PGreenblog

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.

The Terran Trio: "I Think Therefore I Am", "I Am Therefore I Act", and "Live from NY, It's SATURDAY NIGHT!"

Just a forewarning. This is a really, really strange entry, especially if you've followed my stuff for awhile (though maybe not if you know me personally):

It Starts Here.....

Not sure whether or not any of you have ever been students of philosophy, but if you have, you probably heard one of the greatest almost cliche-ish philosophical declarations. That would be the Rene Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" "I think, therefore I am." This masterpiece of Cartesian understatement is more accurate as "Dubito, cognito, ergo sum" - "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am, " but however its used it has been seen as the philosophical proof positive of human existence - cognitive reasoning - for hundreds of years - though not everyone in this world is a fan of the man. The idea behind is simple. I doubt, and someone must be doing the doubting, which proves that I exist or I wouldn't be able to think about the fact that someone (me) is doing the doubting.....or something akin to that.

Okay. We've established that we exist and we exist apart from non-reasoning creatures though with all creatures nonetheless. I doubt that animals doubt their existence which proves their existence though really it proves my existence because I'm the one writing about their existence; they aren't writing about mine and then does that mean that they don't exist in their own minds, but we know they do and ARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! (I wonder if I exist in my more animal-like states of mind?) (GAAAAAAACCCKKKK!)

Time for a 21st century makeover. (Still wondering what Saturday Night Live has to do with this?)

So, I'm declaring a new post-modern Cartesianism. "I think therefore I act (or I should act - shouldn't I?)." Now this statement of mine has no inherent reasoning or even logic that I can see (though it sounds like a philosophical dictum) Just because "I" think (Understand) doesn't mean "I" act on that understanding (that would be active knowledge), thus stopping me (that would be the real me - Paul Greenberg rather than the universal "I" - the generic individual mentioned above. We're heading toward another GAAAAACK here)

Actually, lets refine this a little. In fact, rather than a post modern Cartesianism, let's call this a neo-Dante-ist perspective.

Dante Alighieri, best known, of course for his "Divine Comedy" poetic trilogy, wrote this work called "Convito." In Convito, he identifies Love (in part) as the "deep contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured." His thinking follows that since this love is based on reason and logic (though highly emotional - whole brained, not left brained) it can be universally shared and the more who participate in that sharing, the greater it becomes. So the actions of reasoning being who are participating in the sharing of Love (with a capital "L") according to Dante, is something that makes it greater. (Still wondering about Saturday Night Live aren't you? AND wondering if I've lost my mind? AND wondering what in the eternal spirit's name does this have to do with CRM?)

Okay, time for the payoff in this insane posting. (you do knowing I'm playing with you, right?)

All this means that when Beth Comstock, President of NBC Universal Integrated Media says to Fast Company last May:

"If consumers are in control, they're going to figure out how they want to watch. We have to find the right solution."

and then she goes out and does something about it, she is acting on what she thinks AND providing the means to share in the results which make them greater still. So Descartes and Dante can stop rolling over in their resting places. I'm applying them to the 21st century now.

So what are the "objects of the enamoured mind" here? Saturday Night Live videos.

Wha'?

Last night, Yvonne (those who don't know. My wonderful wife of 26 years) and I were watching Christopher Walken hosting Saturday Night Live. He is the best host they've ever had and was one of the main characters in one of their greatest skits ever - More Cowbell. (Wanna watch it?)

At the end of the show, they announced that you could go to NBC and embed some of their skits for tonight (and prior shows) onto your blog or website. I did a doubletake and thought - WOWEEWOWEEWEE! This is coming from the station that actually tried to remove one of the key things that made SNL popular again from YouTube et. al. That would their Lazy Sunday Digital Short that had over 6 million views and, in the pre-Beth Comstock days, drew attention to SNL again.

They have come around to Beth Comstock's (and Dante's) view on both user generated content and sharing - you share and the more who participate in the sharing of that object (content), the greater it becomes. Now bloggers are encouraged to embed SNL skits into their blogs - and in honor of that - and Dante and Descartes (who lived two hundred years after Dante - a case of Descartes following the....never mind), I'm going to embed a couple of Christopher Walken skits for you from last night one in particular where Kristin Wiig is a riot (you'll have to suffer a commercial or two though):

Now a couple of more that NBC provided from earlier shows that I love.

First a great appearance by Mike Huckabee, easily the funniest by far of all the presidential candidates (though I'm a Democrat and Obama guy):

Now one by Joshua Hill (Superbad etc.) as a six year old Jewish comedian with his single parent Dad at Benihana's.

Wow. What a post. All that philosophical stuff to tell you that I love SNL skits sometimes and Christopher Walken.

Though there is a point here.....

The point is that NBC and many other companies are figuring out that the levels of participation of the population in producing and sharing content is now skyrocketing to the point that its become a mainstream activity - unleasing waves of participation and innovation (potentially - and along with a lot of shlock too) at unprecedented levels. And, to make sure that their businesses are responsive and thus, surviving or even fluourishing, they have to go with the flow. Interestingly, it takes the 14th century poet and Platonist Dante Alighieri to give the greater benefit of all this - we are reasoning beings participating in creation of something that is tied to our emotions and the more that we share it, the more will participate. Isn't this the basis for the success of social networks and communities? Or of user generated content? It is and that's why the transformation is social and affects all institutions - not just business. Its the way that people are expressing their creative "impulses" - "deep contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured." That statement from Convito is no different than an emotional, personalized experience.

Proving once again, mankind is always continuing its own history by elevating its capabilities to greater and greater heights. All that's going on now is that we have new tools and new paradigms to meet those historic needs. Its why we think and how we act as individuals and as a species.

Even NBC figured that out.

Technorati : CRM, Christopher Walken, Dante Alighieri, NBC, Rene Descartes, Saturday Night Live

Microsoft Convergence - Some Right Stuff - Wrong Convergence

There are 9500 souls wandering around the Orlando Convention Center (not as I write this since its 4:00am and I can't sleep but during the day) - all attending Microsoft Convergence 2008. I have to assume most of them are good souls. They are also Microsoft fanboys (and girls), willing to drink Microsoft kool aid - which tastes pretty good much of the time (yes, Apple isn't the only company with fanboys (and girls)) - and which absorbs Microsoft messages - especially at Convergence - with nary a peep of concern or protest, because they make a good living either using or selling Microsoft enterprise applications - at Convergence 2008 - in particular - ERP related (like Dynamics AX 2009, GP10, etc.) or CRM (Dynamics CRM on premise or Live 4.0). But, that isn't the reason I'm losing sleep. I'm not sleeping here because a. the bed at the Peabody, an otherwise totally lovely hotel, is too hard and b. the messaging that Microsoft is throwing out to the crowd is really a mixed bag. It's not wrong - but it's not what I'd be doing up against SAP and Oracle, salesforce and Sage. Let me take you back 24 hours or less to Steve Ballmer's keynote......

