Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter could open up new ways for companies to interact with clients and gauge demand for the products they sell, panelists at the Louisiana Technology Council’s 6th annual CIO/CTO Forum said Friday in New Orleans.
Cliff Triplett, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Baker Hughes Inc., said researchers at Hewlett Packard have already found that by scanning the Internet for chatter about soon-to-be-released movies, they can accurately predict the amount of money a film will take in on its opening weekend.
That opens up the possibility, according to Triplett, that companies could find other ways of using social media to gauge interest and demand for products they are preparing to roll out.
“Social media is becoming the way we communicate (and) sell,” Triplett said.
“I think it’s a huge issue (and) that we have many, many more turns of the crank before we understand the full implications of social media,” said Tony Scott, Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Microsoft. “We all have to learn how to leverage it.”
Even technology that falls outside the realm of social media will change the way companies interact with their customers and employees in the future.
Mechanisms such as instant messaging and voice video will make it possible to communicate more quickly with customers and reduce the amount of time it will take to make decisions, said Dennis Walsh, former Chief Technology Officer and currently a consultant to General Motors.
Technologies will also increasingly make it possible for employees to work from anywhere.
“This notion of ‘going’ to work has been tossed on its head,” Scott said.
But the convenience of always being plugged in to what’s happening at the office, regardless of where you are, cuts both ways, Walsh said.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Walsh said. “It’s completely blurring the line between business and personal (time).”
Going forward, corporate information technology departments must evolve away from simply fixing computers and develop a new focus on helping to grow the business, the panelists said.
“We’ve got to dig deep and get involved in the very business processes” companies are pursuing, Scott said.
About 200 people attended Friday’s forum, held at the New Orleans Marriott on Canal Street.