Collaboration with online communities critical
ConvergenceAsia staff
10/06/2010

IT-enabled online collaboration, particularly with online communities, is increasingly important for corporate reputation and brand management, according to a new Economist Intelligence Unit study.

The Verizon-sponsored study, “Dangerous liaisons: How businesses are learning to work with their new stakeholders,” surveyed senior executives worldwide on their views of how an emerging group of non-traditional stakeholders is impacting corporate reputation.

According to the study, 78 per cent of the respondents say that interaction with special-interest groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or citizen groups is important to their business, while 33 per cent say that online communities will be their most important category of “non-traditional stakeholder” in five years.

An evolving group of Internet-protocol-enabled collaborative solutions - which include voice-over-IP (VoIP), presence-enabled applications, converged fixed-mobile communications, online white boarding, team workspaces, blogs, podcasts and wikis - are increasingly responsible for empowering non-traditional stakeholder groups. These collaboration solutions are enabling a new, borderless enterprise environment, and facilitate new dialogue streams between the corporate and public (or private) worlds.

The study by the EIU - the business information arm of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist - shows that the successful integration of these new communication streams into corporate collaborative efforts is increasingly critical if organisations are to survive and thrive.

Kerry Bailey, chief marketing officer for Verizon Business said, “Online communities, enabled by social media tools, are having a transformational effect on enterprise communication, enabling stakeholders to access multiple information points on demand, choose their influencers and build global communities of engagement quickly and simply, and outside traditional corporate boundaries.”

“Our survey shows that corporations are now beginning to understand the importance of these new communities, and their influence on corporate success, but that there is still a way to go to establish a balanced environment where online stakeholders can be fully engaged in corporate communication.”

“Dangerous Liaisons: How businesses are learning to work with their new stakeholders” is an Economist Intelligence Unit briefing paper sponsored by Verizon, a global leader in communications and IT solutions.

The research drew on two main initiatives. A global online survey was conducted in March-April 2010, in which 660 executives took part. To supplement the survey results, the EIU also conducted in-depth interviews with 17 senior executives and independent experts knowledgeable in the field of stakeholder management.

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