PGreenblog

Pictures At An Exhibition: Michael Maoz Kicks Some Intent-Driven Butt Into Gear

Got to see Michael Maoz (Gartner's superstar analyst) both hanging out and presenting at the SAP CRM Theater. Aside from just the sheer pleasure of seeing someone I count among my special friends, he did a GREAT job at the presentation, unveiling some new material on CRM and the social actions of the new customer. Some of his stuff was validating to me because it overlapped (with different verbal assignments) what I've been saying. Some of it was outright fascinating & I think he personally is onto something here. I'm going to summarize in about 200 words what he said for an hour so needless to say this will be the spare version. Gartner Research apparently found that CRM is THE top priority for businesses in 2008 - in part due to the economic difficulties - because people need to retain customers when the going is bad. but what was interesting is the different spins different segments have - for examples the biggest business issue is enhancing and retaining relationships with customers (8.1 on scale of 10) while #2 is tracking new customers (pay attention Business Objects!!) (8.0/10). When CEOs only were queried they thought that sales productivity (36%) and customer care (35%) were the #1 & #2 issues respectively - which for those of who think in a classically siloed way - are two of the three pillars of CRM. When IT was queried about their business expectations the number 1 for 2008 (and '07 & '06) was improving business processes and #2? Attracting & retaining customers. Innovation went from #10 in 2007 to #3 in 2008. He then went thorough a significant amount of other Gartner numbers of which, I'll let you in on a few more. The availability of channels for the customer has increased in both scope and complexity and what was fascinating is that as self-service via the web increased to 50% of channel activity in customer service in 2007, the parts of customer service that still relied on humans (e.g. contact center CSRs) found that it got far worse for them and even with all the new technologies and the reduction in the amount of human to human contact (though, for example, T-Mobile has 300 million incoming so I can't see that calls have been reduced THAT much), the attrition rate among CSRs is worse than ever. The reason? If someone goes to the extent of calling, given they can take care of many of their problems or queries via the web, they are REALLY REALLY mad. REALLY mad. Really....mad. The lesser problems have been solved online. See the theme here? Customers, customers, and, oh crap, yeah, all things related to customers. Which means that CRM is the #1 priority for us'n in 2008. But, and this was the kicker, as Michael said, his daughters don't know that. They do their purchasing due to what they are told to on Facebook. They ask their friends via Facebook, or MySpace or perhaps use the aggregators like FriendFeed to find out where to go tonight or the best place to get a bargain handbag or how to figure out a more complex purchase. All that "stuff" that companies are doing doesn't mean squat to them. He also pointed out in a very interesting way that he's had three varieties of Toyota SUV, or car or lux car (Lexus), and has been a committed Toyota customer for 10 years, but Toyota didn't grow with him so it couldn't make a suggestion about what might interest him. Why not? THEY DIDN'T KNOW. All they know is that he bought some cars for some reasons other than what they can fathom. In fact, I find this to be a HUGE problem with companies and a complex one to solve. How do you grow with the customers? Each of them grows differently and yet, if you knew, the likelihood of repurchase or of a new purchase or cross sell or whatever salesy terms you are comforted by, goes up exponentially because the emotional state attached to that knowledge and indication of that knowledge to the customer is that "hey, they CARE," or in a Sally Fieldsian way, "They like me. They REALLY like me." Procter & Gamble is the only company I'm aware of doing that "growing up with the customer" to some degree. They have a product called "Sparkle Body Spray" that in 2005 (long story with this that you should attend my classes to hear) was aimed at the 14-15 year old girl market and had a social site that was associated with the themes that you'd find with that age group. Contests, blogs with colors associated with the body spray (anti-perspirant) scents, putting together dream date and then emailing info or text messaging info to friends, etc. This was wildly successful, all word of mouth built with 12,000 unique visitors a week who averaged 25 minutes per visit on the site. But if you look at it now, when the girls are now around 17-18, the site is tied to another site "Because You're Hot" which has video dance contests that win you a JLo music video slot and surveys about the sexiest scent, etc. In other words, the site is growing up with its audience. (BTW, this is me, not Michael in that red paragraph. I don't want to put words in his mouth) He made the point that his kids and many others are moving to control their own experiences outside the channels provided by the company and this is an inevitable march. This peer to peer relationship, the external communities not in the control of the business, are all creating a new set of expectations which he identified as:

• 24/7 availability of services
• want to be needed, recognized
• Dialogue, experience control
• Give them, show them you have domain expertise

The optimal enterprise here would not be the current one which he called the function driven enterprise, but instead the "Intent-driven Enterprise." That is a company that knows not just what I want, but knows my intent - what are the reasons I want what I want, and what WILL I be interested in down the road - the knowledge of which they got from me, senor, senorita, senora customer. He then identified the top "functionality" requirements for the Intent-driven Enterprise:

1. It is in sync with evolving needs (key here is evolving)
2. It engages community opinions
3. It is reliable & trustworthy
4. It allows independent ratings
and
5. It uses "like type" comparisons (similar here to the Edelman Trust Index findings - the most trusted person I know is someone like me).

