In brief: Social media tools such as wikis, microblogs, etc. can be used internally at financial services firms to spur innovation.

Harvard Business Review had a focus this month on innovation and one of their articles discussed How a Connected Wrokforce Innovates. This got me thinking that as financial firms struggle with how to use social media at their organizations, perhaps their first step should be focusing on internal uses to connect their own people.

In our report Social Media: Trends & Tactics in Financial Services, we discussed how T. Rowe Price used internal tools to reduce the cost of customer service calls. But, social media can be used beyond cost reductions to help firms determine future initiatives. After all, large organizations have thousands of people on the front lines interacting with customers every day. Providing these folks with tools to quickly post thoughts, ideas, or comments about issues their customers are having could lead new product innovations, service channel improvements, or whole host of internal process improvements.

And, since these types of social media tools would not be customer facing, there is little risk that compliance would stifle the effort. As the HBR article points out: “There are few risks. The technologies are cheap. A company can always remove any counterproductive contributions from the website. Quite honestly, the bigger risk is that a company will turn its back on a proven source of great ideas: its people.”

Report: Social Media - Trends & Tactics in Financial Services

Social Media Report

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