Social media use by EY.



Life at EY

The McKinsey report published by McKinsey Global Institute (2012), identifies professional services firms as being innately social organisations, relying on confidential and trustworthy interactions with colleagues and clients, often in different locations. The necessity to collaborate by sharing knowledge internally and externally therefore makes them a service sector able to see significant return on investment from implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools. Wikipedia describes the big four audit firms, as international professional services networks, offering a range of knowledge based services.  The global and networked attributes signal to me that these firms would benefit from McKinsey value lever 9: "Use social technology to improve intra- and inter- organisational collaboration and communication.", and are therefore worth a closer look.

In INN346 lectures Callam Porch and Jamie Turner have provided interesting insights into the way Deloitte takes advantage of social medial tools, and speaking to a colleague in KPMG I understand they also extensively use blogging, a corporate version of yammer, instant messaging and other Enterprise 2.0 tools. Therefore, for this blog I've chosen to investigate the third largest of the big four audit firms, Ernst and Young, or EY as they brand themselves. I have elected to investigate the global EY, rather than just the Australian division.

As an external potential customer - how can I tell if I will trust Ernst and Young?

EY have an inviting home page which immediately provides evidence of extensive use of social technologies for them to interact with their customers. Relevant, current information is constantly changing, an events calendar provides webcasts of changes to standards, and issues to inform customers, and there are links throughout to several blogs from their newsroom, such as the "Analyst Relations" blog, and their webcasts.

EY extend an invitation to connect via email alerts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, EY Webcasts and EY Insights Apps. There are 12 apps for iPad and iPhone alone, covering tax insights to business reports and forecasts.

The richness of information provided on the webcasts alone, from broad general guidance, to specialist information, is impressive.

EY are extensively using value lever 5. "Use social technologies for marketing Communication/interaction.", and value lever 3, "Use social technology to distribute business processes."


As an existing customer - how can I collaborate with EY for maximum mutual benefit?

So much information! But if I am an existing customer - what additional Enterprise 2.0 technologies are available?

There is an EY Client Portal that offers more. Apparently collaborative services are offered in protected online work environments. Assumedly a plethora of internal blogs and wikis - intriguing - but I was unable to find access to this.


Working within EY - how can I collaborate with my colleagues, and can I be heard by the senior partners?

The external use of social media by EY is impressive, but what of the internal? Given EY provide extensive outward facing advice, including useful business templates, I assume they also use a collaborative system in-house. However, finding inside information has proved a challenge.

To understand the need for internal communication within EY,  it is worth considering for a moment where EY colleagues may be located. EY is a global organisation with seven geographical areas. To facilitate global communication  they have introduced an online toolkit called "intercomm". This looks promising, but again I couldn't access detail.

A McKinsey report, "Turning buzz into gold", identifies the benefits of using social media platforms for recruiting, which EY are doing, posting jobs on LinkedIn.

A blog posted in 2009 by a social media consultant was fairly scathing in it's review of EY's internal understanding and use of social media, concluding that none of the EY participants attending his social media event had seen their own company's social media sites. Not so good when they were EY marketing and development representatives. However, that was 5 years ago though. Have things improved?

Well, EY launched Yammer in 2013, with a major publicity campaign. Better late than never?

A webinar "How EY measures Yammer use" is being held on Sept 2nd , 2014, could provide insight into the success of this development.

My conclusion on the use of blogs and wikis by EY is that they are using blogs extensively to assist their marketing and sales, to provide customer service, and in operations and distribution. I assume the same level of information sharing occurs within, but was unable to find the evidence required.

If anyone else has any tips on how to source this data please let me know!

The burgers may not be better, but the marketing is.

In deciding which organization to target for this blog I thought I'd take inspiration from Justin Yung's brilliant second blog, where he compared social technology use in Pepsico and Coca-cola, and I would consider an organization we all know.

Starting last year,  my son would eagerly get out his mobile phone whenever we approached a certain fast food outlet, to see what freebie he could score. Obviously Hungry Jacks were successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies in their functional area of marketing and sales. I thought I'd like to investigate whether giving away all this free food actually helped.

I found that, well, yes it did.

The campaign's success was acknowledged by Hungry Jack's winning a 2013 Australian Mobile Award. Their "Shake and Win" campaign, launched mid 2012,  saw a 25% increase in profit and a 1186% return on investment.

