Marketplace Communities: Improving Marketplace Relationships with Online Community & Social Software...

8/9/2019 Marketplace Communities: Improving Marketplace Relationships with Online Community & Social Software Solutions

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/marketplace-communities-improving-marketplace-relationships-with-online-community 1/17

Improving Marketplace Relationships with

Online Community & Soc ia l Software Solutions

June 2009



Marketp lac e Comm unities

Property of IGLOO Inc. All rights reserved. i

Contents

Contents ................................................................................................................ i

Introduction ..........................................................................................................

2

The Internet Affect — Web 2.0 ....................................................................... 2

Online Communities ........................................................................................ 3

Marketplace Communities .................................................................................... 4

Marketing—Engaging Customers to Build Brand Loyalty ........................................ 5

Social Media Marketing—The Web 2.0 Medium is the Message .................... 5

Managing & Protecting Your Brand ................................................................. 7

Customer Support—Delivering Superior Service .................................................... 8

Streamlining Customer Support to Ensure Retention...................................... 8

Promoting End User Productivity & Customer Feedback to Increase

Competitiveness ........................................................................................

9

Partners—Accelerating Innovation .......................................................................11

Capitalize on the Ideas, Insights & Domain Expertise of Your Partners ......... 11

Implement Quickly and Affordably .......................................................................13

Technology ..................................................................................................... 13

Deployment ................................................................................................... 13

Culture ........................................................................................................... 14

Conclusion—the C‐Level Perspective ....................................................................15




Introduction

Most companies today, regardless of location, size or industry focus struggle with the same things:

1. Vital corporate knowledge being trapped in information silos like email inboxes and structured

information systems like ERP and CRM (knowledge).

2. A limited understanding of organizational expertise (talent).

3. Creating their connected but globally dispersed workforce

(relationships).

These issues hamper productivity, decrease corporate capacity and

cripple the pace of innovation.

The Internet Affec t — Web 2.0

Over the last 10 years the Internet has changed our lives forever—

both from a social and a business perspective. Currently we are in a

technology phase that the experts call Web 2.0 — a set of new and innovative tools that take us beyond simple

browsing, searching and publishing of static web sites. These new Web 2.0 tools enable us to actively

participate, publish and interact with others on the web quickly, easily and at little or no cost.

Web 2.0 technologies are quickly changing how organizations, institutions and enterprises innovate, collaborate

and share knowledge. New user‐driven networked business models, practices and processes are emerging

where collaboration, contribution and sharing are promoted and rewarded within an organization. This cultural

shift is just starting to transform old hierarchical‐driven organizations into interactive, vibrant online

communities that are more agile, productive and competitive. Corporations, associations and academic

institutions are rethinking old business models and evolving their cultures to include Web 2.0 technology to

compete in an emerging global knowledge economy.

What is interesting is that many companies do not realize that networking is not a new concept in the business

world. Business users have been networking for decades, long before anyone had ever heard of Facebook or

Linked‐In. From the daily telephone conversations we have with our customers to conference room meetings

Property of IGLOO Inc. All rights reserved. 2





with potential partners or the water cooler conversations with other employees; these are all early forms of

social networking and are still being used today.

Online Comm unitiesOnline communities are a great solution for companies looking for new and innovative ways to find information,

share knowledge, experience and ideas, and to build business relationships across organizational and

geographical boundaries. When implemented correctly, online communities can create tremendous corporate

capacity by connecting, empowering and motivating their most valuable business asset: people.

Two major online community types exist in every organization – Workplace and Marketplace.

A Workplace

Community

empowers

your

organization

to

quickly

and

easily

connect

your

workforce

across

geographically dispersed project teams, departments and business units to realize significant productivity gains,

foster innovation and drive employee engagement.

Marketplace Communities extend your network beyond the corporate firewall, allowing you to connect with

members, partners, customers and suppliers to deepen relationships, build trust and reward loyalty.





Ma rketp lac e Communities

Marketplace communities drive, enhance and enrich your connections with your members, alumni, partners,

customers and

suppliers,

enabling

you

to:

• Build deeper and tighter relationships with partners and customers; increase customer retention.

• Accelerate innovation; advance from serial to parallel collaboration and development.

• Shorten project lifecycles; remove project roadblocks caused by poor or insufficient information.

