Web 2.0, Communites, and Business Processes

The ability for members to freely exchange information. Most CMO's and business managers rely on web analytics - they look at quantitative data - to make decisions. CMO's should be changing their thinking about value. Rarely do they have a feel for the qualitative information. You know, the kind you would get from actively participating in a community or talking to customers. Ohhhhhhhh messy. Too time consuming.

People's lives are rich and complex, so you need to get data both in the large and in the small. That means quantitative data from large groups to answer the 'who, what, where and how' questions, and qualitative data to answer the 'why' questions. For example, we know from research done by [photo sharing website] Flickr that while Americans are big sharers of photos, Scandinavians are not. Why? What is the cultural impact on photo sharing?"

"Are customer communities changing the marketing department" posted by francois on emergencemarketing.com.

For those companies who are not transforming the role of the CMO and their marketing departments, many community activities will fail - as there is no connection between what customers do and expect in those communities and the internal business processes that can actually make things happen. In the long run, and because of the game-changing nature of successful communities, those marketing departments will become totally irrelevant to the company strategy.

Below are slides from a workshop given by francois and presented at the community 2.0 conference.