Building a community management centre of excellence

transcript

Dachis GroupBuilding a Community Management Centre of Excellence

Does your company fully understand the importance of community management for social business success?

Any online community within your company has an underlying purpose. It is the job of a community manager to drive this purpose.

By driving purpose, connecting people together and nurturing a cooperative environment community managers help realise your business goals.

Dachis Group believe that companies can increase the prominence and effectiveness of community management by creating a centre of excellence.

The following slides discuss what a centre of excellence might look like in the context of community management and how your company can start building one today.

CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE

A CoE is an internal service hub comprising people, knowledge and practices that together deliver thought leadership, better ways of working and continuous improvement in a specific field of work.

CENTRE OF EXCELLENCEWHAT IS IT?

People

PracticesKnowledgeCoE

CENTRE OF EXCELLENCEWHY IS A COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT CoE NEEDED?

To focus the community’s underlying purpose

To establish community

management as a serious discipline

To provide thought

leadership & training

To build a repository of research, tactics

and lessons learned

To align community development with

business objectives

To gather evolving requirements and manage change

To apply a consistent strategy

across the organisation

HOW WOULD THE CoE WORK?TWO SITUATIONS

HR are launching a new talent discovery platform that will help employees take ownership of their career development. How will they get people to maintain their talent profiles and fully engage with the initiative?

SITUATION 1

SITUATION 1WITHOUT A CoE

Project Managers

Vendor

HR consults with the platform vendor, the communications department, and project managers.

Project Managers

Vendor

The vendor knows the tool but has no understanding of the company’s culture.

Project Managers

Vendor

The comms department informs the workforce but does not know how to incentivise users.

Project Managers

Vendor

Project managers are frustrated because they can’t find talent through using the tool.

Project Managers

Vendor

Employees fail to engage because there has not been a sufficiently joined-up approach.

SITUATION 1WITH A CoE

People

PracticesKnowledge

CoEHREmployees

Problem

Solution

HR employes the CoE to run an adoption campaign.

PracticesKnowledge

People

HREmployees

Problem

Solution

The CoE appoints a community manager to run the campaign and enlists advocates from across the organisation.

People

PracticesKnowledge

CoEHREmployees

Problem

Solution

The CoE designs the use cases and brings into play a rich set of adoption tactics.

People

Knowledge Practices

CoEHREmployees

Problem

Solution

The CoE measures the effectiveness of the campaign and provides regular reports.

People

PracticesKnowledge

CoEHREmployees

Problem

Solution

All the while employees are placed front and centre of the process and their feedback is acted upon.

People

PracticesKnowledge

CoEHREmployees

Problem

Solution

The initiative is off to a good start and the CoE has further developed its people, knowledge and practices for the future.

The social business platform has seen very high rates of adoption in one country but almost none in other regions. The executives want to find out what is driving success in the successful country and transfer best practices to all other regions.

SITUATION 2

Power User

Executives

Analyst

nRegion n

The executives hire an analyst to find out why adoption has been strong in one region but not others.

Power User

Executives

Analyst

nRegion n

The analyst discovers that adoption has been driven by a power user acting as community manager in the successful region.

Power User

Executives

Analyst

nRegion n

The power user is asked to consult with leaders in each lagging region in order to transfer skills.

Power User

Executives

Analyst

nRegion n

The result is haphazard as many of the leaders are not suited to community management and find the advice difficult to action.

Region n

Executives

Problem

Solution

People

PracticesKnowledge

The executives ask the CoE to investigate the variation in user adoption and implement an action plan for the lagging regions.

Region n

Executives

Problem

Solution

PracticesKnowledge

People

The CoE identifies individuals in each region who are best suited to community management activities and trains them up for the task.

Region n

Executives

Problem

Solution

People

PracticesKnowledge

The CoE provides a support network that all local community managers can draw from and contribute to.

Region n

Executives

Problem

Solution

People

Knowledge Practices

The CoE continually monitors rates of adoption in each region and develops its approach accordingly.

Region n

Executives

Problem

Solution

People

Knowledge Practices

Good community management practices take root in all regions which helps to drive adoption and improve the overall vitality of the platform.

HOW TO BUILD A CoE

HOW TO BUILD A CoE8 STEPS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

When building a CoE it is advisable to start small and grow organically. The key to success lies in the people and processes on which it is built.Broadly speaking the process will follow 8 steps.

HOW TO BUILD A CoESTEP 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 1 - Define the visionStart by defining the purpose, goals and plan of action for the CoE. This strategic approach will include setting out a high-level organisational model, success factors, measurements and metrics.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 2 - Establish success criteriaDetermine what you want success to look like. What should the CoE accomplish? What upcoming initiatives would you like them to assist with? Having these success criteria clear from the outset will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of the initiative.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 3 - Determine GovernanceWhat are the required roles in the CoE and what are their responsibilities? Decide upon the lines of communication and procedural checklists. What other things should be in place to ensure the quality and consistency of each new engagement?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 4 - Fill in the details Bring definition to the organisational model by determining the skills and roles you will need. Perform a white space analysis and decide your recruitment requirements. Create a mentor and training programme to help CoE members achieve the required level of expertise.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 5 - Involve the right peopleMake sure that you have at least one community management expert to lead the way. If this person doesn’t already work within the organisation consider hiring from without. Also involve other likely individuals such as power users, natural helpers and advocates of social business technology.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 6 - Account for costsBuild an understanding of how to cost CoE engagements. Consider how finances will be managed. Will the CoE have a price structure? How will it be budgeted?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 7 - Run pilot projectsBefore opening up the CoE’s services to the whole company it would be wise to test what you’ve built with one or two pilot projects. Meet with project owners to determine scope, requirements, objectives etc. and then test that your people, processes and metrics are fit-for-purpose. Review your pilot projects and make necessary improvements to the CoE model.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Step 8 - Raise awarenessFor the CoE to be successful the rest of the company needs to know about it. How can internal customers be made aware of the offering? Determine what the core services are and advertise through all appropriate channels, but particularly through the community platform itself.

ABOUTDACHIS GROUP

ABOUT DACHIS GROUPLEADERS IN SOCIAL BUSINESS STRATEGY

Dachis Group are the leading global, integrated, end-to-end social business consultancy.

We help clients design social ecosystems, build real-world business cases and apply the best principles of social media.

We are leaders in social business strategy and implementation.

Cerys Hearsey SENIOR CONSULTANT

cerys.hearsey@dachisgroup.com

CONTACTS

‘Pigeons in Flight’ image by Jimmy Brown:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmybrown/4041963981/

Kieran Kelly CONSULTANT

kieran.kelly@dachisgroup.com

Thank you.

Building a community management centre of excellence

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