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A Guide to Influence(rs): Chapter 2

I’m presuming that you’ve read Chapter 1 a.k.a. the first post on this. If not, here’s the link. Go do that now. If you’re reading this in the book form, I know you’ve read it because this says Chapter 2 and who reads Chapter 2 before Chapter 1?

Influencer Relations Programs

I think that you probably now have a good idea of the rudiments of what “types” of analysts are out there and a few names that fit the type – though we’ll go into a much bigger list in Chapter 4 along with some of the things that you have to think about when it comes to dealing with individual analysts. This means you, analyst relations person, you investor relations person, you especially public relations person, you influencer relations person. When we get to Chapter 3, I’m going to elaborate on how to do this right, and show you how it gets done wrong, which, unfortunately, tends to be the bulk of approaches that are out there for, lets say, explainable, but not acceptable reasons.

Do you even need a program? Why? Why not? How do you structure that program? Or, at least, who does it well?

Do You Need a Program?

There is something sad about the whole influencer relations (IR) thing, even though, at a certain level, I make my living because of it.

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, what makes the whole thing sad and a little maddening perhaps is that it’s a game.

Maybe you wonder why I would say that?

Simple.

The best of all possible worlds says that companies should be able to stand on the merits of the quality of their offering to the potential customers that they are attempting to lure. If that were true, it would eliminate the need to chat with any influencer or the twenty that you do have to chat up. (Aside: By the way, it would also eliminate the apparent need that several of the technologies companies have to snarkily denigrate their competition in childish and distinctly unoriginal ways.) The value of the product to the persons seeking a specific business outcome from that product would decide the winners of the competition.

But, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds – or do we? I won’t get into the existential conversation that is suggested by this; that’s Spinoza’s bailiwick, but I will say that we live in a world, instead, where companies do have to deal with influencers.

You have to because:

1. Influencers talk to customers and prospects
2. Influencers talk to potential investors
3. Influencers talk to “markets”
4. Influencers talk to other influencers
5. Influencers actually can provide good advice if they do consulting, which many do. And bad advice too. Let’s face it, we ain’t perfect.

That’s a lot of relatively powerful reasons. Let’s see what each of them means.

Influencers talk to customers and prospects

This is done both formally and informally. Formally, it means that customers and prospects specifically either seek out influencers or read what they write about the companies that they are interested in possibly engaging. The institutional influencers get a large percentage of the customer/prospect formal phone calls though the boutique firms and the independents do also. I’d say in the vicinity of a two-thirds to one-third ratio if you had to guess at a number. That would be a customer calling up the influencer at Gartner let’s say, and asking “what do you think of Oracle for um, loyalty management?”

But they also call me, and Constellation Research and Denis Pombriant and…you get the picture. It’s a bit random at times who they choose and a bit perplexing why, but they make the calls.

Don’t forget the more informal channels too. For example, I speak at a conference. I will inevitably get somebody from a company with a proposal out for some CRM related or social technology, asking me about the finalists or about a company they are considering as their choice. With caveats about the generality of my answer, I’ll give them an idea of what I think, if I can. Sometimes, that leads to a more formal (and occasionally deep enough to be paid) discussion with the team that’s making the decision.

The other area where customers look to influencers is in their writing. If I or someone else write an opinion piece about a technology company and their product it is read. For example, literally, every day (I would guess) Naomi Bloom, a world class leading HR analyst/influencer/consultant who is also a member of the Enterprise Irregulars, will get queries in an email from some customer who read something that she wrote about a company of interest to them – and as often as makes sense – she responds.

Influencers talk to potential investors

Again, this is both informal and formal. On the more formal side, there are companies like Gerson Lehmann Group (GLG) and De Matteo Moness (DMM) who pay influencers by the hour to render opinions on both market trends and specific companies within those markets to their clients who tend to be institutional investors from large banks or venture capital firms. I know in my experience with these companies, which is pretty extensive, the general discussion is on CRM market trends, and what do I think of company X, and where it is going relatively to other companies. Interestingly, there is one company that has been the subject of at least 80% of the inquiries over the past 5 years that I’ve been doing these kinds of calls. I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess which.

This is by no means the only avenue that investors and potential other shareholders reach out through. They do it via emails, and meetings at conferences among other places. This happens frequently to all influencers with a public presence. The independent influencers tend to get the bulk of these informal kinds of queries. They seem more approachable than the institutionals though it’s truly not the case. As always, it is a matter of personality when it comes to approachability, not typecasting.

Influencers talk to markets

This means that influencers influence markets. What influencers write and say about markets and trends in markets impact what people think about markets and potential trends. Because influencers are human beings, despite what you may think, (J) if they are writing a piece on the market that your company is involved in, and, for example, they need to mention a company who represents the market well, they are going to mention the companies that are top of mind – even as representative examples. If you have no relationship to them at all, then you won’t be top of mind, whether you’re known to the influencer or not. Again. They are human beings and thus work like any other human beings. The organizations and individuals who they feel connected to, they will think of first. If you’re not, they may think of you as one of their choices but you won’t be the one who’s mentioned.

