Blog 7: Chipotle Mexican Grill

The company chosen for this blog is Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. It is a restaurant chain in the U.S., which prepares specialty Mexican dishes such as salads, burritos and tacos. In addition to its home market, the company also enjoys significant customer footfall in its restaurants located in the U.K., France, Germany and Canada. It operates a total of 1,595 outlets in these countries. It was founded in 1993 in Denver, Colorado. It earned total revenues of $3.2 billion and profits of $327 million in the financial year 2012-13 (Annual Report, 2013; Chipotle.com, n.d.). The company was ranked 20^th in its list of most innovative organizations by Forbes magazine in 2014 (Forbes, 2014). The restaurant is a popular choice among different segments of customers due to its varied menu and fast service.

 

 

The particular case of ‘misuse’ of social technology by Chipotle that is being considered here is a fake “hacking” of its tweet handle in 2013, later acknowledged to have been orchestrated by the company executives themselves. Immediately prior to this event Chipotle had launched a 20 day treasure hunt campaign, called “Adventurito”, at some of their restaurants. In order to garner more publicity for the campaign, management thought that they would post related tweets from their tweeter account (having 200,000 followers at that time) that would show the account as having been purportedly hacked.

 

These tweets, which were in the nature of treasure hunt directions and responses, were posted on 21^st July, 2013 (the 20^th anniversary of Chipostle), and were retweeted 12,000 times. The account added 4,000 followers in a day, compared to an average addition of 250 followers on a normal day. Many other tweeter users immediately suspected something wrong – a number of users questioned whether the account was indeed hacked or whether it was merely a corporate attempt at manufacturing attention on social media (Huffington Post, 2013). Later the Director of Communications at Chipotle, Chris Arnold, admitted that it was a preplanned campaign and a fake “hack”.

 

In terms of marketing and publicity, the event was neither a success nor a failure. Although the company managed to add several thousand more twitter follower, its Facebook account neither gained nor lost many users as a result of it. While there were a few angry user comments, a majority of social media users ignored the event. However, there were many comments from online commenters and journalists that it was wrong for Chipostle to have launched such a campaign (Tobin, 2013).

The incident can be prevented in future by the company defining a clear social media policy as well as its marketing goal. Chipotle positions itself as a restaurant that sells “food with integrity” and one that stresses on transparency and clarity in its customer relations. Since branding on social media platforms is a long term process, just as branding in traditional media, the company should understand that it risks losing customer confidence through such staged “hacking” of its own marketing channel. This would ultimately be viewed by customers as an unethical activity, and they would as a result lose trust in the company (Wilms, 2013). Following the eight ethical principles outlined by Simon Rogerson, it appears that the action was neither honest nor fair – it violated the trust of unsuspecting twitter followers (Brinkman & Sanders, 2012). Since the incident did not add substantially to Chipotle’s social media followers, it should realize that all publicity is certainly not good publicity and therefore should refrain from such campaigns in the future. 

 References

Annual Report. (2013). Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. Available at http://ir.chipotle.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=194775&p=irol-reportsAnnual

Brinkman, W. & Sanders, A. (2012). Ethics in a Computing Culture. Retrieved from http://www.cengagebrain.co.nz/content/9781133990932.pdf

Forbes. (2014). World’s Most Innovative Companies. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/companies/chipotle-mexican-grill/

Huffington Post. (2014). Chipotle Faked Its Recent Twitter Hack, Confirms Company. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/chipotle-faked-twitter-hack_n_3652534.html

Tobin, A. (2013). Social Justice: Chipotle’s Pathetic Misuse of Social Media. ARCompany. Retrieved from http://arcompany.co/social-justice-chipotles-pathetic-misuse-of-social-media/

Wilms, T. (2013). The Fake Corporate Twitter Hack #Fail. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2013/07/26/the-fake-corporate-twitter-hack-fail/

Blog 6: My Return On Investment (ROI)

 Enterprise 2.0 tools, including wiki pages, blogs, video feeds, and a variety of other social networking technologies have been employed by many businesses recently. These tools are used for better employee management and increased employee collaboration, resulting in increased efficiency and competitive ability (Huddle, n.d.).

In this blog I shall consider a fictitious company that employs almost 50,000 people across the nation. It has introduced Enterprise 2.0 using IBM collaboration tools and auditors want a perspective on ROI of the project using a framework developed by Forrester Research (Forbush, 2010). The analysis will be performed considering both tangible and intangible benefits for the company.