What Preceded The Keynote

Except for one unique and genuinely interesting "opening act", all that preceded Senor Steve was pretty much standard industry conference junk. I still wonder why some 30 years plus after the movie came out, that every industry conference or product launch I go to thinks that doing something themed on Star Wars is really "cool" or "hip" or.... I'm tired of seeing cartoons, actors and plastic puppet figurines that look like Yoda, Chewie, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and R2D2 in non-stop "war between the dark side and whatever it is that we're pushing at the event" with of course, the forces of the event winning every time. I swear, that if they do it one more time - any of 'em - I'm going to take my lightsword and...... But right before Ballmer went on, they did something that on the surface of it might have violated the laws of political correctness but was actually a genuinely astounding thing (while trying to sleep, I came up with a much cleverer turn of phrase than this but lost the thought by the time I go to my laptop to write it). It started with five stunningly gorgeous/hot women in rather skimpy outfits - all white ones (the outfits, that is). I'd say P.C. violation here, except that they then proceeded to do a really rather awe-inspiring Cirque du Soleil like ballet rising into the air and doing those twists and combinations and swirling aerial stunts/dances that amaze you at the athleticism and the occasional flirtation with aesthetic beauty (not hotness) that you see at times. It was genuinely terrific - and did I tell you the women were incredibly good looking? Good start. Ballmer - up next

Steve Ballmer - Always Enjoyable, Not Entirely On Point (At Least MY Point)

Steve Ballmer, as those of you who have seen him speak (which might be 28% of the entire planet), is an entertaining, well orchestrated histrionic speaker. He knows exactly what he's doing, with cadences measured to the size and nature of his crowd and with gestures and questions which seem spontaneous - but as a pretty decent speaker myself (if I do say so myself - and I do), I know they ain't. But he always has a message for the crowd he speaks with. I was on a stage with him about 3 years ago for two speeches in one day - just two speakers - him, then me - tough act to follow - and one of the crowds was 250 small business people and the other 300 association people (in the opposite order actually). I'd like to think they were there to see me but....don't think they were. In any case, he had a clear message for both crowd and for each crowd. Same message, different metaphor and different cadences. For the sake of brevity, just take my word for that. It was masterful. While masterful in delivery and cadence at the Convergence 9500-strong keynote (with folks from 65 countries consisting of customers, partners, prospects and press/analysts), his message was not wrong, but it was wrong. It was a message that you could get away with, but wasn't visionary and wasn't something the CEO of a company that was competing with Oracle, SAP etc. should have said. The missing parts of the messages were loudly absent from the keynote and from pretty much the entirety of the conference so far (still have something of another day to go) - though there were signs that it wasn't being ignored in Microsoft backrooms or in their labs.

The Fundamentals

One of Steve Ballmer's core points was outlined during what he called a "history of PC computing" not really an apt name for what followed. He spoke to 4 pillars in the history. The first three were

1. Personal productivity - characterized by usability (well represented in a discussion at a later press event with Jakob Nielsen, web design guru now Microsoft lab leader in Copenhagen), mobility (which he tied to Windows Mobile only - a big mistake) and portals (which of course was Sharepoint - good product, up against serious competition because much of its feature set is getting a bit dated).
2. Analysis and teamwork - tied somewhat seemingly randomly but not entirely without merit - to workflow, search and business intelligence. Though nothing about collaboration really
and
3. Application platforms - tied to scalability, integration and simplicity - a genuinely great choice here - and he made the point that to that end, there was going to be a release of a product called Windows Server Essentials to simplify (not strip down, thenks got) installations of Windows server apps for small and medium enterprises.

All in all, so far, not bad. But what came next was the most telling part of the entire speech.

The 4th Pillar - White Spaces, Missing Places

He saw the greatest future opportunity as falling between personal productivity and applications platforms - the white space in between the two - a kind of strategy that leading superstar analyst Denis Pombriant (also in attendance) points out is a 15 year old Microsoft strategy. And there is nothing wrong with what he said per se. As I pointed out in a blog entry in a universe a far far away and a long time ago (OH NOOOOOOOOOO!), Microsoft builds out ecosystems, not channels and they fill in white spaces with partners who have expertise. So there is nothing wrong with saying or doing that. Except....except, except, except, they are competing with Oracle, SAP and salesforce.com.

A Brief Subplot Before the Main Event....

And, given those institutions recent moves - especially in CRM and soon their enterprise applications - that changes the game. First, two other points about Ballmer's keynote that are relevant to what I'm going to say - he identified the competitive sweet spots for them as small and mid-market ERP and all size ranges for CRM. He even talked about what he called XRM - extended CRM - which he said was "helping to manage relationships in all forms" - though the only "forms" he identified were government to citizen and politician to constituent. That statement has two problems and one irony. The biggest of the problems is that CRM is no longer about managing relationships as much as it's about engaging customers. The second problem is that he limited the extension to public sector examples - which is far too limiting a way to talk about extending it - though in his defense it came from a discussion around the use of Dynamics CRM by British local governments so that was top of mind I presume. The irony is that in its very early days, CRM was called XRP - extended ERP and was as narrowly defined in its extension as Steve B. did with XRM. He had a great chance to really do some on point messaging here but failed to and that leads me to what that on point messaging should be.

....Now the Main Event

In the last few months, Oracle, SAP and salesforce. have been putting forward versions of their applications and supportive messaging around, not finding white space in existing enterprise frameworks, but creating whole new unified collaborative frameworks that enable all the improvements in customer-corporate interactions and corporate to corporate interactions. Their messages are not those of extension of the traditional operational and singular but integration of the operational and collaborative. Not the management of relationships but the engagement of customers and employees. THe message is one of a very productive, high return future with new models - in other words, visionary. Each of them is backing it up in a different way. Oracle announced some extraordinarily productive tools based on Web 2.0 (and CRM 2.0) technologies for their Oracle Siebel CRM on Demand version 15 as I outlined in my March 11 blog post; SAP last fall announced a major revamp of their SAP CRM 2007 by making it highly personally configurable and interoperable and device centric. Salesforce has been utilizing it's partner ecosystem to integrate social capabilities with its basic platform and, at Dreamforce 2007 released a highly configurable user experience based toolset for their platform called Visualforce. Ad infinitum. In other words, they are not saying, let's squeeze new areas out of the "inbetweenness" of traditional frameworks, but lets move forward by creating new frameworks that don't ignore the old operational requirements for all businesses but recognize the ascendancy of the customer, recognize the incorporation of consumer thinking in the enterprise, recognize the integration between personal and business and provide the business tools to meet the need of the 21st century business. Exciting and practical, customer focused. Not practical and customer-centric corporate focus. THESE ARE THE COMPANIES THAT ARE COMPETING WITH MICROSOFT!!! The irony here revolves around two things:

1. Microsoft has a huge opportunity, because Dynamics CRM 4.0 is not only their first truly excellent product that can compete and win and grab market share if done right
but
2. Microsoft is clearly aware of the issues that I'm talking about and working on it in multiple ways (aside from their Live offering).

