PGreenblog

A Few Truly Miscellaneous Things

Some Miscellany....

Oracle on Demand 16 Announcement

Last week, Oracle announced that Oracle CRM On Demand added five new products to their already burgeoning line of on CRM on demand offerings. They include:

1. Oracle Self Service E-Billing On Demand
2. Oracle Sales Library
3. Oracle CRM On Demand Deal Management
4. Oracle CRM On Demand Enterprise Disaster Recovery
5. Oracle AIA integration between On Demand and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

While this isn't an earthshttering announcement, its important for a couple of things. First the release of Sales Library on Demand and Self-Service EBilling on Demand. They both are applications that identify the changed expectations of customers and employees in how they command their relationships with institutions. For example, Sales Library on Demand provides a more granular finer tuned control based on not just document/presentation libraries but the user generated content associated with it in the form of rankings, ratings, commenting and sharing slides and whole presentations. An application that incorporates crowdsourcing. While not innovative in the sense that the incorporated features have been created elsewhere and are commonly available, what is innovative is the use of those features in this particular type of application - what would otherwise be a basic but sophisticated document repository.

Similar for Self-Service E-Billing On Demand - this isn't terribly innovative, nor are similar applications uncommon - especially in the on premise world - but it is a valuable service that allows consumers to control how they handle their bills regardless of the complexity of their plan - which means that the social customer, that empowered creature of the contemporary era, can do it the way they want it - at least in concept. Plus this is on demand.

The one that I can't fathom that well is Oracle On Demand Enterprise Disaster Recovery, which, judging from my reading of it, is a service offered not a product. It seems to enable business continuity in the event of a natural disaster. I'm not sure why this is a separate service or if I'm even figuring this one out right - but if its a special you pay extra service, then I'm not thrilled that this would be something not provided routinely to the customers of Oracle CRM on Demand. Data protection on that scale would seem to be something that I just get if a customer. But maybe I'm reading this wrong......Someone want to correct me?

CRM Playaz and Announcing Twikipedia!

Twitterspeak is horrible. Really horrible. Really twawful! (Aaaaaaagggghhhhh!!). In order to ridicule it out of existence, Brent Leary and I - the CRM Playaz team, have set up Twikipedia - a wiki that will accumulate all known Twitterspeak terms into a single pile of debris in the same way that Comedy Central accumulates all comedians. Only in this case, when we've gotten the sum total of all Twitter terms, we're going to burn the wiki digitally - somehow. Maybe we'll just delete it in the hope that all Twitter terms linked to the wiki will disappear from cyberspace forever. Or something. Or we can take your suggestions on what to do with it - but not what to do with us. Oh yeah, we're looking for particular sponsors - either Twizzlers or Hostess Twinkies is preferred.

You can hear what we think about Twitterspeak on Episode #2 of CRM Playaz here.

PR Firms That Get It - Thanks to Jennifer Leggio - Oh Yeah, LaForce Plus Stevens Doesn't Make The List

ZDNET blogger Jennifer Leggio does a service for humanity with her release of her survey results of which PR firms "get it", when it comes to their use of social media. That means the ones who haven't got a disconnect between their walk and talk. Interesting, in this case, many walk the walk but they don't talk the talk when it comes to developing effective social PR strategies for their clients. Having surveys like this when it comes to PR firms especially is important at this time because many of the traditional PR firms are drowning when it comes to how to handle the new branding and marketing - one governed by (buzz words a'comin') transparency and authenticity - the polar opposite of traditional PR. It is also particularly cogent and important due to the length that firms who don't get it will go to seem as if they do. For example, the incredibly crass and absolutely unethical behavior of boo-tique (get it?) NY PR firm LaForce plus Stevens, now more aptly named by me as LaFarce minus Stevens, because of their plagarism of Brent Leary who they still haven't finalized a settlement with and in fact, have been ignoring the last several weeks in the hope that the bad PR will go away. It won't.

