Business is Social – the script according to Salesforce.com’s Benioff

If you were one of the 90,000 who attended Dreamforce you would have been swept away in the energy and euphoria that is the Salesforce.com machine. Who couldn’t be. It is now the largest tech conference with 800 sessions, 350 partners and big name bands. And now Salesforce.com has a run rate of $3bn per year.  Impressive stuff.

Woooooooowwwwwww!!?!! I’m reaaaaaaaaaallly pumped.

For those who missed it, below is the first 17 minutes of Marc’s keynote. Make sure you have lots of room so you can jump around and punch the air.

But all that said, there are some very important messages here. Every year Salesforce.com extends its vision for the socially enabled enterprise and more importantly it is showing a road map for clients to follow. This is critical because the vast gulf between the “socially enabled enterprises” and the laggards is growing daily at a ferocious rate.

Luckily social is not relevant to us

And don’t think it only applies to retailers or B2C companies. The same rules apply for B2B companies dealing with their partners and customers and every company in terms of getting the best from their employees.

The social revolution is now upon us – well, most of us. 4.5 billion social users. Now 70% of businesses use social to connect with customers and McKinsey estimate there is $1.3trn of value to be gained by better use of social.

IDC estimate that the annual growth of social is 47%, and there is 123% growth in social customer interaction and at the last count there were 150m customer social transactions per day. That, ladies and gentlemen is the “customer revolution”.

A recent IBM Global CEO Study conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,709 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders around the globe. These leaders confirmed that our new connected era is changing how people engage. How are CEOs responding to the complexity of increasingly interconnected organizations, markets, societies and governments? The key findings center on:

• Employees. Empowering employees through values
• Customers. Engaging customers as individuals
• Partnering. Amplifying innovation with partnerships

Some really important things to consider here as I am about to fly to TUCON, TIBCO’s annual user conference.

The social revolution

So the question you need to ask yourself is, “Is your company going through a social revolution?

Cue the video