

• Estimated average cost of redundant effort in Fortune 500 companies exceeds $60$ million per year per firm.

• Directory of corporate experts.

• May also have:- Best-practices.

  • FAQ repository.

  • External sources on the Web.

  • News feeds, Blogs, Social bookmarking.

Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Work

• E.g., researchers, designers, architects, scientists, engineers.

• Knowledge workers: exercise independent judgment.

• Keep the organization current in knowledge as it develops in the external world.

• Serving as internal consultants regarding the areas of their knowledge, the changes taking place, and opportunities.

• Acting as change agents, evaluating, initiating, and promoting change projects.

Knowledge Work Systems

• Highly specialized with powerful graphics, analytical tools, and communications and document management capabilities.

• Computer-aided design (CAD):- Provide design specs, Recalculates technical details.

• Virtual reality systems:- Simulations, Virtual reality modeling language (VRML) – Web standard.

• Investment workstations:- Streamline investment process → financial sector.

What Are Expert Systems?

• Expert systems:- Rule-based systems IF/THEN.

  • Encode human knowledge.

  • Example: Calculator.

• Expert systems shells:- Process IF side of rules until no value returned.

  • Reports values of all variables.

  • Knowledge gathered from human experts in the domain of interest.

Expert Systems Drawbacks

• Difficult and expensive to develop

• Labor intensive, ties up domain experts

• Difficult to maintain

• Changes cause unpredictable outcomes

• Didn’t live up to expectations

• Can’t duplicate diagnostic abilities of humans

• Constantly needing expensive changes to programs to reflect new knowledge

Expert Systems: Limitations

• Work well with problems of classification – possible outcomes are all known in advance

• Less useful for unstructured problems typically encountered by managers

• Expensive. May cost less to hire/train more experts than to build an expert system!

• Expert system must continually change

• Maintenance costs high!

Meet Watson

• IBM's Watson is a cognitive system that can "reason."

• Significant