• Improve processes; increase access to the experience and expertise of partners.

• Reduce duplicated efforts: share best practices and previous project information.

• Dramatically reduce operating costs through improved employee and team efficiencies.

• Improve competitiveness by centralizing resources and saving time.

This paper will focus on the business value of Marketplace Communities. Throughout the paper, we’ll use real

life examples or applications of Marketplace Communities to illustrate business benefits like:

• Improving customer engagement and access to marketing intelligence to build brand loyalty and sell

more products and services.

• Providing superior customer support to create deeper and more trusted relationships with your

customers.

• Connecting employees, partners, customers and suppliers within a global trading community to

collaborate and innovate to bring better products to market faster.





Marketing—Engag ing Customers to Build Brand Loya lty

As consumers, we are exposed to a myriad of marketing messages on a daily basis. Due to this overexposure,

the trend

is

now

to

ignore

traditional

media

messages

and

rely

on

information

from

an

increasing

number

of

online (and trusted) resources—including consumer blogs, product reviews, videos and more. As consumer trust

in traditional media depreciates, it is becoming clear that marketers need to take a new approach: they need to

engage the customer and prove value. To start making any kind of impact, marketing teams need to become

involved in grassroots, consumer‐initiated dialogues like blogs and online discussions. An online community

supports this kind of customer engagement, connecting your marketers directly with your customers to build

relationships that result in an improved brand experience and more satisfied customers.

Soc ial Media Marketing—The Web 2.0 Med ium is the Message

An online community delivers innovative and new ways for marketers to engage with their key stakeholder

groups — analysts, media, prospects and customers. Since an increasing number of people are listening to

recommendations from peers or friends and reading competitive product reviews online, organizations are

becoming more interested in the ability to capture and capitalize on conversations that typically occur in an ad‐

hoc manner. As well, online communities provide marketers with the functionality required to find more

detailed information about their key consumers to increase sales and protect and enrich their brands.

Marketing

has

traditionally

focused

on

tracking

individuals

and

their

buying

behaviour.

A

Marketplace

Community offers both quantitative and qualitative methods for capturing buyer behaviour and measuring the

outcome, results and effectiveness of marketing initiatives. Quantitative metrics include measurable statistics

like site traffic, number of page hits, online surveys, increases in membership and even increases in

contributions, blogs and discussion forum postings. Qualitative information is much more subjective and

includes anecdotal evidence about the organic development of an online community or newly developed

partnerships that result from participation in the community. Consumer sentiment, opinion and trust are often

manifested in comments in blogs, ratings, discussion forums or the simple mechanism of “email to a friend”.

You can

optimize

your

online

community

with

quantitative

metrics

like

Google™

Analytics—built

right

in.

Providing real time statistical reporting and tracking fully integrated within the network, Google Analytics can

track any page that contains specified tracking code. Reports include site usage (page view, visits, bounce rate,

average time on site), visitor overview, traffic sources, content overview and conversions. For example, if your




network is designed to drive consumers to a particular page, such as a purchase or registration page, you can

track the number of successful conversions that occur.

Fully integrated with your online community, Google Analytics can be used to measure valuable marketing metrics, including website traffic, buyer behavior, and more.

Blogs are an ideal tool for sharing and measuring experience, brand awareness and loyalty. A blog is an online

editorial or article that expresses an author’s opinion, observation or expertise on specific products, services,

events and more. Authorized members of an online community can create their own blog and/or comment and

pose questions to other bloggers within the network. Expert Blogger programs can be created, and because

members can

rate

or

recommend

almost

any

type

of

published

content

within

the

community,

viral

campaigns

can be generated around a key influencer’s blog. Members can also tag content and create tag clouds based on

the most popular tags within the online community. This information and content can be shared across the

internet, allowing you to create and support brand evangelists.

Social media contributions, including blog comments, ratings, reviews and videos are playing an increasing role

in calculating the value of a customer and tracking emerging behaviour. They allow organizations to monitor

sentiment about products posted in forums and blog comments and measure the influence of those articles on

buying behaviour by tracking the actions that encourage or discourage repeat purchase. Marketing departments

can utilize Web 2.0 social networking tools to measure buying behaviour and respond accordingly using

incentive programs, or by making product improvements or service enhancements.