In any case, Jennifer's survey results are well worth reading. For example, I was glad to see that one of my favorite PR firms - perhaps the one that I trust most - Horn Group - was in the same category as I put it by her survey respondents. I get hit up by 15-25 requests a week to take demos and calls from PR people who represent CRM and SaaS firms. Over time, I've learned who I think "get it" when it comes to social strategies and who I simply trust. On my list: Horn Group, also on Jennifer's list; LaunchSquad, not on Jennifer's list; Ubiquity, not on Jennifer's list. I trust a number of individuals at firms like Edelman and Waggoner Edstrom though I can't say the same for the firms themselves - though I don't distrust them either. What I have learned however, is that the sins of the company are not the sins of the individual at the company so I can work with varying degrees of success with specific individuals at specific good or bad PR firms - whether they get it or not. The difference is that if the Horn Group, Launchsquad or Ubiquity ask me to review something, I most likely will. I can't say the same for any other PR firms. So, my criteria are similar but not identical to Jennifer's. Mine are "get it" as a company and trust as individuals.

Jennifer is going to follow it up with a second more comprehensive survey. In her blog posting on the latter, she points out that there were a number of PR firms that were perplexed about the results because they thought they were doing a great or good job at social media strategies. If I were a PR firm, I would be paying close, close attention to these results. There are just too many fiascos to point to. PR is getting really bad PR and they need to step it up.

SAP and PaaS?

A recent speculation by Rick Whitehead on SAP's acquisition last week of enterprise application development platform provider Coghead's intellectual property (HQed near enough to Oracle to effectively see it out the window ironically enough) led me to think about the SAP move into Platform as a Service (PaaS). First, before I briefly comment on the Coghead acquisition, I would highly recommend you take a look at Erica Morphy's article on Paas in the Ecommerce Times to get the first of what seems to be at least two articles on this topic - since this one is labeled "Part I."

What makes this particularly interesting isn't just that Coghead was a web-based on demand enterprise software development platform - but that the API and architecture that it was based on was REST - the same architecture that the web is based on. RESTful architectural components have been the foundation of the recent Sage Software offerings both back and front office. REST is an architecture that is highly effective for small and medium businesses in particular at least in the lanes of the technology universe that I travel in. Coghead was known for its use of a REST API, its incredibly easy to use UI and a strong toolset. While I can't say for certain what SAP is doing here by acquiring Coghead, they did have a financial interest in the company, so acquiring the assets isn't that much of a stretch. However, I think that SAP has a much more important motivation which is that this is exactly the kind of toolset/platform that will potentially help bolster them in the SMB marketplace. If they aren't thinking that way they should. Given that NetWeaver, their current platform is a SOA based platform, having a REST-based platform only bodes well for an effort by SAP to enter the cloud and to diversify their old portfolio. I think.

2004 Redux

Back in 2004, when the 3rd edition of CRM at the Speed of Light came out, my wife had been through a bout with breast cancer - which she thankfully beat - due to her incredible courage and attitude the whole time she had it. I wrote the following dedication to the book:

"I love my family without reservation. My mom, Helen, 87 years old, and my dad, Abraham, 89 years old, who have always been there for me and love me unconditionally as I do them; my brother Bob, a brilliant and wonderful brother, guru in his own right and a personal and business inspiration to me all the time; my sister-in-law Freyda, who astounds me daily-even qualifying and running very well in the 2004 Boston Marathon; and my niece Sara who is all that a young woman should be as she moves through her teen years. I love my mother-in-law, Martha Reid, a source of wisdom and unreserved warmth for so many years.But this edition of this book is especially for Yvonne, my wife of more than 20 years. Not only has she had to put up with me, but this year, has put up with cancer-and with a never-flagging spirit, indomitable courage, remarkable intellect, emotional power, and fabulous determination, is on her way to beating it. I love her endlessly for all that she is, all that she inspires, and all that she means-not just to me but to everyone around her. I can only dedicate something earthly and bound, but what I feel is celestial and unbound."

I have no real reason to put this into the blog entry except that I want you to know that I feel no differently about my wife today than I did five years ago. Nor any of my family even though I have lost my Dad since that time. I'm thinking about them and want you to know what's still most important to me.

It ain't CRM.