Its just that no one made those points all that clear. Let's look at the last first. Two things were said during the day that made it clear that Microsoft labs knows all about the way that the customer universe has changed. During the SB presentation, they did a short demo of the Call Center of the Future. While the dialog was so cheesy, even the fans in the crowd were laughing at it (it was of the variety of "oh thank you call center using Microsoft products for not only being able to truly understand me but also to make the changes that I need on time and on budget."), the content was anything but that. It showed that Microsoft was well aware of customer needs and how much they've changed. For example, they identified a presence-based engine that sought and found the first available agent at the call center and then made sure that agent had all the updated customer information at the ready - improving by a long shot the speed of answering the call and the effectiveness of its result. The key to the customer information was that it maintained its context so records didn't have to be re-pulled and questions re-asked. So it's clear Microsoft understood engagement from the standpoint of both presence and context - two of the important social characteristics that were necessary to satisfy contemporary customer requirements for engagement. Second, in a press event that was held a bit later on the Microsoft User Experience, the aforementioned web user focused design guru Jakob Nielsen made the strong point that their labs were not just studying and designing according to the standard design foci of usability and utility, but they are adding desirability as a design feature - which goes to the heart of personalization and the contemporary customer. All in all, a terrific move, especially as the younger & younger generations of new employees enter the workforce and are NOT enamored of Outlook because they grew up on the web-based free services like GMail, AOL and Yahoo (Microsoft NEEDS to get Yahoo) which have a completely different user experience - look and feel that will replace the standard regime of Outlook comfort as a focus.

In Sum.....

I think that Microsoft has an extraordinary opportunity to grab some market share and even, with some fortuitous breaks lead the market. But right now, I'm not feeling the Microsoft Love (they talked about this) that I need to feel others are feeling. They are not talking about building new frameworks for their ecosystem - just sending the message that they are extending the old one - and that old one is based on a corporate framework/ecosystem that is long broken and now being replaced by one dominated by the customer. They can get by with that message and even do pretty well with it but this is a company used to leading. That said, being a fan (but NOT a fanboy) of this company for a long time and seeing their first truly good CRM product emerge, they have a chance to make a midcourse visionary messaging correction that they need to make. Otherwise, Oracle, SAP and salesforce in particular, and, in a different way, Google, will begin to make them less relevant - though NEVER irrelevant - than they are now - and that, for them, wouldn't be a good thing.

Some Miscellany

• Microsoft needs to make itself "device friendly", not "Windows Mobile device friendly." They have Exchange. If they show interoperability with the Blackberry OS and other mobile OSes, by providing native Exchange compatibility then they are being smart. The Blackberry partners who provide that hosted service are doing great with it. Staying Windows Mobile OS only, not that smart and missing lots of opportunity. There are signs they are loosening up with, as Kevin Schofield of Microsoft pointed out to me last night, the announcement of iPhone Exchange compatibility, but until they are compatible with Blackberries natively, they ain't there yet.
• In the Q&A Steve B. was asked about the differences between Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and salesforce.com. He mentioned one of them as "unparalleled" simplicity of customization by comparison with salesforce.com. Given the level that salesforce.com has gone to provide strong customization and configuration tools like Visualforce, I'm not sure that he can sustain that claim, but I haven't seen the customization tools. To that end, I'm going to put Microsoft and salesforce.com feet to the fire. In the next week or so, I'm going to contact both companies and see if they are willing to do a bakeoff. The idea would be to customize the same exact set of things under the same (or as close to the same as possible) set of circumstances. I don't have the criteria yet but I'd like to see who's customization is simpler (since that is the primary basis for Steve B's claim) and easier for the non-technical user. If the two companies are too afraid, I'll contact the partners for each and if they are too nervous I'll find independents who can and who use the tools. Stay tuned on this one. It will be real soon.

Throwing out Concepts - Spring Training Version

I'm working on a couple of things that have been triggered by an onset of consulting I'm doing for clients on the development of social networks/user communities and at the same time, the use of social media. Fear not, though, friends, I'm not leaving CRM to do this (actually, fear not, me - since why should you give a.... about what I'm saying in this paragraph? Hardly a fear now, is it?) - this is in fact a natural extension of CRM 2.0. One might ask, "How is this kind of consulting an extension of CRM, Paulie?" I'm glad you asked, master or mistress of your unique domain. Simple. This is a step for in developing the strategies and programs for customer engagement, and given the expectations of customers these days - and their command of the business ecosystem - it takes new and extended forms of communication, collaboration, transparency, authenticity and coolness - in addition to operational functionality to do it. This is CRM 2.0 consulting. Which leads me to my actual point for this entry. I'm wrestling with a couple of concepts that I want to throw out there to you for discussion. I'm raw with these and not all that limber yet when it comes to thinking about them (hence, the title of this entry, baseball fans). Here goes. Concept #1

The Company Must Be A Company But Also A Peer

This is the rawer of the two but I'm going to fully flesh it out very soon. I'm on to something with this one. Here's the logic: The business ecosystem has a customer controlled ecology. Part of the reason for that is that the customer is engaged with conversation and collaboration outside the business - with their peers - and this is not just a business thing, but the way that they live. This is shaped in part by the Gen Xers and Gen Yers that are now in the workforce, but also by an increasing understanding by the baby boomers that this is the contemporary version of the changes that they were so actively engaged in creating in the 60s - and that means this is a social change. And its inspiring them, too. This social change is coupled with the fact that each of us has a personal value chain that actually encompasses our interactions with all institutions - among them social, economic, business - and that the totality of the interactions and how we respond to them actually is what comprises the way that we deal with any given individual business. Businesses, in this scenario, have two problems:

1. They can't control the personal value chain of any individual. They can only intersect parts of it and then try to influence that
2. Businesses are operating in an ancient mode when it comes to how they are thinking about this. They're thinking that they are competing for the customer with other companies of like product when in fact, they are competing with the thousands of messages that the customer is getting everyday from all institutions to just get their attention AND they are competing with the expectations of the customer as shaped by the personal value chains of that individual customer - not shaped by competitive products and services.

