by Francisco Marco-SerranoPosted on Posted in Autoritas, CSR, internet — No Comments ↓

Twenty years ago, Kaplan & Norton designed the Balanced Scorecard (BSc) as a performance management tool. This framework considered the strategy of a company was made up of four different perspectives, which were interlinked: financial, customer, internal, and learning and growth.

I have to admit that when I was researching about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the BSc literature as part of a team that was trying to devise a model that incorporated CSR and innovation to allow SMBs to manage their strategy execution and measure their strategic performance I found several models that would have allowed it. Those models could be grouped in two: the ones that embed CSR within the four perspectives, and those that create a new one (the CSR perspective).

So then, why not an internet perspective if we liked to stress our digital presence in the corporate strategy?

What if we were able to monitor the internet _including the social networks_ for obtaining an X-ray of our brand and we had the ability to interpret the results?

Could you imagine comparing your brand self-image (how you see yourself) to that of what the people at internet see it? And if you were able to compare it to your competitors’ brands, too?

That’s the power of the internet. That’s the power of Cosmos. Do you know Cosmos?

by Francisco Marco-SerranoPosted on Posted in Autoritas, internet, social media — No Comments ↓

Every organisation should have its strategy well conceived and formalised in a written form. Usually, a top down methodology is suggested such as your values and culture together with the ultimate goal, the Vision, define the Mision of the organisation. From there, the internal and external analysis will allow the company to determine its SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), providing valuable information towards the achievement of the organisation’s targets.

As the digital strategy of an organisations should be aligned to the corporate strategy and incorporated within the marketing strategy. So then, it is also recommended to have a social media strategic plan, not just a set of ideas or actions that senior executives have in mind and no one else in the company knows.

Feedback

Further, the strategic plan shouldn’t be a static and closed-form that one must defend to death and follow it through to the ultimate consequences. Maybe the environment has changed, maybe we were wrong when we devised the analysis and produced the strategy… That’s when feedback gets into action, transforming a monolithic strategic process in a dynamic and self-healing one.

With this in mind, Cosmos (I mentioned this tool in a previous post) has been developed so it acts as your digital strategic wizard, assisting with the internet and social media environment monitoring and assessing the gaps (are there any differences between what you want to be and what you are being seen as?, is your communication strategy in social media in line with your corporate strategy and which are the results in the various social networking sites?, which social media campaigns have been the most accurate in achieving our strategic goals?…).

Even better, another of the features of Cosmos is it can semi-automatise the feedback process by providing you with information that you might have misunderstood, missed, or that is just too new for you or your team to have come with. So then, in the hands of the strategic development team, Cosmos adds up to its ability to act as a strategic wizard the possibility to spot new valuable information in form of: influencers and critics, competitors, or new brand attributes.

Cosmos, thanks for the feedback!

by Francisco Marco-SerranoPosted on Posted in Autoritas, social media

Chaos (Greek χάος, khaos) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial “gap” created by the original separation of heaven and earth.

(Wikipedia,  retrieved 21/01/2013)

Before Cosmos there was Chaos. This is a citation that Autoritas Consulting CEO, Javier Llinares, likes to use to remind us what is the vision of Cosmos (by Autoritas Consulting).

Although it may seem a rather pretentious sentence, I assume that he is very proud of the platform that the company has managed to create to allow organisations and brands to make sense of their digital ego. Actually, I am starting to be proud myself.

Cosmos, the platform not the Greek myth this time, is an active listening and monitoring tool that manages the multiple relationships an organisation has with the online World (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, digital press…), either active or passively. Thanks to it, senior managers are capable of following really precisely the digital image of their brand, assessing if the internet strategy is aligned with the corporate strategy.

Do you want to know more about the [internet] Universe? Meet Cosmos (here)!