When did it happen? It seemed to creep up on us.

Look at this data https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-global-digital-overview 

To quote the report

“More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet at the start of 2020, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of this year.”

Everybody is on social media.  Our customers, our sales people, our employees and .... our suppliers.

I turned the television on today, there is the outbreak of the Cornavirus in China. The BBC were interviewing somebody who was stuck in Wuhan and had tweeted a video about him and his Granny who is staying with him.

For a start the BBC does not need to send a journalist to the area as this guy gives great TV. He has the UK Foreign Office on the back foot and he is setting the news agenda on this story.

How is it that a person nobody had heard of can control the news agenda with a social media account and an internet connection? Because that is the world we live in.

It only seemed yesterday that social media was about cat photos, photos of your lunch and “influencers”.  Now the news agenda is driven by social.

You may not like it, but that’s the way it is.

The same with the world of business, people are dabbling in business with social. It could be you look people up on social before a meeting, right through to our customers who are going through complete transformations. Either way, social media is not a glitch or a fad in business it is now strategic to the way business works. 

So what are you doing in procurement to start using social? 

What companies are looking at social?

It seems to be early adopters and the early majority.  In Marketing, we are seeing change makers in companies coming to us and saying “marketing is working anymore”.  It takes a brave person to say that.  It's time to say "Procurement isn't working anymore" and for the changemakers to start transforming with social.

These agents of change know that pulling the same old, same old, levers won’t get the results that management teams want.  

Our changemaker clients know they have to do things radically different to win. 

Maybe it’s time to be an agent of change yourself and get ready to disrupt your market? 

If you are that agent of change, get in touch!