What this leads to then is that the customer is trying to see the business in a more complex way (at least unconsciously so) than the business is actually anticipating. The customer is expecting a personal interaction that is of a quality that has been determined by all the other experiences he/she is having with all his/her institutions. That means that the company, while it still has to meet its business objectives and follow through on its plan and pay attention to its bottom and top lines, has to at the same time, provide some level of personal interaction with the customer - whether real or virtual. The customer needs to feel that the company can be trusted, is being honest a.k.a. authentic, etc. - meaning traits that are assigned to human interactions most of the time - but have to permeate all facets of the company - especially those that intersect with the personal value chain of the individual customer. Enough of this one. There is more but you can see that this is still awkward and I haven't fully formulated it yet but am working it through. Is it stupid? Smart? Wrong? Right? Very Cool? Insane? Let me know what you think. This can be important in the establishment of the new business models and the CRM 2.0 model for customer engagement. This is based on recognition of the mind of the social customer - an undeniably different mindset than five years ago. Okay. Concept #2

Members of Social Networks Should Have a Reasonable Expectation of Trust, Primarily - Not Privacy

Before you go all Chuck Norris on me, hear this one out. The relationship between members of social networks and the social networks that they are members of falls under the umbrella of Concept #1 - meaning that the member is not only interrelating with peers on the social network, but expects the social network to act like one too. The deal between the two partners - the member and the network - is a social contract - and a compact. On the one hand, the member is licensing the use of their profile to the network in return for the use of the network. The permission is to use it commercially. This is just the reality of what the purpose of the social network is to its owners. Its either to make money or extend a brand or something akin to that. It isn't a charitable thing, its a business and the social network can reasonably expect that a member who registers understands that. Only an idiot would be so dumb as to think that the social network is there for their pleasure ONLY. It is a business or related to a business typically. That said, the member has the right to expect that the social network will do the judicious thing in the use of their profile - which is publicly revealed private information. The profile - which is an asset to the social network - has to be handled in a way that the member sees as trustworthy. Privacy is somewhat limited by the very fact that this social network is a business and it is social. That word would be social - meaning actions between individuals - which since they are virtual for the most part - means that the profile is at the core of what actions are being taken - which means that the profile, at least in part, is publicly revealed. But the member has the right to control and own the profile. Again, they are licensing its use in a limited way to the social network in return for privileges in the community. That means that while privacy can't be their primary expectation - though some can be expected - trust should be their primary expectation. They trust that the social network will use their profiles according to the social contract/compact that they've both "signed" and that is implied. Some privacy is just a feature of that. Maintenance of ownership and control over the profile by the member is the core to that trust. You all saw what I wrote in last week when Facebook violated that trust. They didn't violate privacy. But they broke that social compact and destroyed trust. So this one is raw also, but if you've got some ideas on it, throw 'em at me. Curveballs are fine, two-seam fastballs, change-ups, all good. Just let me hear from you. These are new and likely to be in the 4th edition when I get to the social network chapters. Help.

Murders and Acquisitions

You can tell we're in a new year for the IT world and particularly those business applications firms that are vying for world domination. Everyone and their mother has been following the Microsoft attempt to take over Yahoo and you see its now heading from "mergers and acquisitions" to "murder and acquisitions" as my cousin now graduating Northwestern called it when he was a little kid. Meaning its going to be hostile because the Yahoo board thinks Microsoft is undervaluing Yahoo.

Hah.

If Yahoo had been able to compete with Google, which given its resources, it should have been able, then perhaps, but the platform that Yahoo has which I thought was superior to Google never was able to aggressively take advantage of that superiority. As a result, Google has been eating Yahoo's lunch ever since despite the 137 million visitors at Yahoo. So acquisition by Microsoft would be to their advantage if both sides are interested in stemming the Google tide.

But, that's merely me shooting off my mouth. What I want to briefly discuss is another possible acquisition that's floating around though not to the extent of the Microsoft/Yahoo story. But I think its important. That would be the rumor of the interest by salesforce.com in being acquired by Oracle at $75.00 per share, reported by Tom Foremski's Silicon Valley Watcher on Saturday. There is an interesting twist on this in terms of how the blogosphere affects stock prices and also, I have an opinion.

First the twist.

Bloomberg reported this morning that salesforce.com's stock price went up 7.7% to $54.80 yesterday based on this rumor. Foremski reported in Silicon Valley Watcher this morning what kind of impact that the blogosphere can have over the weekend. He shows how this story went viral and how it then was likely the source most responsible for the increase in the salesforce stock price yesterday, noting rather wisely that:

"Interestingly, there is another aspect to Saturday publishing. I've noticed: the mainstream media is not very good at following up breaking stories at the weekends because of its skeleton staffing levels. That is why the blogosphere often drives the news agenda on Saturday and Sunday because there isn't much mainstream media content to blog about and link to."

That's something I never really considered and will be thinking about.

On the possible deal itself, much as I'm seeing encouraging signs from Oracle as a creative and innovative, forward thinking, force in CRM (thanks to Anthony Lye and Ed Abbo), I hope this deal doesn't happen. I'd rather see salesforce.com as an independent force for innovation. I'm not sure what the reasoning that salesforce has for this (if its true) but it would be a sad day if it gets swallowed up by anyone at all - that level of innovation doesn't happen that frequently - whether this is a good match or not.

Technorati : CRM, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, salesforce.com

God, Put It To Rest, Ye Merry Gentlemen: ANOTHER "What About B2B?" Answer

I thought my dramatic last flourish would be the forecast for 2008, but I couldn't resist letting you know of one more article that I think you should read - especially if you are a "what about B2B?"monger or have an interest in literal vendor relationship management. This morning in online PC World an article on how power has shifted into the hands of the software buyers - in this case they are addressing CIOs. Worth reading because of their reasoning. They think that open source, the shift to SaaS, the increasing use of web services and service oriented architectures and the growth of virtualization are increasing the number of alternatives out there forcing the software vendors to be increasingly competitive and increasingly nervous, putting authority and control in the hands of the buyers a.k.a. CUSTOMERS That means B2B buyers are in control. That means once again as I've been saying for at least 18 and as much as 24 months, the customers are in control of the business ecosystem, whether its B2C or B2B.

As they say in Thailand, there's lots of good solid left brainedness and just plain smart reasoning in this article, ka.

Consider this PC World article here a late present.

Happy New Year everyone.

Technorati : Forrester Group, VRM, salesforce.com, software as a service

This is IT!! The Forecast for 2008: Sizzle or Fizzle? Tune In Next Year, Same Time, Same Station

Time to Stop Procrastinating and to Start Prognosticating Or Is That Pontificating?

There is an important algorithm that all my forecasts are based on that, for the first time, in this 2007 fourth and final wrap up blog entry, I'm going to reveal to everyone so that you can become a fabulous forecaster too.