The tangible benefits can be grouped into four principal categories. The first is revenue generation from products that were the result of, or whose designs were benefited from, generation of ideas through Enterprise 2.0 tools. The Forrester Research report stated that collaboration tools would typically increase new ideas by 0.5%. If the company generates revenues of $20 million from its new products, then this translates to revenues of $100,000. 

The second category is lower time-to-market. The report estimated that 1% of all products are benefited from this, and let us assume that the corresponding revenue benefit to the company is $100,000.

The third category is revenues from incremental sales. This occurs because the IBM collaboration tools allow sales executives to post their best practices on their portion of the intranet and link these to demonstration videos, thus leading to improved sales performance from the entire team. We shall assume that the company experienced increased sales of $900,000 and it operates at a margin of 25%. Therefore, the sales revenue increased by $225,000.

The fourth category is saving due to staff productivity. The collaboration tools are designed to disseminate knowledge faster and this helps employees at all levels access relevant information more quickly to improve their efficiency (Razmerita, Kirchner, & Sudzina, 2009). The Forrester report stated that an employee can save 10 minutes on average every time she accesses the intranet instead of going to the library. Considering factors such as employee strength and hourly remuneration for each employee, let us assume that this translates into an overall saving of $1,000,000.

Increased revenues from tangible benefits of Enterprise 2.0 for the company are a sum of the four categories discussed. This is $1,425,000.

There are a number of intangible benefits also, such as greater employee engagement, lower employee turnover, diffusion of good ideas across departments and hierarchies, and quicker and more informed to customer issues (Wong, Bosua, Kurnia, & Chang, 2013). Let us assume, conservatively, that these benefits transform into a revenue generation of $500,000. Then the total increased revenue from tangible and intangible benefits is $1,925,000.

Let us assume that the company initially invested $1,000,000 for purchase and installation of the system, and that it has a recurring cost of $200,000.

The formula for ROI for each year is total benefit minus total expenses expressed as a ratio of total expenses till that year, multiplying by 100 (Newman, Thomas & Ebrary, 2009).

 

Using this formula, first year ROI is ([1925000 – (1000000 + 200000)]/(1000000 + 200000))*100 = 60%.

The second year ROI is ([2*1925000 – (1000000 + 2·200000)]/(1000000 + 2·200000))*100 = 175%.

The third year ROI is ([3*1925000 – (1000000 + 3·200000)]/(1000000 + 3·200000))*100 = 261%.

The strength of my ROI analysis is that I have considered a number of tangible benefits according to an accepted framework and I have also considered intangible benefits. The weakness is that the intangible benefits are difficult to enumerate. In addition employee performance is dependent on a number of factors, social technology being only one of these. Therefore, the figures mentioned are only rough estimates.

References

Forbush, N. (2010). Total Economic Impact^TM of IBM Social Collaboration Tools. Forrester Consulting. Retrieved from ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pub/lotusweb/Forrester_TEI_IBM_Social_Collaboration_v20Sep10.pdf

Huddle. (n.d.) Communication & collaboration in the Enterprise 2.0 world. Retrieved from http://www.huddle.com/files/white-papers/Huddle_white_paper_-_Collaboration_-_Communication_and_collaboration.pdf

Newman, A., & Thomas, J. (2008). Enterprise 2.0 implementation. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing. 

Razmerita, L., Kirchner, K., & Sudzina, F. (2009). Personal knowledge management: The role of Web 2.0 tools for managing knowledge at individual and organisational levels. Online Information Review, 33(6), 1021-1039. doi:10.1108/14684520911010981 

Wong, D., Bosua, R., Kurnia, S. & Chang, S. (2013). Leveraging Enterprise 2.0 for Knowledge Sharing. 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems. Retrieved from http://mo.bf.rmit.edu.au/acis2013/215.pdf

Blog 5: Target Corporation

In this blog activity, social media has affected many companies and retailer corporations around the world. One of the global retailers is Target Corporation, which is an international discount retailer that has adopted a number of social technology measures. Target is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota by and established by Doug Dayton and his brothers in 1962, and it is the second largest retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart (Target Corporation). Then, it has expanded to be more than 1220 stores located in about 47 states, then reached to Canada and Australia (Target Corporation). These stores carry a range of clothing and some non-perishable grocery items; some stores also sell electronic items, sports accessories, furniture and other products.