Because this is so complex, success can't be defined as good "suboptimal" results (good marketing, good sales, good service, etc.) but has to be defined as the engagement of an integrated ecosystem made available to the customer.

He (almost) closed with what I would call a perceptual model for the future customer. He said the customer had to have the illusion of free will, of the availability of multiple paths for exploration and of the means to achieve several goals with the business. While the business is needed to provide it, the business reality is that the paths are probably pre-determined, that there is one process that is truly available and that one goal is there for the customer. Michael wasn't advocating this, he was saying that's what the business reality is and probably will be. This is very much the same concept in a somewhat different framework that Joe Pine 2 advocates in "Authenticity" which is fake real in a manner of speaking. My take on this has been more benign since I don't think that fake ANYTHING is what needs to happen but I do think that you don't need to own luxury, you need to "feel luxurious." You know the old saying, "whatever floats your boat?" That is what I mean, but the business has to see it from what it costs them to make the boat that the customer wants to float, and no one in their right mind can argue this is wrong. I do think there is an optimal state possible, though. I think that the engagement of the entire ecosystem of the company for the customer opens up options for the customer that give them increased degrees of freedom while at the same time allowing the enterprise to execute its business plan successfully. Meaning a "real real" collaboration. Primarily because there are a lot of forces involved in an ecosystem - not just one company and one customer but multiple value chains associated with either the customer or the enterprise. What Michael (though not in this presentation, more in discussions) and I make abundantly clear in our own inimitable styles is that business value and customer value while sharing the word "value" are two very different ideas that have to work in conjunction for both the customer to get what he/she wants & the business to get what it wants.

Pay attention to this "intent-driven enterprise" thing - its important and this is the first I've seen it. I hope that Gartner gets on board with Michael's thinking here. It would do them well to be more than cursory about it. This is really good stuff.

Its 2008. SAP FINALLY Gets It. They Really, Really Do.....

I'm more than pleasantly surprised. Much more actually. As you know from my past "tough love" posts on SAP and their often dusty messaging, while I liked the company, I thought that they just didn't get "it." The "it" being the contemporary customer's approach to the world and the social changes going on that were affecting business in a rather dramatic way. In fact, one year ago at this time, I'd have to have said (and did) that most of large software - actually all large high tech - companies - were ignoring the changes and still trying to please the enterprise customer in ways that no longer made sense nor has an iota of reasonable excuse for continuing. But, I'm sitting here at Sapphire 2008 heading into day 2 after a very productive day 1, and not only hearing messaging at this conference that I think is on the money, but getting the anecdotal evidence I need to make me believe that this is more than messaging - that SAP seems committed to transforming itself down to its core culture - and has been proceeding to do so. Two things before I outline some of what I'm seeing here:

1. For those of you who don't know it. SAPPHIRE is SAP's annual conference, which for the last 3 (I think) years has been a joint effort of SAP and ASUG, their user group umbrella organization. This is a MASSIVE conference - with over 15,000 attendees - apparently stuck down here in Orlando FL for a few more years (too bad on that one) at the Orlando Convention Center. Which can handle the traffic. I just don't love Orlando.
2. My approach to figuring this all out is straightforward, I listen to the stuff said on the stage, then I go and talk to people and, ahem, eavesdrop on the more casual conversations that go on and watch and listen for the smaller things that indicate cultural and intellectual transformation. So, for example, if someone says, as Henning Kagermann, the CEO of SAP, did, that SAP is committed to a culture of co-development and co-innovation, then I go out and find the signs that they are by seeing what they are actually doing and hearing how people are talking