Here it is:

cs*(womm)n = d(ui)

Where:

cs = crowdsourcing

* = times, multiply by, you should know this one. Did you flunk school completely?

womm=word of mouth marketing

n= Either the number of friends you've talked to about the "thing" or a letter of the alphabet that falls between "m" and "o" that makes the algorithm exotic.

d(ui) = Dewars, the scotch (not like "we should end all de wars".....though we, of course, should) You can interpret the ui as "user interface" though if you can interpret it some other way, I can't bail you out.

Let me explain how this complex algorithm was created. I've been listening to (actually, catching up with the Onion News video podcasts the last couple of days.Aside a complete, unrelated but important aside: for those of you who have that sardonic, satiric sort of sense of sumor - ahhh, humor but humor just didn't have that "s" I needed, you should be listening, watching and reading The Onion religiously. (Here are all the links that you could ever want) The November 2007 podcasts were sponsored by Dewars leading up to a December 5, repeal of prohibition day. They ran this somewhat cute but not all that funny ad about the repeal of prohibition. Not worth it until....the end. Here it is, unchill filtered, unadulterated, cask strength. The end of the Dewars commercial:

CS*(WOMM)N=D(UI): A ONE ALGORITHM PLAY
(There is a fade in from the previously undescribed scene and standing center stage is a somewhat exaggerated master of ceremonies sort looking rather pleased with himself. This MC looks at the crowd and begins to speak)
"As Tommy Dewar says, 'If an opinion becomes general, it is generally correct!'"
(The scene fades to black and we are back to The Onion Video News)

That rather remarkable quote ,from the mouth of someone who I presume is either a liquor magnate, or a man with a very coincidental name.

THAT, my friends and colleagues, is timeless wisdom when it comes to prognostication. If I didn't know better I'd think that James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds said it at a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) event. So take that lovely Tommy Dewars advice into account when you forecast - because that is about the validity level of any forecast.

Now for my forecast - the number you see in front of each of these is merely the level of feeling I have as to my "rightness" for 2008. You could call it the "n" in the algorithm above if that gives you a measure of comfort.

