Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business

Your people, armed with cheap, accessible technology, are connecting with customers and building innovative new solutions. But who are these creative problem-solvers? How can you be one? And just as important how can you lead them? We call them heroes. This book explains how to transform your company by unleashing the mighty force of these heroes. Is Your Company EMPOWERED for Success? You know its happening within your organization. Your people, armed with cheap, accessible technology, are connecting with customers and building innovative new solutions. But who are these creative problem-solvers? How can you be one? And just as important–how can you lead them? We call them HEROes: highly empowered and resourceful operatives. Your company needs them because in the age of Twitter, iPhones, Facebook, YouTube, and an ever-evolving torrent of Web information, your customers now step up to the counter armed with more data and access than ever before, and in many cases, your company is overmatched. In Empowered, Forresters Josh Bernoff–coauthor of the pioneering book Groundswell–and Ted Schadler explain how to transform your company by unleashing the mighty force of these HEROes. Like John Bernier and Ben Hedrington at Best Buy, who built an army of 2,500 tweeting employees to reach out to customers online. Or Ross Inglis, who tapped into Internet computing resources to open an entirely new customer channel for Thomson Reuters. Or John Stadick, who equipped 600 sales staff with iPhones and boosted profits at his construction rental company. The truth is, one in three of your information workers already use easily accessible technologies that your company does not sanction. Empowered gives you a prescription for embracing this covert innovation. At the heart of a HERO-powered business is a new pact between these critical employees, company managers, and the IT department: HEROes build new solutions to meet customer needs, management sets clear rules while encouraging more experimentation, and IT expands its role to both support and secure these business solutions. Fueled by data from Forrester Research, Empowered is packed with the business tools and information necessary to move your organization several steps ahead of the competition: * Statistical analysis of the 16% of customers who account for 80% of the online influence * The four-step IDEA process to transform customer-facing service, marketing, and mobile applications * A tool to score HERO projects on value and effort, to offer guidance on which projects to support * The HERO index: A scorecard of the industries and departments with the most–and the fewest–HEROes * Roadmaps for collaboration systems that stimulate and support HERO innovation * The game plan for ITs new role as a key partner in technology ideas throughout the company * Dozens of case studies and examples from firms in every industry, from retail to business services Armed with an arsenal of exciting and valuable new technologies, your employees are already transforming the way you do business. You can lead them or block them–its your choice. Empowered will help you make the right decision.