OK. Enough of the preliminaries. Now on to the meat (though there is a vegetarian alternative phrase if requested). I sat in on the morning Executive Session for Business Influencers (I have this nice ego-boosting black tag on my badge that says I'm one. Thank god someone believes that. I'll save the badge for when I need to remember) and one brief observations. Analysts wear far too much wool. Its hot here but about 80% of the audience were wearing suits. Yuck. The message that was presented yesterday morning at the Exec. session was claro. SAP is successful, growing and SAP is changing and meeting the requirements of that change. On the successful side, SAP's global market share was 32.6% with organic growth up 0.9% over the last year and growth of market share through acquisition 3.3%. They had some significant revenue growth too with total revenue for example in EMEA at 1,306,000,000 euros which is 21% year over year growth in that sector. I didn't manage to get the totals, but so what? You get the idea which is the idea of this number. The themes that were presented for their "as is" (as opposed to forward thinking) state were that they could handle complex systems by innovating quickly; they were people centric with the ability to develop ad hoc processes (I presume they meant here processes that were appropriate to the audiences and not pre-cut); and (KEY THEME) collaborative networks were their love and their neo-raison d'etre - which meant having relationships that provided and were provided insight and connecting people to share info so that those insights could be realized (though, admittedly, I find this a little abstract as a message though a great idea). Hennings Kagermann also made the point in his opening segment that they were making SAP enterprise apps along the line of CRM-SRM-SCM-PLM-ERP-and what is still unknown to me EhP/EhP (??????) easy to "consume" and available for continuous innovation without upgrade. Again not explained much but borne out later in conversations I had about it - though I intend to find out more later today on this if possible. They are going to have an announcement today about a new product, but I don't know if I should say anything since the announcement is today, not yesterday. Its interesting to me though and not CRM but something that I think needs to be talked about when it is released. John Schwartz, CEO of Business Objects, talked about what they are doing in merging with SAP and painted a rather rosy picture. He said BO had 45,000 customers and 6500 employees - pretty massive and made it seem that the merger and unification of the cultures was going just great, thank you very much. I'll choose to remain a skeptic since nothing of that magnitude has ever gone that smoothly but its not an area I care that much about really so warts, glitches, wind and fire will not be the subject of this. There was only a brief discussion of cloud computing which I would suggest to SAP they pay more than brief attention to with the Google-IBM and Google-salesforce.com alliances that have been announced in the last two weeks or so. Hennings K. mentioned that SAP is agnostic when it comes to cloud computing because they realize that not everyone is going to want the same thing and so SAP needs to be above the clouds (that's mine, not his. I take full responsibility for the bad pun). So that's the "as is" state of the company's cortex - what about the "to be" and "going forward" states?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

There were three things they mentioned, much to my delighted surprise as their path going forward. They were:

• Co-innovation - That was specifically discussed with the recent RIM/SAP alliance to provide all of SAP's applications, starting with what might be a brilliant execution from what I saw of SAP CRM for the Blackberry. Driven by SVP of Mobility and Analytics Michael De La Cruz on the SAP side and a variety of folks on the RIM side including my good bud, Paul Briggs as the marketing guy for RIM in this effort, the application I saw was easily the most comprehensive and user friendly CRM application for the Blackberry bar none. I saw it in pre-production so I don't know how its going to play but even in that state it was fully integrated with the RIM alarm and calendar and contacts and accounts. In other words, the native Blackberry apps - which makes sense given that in the spirit of co-innovation, RIM actually developed the app for SAP - which is a marked departure, by the way, for BOTH companies in how they do things. That alone for those of us into the arcane machinations of company politics and culture - is important. But the idea of SAP doing it alone is seemingly not entirely a thing of the past but has become simply one of the approaches. While coopetition is not new, as old as 1990 or 1994 or something (a Novell guy wrote a book by that name), the idea of collaboration and co-development was never something that was culturally comfortable - apparently until now.
• Web 2.0 - what made this particularly interesting was not just the new use interface of SAP CRM 2007 which was I think the best looking interface and perhaps the most functionally useful and simple one I've ever seen in a large enterprise CRM application, but also the fact that SAP claimed that they were "living the Web 2.0" - which is the harbinger of their cultural change. Now, I treated that as a marketing claim until I had the ability to speak with some of the senior management at the conference (from CEO Hennings Kagermann - a really nice guy - to SVPS of varying title to VPs to some of the less senior) and I had the ability to listen in on some "ordinary" organic conversations - and I think they are being authentic. Or as we say on the street (yeah, Paulie, you're quite the street guy aren't you? Right.), they're real. Keep in mind, I'm a skeptic not by nature but by profession to some degree. But the level of interest and activity among a decidedly younger management and staff than I expected (given that I'd talked with several of them in the past) around Web 2.0 tools and the freedom to innovate which seems to have seized control over the last year or so or some more recent time period is amazing. They don't seem to always move as glacially as they did in the past though they still (as I can personally attest) have their icebergian moments. (yes, I made that word up. But you know what it means don't you?). They seem able to take an idea and incorporate it quickly into their thinking. For example, I had a meeting with one SVP who was pointing out to me (proving it, really) what they were going to do in future generations of their products around the social applications - which was on a more significant scale then I expected. I mentioned something that I thought they needed to consider, a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head and he then made serious note of it and I do think he'll follow up. None of that "traditional" SAP "we'll do it and you'll like it" approach that characterized the past. In multiple discussions with analysts from Gartner, Forrester, AMR and IDC, there was a universal agreement amongst them that there is something different about SAP as a company and all really like the new SAP CRM 2007 and the Blackberry implementation of SAP CRM out there besides. I'd like to think that while I certainly am naive enough to be made a fool of on occasion, these folks (about 6-8 of them) are far more seasoned and "foolproof" than me and they saw what I saw. SAP is living the Web 2.0 "philosophy" or whatever you call it and they are different than they were even a year ago. What's amazing is that I'm not sure what triggered it at all. But it's good.
• Analytics and Insight - Insight in particular was a word that was thrown out there a hundred times. Now, this is maybe the one glitch in the soft message. This is now a pillar of the trio of pillars because they acquired Business Objects and they have to do SOMETHING with it. Actually it seems to be a good acquisition but this is the one part that smacked a bit of self-aggrandizement. Its forgivable. Its their conference, for godssakes. What they emphasized here, though, was still a plus - the idea of providing real time analytics embedded across applications so that dynamic insights could be provided in real time.