1. (8) CRM 2.0 will be nearly ubiquitous in 2008 and omnipresent in 2009. It's clear with the moves being made by the market makers like salesforce, Oracle, SAP and to a lesser extent Microsoft with the integration of social technologies into their offerings - and the understanding that customers want cool looking stuff too, that CRM 2.0 is finally reaching the place it should and by 2008 will be there technologically through platforms, partnerships and tools. The issue that will remain will be the culture of the practitioners to take this into the core of their strategy. Its actually a lot harder to "get" the fact that the customers are in command and that they demand transparency, authenticity and more than anything engagement/collaboration as part of their RFP to those that they will do business with. Don't meet that cultural and strategic set of requirements, the technologies you adopt won't be much use for long. I think that the strategic adoption of customer engagement as the core of customer strategy will take longer than the linear willingness to use the technologies and there will be some notable failures when the totality of the criteria aren't met. (parenthetically, I hope that this year sees a better name than CRM 2.0. Maybe Social CRM or if we want to be really hip about it, so.cial.cRM (ain't that de.lic.ious?)
2. (7)SMB interest in CRM - both strategically and technologically will not only grow, but be at the cutting edge in the thinking beyond. This is due to Gen X and Y entrepreneurs driving much of the SMB market; the easy availability of cheap or free business technology tools; increasing visibility of anecdotal evidence of small business success which means really good stories that always impact how people think, the published benefits of Web 2.0 technologies; and the increasing use of consumer technologies and thinking in business. - Interesting, the latter is important because SMBs - especially the small businesses are closer to consumer thinking than their Fortune 500 counterparts. For example, a case can easily be made to use the iPhone for small businesses as a business and consumer device, while in the larger environments, those that use Exchange servers for example, it isn't the wisest choice. There are more factors here too, among them the hunger for the SMB market is reaching ravenous levels by technology vendors; and the resultant effect is dozens of solid alternatives to big boys. The value of those alternatives is not just that they are cheap but that the companies that make them are small businesses themselves and they have a solid use case when they look in a mirror. Think there isn't enough proof. First Check out Brent Leary's always mission-critical stuff on this very idea. He is THE expert in this area of CRM. Second, look at some of the results of this study by RingCentral on small business technology spending: "The majority of small businesses (60%) will increase tech spending in 2008 • Only 6% of businesses plan to decrease spending and 31% planning to maintain current spending levels. • Small business use of social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook) will increase from 38% in 2007 to 59 % in 2008." For the full monty on this one check out this site.
3. (8)Social media and especially social networks will hit a wall as too many proliferate and privacy issues and commercialization questions begin to predominate discussion. This won't stop people from using them in business or joining them but the rate of growth will slow, barring some spectacular entry into the fray. We've seen that with the continuing stupid moves being made by Facebook - especially with Beacon. If you think about it, Facebook began to treat its "customers" as objects of a sale, rather than subjects of a relationship - exactly what even "classic CRM" set out to fix. This was reinforced no further back than yesterday, when news hit that Google, the drivers of the possible "spectacular entry" - did the following: "They flipped on a switch in Google Reader that makes posts and articles designated as "shared" by Google Reader users available to every person listed as that person's contact or friend on Google Talk. Given that bloggers don't necessary want the exposure to what could be parents or business associates, among others, the bloggers took umbrage. AND to make it worse, they didn't even learn from the mistakes of Beacon. They made this an opt-out feature, not opt-in. So stupidity, privacy and distrust are punching holes into the sex appeal of social media and this will be even more prevalent in 2008 - starting to settle the totally scorching social network frontierland. For more info on the StupidGoogle error, check here.
4. (6)Web based apps. will become enterprise ready in 2008 as companies like Zoho begin to challenge the on demand market leaders with their pricing and features. Zoho in particular will be ready to rock - with offline and business work. This is a natural evolution, since most of the social media and Web 2.0 application vendors are trying some way to make money and need to appeal to businesses as well as consumers. In fact, dozens of Web 2.0 vendors have asked me over the last 6 months primarily how to get into the CRM "market." The interest in how to help businesses lock in their customers is pretty high because most of the big and small Web 2.0 and web-based vendors are seeing the value. Companies like Zoho are putting forward solid products with inexpensive subscriptions, making them eminently appealing and the more business functionality (scalability, integration, security, etc.) they include, the more that businesses will see their value. I see this as a real threat to the on demand world by 2010 though. So on demand has time to get itself ready to meet the challenge.
5. (7)Enterprise 2.0 will become the business norm for Fortune 1000 companies by 2010 - 2008 will see major moves forward outside of the tech sector where it is already becoming pre-eminent. This is not particularly surprising. There is already widespread adoption within the high tech industry with companies like IBM, SAP, Microsoft and Cisco wholeheartedly embracing all the social media and the arts of social tagging among other things 2.0 related - both internally and with their customers. Additionally, this is becoming a widespread endeavor outside high tech with Proctor and Gamble and other mega-giant-ginormous companies adopting the Enterprise 2.0 technologies. There is more and more demand directly in the workplace for Enterprise 2.0 tools with as Computerworld called them "the children of baby boomers" expecting collaboration and informality in the workplace as they enter it. The number entering that workforce (and have been over the past few years) - 80 million with this new set of expectations. Their expectations in the workplace are colored by the way they live at home and communicate with their friends. Dion Hinchcliffe does his usual exhaustive work on Enterprise 2.0 at the end of the year. This is a MUST read if you want to understand the way that Enterprise 2.0 is transforming the workplace and its important in changing culture and business models.
6. (5)There will be significant growth in four verticals for CRM, particularly community based CRM - public sector and the three "emotional verticals" - retail, financial services and health services. Each of these verticals is already seeing a huge upsurge in CRM interest, much of it triggered by prior customer experiences at the service level. The financial services industry and retail sectors are all actively engaged in CRM now, with health services trailing them and public sector in a separate universe. Interestingly, the public sector is intensely interested in in CRM because they've seen its value in the 2008 presidential primaries where the case can be made that part of the reason for Barack Obama's success has been his campaign staff's savvy and finely honed usage of social tools and CRM to engage the potential voters. This hasn't gone unnoticed on the administrative side - the one with all those federal agencies, nor on the legislative side - the ones with all those Congresspeople.
7. (10)The debate of where CEM and CRM interlock, fit, subsume, etc. will fade to the level of significance it should have - none. The customer experience and CRM will simply be the foundations for customer strategy in 2008. This one has been a silly discussion since the beginning. The way that customers engage companies can be improved and enhanced through the operational effectiveness that's necessary ("traditional CRM") and the types of tools and experiences provided (customer experience) so that the customers can be significantly participant in the life of the companies that they want to do business with - within reason - meaning the company's business plan's parameters and the willingness of the company to be authentic/transparent (critical factor). The debate about whether CEM is part of CRM or vice versa or one will eliminate the other will be consigned to the dustbins of history and the lowest rungs of academic frippery where it belongs. Roomba will suck it up and toss it.
8. (8)Consumer thinking and the associated technologies will be a major part of business thinking and technologies in 2008-2010. This one is a near lock for the next three years. Already we're seeing analysts like Gartner talk about its potential as they did at their September 2007 CRM conference and Forrester taking it even further with their emphasis on the rise of social computing - which is very much coherent with the increase of the use of consumer technologies in business. That means (see number 5) that text messaging, instant messaging, mobile devices/smartphones, and Web 2.0 technologies will become part of the strategic planning as will the idea of how to replicate a consumer-side experience on the business side to make this more palatable with their customers. Think not? Think again. One of the reasons that Rearden Commerce has had some success in the marketplace was because they understood that the line between personal and business was not only thin, but actually about the same as that yellow line of scrimmage you see at football games on TV - not real. They were able to build a business model that went on the realistic premise that people did personal things at the workplace and work things at home and by aggregating the services and tools for that to be effective in total, they could be successful - and they have been. Don't underestimate the new interface that SAP CRM 2007 sports. It looks a bit like Google and is entirely skinnable - meaning you can personalize the look and feel down to the decals on the screen so to speak. They get that consumer thinking colors the way people like to interact in a business environment - even B2GoddamnB environments (I swear if I get that B2B v. B2C question again, I'll.....)
9. (6)The newer forms of marketing and public relations will begin to predominate over traditional forms, though traditional advertising etc. will by no means disappear. But the value proposition of search engine marketing, experiential marketing, word of mouth marketing and a myriad of others will become increasingly interesting to companies - though hopefully, they will each become marketing tools in a toolbox - rather than uniquely distinct marketings. Social tagging and folksonomies will also begin to hit the ground running - maybe not at cheetah speeds but fast - as marketing nirvanas - though privacy issues will still prevent the widespread adoption of this in 2008 - though look out for 2009-2010
10. (4)Partner Relationship Management will get its third life in 2008. PRM will see a resurgence in 2008 due to breakthrough thinking like the salesforce-to-salesforce channel management tools that salesforce released based on evolving partner communities that would enrich the partner ecosystems out there. This is always dicey since I keep predicting that PRM is going somewhere and it never does. This might be the year. We can always hope, can't we, fans of the Cubbies?
11. (7)SOA becomes the architecture of choice in 2008.This one is a no brainer I think. The level of acceptance is already high but that doesn't mean the issues of SOA will be resolved. For example, the CTO of Websphere Jerry Cuomo thinks that SOA governance and policy will be the main SOA roadblocks in 2008. The actual architectural implementations are starting to roll out. I agree with him. Once the technology becomes more or less mainstream and stable, the issues on how its going to be handled within companies and among companies become paramount. We've reached that level of maturity so far.
12. (50)The Yankees will surprise and take the division again and go on to finally break the "curse" of not winning a World Series for 7 long years. Just think - six year old Yankee fans have never seen them win a series and 1 year old fans have never seen them win a division. What kind of way is that for the little New Yorkers to grow up - with all that failure for so long.

I was going to do a company "list" based on highly likely success, probable success, iffy but positive, shaky and sliding down. But I'm going to hold off on that one until I finish a series of meetings and do some more research. That'll be a prize in the early new year, if I remember to do it. Remind me.

With that, Once again, I close the year with my foot firmly ensconced in my cheek (or is that my tongue?).

Have a very, very Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thank you so much for making me do something that I actually love doing and letting me know constantly why I should keep doing it. You're great people and better friends.

Enjoy.

Technorati : CRM, CRM 2.0, Customer relationship management, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, NY Yankees, Partner Relationship Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Web 2.0, social media

THEY'RE Saying It, Not Me: The "Other" (Than Mine) Forecasts for 2008

Okay, this is the third in my series of four "lets end the year on bang, not a whimper" blog entries. Of course, that's merely T.S. Eliot's phrase turned inside out and otherwise makes no sense at all, but at least lets me have the illusion of literary allusion.

I'm going to take a look at a few of the more interesting predictions that other analysts and forecasters of note are making on what we're going to see in CRM in 2008 and then make my snarky comments based on their forecasts. Or maybe they won't be so snarky. Oh, the freedom we bloggers have to look like idiots (I'm talking about myself here of course) - or be very intelligent.

There are an incredible number of forecasts/predictions out there. In fact, if you want to see the Web 2.0 lot of 'em, you can check out Darren Herman's site for a compendium of sites that are making them. As far as my choices, they are some chosen but all in all pretty random. To describe my selection process, I fall back upon a quote from Harold Bloom on his picks for a literary survey in 2002 that I read in Classic Cocktails: A Modern Shake by Mark Kingwell: "my choice is wholly arbitrary and idiosyncratic. These are certainly not 'the top one hundred' in anybody's judgment, my own included. I wanted to write about these." Where I differ is that some of these are the top 100 CRM predictions. But then I'm not Harold Bloom either. Nor he, me.

