16 Aug Employers Lack Social Technology Education

By Amanda McGrory

Source: Benefits Pro

Although 80 percent of employers report using social technologies, 49 percent of employers say they are not taking advantage of the full potential, and only 12 percent of employer say they have improved their daily activities, according to a recent survey by Teradata, an analytic data solutions company, and Mzinga, a provider of social intelligence solutions, along with the Center for Complexity in Business at the University of Maryland.

Social technologies are used for marketing, employee collaboration, customer service, and support and sales, and the survey finds that the top  areas that affect trust and influence are customer experience, service or support; marketing or brand experience; employee collaboration and knowledge sharing; and sales.

Another 75 percent of respondents fail to measure the return on investment regarding their social technologies. Instead, most do this on a case-by-case basis. Among those not measuring ROI, 31 percent are unsure whether their vendors provide analytics, 14 percent have vendors that do not provide analytics, and 44 percent do not work with vendors for analytics.

“The survey results indicate that a wide variety of industries are interested in analytics and the power that analytics can provide them in making business decisions,” says William Rand, assistant professor and director at the Center for Complexity in Business. “However, there seems to be a lack of knowledge of how to best implement analytics and a lack of consistent support for analytics across different platforms. This indicates a strong market need for education and consistent implementation of world-class analytic systems.”

In fact, some respondents report being unaware as to what information analytics can provide, and many say they have been influential since their companies have implemented social technologies but do not know how to successfully measure their use or believe the analytics were too difficult to process.