  There is one piece of advice that I hope they take. I noticed that there was almost far too much consistency to the conversations about SAP product releases. So for example, in every discussion I heard or had, without exception, when it came to the discussion about the Blackberry CRM product, whether in a speech or on in a conversation, they all began the discussion with how people use the alarm on the Blackberry to wake up. EVERY-LAST-ONE-OF-THEM. Obviously everyone is well schooled in what the messages need to be around product, but it comes across as plastic which isn't good. A little messaging freedom might be nice.

  That's a niggling thing though by comparison to the sea change that SAP seems to have undergone. Look, maybe over the next several months, they'll break my heart and turn out to be what they used to but I don't think so. This one is here to stay.

  If I had to venture a guess as 2008 keeps moving inexorably to its end - I'd say that salesforce.com is going to be challenged by SAP and Oracle for CRM 2.0 leadership. Not expected at all, but welcomed. I'm not sure I'm right because my big caveat is that I haven't seen either Oracle or SAP new products in live customer environments over time and THAT is the final arbiter of success, culture change or not.

  As far as SAP goes, they've revitalized themselves and it seems unanimous among those I spoke with here - analysts, some customers, SAP staff members - that the change is deep and real.This is a far cry from what Microsoft did at Convergence at month ago to itself at this location and a far cry from what SAP did to itself a year ago in Orlando. But this time, SAP did good. Real good.

  Good for them.

Bits O' Honey Partido Uno

Quotes To Think About (& Use) In 2.0 Land

"A 2006 study by the Verde Group showed that people who hear about a bad shopping experience are less likely than the people who actually had the bad experience to ever set foot in the store." -- from "Word of Mouth Marketing", Andy Sernovitz

"That's the deal companies make when relying on the help of customers to grow: customers will volunteeer their time and attention, but they will fight for their status and power." -- from "Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message" - by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba

"In this world of constant feedback, one element of some corporate cultures is definitely going away. Strategies based on deception are doomed to failure." --from "Groundswell" by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

"...the human mind has no limit of developing, of realizing ever deeply and more adequately universal orders of life" --from "The Philosophy of Literature" by Gustav Mueller (when speaking about Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy")

"Community offers the promise of belonging....To beloong is to act as an investor, owner and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for the choice."--from "Community: The Structure of Belonging" by Peter Block

Okay, everyone, I'm off to Sapphire 2008, SAP's shindig. They expect about 15,000 there. I'll be one of the herd. There as a "business influencer." Great title. One of the herd. I'll be doing Experience on the Edge (my podcast, if you haven't heard from there using my new Apogee Duet so I can get great rather than mediocre road sound quality. This will be episode #16 of the weekly verbal assault. Go listen to it), though it won't be about Sapphire. The Sapphire commentary will be #17 - and it will be impressions and maybe an interview or two. I'll keep you posted. Watch this blog for Sapphire coverage though.....