Then before New Years, but after Christmas, I'm going to do my forecast in 2008 including a more granular version than I did on Episode 4 of Experience on the Edge, my podcast for MyCRMCareer, which you can listen to here,

Now on to the prognosticators. My commentary is in red and bold so you can't miss it - though you might want to....:

Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research

Denis is always the first ones I look for (and at) because he is the one that I think is my numero uno, my number 1 (and a free Verizon phone to ya, sir) when it comes to his forecasts. So here are (somewhat randomly) three of his picks for 2008 and my comments re: them.

1. Authenticity will replace the idea of customer experience - interestingly, Joe Pine has been one of the leaders in both of those idea areas and authenticity is the newest. Briefly, in Pine's own words, "[Authenticity is about a company] being true to itself, and being what it says it is to others." Pine's last idea, the customer experience, remains valid but we seem to have forgotten that an experience is something that is uniquely staged for a customer to provide a transformation in the customer's life. Today, experience is simply about what happens in an encounter, good or bad, and often that experience is inauthentic in one or more ways. So out with the old (experience) and in with the new (authenticity). (PG: I agree with Denis here for the most part, though I think that authenticity can't replace the idea of customer experience - I think it will be the prime business side lever for what qualifies as a spectacular customer experience (in the true meaning of the word - not the good or bad customer service meaning). Corporations will increasingly realize that the value that customers are looking for is first and foremost an honest relationship with the companies they want to do business with. Truth establishes trust and trust is the most important universal piece of a personalized customer experience. So the way that authenticity emerges might be a bit different but it will emerge as Denis says it will)
2. The idea of platforms will continue to gain momentum and with that the definition of a platform will suffer the same dilution and loss of focus as customer experience has over the last five years though platform has a long way to go before that happens. We've seen salesforce.com introduce the concept of a development platform and we will see other companies introduce less grandiose versions of their own platforms. Already, I have seen Microsoft describe its CRM as an ideal development platform for almost any business application and SAP and Oracle all have played riffs on this theme too. Also look for platform to stand for a smaller piece of CRM reality such as "marketing platform" or "BI platform" etc. Those terms are already with us but they are thought of in lower case and are used as descriptors. Soon I think we'll see them approach the importance of Brand Names and the word "Platform" will be written with a capital letter. (PG: Couldn't agree more with Denis on this one. For example, SugarCRM has become a platform that has some interesting things being done. Rearden Commerce is a unique SOA-based platform, yet they don't get SAP, salesforce.com, NetSuite as a platform treatment at all. I also agree with him here on the Platform with a capital P. So I'm 100% in this camp. You go, Denis Pombriant - that's Pombriant with a capital "P.")
3. Lastly, watch out for unintended consequences of Sales 2.0 and all things social networking related. I think there will be a tendency to capture a lot of data and treat it as the gospel truth but the down side of capturing data from social applications is that the whole approach is not scientific. The approach can give you valuable qualitative information but it is not the same as posing a question and expecting a thoughtful response. There is great potential to over-do social networking and Web 2.0 and if un-managed I think we could see some neat bloopers. (PG: We're already seeing those bloopers though not so neat with things like the Facebook Beacon controversy. Because of the proliferation of both the number of social networks, the easy to see sex appeal of social networks, and the market valuations of the big guys, plus the absolute desire to obsessively place a 2.0 at the of every word in the lexicon, the potential to overdo is spectacular actually. On the other side, Denis' commentary on the tendency to capture data unscientifically and treat is as gospel truth is for the most part true dat(a). But I think that there is a tendency, whether the data is captured scientifically or not, especially in CRM to use data as a substitute for judgment rather than as an aid to judgment - and that predates social networking data. The value of social applications data is that it is crafted by the user typically, not by an algorithm that represents presumed segments or habits. So there is an emotional component to capturing that data that has real potential value provided the judgments made from it are intelligent. So I would differ by degree but not by the statement itself here)

You can get Denis' complete forecast including the above at his Beagle Research Blog here

Bruce Richardson, AMR Research

Bruce is a classically trained analyst in enterprise applications who is getting as savvy on the convergence of social media with enterprise apps as he is on enterprise apps, the stand alone edition. He is a leading analyst for AMR Research always well worth reading and about the only flaw I can find with him is his devotion to the Red Sox.

Here is one of his noggin-busters for 2008:

Next year's theme: convergence of enterprise apps and social networks

1. Like you, every day I get multiple invitations to join friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo. In the past two weeks, I have also been asked to join Hi5 Networks and Spock.com. Smart companies are looking at social networks and seeing new prospecting and hiring opportunities. They are also looking to use these tools to build tighter links to a wide range of communities, from shareholders to suppliers. A few months ago, I wrote that salesforce.com is looking to become the "Facebook of the business world." Last month I wrote about Faceforce, a new tool that links information from your Facebook profile and network to salesforce.com's software. This could be a little creepy if abused or overused, but I have the power to limit access to my Facebook profile. A few weeks ago salesforce.com announced Salesforce to Salesforce, the world's first "multi-tenant business network." Some of the initial customers are using this technology to connect directly to their reseller networks to share and track leads in real-time, plan and update marketing campaigns, track orders, and share other functions and processes. The intent is to reduce the latency from suspect-to-prospect-to-customer and eliminate any and all manual processes. Rob Bois goes into detail about this below in Market Roundup. The next step should be to layer salesforce.com's IdeaExchange on top to allow the channel master to solicit ideas for new features and functions or improvements to the indirect channel program. In the not-too-distant future, I suspect that we will see a Facebook-like application from salesforce.com that will be used to replace static employee intranet sites, extend out to key customers (like a social network site for your major accounts), or provide pages for the sales and service members of key suppliers. Why? Facebook envy. Even though salesforce.com has reached the one million mark, I suspect that CEO Marc Benioff won't be happy until he approaches LinkedIn's 17 million connections or Facebook's 60 million friends. (PG: I agree with Bruce as I think, Dion Hinchcliffe, the chief evangelist, along with Andrew McAfee, for Enterprise 2.0 here. I think that Bruce's interesting example of salesforce-to-salesforce is one that I like though I don't think that the Facebook like app from a business entity will necessarily come from salesforce. There could well be a CRM-like app or Enterprise 2.0-like app coming from IBM or the Facebook like app may come from a surprising place - though less surprising than a month ago - like SAP or Oracle. Marc Benioff's ego doesn't drive this one. Market requirements and customer value drive it.)
   

You can get Bruce's look at 2008 including the above at the AMR First Thing Monday micropages. BTW, I'd subscribe to First Thing Monday before next Monday, if I was you - though I'm not.