The brief on the AMI awards site, states

"Executed through owned media, mobile banners and earned media, primarily via Facebook check-ins, the app remains one of the most downloaded branded apps and number one in the free Food & Drinks section. The pilot project has since become a permanent pillar of the business without any subsequent investment and is still delivering additional, exponential profit. "

 

Hungry Jacks is a fast food outlet, in a competitive market in Australia. In 2006, the Australian government in comparative analysis of food chain outlets, recorded Hungry Jacks with 594 of 5234 fast food outlets (11%).

Before introducing this campaign the company described itself in Marketing Mag as
"Outspent and outnumbered, and with declining revenue and share of voice, Hungry Jack’s needed help. Clemenger found a new-world solution to an age-old problem which delivered ROI of 1186% and became a permanent part of Hungry Jacks’ marketing mix."

The Xfactor consulting group describes how the app works:
"Upon downloading the app, consumers were invited to “shake their phone” within a 1 km radius of a Hungry Jacks store to receive a prize. They then had 20 minutes to redeem the prize. Facebook users who “checked in” at Hungry Jacks were also rewarded. More than 200,000 prizes were on offer, including freebies, two for the price of one and discounted products. The app also features a store locator and the first nutritional calculator from a fast food restaurant."

The benefits of this campaign can be categorized under two levers aligned with marketing and sales by the 10 Social Technology value levers published by McKinsey Global Institute in 2012.

Value lever 5. Use social technology for marketing communications/interaction:

The benefit immediately identified here is use of customer's existing channels of social media communication and provision of a low cost app to gain extensive coverage amongst the appropriate target group for the organization's products.

The McKinsey report states that "unless individuals receive value from using social technologies, they won't use these technologies."

I know from personal observation that the Shake and Win campaign provided a popular interface for Hungry Jacks target audience. Not only my son, but all of his class would go home via Hungry Jacks. The benefit of this is short term, in gaining customers, and long term, in developing habits in people.

In Marketing Mag, Kathy Hatzis, director at AMI says, “It is so easy to continue on the traditional route in a highly competitive market place and simply fight on price. However, providing an extremely tactical traffic building campaign that allowed for a fun, interactive way to experience the brand and get a deal proved to be a winner.”

Value lever 6 : Generate and foster sales leads: The benefit to Hungry Jacks here was that consumers were using facebook to tell their friends about the special offers.

 On a socialmediaoverflow, the blogger gives insight into why this app was so successful.

"I am pretty sure I got this app the day it came out or soon after (it was a Friday), one of my friends made me download it and we all got free Whoppers on our way out to a bar. We were very happy and posted about it on Facebook and told people at the bar to download it and try it out as there was a Hungry Jack’s nearby.

Over the next few days the newsfeed was littered with people checking in to Hungry Jack’s and people were commenting on the posts asking what it was, or if people were familiar, everyone was asking “What did you get?”.

 

So, Hungry Jacks, introduced a low cost app, that got all their customers rushing (in the 20 minute  time allowed) to their restaurants and telling their friends exactly where they were.

In the Australian,  January 24 this year, the company that owns Hungry Jacks reported a near tripling of their annual profit to $21 million.

Impressive.

 

It's not just the technology causing the paradigm shift.

7:30 am Friday morning, preparing green tea to start the day and a co-worker asks why I'm so pumped up. Response: I've found the answer.
This Enterprise 2.0 unit is a mind stretcher - the market potential of blogging, flattening organisation hierarchies with social media, sites to source global expertise - wow. Yet, I'd been grappling with whether the technology was the cause of this seismic shift in thinking, or the effect, and on Thursday night found the answers in Jo Owen's book.

I had been concerned by the one-sided view of some of the evidence for the impact of Enterprise 2.0 tools and thought there must be more to it.

OK, I understand the technology is phenomenal, but why has it had such a profound effect? Owen's writing provided the background I sought, describing how, in the old management style (in INN436 we have been calling Enterprise 1.0), every company was following the same management rules or strategies, which had often been retrofitted onto an existing successful business model. The result, as business competitors were doing the same thing, is that nothing improved. In fact, worse still, we suffered the dot.com bust and the credit crunch. Owen gives a high level overview of what he calls Modern management (Enterprise 1.0?) vs New World Disorder (Enterprise 2.0?). A snapshot:

• analysis, certainty vs experiment, uncertainty
• competitive warfare vs asymmetric warfare
• prescriptive rules vs  change the rule.
• make and sell vs co-create
• information deficit vs information surplus
• formal power vs informal power

The understanding I gained was that the technology is enabling this paradigm shift, but is only one of five drivers. The other four equally important factors are:

1. Education - not that humans are smarter, but that more of use have higher education
2. Affluence - that we are better off than our parents and grandparents, and this provides new markets.
3. Globalisation - in the old way, a product was assembled on one site, in the new, there can be several globally dispersed sites. Globalisation opens new markets.
4. Recessions - cited as tough for individuals but good for progress.(For one thing, less viable companies disappear, so there is less competition.)

