Social Business Failure #1: Going Cheap
(This is the first post in a weekly theme of social business failures with the intent to learn from each other. Please allow us to learn from you by posting your comments below.)
This is a picture of a survival kit (which, BTW, I could not take with my iPhone because I went swimming with it last Saturday – another failure I won’t get into now) – one of the many hiking/camping type knacks I received for Father’s Day. Everything is packed in there very tightly When I opened it for the first time, safety clips came flying out. I know if I took anything else back out, I would never be able to get it all back in.
Notice the top zipper part. Would it have hurt to spend an extra penny to extend the top just a little bit so that it wasn’t busting at the seams (one of my pet peeves for packaging)?
Yet this is often how we buy social business. Some buy the cheapest platform that can be found, put it on the cheapest hardware and then hire as few people as we can to make it look like it is working. And then they are disappointed when it doesn’t work like they hoped. Can we really be surprised?
At one organization, budgets were really tight, so it was decided by management (against the team’s best judgement) to put up an environment that did not meet technical recommendations. It worked fine for the pilot with limited usage. Then launch day approached. The promotions were genius which drove the usage and… Crash #1. Mad dash for technical adjustments & restart #1. Up for a little… Crash #2. Mad dash for technical adjustments & restart #2. Stable, but not where it should be. That night more adjustments were made. Finally, after a few more adjustments over the next few days they felt comfortable. It was a bitter sweet moment – great usage, poor execution.
In the end they had to spend more resources to do it right than had they configured it correctly in the first place.
Another organization didn’t put the personnel in place as was recommended. The months following the launch, they were disappointed by the adoption. Yet another organization chose a tool because it was not as expensive. Their requirements seemed fulfilled, but they went cheap. In the end, they spent more time in upkeep and no one used it because although it had all the bells and whistles, the user experience was weak and it was very difficult to use.
Here are some questions you might think about. Please let us learn from you by commenting below.
- What can you do to ensure you don’t go cheap on your social business efforts?
- What if management is set on going cheap – how can you ‘convince’ them to spend the money it will take to do it right?
- What if you have already launched, but there isn’t enough of a budget from your sponsoring department to do what needs to be done?
Please add your answers below!
(Also, please consider sharing your social business failure with me to use in a future week’s scenario. I promise it will be anonymous!)