Technorati : CRM, CRM 2.0, CRM Playaz, slideshare.net, twikipedia
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That's the Way We Do It

I'm home sick with a flu of some sort. Its been knocking me out and I've been trying to work a bit through it but its been hard. With that context, consider this scenario:

There is a place in Manassas, VA where I live called the Flower Gallery. The quality of the flowers they provide is incredibly high quality. Great flowers. But......there is a big but here (no, jeez). Because I'm sick its pretty unlikely I'm going to be unable to go to Arlington VA tomorrow (about 25 miles away) and give these flowers to my 92 year old mom for Valentine's Day. My wife has a broken arm so she can't drive at the moment either. My mom can't come because she is in an assisted living facility for a reason. So we called the Flower Gallery and asked if at this late date could they possibly deliver? We would have paid a premium - but they never knew that because they (politely) said "not a chance." I could understand that if they had known it was Arlington, VA but they didn't even bother to ask ANY questions AT ALL to find out if the circumstance merited something. We've bought flowers at premium prices there for years - though they don't know that - because they don't have enough information to let them know that. We haven't paid for the flowers yet, they have no credit card, but because we believe in holding up our end of the bargain - I'm going out while sick and get the flowers and pay them for them and try to bring them to my mom on the first day that I'm well enough to do so. Just not Valentines Day tomorrow.

I could understand it if they had asked questions and said, "that's just too far" but for all they know I was asking them to deliver the flowers to the CVS next store or the residences across the street. They didn't spend ANY time with any concern. That's the problem. Not the refusal. The unwillingness to help me solve any problem because they were unwilling to listen to their customer.

I want you to contrast this with something far more difficult and far more complex. I'm going to provide you with a story in his own voice from Tien Tzuo - CEO of Zuora - and how they dealt with a customer problem February 1 - SuperBowl Sunday. For those of you who don't know Tien - you should. He is one of the best people in the IT world - the former Chief Strategy Officer of salesforce.com, a real live human being and now the CEO of the SaaS-delivered billing and payments company - Zuora - highly successful Zuora. You'll see why when you read this.

"Paul, as an avid reader of your blogs, I know you are always on the lookout for good stories about how companies act when they put customers first.

Here's our story.

A quick background: you wrote about my company, Zuora, a few weeks back. We provide a SaaS billing and payments platform. Billing, as it turns out, is a critical interaction point between our clients and their customers. If the bills are wrong, customers aren't happy, and our clients look bad. In other words, our clients are trusting us to make them look good -- which doesn't leave a lot of room for error on our part.

Putting customers first, then, isn't just good business practice for us. It's something that needs to be embedded in our corporate DNA. In fact, our corporate values statement actually calls for us to be our customers' friend. Our employees aspire to be, in their own words, a "kick-ass, friendly" team. We even have an ongoing, internal project called "Project BFF" to ensure that we live up to our values.

This was recently put to the test when we found an error (ugh) in our billing system. In creating an enhancement for one customer, we accidentally introduced extra zero-dollar line items for other customers. Realizing that friends don't let friends down, our engineering and support team worked through the weekend to make sure we fixed the issue -- so that bills being sent out on Monday would be perfect. The fact that it was SuperBowl weekend didn't deter us -- we knew we had to fix things before the weekend was over, and thankfully, we did.

What surprised me is the resulting email I received from the CEO of one of our customers on Monday. He was thankful, yes. But, what he really wanted to know was: how did I get the Zuora team to work through the weekend - SuperBowl weekend, no less!

I have to say, I found myself at a loss for words. To our team, working over the weekend for our customers, through the night, whatever it takes - is something we take for granted. Friends support each other. Friends don't let friends down. Friends make each other look good.

In any company that is running hard and fast, like we are, it's easy to get myopic and focus on yourself -- your product, your colleagues, your missing. But in the end, your only as good as your customer think you are. And as for the SuperBowl, well, there's always Tivo!"

Compare and contrast this one when it comes to your CRM strategy and you're a small business or a growing company or a struggling company or even an enterprise. I'd say the solution and the committments of the Zuorans was exemplary wouldn't you? Sad to say, Flower Gallery had a lot simpler service issue and they blew it. No Tivo for them. Ultimately, if your business is customer centric you're going to interact with the customer in a way that satisfies his or her personal agenda. You have to so that you can derive benefit from the interaction. In the case of Zuora, the benefits will be there. In the case of the Flower Gallery, they've lost a customer or two.

Technorati : Tien Tzuo, Zuora, customer service
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Feels Kinda Loyal, Doesn't He?

I just got back from India where I keynoted this loyalty conference but THAT story will be over at my ZDNET blog, thus forcing you, once again, (in an opt-inny sort of way), to read both blogs. Part of my diabolical plan to take over the blogosphere - to no good end I assure you. Only because I have no idea what a good end would be to the takeover of the blogosphere. What I want to do here is talk about something else that was sparked by the trip and by the fact that I was at a conference on loyalty speaking about advocacy - and realized after a series of particular circumstances that despite all the talk about the emotional ties when it comes to loyalty and customers, that loyalty is viewed and judgments are made on the basis of scales and left brained thinking rather than the whole-brained thinking that needs to go on to judge what a customer truly seems to be saying and doing and desiring. In fact, the scalar versions of loyalty marketing can be damaging because of the thinking of loyalty marketers. Let me outline two sets of instances.

