Can LinkedIn help a business developer of the ICT Channel? Here my first experience in using this web 2.0 tool in selecting a new technology for my Company portfolio.

Product Portfolio Strategy for the Hospitality sector.
In October 2011 my company decided to create a dedicated business unit for the hospitality market and nominated me as responsible of the unit.
It was not the first time that I found myself in a role in which I have to build a new business. So, I had from the beginning a clear idea of the necessary steps:
- define the strategy and share it with high management.
- define the product portfolio solution and share it with high management, technical support, marketing and sales.
- define the channel implementation and share it with high management, technical support, marketing and sales.
- implementation and then reporting of the go to market strategy.
As to product portfolio selection, this time I wanted to use also LinkedIn as a tool to indentify the best IP PBX for hospitality.  So, I opened a discussion on the LinkedIn Unified Communication Group and other two LinkedIn groups dedicated to Hospitality.
It was not the first time I opened a discussion on LinkedIn and I knew that their success it is hard to forecast. En effect, I had very few followers on the dedicated groups for hospitality but the discussion on the Unified Communication group went quite well. As it is an open group you can read it in details if you are interested in the subject.

IP PBX selection through Linkedin: the results.
Trough the contribution of the community expressed in the discussion and in private e-mails, I was able to build a quite complete list of good IP PBX candidates for my portfolio (tab 1)

tab 1 – potential list of IP PBX for hospitality

Based on the list of tab 1, I made a first selection based on these (very personal) criteria’s:
1) The vendor must have a strong experience in the hospitality sector with a dedicated solution for hospitality.
En effect, hospitality is a quite new sector for my Company so we need a partner that can help up in going to market in a quick and efficient way. Moreover, my Company is a value add distributor so with limited resources to develop or customize an IP PBX with specific features for hospitality.
2) The vendor must have a channel strategy for a value add distributor and, if possible, interest for the Benelux area.
3) The solution of the vendor must be open to work with a middleware software for the billing integration with the hotel PMS (I will cover this important topic in a future post).
Based on  this selection and following activity my Company closed a partnership with Selta.

Collateral effects of joining a LinkedIn Group.
I wanted to understand if this action had also positive effect on other aspect of mine (and my Company) web presence.
First of all, I wanted to see if opening a discussion on LinkedIn helped me to be more visible on this important web 2.0 platform. From  fig 1 it is clear that a (successful) discussion in LinkedIn increase the visibility of my profile in the platform itself.

Fig 1 – Profile Visibility Effect in opening a group discussion in Linkedin.

I wanted also to see if this initiative could have also effect on my personal blog. So I used Google Analytics to see the LinkedIn Traffics as a Referrals source.  From fig 2. it is still quite clear that there was a positive effect (at least in terms of visits).
 

Fig 2 – Google Analytics for Referrals traffic for my blog

Finally, I wanted do check if my initiative on LinkedIn had also a positive effect on the Web Site traffic of my company. Also in this case I used Google Analytics to see the referral traffic for that period of time. From Fig 3 it is quite clear that also in this case there was a positive effect in traffic coming from LinkedIn.

 Fig 3 – Google Analytics for Referral Traffic coming From Linkedin for my Company Web Site.

Conclusion.
LinkedIn helped me to find the right vendor for my Portfolio solution and increased my visibility and the visibility of my Company on the web.
And you, are you using LinkedIn as a tool to support your business developer activity?