By Brad Garland
I'm lucky enough to get to speak about Web 2.0 across the country and at the beginning of my talks I like to establish which employee roles are represented in the crowd. More often than not, the majority of people are from marketing. Most have the same story: They have been tasked by their bosses to find out what this whole Web 2.0 thing is about and are trying to figure out what technology they need to best engage their members. I respond with two key points:
- Technology is not the answer; you need a strategy that ties back to business goals first, and
- The marketing department is not the only part of the institution that can benefit. There are enormous opportunities and efficiencies to be able to better collaborate inside the organization as well.
Often, credit unions approach Web 2.0 as collaboration with their members only. They tend to forget about the potential productivity and resource-saving benefits of leveraging the same technologies inside. Our company has been using these technologies for quite some time--not because they are the latest trends in technology, but because we have a business case for them.
The Garland Group is team of 15 people. Our individual e-mail loads were becoming unwieldy, more because of internal communication than customer inquiries. We also saw that key personnel were being left out of e-mail loops related to critical decisions, which slowed our production efforts. Something had to change.
Although most of us were comfortable with e-mail, we quickly realized that the best way to improve communication was through a single, Web-enabled system that enhances collaboration. We developed a program, SocialStratus, to help improve processes. SocialStratus, coupled with Web-based CRM, allows all communication to be centralized and fully searchable so we can reference earlier projects and conversations. The enhanced communication increases cross-company awareness of our projects and fosters an open and transparent company culture.
There is no question that having a strategy for collaborating with your members is becoming a requirement these days, but I would argue that the first step in fostering communication with your members is a more conducive collaborative environment for your employees.
Brad Garland is founder of the community site Banktastic.com and CEO of The Garland Group, Wylie, Texas.