Two store variants have been introduced during the last ten years – one is PFresh, selling perishable food items and groceries; the other is Super Target, which is essentially a hypermarket selling a very wide range of products. According to the annual report (2013), Target Corporation earned total revenues of $72.3 billion as of 2013 and had net earnings of $1.9 billion. A quarter of this revenue was generated from sales of household essentials (Annual Report, 2013).

 

Target has a prominent and active presence on almost all social network platforms/channels. It has been suggested that social network properties and the use of technology by individuals can be well synchronized to design an effective selling organization (Chung & Hossain, 2010). Target uses this philosophy well in its online communications. For example, it maintains multiple hashtags on Twitter corresponding to different customer requirements and keeps announcing exclusive deals and offers through these hashtags. This means, every hashtag is used for a specific purpose to meet users’ needs.

For example, #TargetDeals is used for the clearance and hot deals, so the customer can be updated via Target website or twitter to get the deal. Here, we can see how they bring all offers in one place to the customer, and the customer can check that easily.

 

Also, there are #TargetStyle and Facebook that used for the latest fashions for customers, so the customer will might not miss the newest models and styles. We can see here how they use the social media tools in marketing and sales functions, and these might include interaction, marketing and social commerce levers that McKinsey published in 2012. Additionally, there is a popular hashtag that is related to bring the latest events, news, partnerships and collaborations, #TargetNews, and Bullseye View website is an official magazine used for the same purposes. Here we can apply the operations and distribution functions that published by McKinsey.

 

Another hashtag, #AskTarget that is used for customer support/care via Twitter as a function of McKinsey’s levers, and it is used to reply to consumers and answer their questions. Target replies quickly to many customer posts on Facebook and other social media sites, and also manages its public relations through these sites (Hitz, 2014). Similarly, they regularly post videos and images on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram, and link these posts with each other.

Furthermore, Target has an “app” called Cartwheel that allows customers to use their smartphones as barcode scanners during checkout, and also share activities on Facebook in term of communication with others. It is evident that Target takes a serious interest in social technology.

 

References

Annual Report. (2013). Target Corporation. Retrieved from https://corporate.target.com/annual-reports/2013/financials/financial-highlights

Answers. (n.d.). Target Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/target-corporation

Chung, K. S. K. & Hossain, L. (2010). Towards a social network model for understanding information and communication technology use for general practitioners in rural Australia. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(4), 562-571.

Hitz, L. (2014). Target on Social Media: How the Retail Giant Markets to a Social Audience of 138 Million. Simply Measured. Retrieved from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/05/19/target-on-social-media-how-the-retail-giant-markets-to-a-social-audience-of-138-million/

 

Blog 4: AT&T Company

Primarily, one has to mention that the blogs and wikis belong nowadays to the most important tools that help to enhance business of many companies both internally and externally. In most cases, the blogs of particular companies has 12 goals for business blogging in order to show that the organization has a human face and is ready to communicate; represent the CEO and other senior managers as progressive thinkers and competent providers of information about the company, the industry and the business community in general; improve communication with customers, including potential by maintaining dialogue; create a simple and affordable means of support; increase the effectiveness of PR-service organization; promote the brand, product or service to consumers; establish and maintain an open dialogue with important company people and organizations, such as current and potential employees and customers, and suppliers, the media, the business community, the public in general, potential business partners; conduct surveys and immediately receive responses from readers; earn revenue from advertising and sponsorship; use business blogs instead of sending e-mails on a subscription and mass mailings; and attract new employees (Wong, 2014). These goals are similar and related to the 10 value levers published by McKinsey.

One has to mention of the global telecommunication company entitled AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph Company) that supplies various companies, businesses and government agencies with different kinds of data, media sources and e-telecommunications, and it is one of the biggest companies in Texas that provides the society with mobile phones and broadband subscription television.  As for the blogs, the corporation has different types of blogs that are designed for various purposes. Thus, there is a Consumer Blog where the people who are leading blogs are communicating with consumers. Moreover, the news about the company and their services are given. To add more, another kind of blog is called Networking Exchange Blog. It gives the possibility for people to share, join, and innovate with the network and technology experts, and; what is more, discover new methods to power their business. The company raises the business issues that are topical for their readers and the latter have the opportunity to share comments and express their point of view. This makes the website of AT&T more popular and; therefore, people are more likely to believe in professionalism of this company.