Web 2.0 tools and consumer activity online are exposing marketing “spin” for what it really is. Online

communities—with combined features that include Web 2.0 tools, collaboration and knowledge sharing enable






organizations to leverage these tools to engage with consumers in a more meaningful way. As a result,

organizations can create more meaningful dialogues and identify true brand champions that will help to build

brand loyalty and foster trust.

Ma naging & Protec ting Your Brand

An online community can function as an integral part of your brand strategy. Once you have identified and

profiled your brand advocates, you can use the community to protect and manage your key brand elements.

Since your brand helps to differentiate you from your competition, protecting it is critical. Because it centralizes

all of your intellectual property within a secure, online environment, an online community can be used as an

online style guide, where you can ‘make public’ approved versions of your logo, corporate templates,

messaging, positioning, rules of usage—everything employees need to make sure that your brand is represented

appropriately to

each

stakeholders

at

every

touch

point.

Images,

such

as

logos

or

a corporate

image

library,

can

be stored, organized and managed in shared albums in an online Photo Gallery. Rules of usage can be posted in

a wiki which can be continuously updated to ensure consistency. Partners and suppliers can subscribe to each

item and receive email updates (instantly, daily, weekly or monthly) when new images are added or modified.

An online community can enhance the quality of your marketing initiatives. You can use it to deliver fully

integrated customer‐facing campaigns and incorporate online and offline metrics to determine the effectiveness

of each initiative. The community also provides profiles your customers, identifies key buying behaviour and

encourages

consumer

engagement

at

multiple

touch

points,

which

results

in

improved

retention

based

on

a

direct, one‐to‐one relationship with the customer. A relationship that brings together your marketers and your

customers—and other involved departments or teams, including product development and consulting—to

release improved products and services to better meet your customers’ needs.





Customer Sup port—Delivering Sup erior Service

It’s an old adage that a happy customer is a loyal customer. In today's competitive markets, customer retention

and customer

loyalty

are

more

important

than

ever.

Especially

when

you

consider

that

the

cost

of

acquiring

new

customers runs 8 to 10 times more than the cost of keeping existing ones.

To provide superior service, your support team needs to create deeper and more trusted relationships with your

customers. This becomes a challenge when customer information is distributed over many systems throughout

your organization and your support staff is unable to find the information needed to resolve customer issues in a

timely manner. Valuable lessons learned from previous inquiries are not available to help solve current issues.

Your customer service representatives are unprepared and the resolution of customer complaints is handled

ineffectively. As a result, your customers become increasingly unsatisfied, costing your company time and

money.

Strea mlining Customer Support to Ensure Retention

A Customer Care Marketplace Community can result in faster client service by giving employees and customers

real time access to technical information. Customers can access the network from any place, at any time.

Organizations can build a highly interactive and comprehensive self ‐service online support community or "one

stop shop" for product info, beta program, upgrades, FAQs, and more based on customer requirements and user

generated

content.

Web 2.0 functionality, including blogs, wikis and forums, can be used as push mechanisms to publish

information to customers and facilitate interaction.

• Support forums cover a wide range of topics, including beta program feedback, bug reports, feature

requests and member or administrator support. They can be used to solicit feedback from customers

regarding new feature requests and product developments.

• A support

Wiki—a

collection

of

web

pages

that

people

can

access,

contribute

to

and

modify

online—

can be set up as a living, breathing document that always contains the most recent product‐related

information. Your support team can manage a wiki as a self service support site where customers can

participate to refine and improve the site, as well as your product and service offerings.




• Organizations use blogs to regularly publish upgrades, bug fixes and new product releases to their

customers, partners and user groups. Engineers can make project information public using blogs and

collect valuable feedback from customers. Customers can also create their own blogs and comment and

pose questions

to

other

bloggers

within

the

community,

stimulating

customer

input

and

involving

your

customers directly in the product development process. Using a Customer Care Community, you can

find out what your customers really think about your products, enabling you to make the necessary fixes

and create and support product or service evangelists.

Prom ot ing End User Prod uc tivity & Customer Feedback to Inc rea se Com pet itiveness

Customer service representatives can establish and use an established Community of Practice to save lessons

learned and identify the expertise needed to resolve difficult issues. An online community supports best

practices— extending

the

dialogue

to

customers,

partners

and

suppliers—to

educate

your

stakeholders

about

new products and service offerings.

