How Motorola's Social Media Channel Success Drives Product Innovation

Motorola officially ceased to exist at the beginning of 2011. It emerged as two companies; the mobile phone division became Motorola Mobile and the data communications and telecommunications equipment provider department became Motorola Solutions. The two companies took the opportunity to streamline their individual channel management strategies, and appear poised to move forward more efficient than ever.

But much uncertainty preceded the split as Motorola struggled with the recession, a lagging mobile phone division and a corporate restructuring. The Motorola Droid smartphone – powered by Google’s Android operating system – shoved Motorola back into the mobile device competition. The recession trickled to an end. And when Motorola finally completed the split on Jan. 4, the new companies prepped to use the channel management lessons of the past to move forward.

Mark Chellis, the North American Director of Carrier and Channel Management, recently spoke to CMIQ about the role social media had played in the company’s channel management strategies over the past several years. Chellis is a speaker at this year’s Channel Management Summit. Chellis will participate in an open panel discussion titled, "Building a Cohesive and Effective Channel Management Strategy," and also lead a social media debate titled, "How Effective is Social Media for Your Channel Programs?" You can check out the full interview in the podcast section.

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Motorola has been experimenting with social media for longer than most people might think. It just was not visible to the end user.

"We already had communities established within our own channel ecosystem," Chellis said, mentioning independent software vendors, value-added resellers and distributors. "We tried to empower them by creating social communities where they had a dialogue with each other and with us."

Motorola’s partners appreciated the opportunity to share best practices peer-to-peer. It also enhanced Motorola’s product and solution development capability.

"We used them as a sounding board for parts of our business," Chellis said. "The dialogue created to, through and with has been invaluable."

Specifically, Chellis pointed to product marketing and development that have been directly impacted by successful social media strategies across channels.

"Product marketing people should have direct links into our social media channels," he said. "Doing online polling, understanding where our product has strengths or weaknesses is going to be vital for next-level growth."

The ES 400 is next-level growth. The product – "between a rugged mobile computing device and a smartphone," Chellis said – was developed after surveys and research conducted using social media platforms across channels and with the public.

"We recognized a niche no one was filling," Chellis said, explaining the rollout plan for the product would also rely on an effective social media strategy across the company’s channels. Microsites and sparking dialogue between partner organizations in different channels is expected to raise product awareness.

"The same is true with other products coming out in the future," Chellis said. "We look at the opportunity to engage our channels and we look at the opportunities to engage people in our business. We know those verticals better than anyone in our industry."

Chellis immediately clarified.

"And that’s not coming from me, that’s Gartner," he said, referring to The Gartner Group, which cited Motorola’s top-notch ability to create vertical-market-based solutions.

Gartner, a technology research firm, backed up Chellis’ claim.

"Motorola is a good solution for retail, government and other verticals," two analysts said in the April 27 announcement.