Marc Benioff\’s Key Note \”Welcome to the Social Enterprise\” at Dreamforce 2011

Here at Dreamforce in San Franciso listening to Marc Benioff giving his vision on The Social Enterprise. This last year Social Media rapidly changed the way business and customers connect. It’s about using social connections and customer data to understand how to improve your value to your customers.

Marc referenced the Arab Spring and how that changed the world and defeated dictators. Are we also in a “Business Spring?” Look at Groupon, they exploded into a $ billion company using the Social Coupon, instantly disrupting and changing the retail promotion business.

How do you create the Social Network?
Using a collaboration platform with a tool like Chatter can enhance the knowledge and value sharing amongst customers, employees, and partners creates a more powerful, innovative business and will create a competitive advantage.

New product announcement – Chatter Now & Chatter Connect. Instant messaging, desktop sharing and integration with other platforms like Sharepoint and Lotus Notes. Also can stream 3rd party data like expense report approval. Is this a replacement of email? Perhaps. But more likely another tool like Facebook that you rely on to understand your business social network, much like you check your Facebook site to know what family and friends are doing and what they like.

Chatter has file sharing and bringing in web pages and into mobile. New version of Chatter mobile for iPad, and Android too. Big thing is collaborating with customers like Facebook with their documents and special groups that are closed and secure to outsiders or unauthorized people.

New product announcement – Data.com
automatically pulls social profile data about contacts into the Sales Cloud. Very cool! Now you don’t have to spend time researching this information about a prospect. One button an it’s in front of you in your Contact profile.

Of course the biggest new product announcement Is around their new Social Listening tool – Radian6 and platform – Heroku. They demoed how Disney is using Radian6 to understand what their customers are talking about. What delights and disappoints them and change their business and marketing plans.

Biggest idea – the Social Product! Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry talked about how they’ve created a Social Enterprise to improve their brand and customer experience. Toyota “Friend” Social Enterprise integrated all their customers into their business, brand, dealers and even the vehicles themselves! The car will give you updates to your social network – sends you tire pressure, service reminders, gas level, etc. Coke has created smart vending machines that can track your purchases via mobile device and build better customer likes and dislikes. Very cool!

It’s all about The Social Enterprise! I’m looking forward to seeing how receptive CEOs, CMO’s, Sales & Mktg Execs vs CIOs will be to this new way of doing business.