Technorati : Community, SAP, Web 2.0, social media, word of mouth marketing

To Twitter Is Not To Fritter (Though It Can Be.....)

When it comes to Twitter, of ALL the social tools out there, I always here the following from corporate executives who are battling with their customers (sad state of affairs, eh wot?) every day:

I get blogs, and I get podcasts and wikis and we're trying to figure out this social networking 'thing' but I just don't get Twitter. I don't get it. I DON'T get it. I don't GET it. It seems like such a waste of time"

Well, as the following will show. It ain't a waste of time. Been saying that it was only a matter of time until the business uses would be uncovered and they are.

Take a look at this way.

• As I'm writing this, the guy who is probably the coolest managing editor on the planet, Josh Weinberger of CRM Magazine, is live tweeting (for those of you techno-Neanderthals, that means using Twitter to cover something live and then broadcast it to the, in this case, Weinberger network of followed and followers) a conference call with RIM and SAP announcing SAP CRM (and more enterprise applications) for the Blackberry. (Try here too) Not only are the updates nearly instant but JW's commentary is great besides.
• What about this customer service story blogged this week by the IT Toolbox SaaS Director Dennis Stevenson on Twitter and his Slideshare problems and how Slideshare employees answered him via Twitter due to a general Twitter post he made. One thing I didn't know is that "there is an ability to listen across the entire Twitterverse for particular text strings," according to Dennis S. Gotta find out how to do that.
• Salesforce.com and their social media maven Kingsley Joseph are ultra busy on Twitter with successforce announcements and salesforce announcements and Kingsley's cogent but pungent commentary on things social add up to a visible and noticeable and intelligent business presence via Twitter to networks that are interested e.g. followers and following so to speak.
• Tomas Kohl, an always astute and sometimes contentious CRM 2.0 observer/analyst/futurist/consultant writes about how Zappos uses Twitter to network among (not with per se) their employees and how they even rank them for the number of Twitter followers they have and allow their customers to correspond in 140 characters or less with those employees (about 270 use them) (Zappos_alfred seems to be the jefe with 601 followers). Zappos, if you haven't ordered from them, is an online shoe store with thousands of brands in all sizes and colors that TRULY gets it. Just ordered some serious walking shoes from them yesterday. Thank you, TK.

These are brief and few but there are many examples out on the web. Here's an aggregator post on Twitter for business. You'll note, that right now, its small time and its primarily the kind of business done over a drink in a manner of speaking. But the potential is there for a lot more.

Marketing is obviously a key application of Twitter but there are some dangers inherent in it. Too much pushing (as is going on with one unnamed person I'm following) and its like having your conversations constantly interrupted with "OMG! I'm amazing. I'm ON TV BIG TIME! HELP SELL ME! I'M TOO MUCH FOR WORDS - AT LEAST FOR OVER 140 CHARACTERS!!!" ad nauseum. That can be irritating because this is a highly personalized albeit short message communications platform. No one wants the ego of another in the way. Rather than corporate marketing hype, the hype gets personal and interferes.

But if used effectively, as salesforce.com is doing, they become participants in the conversation among friends at the bazaar. Information about events or positive articles are looked upon with curiosity and interest and traffic goes to them through the hyperlink (in the form most of the time of a "tinyurl." Twitter's potential for that is limitless. As a marketing, microblogging tool, customer service tool, networking tool and community participation tool.

Not too shabby for the one that few seem to get.

Technorati : Twitter

The Best Powerpoint Ever?

A MAJOR high five to Paul Sweeney for his Tweet calling this the best Powerpoint ever. He may be right.

Chicken.

Technorati : Chicken

VRM v. CRM 2.0 - For Real Difference or Not

Doc Searls wrote a crystalline explanation of what vendor relationship management is in the Project VRM blog yesterday, which got me to thinking. Is there a difference between CRM 2.0 and VRM? If there is, how much does the difference matter? If there isn't, should we call CRM 2.0....duh.....VRM? (for those of you not up on VRM, check out Harvard's Project VRM - tres importante)

Here's an excerpt of what Doc said. (I've never met him but he's one guy I hope I can meet. Chris Carfi knows him pretty well and thinks quite a bit of the guy)

"With VRM, our vectors are anchored on the user side, the customer side, the individual's side. The relationships we establish and manage are on our terms and not just those of vendors. We are not against vendors in the least, of course. Our logic is AND, not OR. But it starts with the sovereign autonomy and independence of each individual as a fully-empowered participant in the relationships that comprise markets and other social arrangements. '-driven' says that much more clearly and correctly than '-centric'."

