Blurring the lines between physical and digital

I have been off for several days now. Certainly getting sick has not helped me with my assignments or my beloved E2.0 blog. But, I am feeling better now and it is time to catch up. So, here is the first blog for Portfolio #2.

The title of this post is borrowed from Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry and now Retail Chief at Apple.

Founded in 1856, Burberry is a global luxury brand with a distinctive British identity. The company designs and sell fashion and accessories for a diversified network of retail, wholesale and licensing channels worldwide.

Angela Ahrendts in the Burberry's Social Enterprise video states: "You have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand." And the iconic, fashion brand embraces the Web and social media to extend the brand and engage with customers and followers in entirely new ways. I think is better to start with this brief video so you can understand which 'ways' I am talking about.

Does this make you want to do a little shopping? Because it definitely makes me, want to break my piggy bank. But most importantly, it amazes me with all the innovative ideas that came from the heads of Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Creative Chief Officer, to bring back what was thought as an old brand, described as just "British and plaid" by Maureen Mullen, the director of research and advisory for L2, a think tank for digital innovation, which named Burberry the top-ranked brand in its Digital IQ Index for two years in a row. "That brand now, in the minds of consumers, means British, plaid - and innovation", she stated for the Burberry, entrenched in the digisphere blog post.

I created this graphic with a summary of the Burberry strategies and the value levers to which I think they apply. Let's discuss how the social technologies are applied to the McKinsey value levers from two main areas, Marketing and Sales, and Customer Service.

One of the ways Burberry uses social technologies for Marketing and Sales and Customer care is with social media. It is the most followed luxury brand on Facebook, with over 17 million fans, and the numbers keep growing for the other 'usual' social media sites. But besides them, Burberry has created profiles to attract the Chinese market with an estimated audience exceeding 11 million users, according to Luxury Society.

All these social media buzz is monitored with technology provided by its partnership with Salesforce, which in my opinion, was what started it all. We can see here the sketch drawn by salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on how Burberry could be a social enterprise overlaying Salesforce (CRM), SAP, Twitter and Facebook. The goal was the total integration among the company, its employees, its customers, and the brand. And they are succeeding at it. 

With Burberry Bespoke, they are deriving the customer insights on new ideas for their trench coat models, and also they provide assistance to the client that requires it, either with the live chat, or one can even make an appointment in the moment to make her dream trench a reality. Art of the trench and Runway to reality are initiatives in which Burberry is building the loyalty of customers using technology to make them feel closer to the brand. With their own social-networking site, they are engaging their customers and having them constantly thinking about the brand. 

The Burberry Kisses is an application I actually used a few years ago, and I thought it was the most adorable idea. To send an email to a loved one and actually see the travel of your card with Google technology was incredible, and I remember telling everyone I knew about it. So, for some this may have no actual impact on Burberry, but I think it was a way to put their name into my mind and build a sort of 'relationship' with me as a user.

Finally, customer care is provided but all the previous strategies, but what stands the most I think is the Burberry World Live. How incredible is that Burberry truly tried to blur the lines between physical and digital and create a store designed just like their site.  

These are all ways in which Burberry has embraced the social technologies for marketing, but also to interact and connect not only with their customers but also with people like me, who wait until the day we can afford a Burberry trench coat.

Did you enjoy this story? Don't you think that Burberry is really going for the social technology here? 

PS. During my sick days I gave my blog a more sophisticated look and included my social media, feel free to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and even LinkedIn; and don't forget to leave me some feedback.

Want to read more?

Burberry on Salesforce
How Burberry Does Digital
Burberry, the digital enterprise
Burberry: entrenched in the digisphere
How Burberry's digital strategy is boosting brand value
Burberry Struts Ahead With Tech Transformation Begun By Apple's Angela Ahrendts

Accenture put the Accent on Blogging

After seeing that name showing up in almost every post I have read of inspirational business blogs, for this week's activity we will revise on Accenture.

Accenture is one of the world’s leading management consulting, technology services and outsourcing companies.

Other than using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Accenture, being a company with different customers, also has created a series of blogs with valuable content for their customers' different needs.

The 17 blogs are written by multiple authors who post consistently, and they go from senior employees to middle management to the chief officers. Here is a link for the list of the Accenture's blogs.

Accenture share its personal and professional experiences with other companies and people interested in technology, and in their words, the goal is to "communicate, but more importantly collaborate, with readers to help them think differently about technology".