 

Besides, one more blog type is called Reimagine Business Blog where the heads of the AT&T are telling of the keys of the success of the company and sharing their experience with blog readers. Another blog that is related to businesses to give some useful solutions is the Digital Care eco system, and it consists of 2 types of social media. The first tool includes: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The second tool is a portal where customers can share their experiences with each other.

In Addition, there is also Innovation Space Blog where all the latest news in the sphere of technique is described that is not only linked to the AT&T business, but those products that may gain the people’s interest. Thus, by providing the society with the necessary information, the organisation makes more people read their blogs, and gives students the opportunity to participate in different exchange programs and hold various charity events such as Spurs Community Programs.

To conclude, one has to emphasize that businesses use blogs for various purposes as McKinsey mentioned; however, the main goal of AT&T Company is not only to promote their services and goods, but to create lively communication with their readers, support them with interesting information, conduct surveys and help people if it is necessary. All these opportunities attract people from all over the world and; as a result, AT&T is promoting its brand, products; engaging stakeholders in its business and drawing the attention of mass media to its company.

 

 

References

Attinnovationspace.com,. (2014). AT&T - Blogs. Retrieved from http://attinnovationspace.com/

AT&T Networking Exchange Blog,. (2014). AT&T Networking Exchange | AT&T Blog | Technology Blog. Retrieved from http://networkingexchangeblog.att.com/

Att.com,. (2014). AT&T Company Information | AT&T About Us. Retrieved from http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=5711

Blogs.att.net,. (2014). AT&T - Consumer News. Retrieved from http://blogs.att.net/consumerblog

Blogs.att.net,. (2014). AT&T - Reimagine Business. Retrieved from http://blogs.att.net/reimaginebusiness

Wong, D. (2014). The Why: 12 Distinct Goals for Business Blogging. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-wong/the-why-12-distinct-goals_b_5651566.html

Blog 3: Oracle WebCenter

 

Many companies around the world have utilized different social media tools for many purposes based on the Enterprise 2.0 expansion. I choose one of the largest companies in the IT field, which is Oracle. It has more than 380000 customers in more than 145 countries around the world, and it leads the database software, and due to the technology revolution it has expanded to focus not only on companies, but on individuals. It proved that it can build the future by changing their technology from databases to applications and then to the cloud. One of the services that Oracle has established is:

Oracle WebCenter (The Center of Engagement)

It is the center that assists people to share and collaborate with each other by engaging them in this site. This site allows business users to create their web pages to deliver their products and experiences to users and make their information accessible by their employees via intuitive portals and applications. The communication here can be between customers, employees and partners.

 

Some of the benefits and the features of Oracle WebCenter:

-          User-friendly: so users can easily create and manage the content, and the interface can be built by dragging-and-dropping content

-          It can be used by non-technical users

-          It is a dynamic site, easy to update based on experts’ reviews or IT users

-          It can include rating, reviews, comments and blogs

-          The ability to connect it with other social media tools

-          It can be designed to access by different mobile devices

 

When applying the 10 technology value levers across the functional areas that published by McKinsey, we can summarize some of them such as:

1-     Product development

Oracle as a big company has different methods and channels to communicate with their customers (companies/individuals), and is available through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and discussion forums. Business users can get any suggestions from the users related to improve a specific product or an idea related to the website. Also, clients might share their experiences and insights about the product.

2-     Sales and marketing

It can be a method to reach to customers and stay up to date with latest product news and events. From this point, it can enhance customers’ loyalty and drive revenue based on special offers or promotions. Marketers can establish and manage the web content, and then they may prefer which products will be delivered to customers depending on some rules and customers classification. The ability to connect with customers through social media tools as I mentioned before.

3-     Customer support

Trying to help customers by using different channels, such as Twitter and other tools to communicate with them and solve their questions or issues. One of the best examples I found in Oracle WebCenter is the Live Chat that can be offered by Oracle itself.

 

To sum up, Oracle is changing and improving every day to provide different services to its customers. The WebCenter is just an example of how they implement Enterprise 2.0 to connect companies, business users and customers together to interact with each other and build digital business for next generations.

