The document discusses how companies can build a community management center of excellence (CoE) to improve social business success. It provides examples of how a CoE could help address two situations: 1) launching an employee talent platform and 2) varying adoption rates of a social platform across regions. The CoE would focus community efforts, establish best practices, and apply a consistent strategy. It then outlines an 8-step process for establishing a CoE, including defining its vision and governance, recruiting experts, and piloting projects to refine its approach.

1. Dachis Group
Building a Community Management Centre of Excellence

2. Does your company fully
understand the importance of
community management for
social business success?
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3. Any online community within
your company has an
underlying purpose. It is
the job of a community
manager to drive this
purpose.
3

4. By driving purpose,
connecting people together
and nurturing a cooperative
environment community
managers help realise your
business goals.
4

5. Dachis Group believe that
companies can increase
the prominence and
effectiveness of community
management by creating a
centre of excellence.
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6. The following slides discuss
what a centre of excellence
might look like in the context
of community management
and how your company
can start building one today.
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7. CENTRE OF
EXCELLENCE

8. CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
WHAT IS IT?
A CoE is an internal service
hub comprising people, People
knowledge and practices
that together deliver thought
leadership, better ways of CoE
working and continuous
Knowledge Practices
improvement in a specific field
of work.
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9. CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
WHY IS A COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT CoE
NEEDED?
To focus the To establish To provide To apply a
community’s community thought consistent strategy
underlying management as a leadership & across the
purpose serious discipline training organisation
To build a repository To gather evolving To align community
of research, tactics requirements and development with
and lessons learned manage change business objectives
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10. HOW WOULD THE CoE WORK?
TWO SITUATIONS
1 2
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11. SITUATION 1
HR are launching a new talent discovery
platform that will help employees take
ownership of their career development. How
will they get people to maintain their talent
profiles and fully engage with the initiative?
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12. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
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13. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
Comms
Vendor Project
Managers
HR
HR consults with the platform
vendor, the communications
department, and project
managers.
13

14. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
Comms
Vendor Project
Managers
HR
The vendor knows the tool but
has no understanding of the
company’s culture.
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15. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
Comms
Vendor Project
Managers
HR
The comms department
informs the workforce but does
not know how to incentivise
users.
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16. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
Comms
Vendor Project
Managers
HR
Project managers are
frustrated because they can’t
find talent through using the
tool.
16

17. SITUATION 1
WITHOUT A CoE
Comms
Vendor Project
Managers
HR
Employees fail to engage
because there has not been a
sufficiently joined-up
approach.
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18. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
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19. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
HR employes the CoE to run an
adoption campaign.
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20. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE appoints a community
manager to run the campaign and
enlists advocates from across the
organisation.
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21. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE designs the use cases and
brings into play a rich set of adoption
tactics.
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22. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE measures the effectiveness of
the campaign and provides regular
reports.
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23. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
All the while employees are placed
front and centre of the process and
their feedback is acted upon.
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24. SITUATION 1
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
HR CoE
Employees
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The initiative is off to a good start and
the CoE has further developed its
people, knowledge and practices for
the future.
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25. SITUATION 2
The social business platform has seen very
high rates of adoption in one country but
almost none in other regions. The executives
want to find out what is driving success in the
successful country and transfer best
practices to all other regions.
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26. SITUATION 2
WITHOUT A CoE
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27. SITUATION 2
WITHOUT A CoE
Executives
Analyst Power
User
Region
n
n
The executives hire an analyst to
find out why adoption has been
strong in one region but not others.
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28. SITUATION 2
WITHOUT A CoE
Executives
Analyst Power
User
Region
n
n
The analyst discovers that adoption
has been driven by a power user
acting as community manager in
the successful region.
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29. SITUATION 2
WITHOUT A CoE
Executives
Analyst Power
User
Region
n
n
The power user is asked to consult
with leaders in each lagging region
in order to transfer skills.
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30. SITUATION 2
WITHOUT A CoE
Executives
Analyst Power
User
Region
n
n
The result is haphazard as many of
the leaders are not suited to
community management and find
the advice difficult to action.
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31. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
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32. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
Region
Region
Region
nnn CoE
Executives
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The executives ask the CoE to
investigate the variation in user
adoption and implement an action plan
for the lagging regions.
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33. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
Region
Region
Region
nnn CoE
Executives
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE identifies individuals in each
region who are best suited to
community management activities and
trains them up for the task.
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34. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
Region
Region
Region
nnn CoE
Executives
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE provides a support network
that all local community managers can
draw from and contribute to.
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35. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
Region
Region
Region
nnn CoE
Executives
Knowledge Practices
Problem
The CoE continually monitors rates of
adoption in each region and develops
its approach accordingly.
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36. SITUATION 2
WITH A CoE
Solution
People
Region
Region
Region
nnn CoE
Executives
Knowledge Practices
Problem
Good community management
practices take root in all regions which
helps to drive adoption and improve the
overall vitality of the platform.
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37. HOW TO
BUILD A CoE

38. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
8 STEPS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
When building a CoE it is advisable to start small and grow
organically. The key to success lies in the people and
processes on which it is built.
Broadly speaking the process will follow 8 steps.
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39. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 1 - Define the vision
Start by defining the purpose, goals and plan of action for the
CoE. This strategic approach will include setting out a high-
level organisational model, success factors, measurements
and metrics.
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40. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 2 - Establish success criteria
Determine what you want success to look like. What should the
CoE accomplish? What upcoming initiatives would you like
them to assist with? Having these success criteria clear from
the outset will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of the
initiative.
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41. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 3
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 3 - Determine Governance
What are the required roles in the CoE and what are their
responsibilities? Decide upon the lines of communication and
procedural checklists. What other things should be in place to
ensure the quality and consistency of each new engagement?
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42. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 4 - Fill in the details
Bring definition to the organisational model by determining the
skills and roles you will need. Perform a white space analysis
and decide your recruitment requirements. Create a mentor
and training programme to help CoE members achieve the
required level of expertise.
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43. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 5 - Involve the right people
Make sure that you have at least one community management
expert to lead the way. If this person doesn’t already work
within the organisation consider hiring from without. Also
involve other likely individuals such as power users, natural
helpers and advocates of social business technology.
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44. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 6 - Account for costs
Build an understanding of how to cost CoE engagements.
Consider how finances will be managed. Will the CoE have a
price structure? How will it be budgeted?
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45. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 7 - Run pilot projects
Before opening up the CoE’s services to the whole company it
would be wise to test what you’ve built with one or two pilot
projects. Meet with project owners to determine scope,
requirements, objectives etc. and then test that your people,
processes and metrics are fit-for-purpose. Review your pilot
projects and make necessary improvements to the CoE model.
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46. HOW TO BUILD A CoE
STEP 8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Step 8 - Raise awareness
For the CoE to be successful the rest of the company needs to
know about it. How can internal customers be made aware of
the offering? Determine what the core services are and
advertise through all appropriate channels, but particularly
through the community platform itself.
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47. ABOUT
DACHIS GROUP

48. ABOUT DACHIS GROUP
LEADERS IN SOCIAL BUSINESS STRATEGY
Dachis Group are the leading We are leaders in social
global, integrated, end-to-end business strategy and
social business consultancy. implementation.
We help clients design social
ecosystems, build real-world
business cases and apply the best
principles of social media.
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49. CONTACTS Kieran Kelly CONSULTANT
kieran.kelly@dachisgroup.com
Cerys Hearsey SENIOR CONSULTANT
cerys.hearsey@dachisgroup.com
‘Pigeons in Flight’ image by Jimmy Brown:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmybrown/4041963981/
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50. Thank you.
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