Gartner Group

Gartner is so big, its almost impossible to identify who said what about which. They often take the conservative approach in forecasting, which is to their credit actually, given the presence of people like me in the marketplace. They have some topnotch CRM analysts among them Michael Maoz, Ed Thompson and Scott Nelson (#21 on the InsideCRM most influential list). But some of these forecasts aren't CRM as much as they are technologies which could impact CRM. The CRM forecast was made at their September 2007 CRM conference.

1. CRM Software - Sales will go from a finally projected 2007 $7.4 billion (14% increase) to a 2008 $8.3 billion (an 11% increase) with much of that coming from a year end surge. (PG: This one is one that I leave in the more capable hands of Gartner frankly. I'm at a total loss when numbers are being thrown out there - at least software sales numbers)
2. Real World Web - The term "real world Web" is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred. For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality. Now is the time to seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation (PG: While I understand this one, I think that Gartner is trying to invent a new category that might be stretching it a bit, though its kinda interesting. But ultimately, its simply using the web to do stuff we need to do in real time which is fine but not a prediction of anything. Just a bit of wishful thinking)
3. Social Software - Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors. Expect significant consolidation as competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise. Nevertheless social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration. (PG: This one is as right on as right on can be, as we begin to see the emergence of the larger companies like Lotus/IBM with Connections - a unified social suite or smaller players like Zoho (Adventnet) with its web-based collaboration and communication tools, become increasingly interesting to enterprises large and small. I think they get 100% for this one. CRM 2.0 is on the cusp now and next year so make it....uhhhh....overcusped....or whatever you want to call it)
4. Skills Shortage - Through 2008, 25% of CRM projects will be canceled or postponed because of the skills shortage in consultants and systems integrators....Analytics skills particularly will see a significant skills shortage, and many marketers are unprepared to capitalize on Web 2.0. (PG: Again, I can't speak for the percentages, though it is noted that this is down from 75% of projects being canceled in the past for all reasons combined. They also point out that consultant pricing will be up - which means I should have nothing to complain about. But the skills shortage in CRM is real - partially because CRM is still not a hot and heavy topic in the schools, partially because a re skilling is necessary for even the old veterans to meet the contemporary demands - hence the "unprepared to capitalize on Web 2.0" comment and I'm sure a myriad of other reasons. But I think they are right again here)

You can get the 2008 Strategic Technologies forecast here.

For an article on Gartner's 2008 CRM forecast, please go to SearchCRM here

Graham Hill

Graham, Hill, an associate at CACI Sophron, in my book, is just so much more than that. I think he is the most underappreciated CRM thought leader in the business. His blog was #12 on the InsideCRM Top 20 list and should have been higher, though that's no slouch either. He does his thinking and speaking quietly, with a distinctly European style of literate intellect and with a level of scholarship probably unmatched in the industry. So here are a couple of his forecasts for customer value for 2008.

1. Incorporating customer word of mouth into CLV - The basic CLV model assumes that customers are solitary figures. But look around yourself when you next go shopping and you will see people out in small or larger groups, shopping together. People are social animals and the power of friends' word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations in driving purchases is now well established. Some companies are already starting to incorporate the value of customer WOM in their CLV models. For example, Kumar, et. al., in a recent edition of the Harvard Business Review looked at the value of word-of-mouth recommendations for telecommunications companies and financial services customers. Amazingly, they found that a customer's WOM was worth up to four times more than his or her basic CLV. That's a lot of additional value. With the enormous growth in communities and social networks, the breeding grounds for WOM, I predict that more companies will incorporate the value of WOM in their CLV calculations. (PG: Graham's forecasts are tougher to comment on, because they are exceptionally granular - but in this case, I do think that at least companies will increasingly realize the value of word of mouth in their strategies for marketing ; there is already ample evidence for that out there. For cases studies on this, check out the Word of Mouth Marketing Association site here. Perhaps in their CLV calculations, though I don't know how that translates into metrics exactly. This is an area I'm going to be investigating in 2008. Maybe Graham can help me for CRM at the Speed of Light's 4th edition. Please.)
2. Valuing customer social networks - One of the most discussed topics in 2007 was the exponential growth of social networks like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. Now every large corporation wants to buy a slice of the action. Microsoft was the latest to take the bait, beating out Google when it paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, effectively valuing Facebook at $15 billion. Lots of other companies have customer social networks of their own: airlines, loyalty programs and telcos, for example. All of these are starting to look to networks as an additional source of value, not so much as something to sell to a rich corporation like Microsoft but as something that can be harnessed to drive innovation, marketing and customer self-service. For example, analysts like Finnish start-up Xtract are carrying out social network analyses for mobile telcos on their customer-calling networks, to identify those customers who sit at the center of calling networks or who link networks together. Although this is still early days, I predict that these central customers in customer social networks will start to have their network value calculated and will become the subject of very special loyalty programs to keep them and their customer network with the company. (PG: This is intriguing and HIGHLY LIKELY because the elements for this to occur are all there - CLV, social network analysis (SNA) and social networks, along with a history of it being done on the corporate side through SNA influence analysis - who are the most influential people at the prospect company in this opportunity for a big sale is typically the form it takes. In a customer ecosystem where both valued individual customers are already subject to special loyalty programs, its a small step and a little leap to customers who are valued for the size, range, purchasing power, and targeted focus of their network. That's what an advocacy program would be all about. So this one is a great no-brainer to happen over the next two years. I think momentum in 2009 though, but the trickle plus begins in 2008)

To read Graham's rahthah erudite and absolutely necessary, always worthy blog go to CustomerThink and follow this link.

Paul Gillin

Paul is the author of "The New Influencers" and a regular columnist for B2B magazine. I met Paul YEARS ago when he was the jefe for the SearchCRM site and one of the best in CRM. So he is at the confluence of CRM and social media, a great place to be this year and next. This guy just simply gets it. Here's one of his forecasts on the future of tech PR and social media (in this case) from his blog

1. The rise of social search, addressing some of the inherent limitations of search. Mahalo and WikiaSearch are early proofs of concept of an evolution of the search utility. (PG: This is one that I think Paul nails, though I think the cultural readiness is not quite there in the corporate world yet. Social search will be increasingly important and the momentum for will show BIG TIME in 2009, not this year. I think the tools are still too primitive with the big shots like Mahalo and WikiaSearch not even released to public beta yet. WikiaSearch is set to go on January 7 though. I also think that corporate vision when it comes to social search is somewhat myopic.

For the rest of Paul's forecast, come to his social media blog here and read dammit, read

Okay, folks, that's about it for this episode of As the World Is Possibly Going To Turn. I'll get to my final 2007 blog entry in a couple of days - and that will be my forecasts, less illustrious than this bunch but still....we can all fantasize, can't we?

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