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Filing Information: January 2012, IDC #232868, Volume: 1, Tab: Vendors

Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions: Event Flash

EVENT FLASH

B r i n g i n g S o c i a l M e d i a C o n t r o l s t o F i n a n c i a l S e r v i c e s : A c t i a n c e A n n o u n c e s t h e G e n e r a l A v a i l a b i l i t y o f S o c i a l i t e E n g a g e

Erin Traudt Michael Fauscette

I N T H I S E V E N T F L A S H

This IDC Flash highlights the January 31, 2012, announcement by Actiance Inc. about the general availability

of Socialite Engage, a social media engagement platform designed specifically for those in the financial

services industry. Given the strict rules and federal regulations that govern the financial services sector,

Socialite Engage has been built to flexibly manage inbound and outbound content and conversations via

popular social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter while providing message archiving

controls to maintain compliance.

S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W

Today, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have become household names, not only for communicating with

friends and relatives but also as viable channels for conducting business. In fact, findings from IDC's third

annual Social Business Survey conducted in May 2011 revealed that companies were predominantly using

consumer social media tools to communicate with customers (51%), create awareness about a company

product or service (43%), and acquire knowledge/ask questions (42%). For those survey participants that

were using consumer social software for business-related initiatives, IDC found that the top 5 social Web sites

were Facebook (75%), LinkedIn (59%), Google (57%), YouTube (55%), and Twitter (49%).

These results support the growing number of use cases for engaging on the social Web for business — not

consumer — purposes. The value of social media has a rather broad impact on a range of departments and

industries. From an organizational perspective, marketing and public relations professionals have been at the

forefront of using social networking and social media tools for external brand awareness activities. However,

not all industries have been ready to adopt social media practices because of the need to understand social

media's benefits and impact on organizational culture while abiding by heavy government regulation.

One company that is helping financial institutions overcome the hurdle of using social media compliantly for

customer awareness and engagement is Actiance. Actiance was founded in 1998 originally as FaceTime

Communications and provides security and compliance software for real-time, unified communications (UC),

collaboration, and Web 2.0 technologies including social networks. The company has expanded its product

suite with the addition of Socialite Engage — a Web-based application, available via the SaaS delivery model,

designed to help marketing professionals, compliance departments, and/or individual financial advisors along

with their marketing and compliance teams distribute approved content over LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

to drive new business opportunities, customer loyalty, and brand awareness. Socialite Engage is integrated

with Socialite Enable, Actiance's social media compliance offering designed to help companies and users

manage access to social network features as well as moderate custom content and communications before

they are publicly released. Key features of Socialite Engage include, but are not limited to, the following:

Content library. Socialite Engage users can select permitted content developed internally or by a third

party such as Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters, EarthIntegrate, or Equilar and post that information to

social networks via multiple channels (e.g., personal or corporate pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and

Twitter).

Newsfeed. Socialite Engage users can see an aggregated view of all the conversations happening

across their entire network.

Key connections. Socialite Engage users can identify specific people within their network to follow

more closely in order to monitor their activity and changes in their status.

Teaming. Central marketers manage and monitor the aggregated results of Socialite Engage users,

identifying success stories and aiding underperforming individuals.

Analytics. Socialite Engage users can identify and measure the success of a particular piece of content

and determine who is the most active and influential member of a network as well as the best time

during the day to communicate with prospects and clients.

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With the general availability release of Socialite Engage, Actiance has also established new professional

services offerings to help financial services clients better understand how to create meaningful interactions

with key prospects and customers effectively using social media. These services include:

Stakeholder Social Engagement Workshop

Social Media Enablement Training Session for Financial Services

Best Practices for LinkedIn

Best Practices for Twitter

Best Practices for Facebook

Socialite Technical Planning, Configuration and Implementation

F U T U R E O U T L O O K

The future of business is social. This not only includes the use of social media for engaging externally with

customers but also is a way for internal employee social collaboration to occur. A new set of social tools have

emerged specifically for the enterprise that combine consumer social principles with business culture and

process to transform companies into social businesses. Social businesses are organizations that embrace

Web 2.0 technologies to implement cultural and process changes to improve business performance in an

increasingly connected global economic environment.

Important to this transformation process both inside and outside of an organization are education and

awareness about social media policies and best practices. According to IDC research, 57% of companies

have a social media policy in place. While this is encouraging, the focus should be on getting the remaining

43% of companies to implement guiding principles as well as offer training and certification to encourage

adoption, regardless of industry.

Heavily regulated industries such as energy and financial services have been under severe scrutiny in recent

years, which has created a highly competitive environment. The need to use social media for client

engagement, retention, and brand awareness is increasing as more businesses and consumers communicate,

share, and discover information online. As the wealth of the nation moves more toward a population that is

becoming increasingly social, financial services firms need to begin having conversations in the area in which

these investors wish to communicate. Socialite Engage is intended to make these activities not only easy for

users but also relevant and to ensure that companies remain in compliance with the rules and laws issued by

the government. With Socialite Engage, companies can maximize the business value of the use of social

channels while minimizing risk by offering another level of control on content communicated through the social

Web.