Social Business: Compliant Communities as a Strategic Differentiator

By Joe Shepley (@joeshepley) Oct 12, 2011

I recently attended JiveWorld11, where a key theme in many of the presentations, as well as most of my conversations, was compliant communities. I’ll admit to being a little bit surprised, because to date, Enterprise 2.0 and social media practitioners seem to be, if not completely unconcerned with compliance, at least less concerned than they should be.

Many of them come to social media and Enterprise 2.0 from marketing or agency backgrounds, which are areas that typically have low involvement in enterprise-compliance activities. Additionally, E2.0 and social media tools and capabilities are predicated on openness, collaboration and freedom, so imposing tight compliance seems to go against the very reasons we get involved in them in the first place.

And it doesn’t help that on top of all this, with the exception of FINRA, regulators in the U.S. have been silent on social media and E2.0 — heck, most regulators are just getting around to addressing things like email and instant messaging.

Winds of Change

But despite the fact that compliance has been somewhat absent from discussions of Enterprise 2.0 and social media to date, the situation is changing, and fast, for a number of reasons:

Regulation is coming — FINRA has paved the way with Notice 10-06 and Notice 11-39; other regulators are not far behind.
Social media and Enterprise 2.0 are hitting the big time — 12 months ago, I was the one starting the conversation around social media and E2.0 with my clients; today, this is one of the first topics they broach when I show up.
Vendors are starting to get it — an increasing number of E2.0 and social media vendors are incorporating compliance into their marketing and product roadmaps, and the number of pure-play compliance solutions is increasing (e.g., Actiance, Hearsay).
The number of Enterprise 2.0 and social media business cases is growing — we’re moving way beyond generic employee communities, knowledge sharing applications or expertise management tools. Today, organizations are looking to use social media and E2.0 tools and capabilities to enable core business processes, such as sales force enablement, front-line customer service or product development. And these core business processes tend to require more compliance, not only because they are core to the business, but also because they are more specific, i.e., regulators don’t have as much to say about expertise management as they do about working with brokers, for example.

Compliance is a Bummer

None of this changes the fact that compliance is seen as a buzz kill, not just in the world of Enterprise 2.0, but Enterprise 1.0 as well. I mean, nobody really likes compliance or is excited to do it. Folks do it because they have to — that’s why we have regulations in the first place: to make folks do things they ordinarily wouldn’t do because they’re not in their best interest (or they compete with things that are more in their best interest).

And even large organizations in heavily regulated industries that typically spend lots of time and money on enterprise compliance activities (and market their ability to be compliant to the wider public) wouldn’t do any of this if they didn’t have to…or at least not to the degree that they do now.

There’s the sense that we could do business more effectively, efficiently, and profitably if all these pesky regulations weren’t in the way, and this is doubly true for E2.0 and social media activities.

Barriers to Entry

But I take issue with these typical attitudes to enterprise compliance activities, because I think they miss the opportunity presented by compliance as a barrier to entry.