I focused on the 3 Technology blogs,  where they discuss internal experiences with technology (especially Social Media); the usage of new technologies; and workplace technology product reviews.

We can clearly distinguish the McKinsey Global Institute (2012) value levers, as one of Accenture's goals with the blogs is to apply new technologies that will help their clients and themselves, achieve high performance, and by developing that knowledge based on their experiences and sharing it with their readers, they are creating new services for the customers and for Accenture to offer in the future. (Product Development)

The participation of the employees in the blogs and the teams in charge of working with the technologies the blog posts are about in the research, developing, sharing and finally in the interaction with the customers and the collaboration between them are relevant to Operations and Business Support value levers.

Finally, and in my opinion, the most important value lever present by using blogs in Accenture is Marketing and Sales.

First of all, by sharing knowledge with their customers and allowing them to access expertise for their own businesses, Accenture is strengthening the relationship with them, which creates revenues.

Furthermore, the blogs act as platforms to showcase Accenture's expertise and make a clear distinction between them, their brand and their competition; enabling them to receive potential customers that will notice the thought leadership concept.

And finally, the creation of valuable content will create visibility and recognition, which helps Accenture to build the brand reputation and generate recognition as experts in the correspondent fields.

We can all agree that blogs are a great tool for professional service firms to extend their network, publish and distribute thought leadership, engage with clients and prospects, expand reach, strengthen brand, and build website traffic (Mary Flaherty from RainMakerBlog).

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading some of the posts on the Accenture Blog for Internal IT, I recommend you to go and check them out, and down below I leave with some pages I came across this week. Happy readings! Cheers!

PS. I am on Twitter now! Feel free to follow me because I will start blogging a little bit more... Woohoo!

More on Professional Services Firms Blogging:

Are There Any Good Professional Services Firm Blogs Out There?

Where is your B2B Blog?

Why Successful Companies Use Blogs to Grow Their Business

Accenture's CIO discusses social technologies used in the company and how they make 

Social at Oracle: The IdeaFactory Success Story

For this week's assignment, I have chosen Oracle's E2.0 success story. I assume all of us in the IT world know what Oracle is, but just as a refresher...

Oracle Corporation is a U.S.-based multinational computer technology corporation. The company specializes in developing and marketing computer hardware systems and enterprise software products.  (Wikipedia)

So I found the story of how, in early 2007, Oracle began to incorporate Enterprise 2.0 to its processes, to foster innovation, share information and bring people together, both internally and externally, by developing IdeaFactory. Read the full post on the History of Oracle Connect written by Kellsey Ruppel.

A brief introduction on Oracle's IdeaFactory and Connect

Appslab, an Oracle's development team focused on innovation, created IdeaFactory, a platform to capture product ideas and allow users to propose and have a say in ideas, specifically, Oracle Application products. This tool grew up so fast, that people from all over Oracle logged in, voted, commented and contributed their own ideas, and not just about Oracle products, but also about internal topics and practices, making the communication lines open and honest.

After seeing the tool was working so well amongst Oracle employees, the AppsLab team added a social networking layer, creating Oracle’s first social tool, Oracle Connect. Every Oracle employee had an account and a base profile. The networking was bi-directional and anyone could ask to connect with anyone else in the company, including the CEO, which several people did. With the acquisitions Oracle was doing by the time, new staff also found this tool very useful.

Connect also aimed to generate and facilitate internal innovation within Oracle, so the AppsLab launched OpenLab, an open source-style project that welcomed any internal developers to take Connect’s code and add features that met their needs.

"What began as a little experiment with new technology has grown into a mission-critical social tool, used by thousands of people each day to get work done", said Kellsey.

In addition to Connect, the team created Oracle Mix, a social tool for users interested in Oracle products and the community, where they could make inputs or ask Oracle employees for support like they do in forums in the present days.

Value levers associated with implementing Enterprise 2.0 in the development of IdeaFactory/Oracle Connect:

I have found that two of the functional areas were benefited by the implementation of Enterprise 2.0. For that, I have prepared a table on how the value levers were applied to Oracle.

We can say that there are so many and different benefits in the incorporation of Web 2.0 in business, and although it may have its risks, no company now can stay disconnected from their customers. Down below I leave you with other successful stories and a video to reinforce the idea.

Do you find any other advantages in this case? Let me know.

I know that we only have to discuss 2 functional areas, but do you agree with me that Product Development is involved too? Given that the open code led to the creation of new applications for Oracle Connect by using Oracle Connect.

More on Social Media used in Business:

21 Enterprises Success Stories
Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business