How has social media transformed traditional business models?

Social media has massively changed the way we work and, if you let it, it can radically revolutionise the way you collaborate and communicate with colleagues. Whether they work with you or not! You can now collaborate on work regardless of geographical divides and there are many sites that facilitate online sharing of work and some that are pushing new boundaries. With all the benefits of working collaboratively online, it’s worth examining whether this is the way that companies are heading – offices get smaller and your virtual workforce gets bigger.

We’re all, hopefully, aware of the benefits of Google docs for working on documents. The ability to share and edit documents in real-time has been a great benefit to me and is pretty much something that I now take for granted. Project management services such as basecamp are also a great way to organise and create visibility of your work both with colleagues and customers/clients. But what you may not be so familiar with, is the ability to combine your internal work and processes, with on-demand workers.

Smartsheet is a service that lets you do just that. It’s like Google docs on steroids. The service is combined with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, allowing you to create documents that are then submitted to the organisation’s on-demand workforce. You can create, for example, a spreadsheet of work with the required fields (i.e you require the names and email addresses of editors of sports magazines). This is then sent out to the virtual workforce who complete the tasks in return for payment. The key is that you set the payment level yourself and, as I discussed in a post on crowd-sourcing last week, you only get what you pay for, so be fair with the payment levels here. Smartsheet also has the usual suspects you’d expect in an online collaboration solution, such as project management tools, Google apps login and the ability to track the history of documents and edits.

Smartsheet is a tool that makes it possible for a business of any level to access the most relevant talent for the task at hand and choose from possible candidates regardless of geography. It’s a tempting option, but what are you losing when you have such a disparate workforce? This might suit some companies where your requirements are purely task-driven, but for some companies and individuals, you might need that regular contact and ongoing relationship. Something that’s being addressed by virtual assistants.

A flexible option for small businesses

Virtual assistants do pretty much what it says on the tin. Virtual assistants are an option for those who require someone to work for them at a relatively cheap cost, to perform day to day tasks that might distract you from the real job at hand. There are many virtual assistant companies that provide a trenche of workers that you communicate with online. They’re not so much an option for those job roles that require managing clients etc… but if you put the work in at the start, properly briefing and training your virtual assistant, they can be an invaluable asset to you and your business, all at completely flexible working options without the need to supply them with a desk and a computer. I was discussing this with someone who uses a virtual assistant and he questioned the quality of organisations that supply virtual assistants, so he found his through Craigslist. However you find yours (and I would suggest going the Craigslist route), as a concept, virtual assistants are a great option for small businesses.

Online collaboration has completely changed the way you can structure your company. With the vast array of online collaboration tools – Google Wave being an excellent example, you now have the capability to hire employees all over the world, while communicating with them on a day to day basis. Add in skype and you’re set. So what does this mean for businesses? It means that you have access to talent at a level never achievable before. If you’re skilled and know the right places to look, you don’t need to adhere to traditional boundaries such as geography; your potential workforce just opened up massively.

The traditional business models have essentially been thrown out the window. The way you structure your workforce and the possibilities for your employees’ career progression have opened up and follow different rules now. Structures are becoming more permeable, your employees are networked, connected at completely new levels. We’re starting to see businesses embracing social media at different levels throughout the organisation and incorporating an environment that is conducive to productivity and developments through social tools.

This clearly has it’s benefits. Many companies are employing wikinomics – crowdsourcing products and services for their business. Dell set the trend here with their Ideastorm project, but others have now followed suit, such as My Starbucks Idea and Innovate with Kraft. Whether or not there’s a future in this particular business model remains to be seen, but these companies that are looking forward and increasing their knowledge-access are clearly forward thinking. It’s time for businesses to start opening up their workforce, creating flexible positions and more permeable structures. Obviously, this won’t suit every job position out there. If you need someone to operate a machine, then you need them there to operate a machine. Either way, I don’t think it will be long until the 9-5 is out the window and organisations are ‘always-on’, because their customers are.