Big businesses don’t see any return on their social media activities despite investing on average $19m (£12m) a year, new research has revealed.
This is because social media data is not being shared across different departments, the research by Tata Consultancy Services found.
The study of 655 global businesses with average revenues of $15.6 billion found 90% had seen no significant improvements to their business from social media investment.
Yet 81% of the business leaders have corporate blogs, 77% have mobile apps for consumers who use social media and 61% have online video channels.
And 64% of businesses have assigned at least one full-time employee to look after social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Another 38% of businesses said they received a positive ROI, 18% received a negative ROI, while 44% said they don’t measure it.
The research also revealed that 27% of product development and 37% of product management departments regularly view social media comments from consumers, partly because social media activity is most mostly restricted to the marketing and sales department.
Satya Ramaswamy, VP and global head of TCS digital enterprise at TCS, said organisations need to share internally in order to reap benefits from social media,
"It is time enterprises took a multi-layered approach to social media and learnt to harness its power across the enterprise in critical revenue drivers such as new product design by incorporating feedback from social media in these important business functions. Breaking down the organizational silos is key to realizing the full power of social media," she explained.
