Week 9: Misuse of Social Technology

As technology develops day by day, it has taken a huge part in our lives. Even though there are many advantages of technology, there are same amount of disadvantages out there. Technology helps us to keep in touch with people and it helps to develop business. Also, using technology can leads us to change our views, feeling and behaviours.  

Overview of the Organisation

Samsung is a multinational conglomerate company and headquarters in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. Lee Byung-chul found the Samsung in 1938 as a trading company. In three decades time, they expanded the group into areas such as, textiles, insurance, securities, food processing and retail. After Lee’s death in 1987, Samsung divided into four different business groups include Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansl Group.  

Misuse of Social Technology

            Samsung has hired bloggers and students to write negative online blogs and to comment about one of the competitors mobile brand of Samsung which is HTC. The reviewers did not reveal their real information due to the fact that they could get caught easily. They thought community will think that the information the reviewers provided were real. They were fined $340,000 by a regulator in Taiwan for paying people to write intentional negative comments. This left a huge black mark towards their brand name; they must have lost some of their customers due to this incident. Furthermore, Korean Smartphone maker fined $10,000 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for advertising some errors of camera features of the Galaxy Duos handset.

How could the organisation avoid such a "misuse" in the future? 

            This led them to lose their everyday customers since it’s an illegal, unethical and somewhat ruined the reputation of the business. There are many ways to avoid these types of misuse in the future such as, Samsung can make sure that this kind of unethical activities are no longer exist in their business, as a result they can build up a good customer relationship and better profit margin. 

 I have selected 3 Ethical Principles for Business Executives to back up my opinions.  (Josephaon, 2013)

    1. Honesty

Trust worthiness and honesty is the most important factors that a company needs to catch the customer’s attention. Samsung has led to the place where they are losing their customers because they could not manage to keep the trust between the consumers and the brand.     

    2. Respect for others

Respecting other competitors in the business world will not harm the company or the products that they are producing. Keeping up the respect for other competitors will help the company to be more successful in the business world. Since Samsung did not respect the other competitors, that left a black mark on their name.

   3. Fairness

Each company has its own rules, regulations and laws relating to their business activities. It is against the law to be unethical as they did to the HTC Company and this is why Taiwan Regulator ordered them to pay $340,000.      

References

Bates, D. (2013). Samsung ordered to pay $340,000 after it paid people to write negative online reviews about HTC phones. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2476630/Samsung-ordered-pay-340-000-paid-people-write-negative-online-reviews-HTC-phones.html

Harbison, C. (2013). Samsung fined $340,000 for fake HTC reviews: paid comments slamming competitors revealed by FTC. Retrieved from http://www.idigitaltimes.com/samsung-fined-340000-fake-htc-reviews-paid-comments-slamming-competitors-revealed-ftc-video-334235

Josephson, M. (2010). 12 ethical principles for business executives by Michael Josephson. Retrieved from http://josephsoninstitute.org/business/blog/2010/12/12-ethical-principles-for-business-executives/

Wikipedia. (2014). Samsung. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

Week 8: ROI Case Study: Cisco

In today’s blog I will be discussing about Cisco case study to discuss about the ROI in an Enterprise 2.0 project. There are different types of consequences of ROI (Return on Investment) and many organizations have been using enterprise 2.0 to build up a strong connection with the customers and to communicate with them as often as possible. Enterprise 2.0 can bring advantages and disadvantages to the company and also without knowing the value that the organization makes out of Enterprise 2.0 technology can make a huge different to the organization.

A bit about Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI helps to measure the company’s performances and evaluate the efficiency of the investment and compare the efficiency of a number of different investments (Investopedia, 2014).

Overview of the Cisco

Cisco System is an American Multinational Corporation based in San Jose, California; this helps to design, manufactures and sells networking equipments. Leonard Bosack, Sandy Lerner and Richard Troiano are the founders of Cisco System in San Francisco California, U.S in 1984.

