The document discusses how organizations are establishing Social Business Centers of Excellence (COEs) to better coordinate their social media strategies and initiatives across business units. It provides examples of how COEs at large companies like Shell function. COEs establish shared goals and standards to avoid duplicated efforts. They also develop tools and best practices that can be used across business units while allowing for customization. Establishing COEs helps companies leverage social media at scale through a unified vision and collaborative approach rather than competing initiatives within silos.

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Social Organization: How Centers of Excellence, Collaborative
Management and Seamless Enterprise Structures are Working
An exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today
Vanessa DiMauro
CEO

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The evolution of social business
In the beginning there were just social
media tools
These tools caught on like wildfire, and
started LOB campfires
2
Wiki
Pintrest
Twitter
FacebookLinkedIn
Blog
YouTube
RSS
On-line
Community
Marketing
IT
Business

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The result was CHAOS
• Different metrics
• Competing budgets
• Duplicated initiatives
• Resource wars for talent
• Multiple accounts
And, ultimately no business strategy
And consequently, no leveraged best
practices
3
The evolved organization
realized that there must be a
better approach.
The Social Business Center of
Excellence was born and
collaboration fueled the fire.

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The Value of A Center of Excellence (COE)
• Enables a multifaceted organization to develop a vision & mission for a
strategic initiative that spans across multiple lines of business;
• Ensures that that shared goals and objectives align with the organizational
strategy as well as with the business needs;
• Creates frameworks, tools and standards that can be leveraged across a
unifying vision and mission, yet customized to specific lines of business;
• Leads the implementation of pilot projects to enable organizational
learning and the codification of best practices;
• Establishes shared measures of success / KPIs so best-of-breed models
can be utilized across the organization for competitive advantage.
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More than 50% of organizations report that they currently are
or will be a socially enabled enterprise within the next year
n=835
34%
24%
31%
9% 2% 1%
Already Are < 12 months 1 to 2 years 3 to 5 years > 5 years Never
If your company wanted to be a socially enabled enterprise, how long
would it take to achieve that goal?
Source: The Socially Enabled Enterprise:
A 2013 Research study

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When IT and Marketing do collaborate they are more effective
6
IT N=96
Marketing N = 257
How, if at all, has this change in collaboration impacted your effectiveness as a professional?
Source: The Socially Enabled Enterprise:
A 2013 Research study

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Center of Excellence Framework
7
Strategic Objectives
Corporate Communications
Business
Unit A
Business
Unit B
Business
Unit C
Business
Unit X
Digital Initiatives
Stakeholder
Requirements
Center of Excellence:
- Mission / vision
- Governance
- Editorial calendar
- Content lifecycle:
∙ Requirements
∙ Curation
∙ Development
∙ Posting
∙ Retirement
- Standards
- Filters & templates
- Best practices
- Measures of success

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A COE Perspective from Shell
8
My team has the responsibility for social media governance and
strategy. We work as a center of excellence, in a hub and spoke
model. Our job is to provide the environment, the platform, and
practices as the means to operate and engage in social media
externally, across the company. We work with people across all
parts of the business at a country and local level, as well as our
marketing organization and other corporate functions, such as
recruiting and investor relations, to develop their own strategies
and programs that fit in and utilize social.
We don’t try to tell teams what their strategy should be. My job isn’t
to go into our head of retail and say, “Here’s what your social media
strategy should be.” My job is to ensure that they have an
environment to operate their strategy that’s consistent with what’s
core to our business, which is maintaining good reputation
standards.
Interview with Don Bulmer, Vice President of
Communication Strategy at Shell from Socially
Driven Collaboration research report 2013
(Oracle, Leader Networks, & Social Media
Today)

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A COE Perspective from Shell -2
9
I look at my role more as an enabler than anything else. The only way
you’re going to get true scale is by allowing people to have
accountability for their efforts and ownership of their own programs,
where they benefit. We’re able to then have a dialogue where they
[business] see the benefits of working with our Center of Excellence
because we give them data and information and context that allows
them to be able to run with their programs benefitting from this
platform that we’ve established. It’s one company, right? It’s one
brand.
We established a model and a framework for engagement that has
really clear lines of roles and responsibilities that everybody feels
comfortable with and allows them to kind of do what they’re intended
to do as part of their core aspects of their job.
Interview with Don Bulmer, Vice President of
Communication Strategy at Shell from Socially
Driven Collaboration research report 2013
(Oracle, Leader Networks, & Social Media
Today)

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An Operating Model For Effective COEs
• Executive leadership is critical
– Small but highly leveraged functional team
– Defines goals, key performance models
– Active and ongoing participation from business leaders with clear check points
and success measure
• COE objectives commonly spring forth from the LOB leaders but are
harnessed and prioritized by the COE in light of the mission and vision
– COE is in service of business but serves to orchestrate and facilitate
consistency and scale through repeatable processes
• Takes on role of organizational change agent
– Crawl, walk, run philosophy: pilot programs are paramount
– Big vision coupled with mini-milestones enable COEs to reach final, strategic
destination
– Transparency is a key success factor
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