With spending on customer service processes and applications to assist sales expected to exceed $1Billion globally this year (Gartner Research),  the hype around Social CRM software is over and  companies are rolling up their sleeves and getting down to business.   While B2C markets have seen the biggest adoption of social CRM, B2B businesses are now aggressively investing in social.  By the end of 2013, it is predicted that organisations using social CRM applications will increase to 25% of all projects worldwide (Forbes). (more…)

Penny Power, Author, International Speaker, Entrepreneur and founder of Ecademy talks about the role of social networks for modern professionals. Penny Power is a published author, a highly engaging speaker and one of the UK’s most inspirational and successful female entrepreneurs. Penny founded Ecademy, the UK’s first social network for business, in 1998 at the age of 33 with her husband Thomas Power.

Penny will be speaking and chairing at the Social Media World Forum event taking place at Olympia, London in March.

How important is understanding social media for modern professionals?

I often think about how executives feel about all the noise going on in the world of social media. The desire to see it as a fad, or as something not relevant to their business must be very strong for some. Many will say, and I have heard it said “oh, that is something my kids waste time doing, I am a busy person, I don’t have time for that stuff”. I wonder if I might have felt that if I had stayed in the old world 12 years ago. (more…)