A Customer Care Community keeps your customers engaged and your service representatives productive

You can also extend your organization’s reach into User Group Communities to involve your customers in

upcoming releases, beta testing and more. Engaging your users in online community groups will ensure that you

deliver more effective products and a higher quality of services to your end user community.






By directing customers to a Customer Care Community, Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are freed up to

use their time wisely and answer more pressing telephone inquiries. An online community improves access to

information, ultimately improving employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

Organizations can gain valuable insight into customer behavior by analyzing the customer dialogue within a

Customer Care Community. Feedback around new products or ideas can be solicited and both customers and

partners can be engaged to include a larger audience in the development process—accelerating product life

cycles and increasing an organization’s competitiveness. Valuable insights into customer preferences can only

result in improved quality of service.





Partners—Ac c elera ting Innova tion

Market pressures are continually forcing organizations toward greater efficiency and productivity. Controlling

costs is

only

one

part

of

this

equation.

Increasing

the

quality

of

products

and

services

is

another

and

this

requires a continued commitment to developing innovative ways of doing business with partners and

customers.

A Marketplace Community delivers all of the tools you need to create, sustain and manage a global partner

trading community where the borders and barriers between partners and suppliers are replaced by virtual

teams, improved operational efficiency and increased profits.

Delivered on a SaaS (software as a service) model, a global trading community can inexpensively and seamlessly

extend your organization’s reach directly into the business operations of customers, partners and suppliers. A

Marketplace Community makes it possible to quickly involve partners and suppliers in your development or

value chain, without costly upgrades to existing systems.

Ca pita lize o n the Idea s, Insights & Domain Expertise o f Your Partne rs

A Partner Community gives everyone in your organization increased access to expertise, information and

resources. Project teams can be created on the fly, participant roles defined and any relevant information stored

in

a

central

and

secure

online

environment.

Online

marketplace

community

solutions

accommodate

every

type

of project, from processes like Requests for Proposals (RFP's) to short term events such as joint marketing

efforts with partners outside of the firewall.

All information within your Partner Community can be searched, bookmarked, commented on, tagged, edited

and subscribed to by email or RSS by any authorized person. This allows your partners to be “in the know” when

relevant information, such as requirements, RFPs, product specifications or suppliers, changes. Your partners are

guaranteed immediate and secure access to the most up‐to‐the‐minute information and the expertise they need

to help them do their jobs. External organizations like supplier companies can access updated requirements

posted online,

for

example,

and

bid

on

them,

making

your

Partner

Community

a hub

of

efficiency

in

your

organization.




Use an online partner community to aggregate the information your partners need to work with you to develop

new products and services. As projects are established, specialists such as engineers in the construction

industry, for example, can communicate and share documents with co‐workers and partners from the work site

via the

partner

community.

Marketplace

Communities

enable

employees,

partners,

customers

and

suppliers

to

use familiar Web 2.0 tools to easily collaborate; reducing the time it takes to create proposals, for example, by

replicating best practices online.

Use a Marketplace Community to aggregate the information your partne

need to work with you to develop new products and services

A Partner Community delivers a secure platform with standard security features like SSL, role‐based security and

audit trail. Members of the community can log into the system and begin collaborating with external partners

and suppliers without having to worry about the integrity or security of their data.

Along with your customers and employees, you can leverage a Partner Community to incorporate your partners

and suppliers

into

your

internal

processes

and

convert

them

into

your

most

vocal

supporters

as

a trusted

source

of feedback and reliable innovation.






Imp lement Quic kly and Affordab ly

The introduction of any online community requires the effective management of people, process, and

technology during

implementation

and

deployment

to

ensure

success.

It goes without saying these tools must adhere to corporate governance policies and practices set up by the

organization and made available in a formalized, controlled and secure environment. Managers need to become

enablers in this new world and not gatekeepers. It requires changes in existing business models and corporate

culture.

To get you started, we have included some recommendations which can significantly help your organization to

successfully deploy an online community.

Tec hnology:

• Applications — identify the right applications for workforce. Depending on the project and the

demographic of your workforce (location, age, technical abilities, etc.) different applications and

integrations may be needed. For example, Gen Y will most likely want use text messaging and a wiki;

while Gen X will want to use documents and email.

