Social Business: The Financial department

The financial services of a company is one of the most important one in order to see your business plan move forward. For the social business the financial services are built up of the social contributors. The people who are crowd funding the project.

The social business is a creation of each own social contributors. They take plan, they design, they sell, they take decisions and they fund all these actions with their pre-order of the final product. I suppose this social business department sound more familiar to most of you, as we all have the recent emerging experience of the crowd funding model like Kickstarter and other minor platforms.

But of course we all know that a business in order to operate with stability needs to follow a budget and a cash flow. These 2 important tools should be ensured by the platform that is going to host the social business. It is important for every contributor to know before his contribution where the money will be spend. By this way the contributor comes much closer to the social business, raising the trust and the transparency of the company.

But who is supposed to create the budget and the cash flow? At this point this procedure should be done with 2 ways. Not separate each other, but in contribution. The first way is to start designing the business plan by the person or the team who has the idea. That's fair, but the contributors should be able to make interruptions to the budget and the cash flow mainly in the building procedure.

Therefore there should be a separate fee in order to be payed by the contributors which will grant them access to the scheduling of the company. This method could be used for every department, as the contributor gains the access to the managing team and has his own votes interacting with the other members of the social business.

Finally the financial department in the social business needs support from the platform that will host the social business.

In the case of an eyewear company there should be a clear budget schedule and a clear cost development research. The next department which one of the most difficult to socialize is the Supplies Department.

Social Business: The Marketing Department

As i continue with the series of the Social Business departments i come up with the Marketing department. In our days the Social Marketing is growing fast but is this enough? I say yes, but when i mean social i do not mean only the Facebook/LinkedIn/Pinterest social networks! These are a good start up, but the big deal is in the expert community. The community that has the prestige to recommend the product as a good deal.

At this point the social contribution is taking this role. The people who will express their interest to contribute to this social business are becoming automatically the recommenders of this product. The reason is that they have bucked this product to buy it. If something is good do you bet for it? These people are betting their money!

So at this point social business contributors are becoming a powerful recommender online community. The more they join the more convincing they become. With this power the marketing job is made easier, as these people will spread the idea not only in the social networks of the internet but also to their social life in the real life! Isn't it the final aim to reach the real life?

Lets say that everything is working fine as i said above. Will it work without any management? No. As all great social ideas that have emerged the last years, the social business is in need of a new transparent platform inspiring the contributors to join it. Through this platform it will become easy to organize thousands of contributors in order to make brainstorming and marketing tactics which will reflect in the real life.

In the past i have heard of the Mass Marketing, this new model is the Mass Marketing of the Masses!

I will come back with more Social Business departments until we define the whole business model. There are many details that might miss my thoughts but all these posts are the road map i have to this new business model, the Social Business.

Social Business: The design department

I am going to write a series of all the departments needed to cooperate a business that is running under the social model. The social business.
The design of the product or the service in the classic business model is mostly a one-man show. Generally someone knows how to produce a product, how to find this product and he has all the sources of the product or the service.
In the social business model this becomes opposite. The social contributors are able to help define the product or the service they should cooperate for. This is possible to be done with 2 ways.
The first way is to present different versions and designs of the product and call the social contributors to choose which one they would prefer. In this case in the eyewear industry, we could present 30 different models of sunglasses and the social contributors will come to choose 15 models that they would prefer and make pre-orders.
In the second way the solution comes from the source. We have social contributors that have interest to present their designs and versions of the product and wait for the approval of the other co-contributors.
In each case the approval means a pre-order of the product.
In the social business it's not bad to have organizers and people that have something to say. But the must rule is that the final decision is always taken by the social contributors. It's not bad to have people experts in the production procedure, as this way you help people who have no knowledge of the production to take decisions.These experts are not always coming from the organizer of the social business, but they come up from the social contributors. This is logical as an eyewear industry is expected to attract people from the industry inside.
What does the social contributor has to earn to do that?
1. He is taking product, as they pre-order.
2. He is a social contributor of the business knowing other members of the company that are aware of the industry. Generally the contributors of a certain business are tryin gto have PR in order to open doors to their careers. This model is open to that strategy.
3. If the social business has success, this success is credited to the contributors, who are the direct ones or the supporters. Generally a designer is expected to promote his good skill by contributing a good model of sunglasses in a social business collection.
4. The morale satisfaction that he is contributing into something new and known with other members of the community.

So as you understand the organizers are needed for the good run of th esocial business, but the 1st word always is on the contributors.

Can you imagine your design department contributed by thousands of people? Yes they are too much. But if they support you with pre-orders? Does this social business model in the design department could run?