I appreciated seeing the darker side of the changes also. "The new technology promises freedom but delivers slavery". As an example look at the comments posted in response to airlines proud announcements of wifi provision on long haul flights. A potpourri of responses.

Owen's writing provided another light bulb moment as to why modern man needs to collaborate. This one really resonated with me. Modern man is "collectively smarter but individually more ignorant", and therefore have a greater requirement for collaboration.




A medieval peasant could make and repair almost everything they needed.
A medieval scholar might confidently say they knew 10% of all known human knowledge.

A modern man often doesn't know how things are made, and relies for repair on the aid of a magic wand (credit card)
A modern scholar will confidently know only a teeny tiny % of all known human knowledge.

So - now I understand just how massive this world order change is, and where the technology fits in, I feel I can comfortably and confidently address this week's task - to identify a company successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

and the winner is.. Johnson & Johnson, the world's largest healthcare company, provide an example of an established company who has changed to embrace Enterprise 2.0 technologies. This social media  website has an interview Robert Halper, who is the director of video communication for Johnson & Johnson. Robert explains how Johnson and Johnson use youtube to directly promote healthcare and indirectly humanise the image of the company.

 

Although for interest - read this blog on a company in Brazil (Semco) where the owner made radical changes to the way the company worked by removing management and empowering employee collaboration, including allowing the workers to choose the hours they worked and  their pay scales and all without advanced technology.

 

and to finish - a great video...

Crowdsourcing explained

 

Whew.
So much information, so little time.

Thanks for reading my blog.


References:

Owen, J. (2009) "The Death of Modern Management. How to Lead in the New World Disorder" Wiley

First blog - Hi everyone.
I can't believe how long this has taken me, all good fun though.
Would love some feedback and tips on blogging.

What makes a blog a success?

For me? Its interesting, looks good, concise, thought provoking and ..fun.
and to achieve this? Have something worth broadcasting, add images, videos, share it.

A little bit of searching, added the usual marketing spiel, know thy target audience, keep it current, create your own brand plus create a community by responding to comments, and monitor usage.

14 Ways to Make Your Blog Get Real Attention has 14 great points with images, added:

• keeping your blog SEO friendly (Search Engine Optimisation)
• The Goldilocks rule - not too short, not too long but just right
• Post on weekdays (when the world is bored at work!)

6 Strategies for Launching a Successful Blog for the professional blogger, added:

• promote your blog professionally

Success Story: How do you make Your Blog Pay? Eight Hints from a Profit-Making Blogger.
from a hobby blogger, cum successful professional, who's blog is the Muddy Stilettos Blog site, added:

• support your advertisers (for commercial success), e.g.

Not all of which I will be incorporating THIS week.

My Blogging Strategy

The purpose of this blog is to create a communication chanel with others to raise and discuss ideas around Enterprise 2.0. (Hi class, and hi wider world)
The secondary purpose is to increase my understanding of social media platforms by this creation, so by blog 8 - the post will be amazing.

To create useful posts I intend to tap into the topics raised during the semester in lectures, on google community and others blogs, and to extend the conversations by researching and adding content and opinions. I'll be using success strategies identified to improve my blog's effectiveness and reach.

Strategies for obtaining readership? I'll be leveraging social media, actively participate in the class google plus community, actually post something on my work yammer (that I subscribe to, but don't use), ditto Facebook, ditto LinkedIN (though I do use this), and ...swallowing hard... - Twitter.(joined yesterday!).
I also believe in the old fashioned method of talking to people face-to-face.

Great Blogs discovered this week

I have to admit to not being interested in reading blogs before:  my daily priorities being work, family, friends, cycling, running and the schnauzer, but needs must.

• The Muddy Stilettos Blog site I love, looks good, regularly updated, fun, etc. won the UK Blog Awards 2014, so I guess other people like it too.

• Great vlog posted by Jess this week - thanks

• Some fantastic marathon runs posted just last week by a  Car Hire firm . Interesting marketing strategy?

Would love your comments on my blog - Sue