Vision from the Top 2012: Tony Knopp, SpotlightTMS
Social media and social business are big themes for 2012. In which areas of business will the social movement have the most impact (or most potential for impact)? Why?
The social customer and its growing influence is forcing business to change. Just ask Netflix or Bank of America.
In 2012, social media and social business will have the greatest impact on customer relationship management and employee relations.
Until recently, most planning and execution of social media resided in marketing and communications departments. But social media has now become more than a marketing tool. If leveraged properly, it can be a business engagement model that creates a significant competitive advantage. It can drive customer loyalty, brand advocacy, employee satisfaction and even product innovation, if it's integrated across multiple business functions.
While most forward-thinking corporations have integrated social media into their marketing mix, the concept of social business is still relatively new. The ways businesses connect with colleagues, customers, partners and employees changed significantly over the past year as more mid-to-large enterprises began to adopt social business applications, particularly social CRM. Some CRM vendors are now taking social CRM to the next level to enable organizations to leverage best practices for creating social businesses. In the coming year, we will see explosive growth in social CRM as organizations recognize the value of having all customer-facing departments engage in social media.
As organizations take steps toward social business integration, savvy social businesses will include employees across all departments in the organization to establish social media policies and guidelines. By involving employees in shaping policies that govern their own behavior on the social web, employee morale will increase and positive perceptions of transparency and trust will follow.
Does mobile fall into one of your top 5 priorities for 2012? If so, how will you be attacking it? If not, why not?
Mobile is definitely among the top five priorities at SpotlightTMS for 2012. SpotlightTMSTM is an SaaS application that enables companies to measure the business impact of their sports and entertainment ticket and suite assets. Our focus is on growing a platform that is capable of interacting with users wherever they may be, in ways that are familiar to them. Increasingly, mobile environments are both familiar and ubiquitous.
Indeed, mobile devices are beginning to replace traditional PC hardware as the preferred communications/collaboration medium in the enterprise. Our plan is to meet the user with compelling offerings integrated into the applications they currently use. Although a standalone SpotlightTMS application will continue to be offered, we prefer to grow the product around the applications they already rely on day to day -- their Outlook or Google Calendar, mobile CRM applications, iPhone or Android email, and the like.
As the SpotlightTMS platform matures, users will have access to all of their firms' tickets and assets -- and information surrounding those assets -- on their mobile devices. According to Juniper Research, mobile ticketing (including tickets for sporting events) reached 4.5 percent of mobile phone users worldwide in 2011, and will grow to 12.7 percent -- or 750 million users - by 2015.
This trend gives us another compelling reason to provide a mobile offering. Corporations that use sports tickets and luxury suites as business development tools will be able to order tickets and invite prospects directly from their mobile CRM applications, enhancing their opportunities to generate sales and establish solid customer relationships.
This interview was published in SIIA's Vision from the Top, a Software Division publication released at All About the Cloud 2012.