This leads me to think that there actually (contrary to my prior statements) a difference between CRM 2.0 and VRM. VRM is something like the labor movement (in its more pristine formative days) and CRM 2.0 would be the approach business would need to take to accomodate that labor movement. While CRM 1.0 played in the corporate ecosystem and thought that "customer-centric" activity was da bomb, CRM 2.0 realizes that customer centric activity still means a corporate ecosystem and now everything needs to be customer-driven or simply recognized as customer controlled. CRM 1.0 tried to automate the approach to dealing with managing customers so data was everything and the holy grail of CRM 1.0 was the 360 degree view of the customer, CRM 2.0 recognizes that customers need to be engaged and since the ball is in their court (which is the standpoint that VRM starts from), then they have to play on the home court of the customer.

VRM starts with the idea that each customer governs a personal value chain. CRM 1.0 would exploit that. CRM 2.0 creates a collaboration between the personal value chain of the customer and the extended (to partners, suppliers, vendors) value chain of the company so that value (and values) are given and in return the customer provides value (and values).

These are all important concepts with a difference. Took me to today to realize that VRM is the one that actually starts from the customers' POV and life and CRM 2.0 is the company's way of figuring out the best way to engage and collaborative with that.

Another step in the evolution.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, vendor relationship management

Aggregating Some Ideas and Products For Aggregating

Further (and new) thoughts on a few items:

• Peer to peer is beginning to define the pre-eminent culture of contemporary communications. As I mentioned in a previous post, the customer wants to view the company as a peer. What this makes me think, without any specific research particularly, other than anecdotal that is, is that not only should companies provide a set of tools that will allow customers to personalize their experience with the company, but the company's strategy has to be to humanize the company (which still realizing that it is a company) which, if done well, will realize the idea of "company as a peer." One tactic for example, was mentioned by Long Tail author, Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson in his 2005 (!) discussion on business blogging done by employees, not corporate officers. Chris Carfi, my dear friend and partner, did a great post on retail blogging (that came from a training session on Social Media that we did last week) that supports this contention (the peer to peer value of employees blogging) on his always amazing blog, The Social Customer.

• For CRM 2.0 to be successful, I've been continually making the point that the company has to change its business model from being a provider of goods and/or services to an aggregator of products, services, tools and experiences that allow the customer to personalize the kind of relationship and the experience that they have with the company. What makes this important is the same thing that makes a PC important to someone's life - a means to give someone a sense of control over their own life. Ultimately, that's what we all are looking to have and what makes us advocates of something is that they treat us in a way that gives us the intelligence and knowledge to extend that control over our own life. For example, that's why things like social network aggregators are as important as the social networks in this new world. Take a look at Cerado's Ventana, a creation of Chris Carfi's (he's all OVER this entry isn't he? He's an important social thinker AND doer which is why he is all over this blog). The pix here will give you an idea how it works:

What makes it important is that it is device-aware (can show it on your iphone) and is aggregator of multiple social activities. You can coherently and in a single place either online or on a mobile device, look at your Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, etc. accounts and see all the joint activity going on and respond accordingly. OR you could do what you see here with the BlogHer Guide to Political Bloggers- here is an aggregation of what is now over 150 women in politics who have blogs and here is a single screen (or conjoint set of screens), mobile or online that you can see all the women who are politically blogging through BlogHer and (note the "News" tab) you can see what's new and what's up with a single click.

There are competitors that I've written about in this field in May 2007 with the leading one being Profilactic. I wrote about them separately. But the model that Ventana has is unique and interesting. Its not just aggregating social networks that are out there - its pretty much aggregating content in the format that you want and that's immensely valuable especially when you can carry it mobilely and without a whole lot of baggage or digital overhead. My interest in this doesn't come because I love Chris Carfi in a manly sort of way. It comes because I think that this is a genuinely interesting and potentially really valuable aggregator for consumers but even more so for businesses. Imagine integrating this with wikis and podcasts and blogs so that you can find out what you need - and intelligently deal with a company that you work for or want to deal with (as an employee or a customer respectively) while staring at your iPhone or your Blackberry in real time or nearly so.

Very cool AND very important. I'll be following this more. I've seen it and it works.

I'm Paul Greenberg and I approve this blog entry.

