At KINSHIP we are excited and proud to see our client and friends at the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) yesterday officially launch the first Social Media Command Centre in Vietnam. This was a great achievement by the BIDV SMCC Project Team as they not only developed and implemented a whole new content strategy for the bank and implemented complex locally-developed monitoring software but they also designed and project managed the physical SMCC construction and fit-out, and developed a fantastic promotional launch video (see below). All this in about 10 weeks!

An ideal customer who worked hard

KINSHIP was privileged to have been selected by BIDV as the winner of the tender for consultancy services to develop the business strategy for their Social Media Command Centre. This was a multi-phase consultancy with the strategy, business alignment and use cases being the core of the work, and then the inclusion of the technology selection criteria as the outcome of the strategy and use case development.

In fact there were a long list of deliverables which drew upon our experience across the board in designing and implementing the first Social Media Command Centre in South East Asia – our own for-profit centre which we established in the Philippines several years ago – and in developing and helping implement many fact-based social media strategies – based on our ASPIRE methodology.

We also drew upon our work in crisis management, and in governance and audit of social media.
For KINSHIP this was an ideal project to bring together our experience and skills, and as it turned out BIDV and the SMCC Project Team were ideal customers.

They were an ideal customer because:

• they were curious;

• eager to learn;

• explored options on their own initiative;

• continually questioned how to make the outcomes relevant and appropriate for BIDV and its processes, culture and market;

• provided everything we asked for in a timely manner, and arranged access to the right people at the right time;

• read everything we produced in detail;

• were eager to get hands-on training; and,

• were committed to making social media and social technologies an integral part of how the bank did business in the future.

The BIDV team also did a fantastic job of selling the project upwards and in gaining the support of key executives across the retail bank, and in actively negotiating the various options for where the SMCC should be located and managed within the organisation. These are not simple things in a large, complex and long-established organisation. KINSHIP provided advice and support but the hard work was done by the BIDV team. and in particular Catty Hang the Project Leader and then Team Leader (see pic below – on right).

As part of the project KINSHIP included 3 days of hands-on training at our for-profit SMCC in Clark, Philippines.  This was a very rewarding exercise for all of us in the project.

The BIDV team were able to suddenly pull together all the theoretical knowledge they had gathered, and which KINSHIP had presented to them on paper, and to not only see it applied and operating in practice but also to get hands-on and try for themselves.

For KINSHIP, we learnt a lot more about BIDV’s detailed operational concerns, more about them as people, and gained great satisfaction in seeing how the theoretical knowledge which we had passed on transformed itself into practical knowledge for the BIDV team.

It was at this particular phase of the project that the BIDV team developed the confidence that they could pull the project together and make it happen. Prior to this the vast volume of new knowledge and information which was pouring at them made them nervous and unsure of their ability to be able to coherently deliver to the expectations of the bank. It suddenly all made sense, and was “doable” because they had witnessed how the KINSHIP does it in practice.

The BIDV team was then very competently able to choose social media monitoring software which was best suited to the Vietnamese social media environment. And they were confident to work with the provider to specify and prioritise specific requirements which they knew would be needed to fit in with internal processes and inter-departmental coordination.

And most remarkably they attacked the architectural and physical design, and the construction and fit-out of their Command Centre, like old hands. All of this done and managed by the team. In parallel with design, construction, fit-out and social media monitoring implementation they designed a whole new image and campaign (meet Anh Cố Vấn) for the launch (focused on Facebook but spanning other marketing and retail elements). And, they produced this fantastic professional promotional launch video (below, all Vietnamese but the idea is clear) and gained press coverage. This literally all done in three months. An outstanding effort.

We applaud you

Besides the satisfaction of working with the BIDV team and getting to know them personally, we had great pleasure in seeing them take our advice, digest it, and then take charge and run with their own purpose and goals.

KINSHIP learnt a lot about the special characteristics of the Vietnamese social media environment (dominated by Facebook) and culture. We came to appreciate more than even the great job our own Social Media Command Centre team in Clark does. And, we were thoroughly impressed with the entrepreneurs and software developers in Vietnam and their ability to produce excellent social media monitoring applications which address complex semantic issues inherent in the Vietnamese language.

Well done BIDV and the SMCC Project Team. A fantastic effort and we at KINSHIP can’t wait to see how you develop your expertise and support BIDV in the coming months and years. We applaud you.

Next: To win the Best Social Media Project 2015 award from The Asian Banker so that Anh Cố Vấn can really celebrate!

PS BIDV WINS! At the CMO Asia Awards in August 2015 the BIDV Social Media Team won the award for the Best Social Media Team in Asia. To go from zero to winning this award in less than 6 months is a testament to the power of a sound strategy – as opposed to a tactical reaction – and a committed, competent team to execute the strategy. Congratulations Team BIDV!