Thanks for reading.
Bader,

Blog 2: Domino's Enterprise

In this blog I might go with the two options based on the technology used and the purpose of the use. For option one, this is the first time to use Google+, especially Blogger for the unit Enterprise 2.0. Even in other purposes I used to use WordPress for a period of time. I used to use the social media for specific reasons, especially to achieve a certain objective. Now as a student in this unit I’m trying to gain some knowledge and information by building a useful relationship and sharing our ideas and experiences together not only in this unit, maybe in other communities.

 

As an IT expert, however, I used to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube as social media programs. Around ten years ago, in the organisation where I was working for a period of time, we used to use software that has a simple interface to communicate with each other locally better than using emails and faster. It was a very easy and simple way to announce or ask for help in some cases. Then, the technology has come to change and affect many marketplaces and companies. These days we can see how these companies use the social media to reach to the door or the customer easily in order to save time and attract many and many clients. Many companies have extended their work and network, and these are some examples:

 

-          Domino’s Pizza Enterprise, is one of the biggest pizza chain in Australia in terms of both network store numbers and network sales. Also, it is the largest franchisee brand in the world. It has extended through six countries, with more than 1200 stores, and approximately 26,000 employees and it is the primary international Domino's franchisee. It has enhanced the Pizza ordering, which is can be online or using mobile applications (IPhone or Android). I used to use the mobile application to order and build my Pizza or choose other sides, and they will reach to the door in a specific time. In this application, you can check in/out fast and easily with the new PayPal payment options and track your order from the application to your door with the live Domino’s Pizza Tracker. Domino’s is available throw Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google+; you can communicate with them via these channels. Moreover, people can impact each other by writing reviews through these channels to explain their opinion if they recommend the product or not. This is how the social media revolution can affect enterprises, including marketing to achieve their objectives.

 

-          Nowadays, individuals and small businesses have started using social media programs for marketing, buying and selling. For example, some users in Instagram buy some kind of food, clothes or accessories and this is popular in my country. Additionally, others used to use some popular sites such as Amazon, eBay, and souq. So people have established forums and blogs to discuss their experience in these sites or use special forums buying and selling goods.

In general, hope we share our experiences in social media channels through this unit to gain knowledge and acquire useful ideas.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Blog 1: Successful Blog!

 

 

 

A blog is just a website to represent some information or share ideas with others (McAfee, 2006). Due to the revolution of the technology, the social media such as blogging has become one of the most ways to share opinions, ideas and daily events for Individuals based on their interests. Also, it can be used for marketing by many companies.

The purpose of blogging

Blogs have many purposes and uses. They can be used in the education sector, so teachers can use it in term of learning students, managing their activities, teach them how to comment and leave feedbacks, encourage them to share interests (Martin, 2013). Another use of blogging is marketing especially for small business which might help to build business models and communicate with others or take notes about some products. Additionally, blogs can be personally or individually to share information depending on hobbies or interests, such as politics, sport, economics, music or, etc.

How to create a successful blog?

-          Try to write a brief about yourself to start a relationship between the blogger and the readers. To define why you are blogging? What do you want from this blog? And what do you expect from the readers?

-          Choose a clear and a suitable title for the posts. Also, focus on one angel or topic.

-          Choose the platform or the design of the blog. Which means, keep it simple, professional and attractive. Use some images, bold fonts and any other formatting. The more useful content you have there, the better your chances of readers finding your blog.

-          Joining the blog to other communities, so it will be easy to share the content with others and this can lead to being active.

-          Respect others opinions and comments.

-          Using some resources if the blogger writes real stories or news.

-          Identify the target audience or the readers based on the age, education, interests, occupation or hobbies. Concentrating on a niche readers and enhancing proper content helps to ensure there will be strong interest in your blog's posts and makes promoting the blog easier (Entrepreneur, 2014).

Strategies for obtaining readership

The blogger or the writer should have writing skills which can make the posts interesting by using some examples. In addition, commenting on other blogs and post the link of your blog is a way to increase readers. Finally, try to be an active by responding to the readers.

To sum up, this is what the technology has given us by sharing our daily photos and events. We can communicate with each other via Facebook, Twitter, Wikis, Instagram, YouTube and Blogs such as Ask.

Thank you for reading, feel free to comment on my post.

References
Entrepreneur. (2014). 6 Strategies for Launching a Successful Blog. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232478

Martin, A. (2013). How (And Why) Teachers Should Blog. Retrieved from http://www.edudemic.com/how-why-teachers-should-blog/

McAfee, A. P. (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The dawn of emergent collaboration. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(3), 21-28. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224963703?accountid=13380