Instance Set #1 - United Airlines

1. This year, due to my auto accident of last summer, which I'm sure many of you remember - because I don't - much - I didn't fly as much and as a result of that, I've dropped from Premier Executive flier status to Premier status on United. I only flew 36,000 miles (or thereabouts) instead of the requisite 50,000.
2. In the first month of 2009, I've flown 22,000 miles on United.
3. My Premier Executive Status runs out at the end of February 2009.
4. I've been Premier Executive for a few years already.

Instance Set #2 - Loyalty Marketing Conference Mumbai/Bombay, India

1. When I spoke in the morning on Loyalty and Advocacy (see the embedded presentation here) and I started by asking a series of questions I often ask when I do this kind of discussion. The truncated version goes like this:
   • Who here can tell me of someone or something that they are in love with?
   • Who here can tell me something or someone they love but are not in love with?
   • Who here can tell me something they like a lot, but don't love and are not in love with?
2. Typically, most of the audience can distinguish between these emotional states very, very clearly.
3. One panelist in the next panel, in the course of answering someone else's question, slightly scornfully said that they had never "heard of a scale of in love, love and so on." (a bit paraphrased but not much)
4. I responded in my afternoon CRM 2.0 2 hour workshop that that wasn't a scale.

The Connection Between #1 and #2 (not that one and two, pottymouth!)

Its starting to become increasingly clear that some of the approaches that I'm seeing out in the marketplace toward loyalty programs are failing precisely because they fail to recognize the actual human being that is being targeted and instead translate that human being into a series of metrics, scales, and demographic segments. While they may be able to "identify" a loyal customer based on some set of customer behaviors, they have little means of figuring out how to recognize advocates - because human attitudes are at play when making that determination.

Think about it this way. Despite what is going to seem to be a pretty damned self-aggrandizing suggestion, I'm going to tell you what United should be doing in my case - or cases like mine.

First, though, what do I seem to be in United's eyes? Judging from my transactions with the airline, I look friggin' loyal as hell. I have hundreds of thousands of miles in the air. My travel is both domestic and international. I take 20 plus trips in a typical year on United. When I'm not flying United directly, I fly Star Alliance partners that I book through United. What they don't know is that I also ask my clients to fly me United.

Truth is, I think United sucks.

But on the surface of it, using their "metrics" I'm a loyal customer who needs no particular coddling.

But actually, I'm actually a member of the club of "intertia loyalty"- meaning the cost of switching to another carrier is too high for me to make that switch - even though I don't like United.

If you operate as those loyalty marketers who think that "in love" is a scale, then I am metrically committed to United - my behavior proves that. But if they attempted to figure out my attitude, not my behavior - they would find that because I don't like United, my downgrade to Premier, in conjunction with the lack of upgrading success - making me think my miles are nearly worthless - reduces my intolerance of switching and I'm considerably closer to leaving than I ever have been.

What Should United Do?

Think about this solution. My Premier Executive status is good through February 2009. By December 31, 2008, the cutoff date for the 50K miles needed for Premier Executive, I had flown 36,000 miles and, get this one, 22,000 miles booked to be flown in late January, early Feb 2009. That totals roughly 58,000 miles in flown and booked before the expiration date of February 2009.

Them's the facts. What I would have then done is sent out a note asking me, is there any reason why your mileage fell off so much given the last several years of traveling with us? I would have mentioned the accident. Then as United's VP of Customer Experience (there have been several of them in the last few years), I would have looked at the miles flown and booked and said, "hey, let's keep this guy a Premier Executive because of his extenuating circumstances - especially since he'll have flown more than required" and they would have cemented me - taken me a step beyond that inertia. Instead, I got a note before the end of last year saying something to the effect of - "hey, You're short by about 15,000 miles needed to keep your Premier Executive status. We'd like to give you the chance so you can purchase the miles for $2300.00."

I swear.

All that means is that I have nothing but further contempt for United, given the mercenary way they treated me.

Sigh - that would be a 1.3 on a scale of 5.0.