Technorati : Blackberry, BlogHer, CRM 2.0, Cerado, The Social Customer, Ventana, iPhone, mobile devices, social customer

Kicking It With Social CRM and Media in Plymouth Meeting PA

I've been doing my BPT thing with Chris Carfi, famous in the land of social media & the man who made social customer so popular a concept its almost slang, teaching a two day course on Social Media with only people from David's Bridal. As you may remember - or not - David's Bridal has been my client for six years and has several people who I literally love - and count among my dearest friends. So this is particularly sweet. Because Chris and my partner and bro' Bruce Culbert are also here, I get to teach about something I love to people I love with people I love. Not a bad gig. I DO feel luxurious here. Don't need the Lamborghini (though if you send me one I won't turn it down. Promise.). Got my friends to give me "the feeling."

Contemporary Irritations: Changing History

As you know, I've always been adamantly opposed to negative campaigning. I don't mind honestly critical thinking - in fact I welcome that - and I don't mind a battle on the merits of something. But I really don't like it when one company trashes something.

It gets particularly painful when companies I like do it.

When companies I don't like do it, I'm pretty much on it. You hear about it.

When companies I truly like and sometimes even admire do it, I'm honestly not as enthused but I still have to be a straight shooter and do it anyway.

This is the tale of a company that I like.

A Tale of Infusionsoft

Last week, I heard from Infusionsoft via press releases and links that they were changing their name from InfusionSoft CRM to Infusionsoft (the full press release on their name changes is here) and that they would no longer be involved in CRM but now in "e-marketing." Their reasons are discussed on their website:

"Looking for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for your business? Before you go down that path, there's something you should know about CRM. For years CRM software companies have made big promises. And for years, they've missed the mark. Outrageous claims of all-in-one business solutions turned out to be…well, outrageous. CRM software has been a big disappointment... especially for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Why, you ask?

• CRM software is old technology invented decades ago
• CRM was originally created for very large businesses, not entrepreneurs
• CRM solutions for "small business" aren't much more than contact managers & static data repositories
• CRM has an extremely (and embarrassingly) high failure rate

Basically, CRM software has failed to live up to the Customer Relationship Management philosophy and what it was supposed to be. And unfortunately, small business owners have thrown countless dollars away on "miracle" CRM solutions that amounted to little more than frustration & additional headaches!

Today's small business needs something that goes WAY beyond CRM software. If you want to grow your business instead of just managing it, then you need eMarketing software."

Now they are an "emarketing" company and that is supposed to be completely different and far more successful than CRM.

First, before I get into it.

I have no problem with being critical of CRM. I don't even like the term and think that it needs to be changed or evolved or eliminated for something else. We are in an era where customer engagement is the order of the day and managing customer relationships is no longer viable nor desired. The name reflects a period that had different customer expectations and different perceptions by practitioners and vendors.

But what's going on here is disappointing for more than one reason.

First, for purely selfish reasons, Infusionsoft is reducing CRM to a software solution - despite the software industry claims to know better. Anyone in the field including the good folks at Infusionsoft, know that when we're dealing with CRM, we're dealing with a strategy for customers, not just an application or on demand service. The reasons for its failure were not uniformly ponderous software but more often than not failed thinking about the strategy and the programs prior to the implementation of the software. In fact, if you look at the reasons that were given when CRM did fail, the big ones were failure to adopt (which is a software issue) and a failure to define the elements/metrics/indicators for success (not a software issue). So this description is pretty self serving.

Second, as my good buddy Brent Leary has pointed out in many columns, we're at a point (despite Infusionsoft's claims) that there are numerous options for small business to choose from ranging from Infusionsoft (emarketing notwithstanding) to CRM Guaranteed to Zoho to salesforce.com etc.

Third, and most ridiculous is that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Meaning all Infusionsoft did here, unless they can prove otherwise, is rebrand themselves - which is great and fine. But they felt that in order to rebrand (and distinguish) themselves, they had to start reviling something they had actually been no more than 2 weeks ago without any fundamental changes to anything but their message and website. They were (and still are) a CRM application - a very good one for small businesses I might add - and just because they call themselves something else doesn't make them something else. Maybe I should change my book title to "EMarketing at the Speed of Light...."

I just find this sad -- and silly. I truly like this company, think that Clate Mask is both a smart guy and a great guy. But this effort that they are making to distance themselves from CRM without any changes but to their message and the generic trashing of CRM that's used to trash CRM non-specifically is just...well, sad, sad, sad. Because they didn't need it just to rebrand.

