Salesforce and “Social Enterprise”
Salesforce #fail?
Doug Hadden, VP Products
Salesforce helps enterprises to leverage social networking. But, does an enterprise that uses social tools a “social enterprise”? Salesforce is apparently attempting to trademark the term. Bad idea.
The notion reminds me of the “Charlie the Tuna” commercials from years past – Starkist wants tuna that tastes good not tuna with good taste. Using social in an enterprise does not make it a social enterprise.
There has been robust use of the term “social enterprise” (& #socent twitter hash tag) to mean non-profit or for-profit enterprises engaged in handling a social issue. This isn’t a mystery – one just needs to search on Google. Getting into a public relations and legal battle with the social enterprise ecosystem will damage the Salesforce brand.
This is particularly damaging to the brand because Salesforce has an excellent program for non-profits that provides up to 10 users for free.
Social is a business model – using social for customer support, partner coordination and ideation. It enables customer centricity. Social enterprises are naturally customer-centric (and should be customer-centric in order to succeed.) Social tools can enable customer centricity.
Salesforce can enable social enterprises but not all enterprises that use Salesforce social-oriented tools are social enterprises.
Disclosure
FreeBalance uses Salesforce products. I provide more content via Salesforce Chatter in our company.
Tags: salesforce, socbiz, socent, social business, social enterprise
August 12th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Entirely agree. It will either harm the social enterprise movement which is already under fire over displacement of pubic services or it will harm Salesforce in the way you describe. It’s a zero sum game.
In making the distinction between social media enhance enterprise and social enterprise, an approach which focusses on those who fall between the cracks, my deceased colleague seems to have anticipated this disagreement.
He gave his life,not for the terms social enterprise, but for a vision which would see all abandoned children in loving family homes. Like many we associated ourselves with the term social enteprise because of how it was defined. His sacrifice would have no relationship to this new interpretation.
http://economics4humanity.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/salesforce-and-social-enterprise/
August 23rd, 2012 at 4:09 am
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