Cisco Issue and Solution

            Cisco decided to implement a new social media strategies and digital marketing strategies in April 2012. After the analysis they found out that their social technologies were insufficient for their future. Management and the communication of social media monitoring were the concerns that they highlighted throughout the assessment period.  

So their solution was to use an application called Salesforce Radian6, which allows the user to manage their social campaigns at one place and it helps to analyse, engage and connect with customers more efficiency.  

 Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Cisco System

Tangible benefits can be expressed as the value of something that can be measured or assessed, such as, costs, sales and revenue.  

·         Staff productivity

·         Leadership and innovation

·         Sales opportunities

·         Creative agencies

 Intangible benefits can be expressed as it cannot be measured in monetary value. These intangible benefits may include employee satisfaction, commitment, communication with the employee and improved customer services.   

·         Reduced extra contact centre staff

·         Increased customer insights

·         Improved partner management

·         Engage with their partners

·         Cost effective environment

The formula to calculate the Return on Investment;      

                    Gain from Investment = the profit that gain from selling the investment

Have a look at this link to know how to calculate ROI in bit more detail.  

Nucleus Research Figure 

 
 Strength and Weakness

                 The main strength of Cisco system is that it allows to collaborate with the International    Telecommunication Union (ITU) to provide Internet education throughout the world. As well as, the main weakness of Cisco system is that large number of company acquisitions that allowed growing in multiple emerging markets (Nucleus Research, (2013).    

References

Investopedia. (2014). Return on investment - ROI. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp

Nucleus Research. (2013). ROI case study. Retrieved from http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cisco-ROI.pdf?5c91d9  

Salesforce. (2013). The leading social media marketing suite. Retrieved from http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/

Wikipedia. (2014). Cisco system. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems

Week 7: Myer and Social Technologies

This week I will be choosing a company within the retail sector and discuss how they are using social technology and how they apple the McKinsey value levers in the business. 

Overview of Myer

Myer is Australia’s largest department of retail sector which has been known for over 100 years for fashion and style. Myer is owned by Andrew Robinson and sell various products such as menswear, womenswear, childrenswear, footwear, fragrance, cosmetics, furniture, toys, accessories and electrical goods. The main department of Myer is David Jones. Myer was founded in 1900 in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia and headquarters located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.    

  

Myer functional areas:

1.      Customer Services

2.      Social Commerce

3.      Marketing and Sales 

Using Social Technology

            Myer is using various social networking platforms to keep in touch with the customers such as, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter. These are good choice of social networking platforms to attract the customers to the business. Most of people use at least one or two platform in their everyday life.   

            Myer has been able to reach up to 322,909 fans on their Facebook page, 74,766 followers on Instagram, 1,484 subscribers on Youtube and 75 followers on Twitter.  

     1.  Customer Services       

This is one of the examples from Exhibit 3; levers 8, “Provide customer care via social technologies”. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the excellent ways to provide customer services. Customers can give feedback on any product or anything else publicly on these social networking platform. This will give the Myer, a chance to respond the customer in the best way as possible to make the customer happy. In return this helps Myer to be more successful and offer consumers what they want.

     2.   Social Commerce

Second best thing about Myer is that it also provides the facility for customers to do online shopping where they can purchase their products and have those delivered to home. This example is according to the Exhibit 3; levers 7, “Social Commerce”. Myer post all the discount information and other deals on their social networking platforms and offering free shipping if the customers purchase certain amount of products.

     3.  Marketing and Sales

Finally, according to the Exhibit 3; lever 5, “Use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction”. This leads them to advertise their offers, own products and events on the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Myer uses Youtube to promote their events, beauty tips, new arrival of clothes.            

Conclusion

Myer has an understanding of their customer needs and how to connect with customers via social platform. This will leads to their success in the business and growth of the customers day by day.

References

Myer. (2013). Company profile. Retrieved from http://investor.myer.com.au/Investor-Centre/

Wikipedia. (2014). Myer. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myer