If they had simply said that they were going to rebrand as emarketing and explained it around changes they made to their applications functionality - and how they had been misaligned as CRM when they were actually more of a company providing emarketing (which in all fairness is more of the weight of their applications than any other components) then, okay. No problem.

But, in effect, to rebrand and then blame it on the failure of CRM and then not change their applications to reflect what they're doing? That smacks of desperation to differentiate. If they are actually changing their applications and just not telling us, then their timing is bad. They shouldn't announce their bye byes to CRM until they've eliminated their salesforce automation components and their ecommerce components so they can truly eat their own yummy emarketing dog food.

And don't bother with the CRM sucks argument. Stay positive. Just be straight as to why you decided to rebrand. How can you be one thing one day and then trash it totally the next and not make any other changes than verbiage? If you're making other changes that gives me (and everybody else) a sense of why you truly had to trash CRM to make the changes, please announce them so I can say, okay, that works for me (and everyone else). I have no vested interest in CRM nor do I have one in emarketing. But because I like you guys, I'd like to see you not do things like this which seem somewhat petty.

Damn, I'm disappointed.

Technorati : CRM, Emarketing, InfusionSoft, Zoho

Its Just So....So....Solid

I'm leaving from San Francisco right now. Just spent four days - with much of it focused around the "One World" release of NetSuite - which Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, called the most significant release of NetSuite since its inception. But more on that in a minute. I've always like NetSuite - and for entirely contrasting reasons. I've always found their corporate culture incredibly cool - an upscale, treat people well, let them luxuriate, environment. As a result, not only do they have an highly talented staff, but a hard working staff because they're treated like humans who deserve good things. They treat their contacts - whether customers, analysts, press, or just friends - as well as they treat their employees. They are genuinely good people. This culture is fostered by their CEO Zach Nelson, who is literally my favorite CRM-related CEO. He is accessible, has zero pretensions and likes the good life - and shares that with his staff. His only flaw is that he's an Oakland A's fan - which has a kinda cool side benefit - Billy Beane, General Manager of the A's for those of you completely out of it when it comes to baseball, is on his Board. The only thing I'm concerned about with that is that, because of Beane, Zach will trade some of his more experienced and higher paid staff to salesforce.com or SAP as they get increasingly capable. In a good way, the products/services offered by NetSuite are the opposite of the company culture. They are not "cool" or "luxurious" products. But they are absolutely solid. At a time when most of the major vendors are beginning to provide social (2.0) components to their enterprise applications, NetSuite isn't. Instead, NetSuite offers a suite of enterprise applications that they just keep solidifying. That means ERP, CRM and Ecommerce applications. The latest release, One World is what seems to be a remarkably well thought out way to take an on demand single instance and add multi-currency recognition and conversion, localized (national) versions of quotas, forecasts, commissions, payments, and a global or local reporting capability that provides the kinds of reports by country, region, or even globally that can be role-based (or not). While not sexy particularly, it is slick and can do things like automatically calculate the appropriate national taxes or local taxes in the right currencies without you having to do much more than go to a pulldown menu that has the names of the countries you have your business in. You can view things in the currency and language of the country (I think they support 12 languages so far) or you can see it as a global and integrated whole. All in real time. Solid, Jackson. This One World offering was demonstrated by Zach and three senior NetSuite people using a GHQ, Japanese, German, UK and to some extent, Danish version of interrelated business activities stemming from an order through its fulfillment and with all the back office things that go on so someone can see from multiple standpoints how the revenue derived from the order is booked, recognized and applied to commissions. Given that it was released Wednesday, they already have a significant customer list (upward of 30) including ABS (multimedia/network of the Philippines), KANA (of all companies), Virgin Money, Domin-8 - all of whom sat on the stage yesterday and attested to the ease of use of One World - in a convincing manner, I must say - and I'm usually a customer testimonial skeptic and dismiss them out of hand. Not these. NetSuite has another 50 One World customers (opportunities? prospects? contracted? I don't know)or so in the hopper. All in all, One World does what NetSuite does well. Provides absolutely solid capabilities that keep getting better and better. Do I have any problem with any of their applications? Yep. Marketing. It has all the classic functions and does what traditional EMA does, but its ponderous to use. But that's actually the state of almost all EMA applications that are part of enterprise suites. So they just become run of the mill there. Beyond that, they are solid - very solid and frankly, if you're not looking for a lot of 2.0 functionality, should be at the top of your list. So there is a combination here of a really cool corporate culture and a not cool, but totally solid enterprise application suite. Sweet.