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Q2 How Do SMIS Advance Organizational Strategy? 299

evaluate candidates for such positions? How do you find these types of people? All of these
questions are being asked and answered today.
Ironically, SM may provide the answer to its own question. It’s estimated that 92 percent
of companies use social media to recruit (93 percent of them from LinkedIn), 73 percent have
successfully hired using social media, and one-third have rejected candidates because of some-
7
thing on their social profiles. Recruiters are using SM to find candidates and fill jobs. Some of
those jobs are SM jobs.

Q2 How Do SMIS Advance Organizational Strategy?

In Chapter 3, Figure 3-1 (page 83), you learned the relationship of information systems to or-
ganizational strategy. In brief, strategy determines value chains, which determine business
processes, which determine information systems. Insofar as value chains determine structured
business processes, such as those discussed in Chapter 7, this chain is straightforward. However,
social media is by its very nature dynamic; its flow cannot be designed or diagrammed, and, if it
were, no sooner would the diagram be finished than the SM process would have changed.
Therefore, we need to back up a step and consider how value chains determine dynamic
processes and thus set SMIS requirements. As you will see, social media fundamentally changes
the balance of power among users, their communities, and organizations.
Figure 8-5 summarizes how social media contributes to the five primary value chain activi-
ties and to the human resources support activity. Consider each row of this table.

Social Media and the Sales and Marketing Activity

In the past, organizations controlled their relationships with customers using structured processes
and related information systems. In fact, the primary purpose of traditional CRM was to manage
customer touches. Traditional CRM ensured that the organization spoke to customers with one

Activity Focus Dynamic process Risks

Sales and marketing Outward to prospects Social CRM Loss of credibility
Peer-to-peer sales Bad PR
Customer service Outward to customers Peer-to-peer support Loss of control
Inbound logistics Upstream supply chain Problem solving Privacy
providers
Outbound logistics Downstream supply Problem solving Privacy
chain shippers
Manufacturing and Outward for user design; User-guided design Efficiency/effectiveness
operations Inward to operations Industry relationships
and manufacturing Operational efficiencies
Human resources Employment candidates; Employee prospecting, Error
Employee recruiting, and evaluation Loss of credibility
communications SharePoint for
Figure 8-5 employee‚to‚employee
communication
SM in Value Chain Activities

7 Shea Bennett, “92% of Companies Use Social Media for Recruitment,” All Twitter at MediaBistro.com, October
16, 2013, accessed June 17, 2014, www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-recruiting_b50575.