• Security — ensure that your corporate data is secure including storage, transmission, accessibility and

auditing.

• Extensibility — look for solutions that will integrate seamlessly with your desktop applications,

enterprise solutions and mobile devices.

• Administration — identify your business requirements around controls for configuration, measurement

and monitoring of information and collaboration.

Deployment:

• Pilot — identify a known business problem with a high probability for success to show quick time‐to‐

value and

learn

from

your

experiences.

• Bottom Up — empower your employees and make them part of the decision making process – as your

employees will ultimately be the key contributors to the online community or network.

• Measurements — identify key measures of success including risks right from the start.





• Outreach — create and implement outreach and awareness campaigns to stimulate usage and

excitement.

Culture:

• Generational Gap — identify, recognize and plan for the differences between how different generations

utilize and consume information within your organization.

• Change Management — changing behaviour is difficult; plan on finding champions to promote the

network; implement incentive programs; code of conduct and best practices.

• Feedback Loops — create easy to use feedback tools in your community such as polls, blogs and rating

that can provide critical insight into future investments and deployments.





Conc lusion—the C-Level Perspec tive

With the ever changing workforce (more distributed; more mobile; and more technology savvy) and the Web

expanding to

include

new

communications

and

collaboration

tools,

online

communities

are

becoming

increasingly recognized as a powerful business application that connects an organization with its customers,

partners and suppliers to build trust and loyalty, and increase revenue. There is a growing interest today in how

organizations can participate in the evolution of online communities and leverage supported Web 2.0

technologies to capitalize on new opportunities.

From a C‐Level perspective, a Marketplace Community provides more visibility into partner and customer

preferences. It gives managers the ability to monitor key processes and performance—and discover where

efficiency and innovation lies. Managers can quickly and easily see who is blogging, commenting on, rating,

subscribing to, contributing and accessing key resources in their network. They can take their community’s pulse

and discover newfound insights into buyer behaviour, partner initiatives, process efficiencies and how key

stakeholders connect outside the firewall.

Information is made transparent by the network—it is bubbled up where it can be used and developed to

reduce rework and improve processes and sales. A Marketplace Community puts communication back into the

hands of key stakeholders, letting partners, customers and suppliers choose to receive, read, discuss and

contribute based on their participation, without being intrusive or a waste of time. Organizations can use a

Marketplace Communities

to

track

buyer

behaviour,

develop

deeper

relationships

with

customers,

bring

better

products to market faster and deliver superior customer service.

Marketplace Communities are fundamentally changing the way organizations conduct business—today and into

the future. For more information, visit www.igloosoftware.com.

http://www.igloosoftware.com/





IGLOO develops online community and social software solutions for groups, teams and organizations of any size.

Our solution suite combines Web 2.0 technology with on‐demand hosting, consulting, e‐engagement and all of

the community support services necessary for a sustainable and successful deployment. Organizations use

IGLOO communities internally to improve employee productivity (Workplace Communities) or externally to

foster relationships

with

members,

customers,

partners

and

suppliers

(Marketplace

Communities).

Fully

integrated collaboration, knowledge sharing and Web 2.0 social networking tools enable organizations to quickly

and cost‐effectively create online communities to leverage talent, knowledge and relationships across

organizational and geographical boundaries. IGLOO is funded by RBC Venture Partners. Jim Balsillie is Chair of the

IGLOO board.

If you would like more information on IGLOO’s Marketplace Community platform, please contact us at:

Toll free: 1‐877‐ON‐IGLOO (1‐877‐664‐4566)

By email: [email protected]

22 FREDERICK STREET, 6TH

FLOOR

KITCHENER, ONTARIO, CANADA N2H 6M6

TEL +1.519.489.4120

FAX +1.519.489.4121

www.igloosoftware.com

[email protected]

© Copyright 2009 IGLOO Inc. The copyright to these materials is owned, without reservation, by IGLOO. These

materials may not be copied in whole or part without the express, written permission of IGLOO. The information in

this document is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Marketplace Communities: Improving Marketplace Relationships with Online Community & Social Software...

Documents

Transcript of Marketplace Communities: Improving Marketplace Relationships with Online Community & Social Software...