Is your CIO ready for Social Computing?

Social Computing and social media represent a new wave of energy and both business and IT innovation that is sweeping through tradtional business and IT set ups. The growth of social computing, social networking and social media is impressive and looks unstoppable. All three phenomena are becoming all pervasive and are impacting on so many areas of business. So what are implications for corporate IT and the CIO?

1. New Business Models

All the evidence points to the fact that "Social" will  deliver a new customer-driven business model, which is one where it is the voice of the customer that influences business strategy and where corporate marketing can really respond to real customer needs. This is not the traditional engagement with customers that large corporates have enjoyed in the past.  This is a new working model.

2. A big Impact on IT and the traditional CIO role

So what is the impact of these new technologies on IT and the CIO?  CIO’s have typically managed an environment where they have spent huge amounts of time and effort managing and protecting corporate data and building walls around that corporate data in the form of firewalls, secure data centres, controls over data, internal organisations, segregation of duties etc.  The life of a CIO has always been taxing but through a carefully planned system of controls, he or she has been able to manage a huge diversity of corporate date.  But now one of the biggest impacts of “social computing” is that much of the data about a company is now circulating outside these carefully built IT environments and is certainly outside the reach of the corporate firewalls and the CIO. Indeed unless your CIO is plugged into these social networks, he or she won't even know what is being said about the company. So my assertion is that the Social Computing revolution will have a huge impact on IT and the CIO.

3. Is your CIO ready to position IT in a leadership role in the social computing revolution.

Social Computing is pervasive and has the power to transform business as much as the Internet did in the 1990s. CIOs have an opportunity to take a leadership role in how social will deliver competitive advantage for their organisations beyond creative marketing campaigns. This is the next big challenge for the CIO and the traditional command and control structure that has existed in the corporate IT world for so long is no longer applicable in a social economy. 

Is your organisation and your CIO planning on how to respond to this challenge.  We would love to hear from you so please get in touch via our digital marketing contact page.