Let me put it to you this way. You have a choice of two companies, both of whom fit your criteria well for whatever it is you need to talk about. With Choice #1 they are great and you know them well and like them. Choice #2 equally great but you don’t know them. Either of them would be a great choice to mention. Which one would you mention?

That is correct sir or ma’am. The one you know. Why not? There is no reason not to if they are of equal value otherwise.

That said, if the influencer has a paid relationship to the company that they mention, they do need to say that more often than not. There are even circumstances where paying the influencer to do something will actually prevent them from mentioning you in something. My policy (and this just mine, not necessarily someone else’s) is that when I write a contracted white paper for some company, they understand from the beginning that this is a thought leadership piece and that they will NOT be mentioned in the document at all. But then again, nor will their competitors. However, what I will promise is that it will be aligned appropriately to messaging that we both can agree on. But the key here is both. Not one or the other.

With that example, I leave it to you to weigh the value of paying influencers to do something. That’s not for me to do. But regardless of that, there is enormous value in knowing influencers – establishing some sort of bond. If you don’t see that, stop reading this now and go read “Fifty Shades of Grey.” There is a certain irony in the title, though not in the content.

Influencers talk to other influencers

This goes back to what I said in Chapter 1. Influencers in the technology world and especially in CRM know each other well and hang out together both virtually and when possible which is quite frequently, in person – at restaurants, bars, and conferences most likely. In fact, there is almost a circuit that you will inevitably find the influencers traveling which involves Dreamforce (salesforce.com’s annual shindig); Open World (Oracle’s); Sapphire (SAP’s) and either Convergence (Microsoft’s business applications conference) or Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC). The same people travel to each of the conferences – accommodated by their expenses being paid by the conference owners. You’ll see a significant number of the influencers (though not all) at all four.

On the virtual side, you just have to refer to what I said earlier about the organized groups, like the Enterprise Irregulars (EI) and the Accidental Social CRM Community (AC). But it goes well beyond that. There are constant email exchanges. There are other back channels from some of the firms. Many influencers sit on the boards of other influencer groups (for example, Esteban Kolsky and I both sit on the Board of Advisors of Constellation Research). Some of the younger influencers are mentored by the older influencers (sigh) even though the younger influencers may have substantially more of a digital presence. The implication there is that the younger influencers are influenced by what the older influencers say. (I hope. J). There are daily email exchanges. There are daily direct messages (DMs) on Twitter.

There are temporary partnerships that can be as simple as project collaboration – for example a recent collaboration between Esteban Kolsky (independent influencer) and Mitch Lieberman (vendor influencer) for a Customer Service research project.

It can be a temporary institution such as CRM Idol which in 2012 had 9 primary judges all influencers and 71 extended judges – all influencers from multiple domains – vendors, media, institutional influencers, practitioner, boutique influencers, independent influencers and those elusive influencers who influence other influencers – all of whom came together for a specific purpose – to support small emerging technology companies in an annual contest that puts them on an international stage – which influencers in combination have the power to do.

It can be more permanent too – as simple as Brent Leary and I who have been doing what we call the CRM Playaz for about 4 years now - a satirical look at events in the world of CRM and technology – that has thousands of listeners/watchers. To give you a picturesque example of how that works, here is a story I personally loved.

I was in Kiev Ukraine, speaking to 300 people who were employees of BPMOnline, the EMEA winner of CRM Idol in 2011. After giving a speech to them, the first question I was asked by one of the employees was, “when are you and Brent Leary going to do the next episode of CRM Playaz?”

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

See how it all works?

Not quite, huh? Let me give you the glue.

Add that one other element that I mentioned in Chapter 1 and you get an idea (and only a somewhat fuzzy idea at that) at the intricacy of the influencer networks and how they chat and talk and interact all the time.

That other element? Influencers gossip. That one. They are constantly in situations where they interact with each other and compare notes – in both real and virtual environments. Plus they choose each day to interact with some of the clan. So there are passive and proactive situations that they are involved with.

So think about why your relationship to influencers might have an impact (depending on choosing the right ones – do your own social network analysis – we’ll talk about that in a later chapter) far beyond that individual.

Influencers actually can provide good advice

This section is mildly self-aggrandizing since this is how I make my living, but it is also true. Equally true is that influencers who consult can also provide bad advice. Ultimately, if you hire them to provide you with advice, you have to decide how to use it. But there are two very important specific pieces of advice about getting advice that I think you need to know that are VERY important. One regarding unpaid advice. The other regarding paid advice.

Regarding Unpaid Advice

There are few influencers even including the institutional influencers who are under pressure to be utilized who won’t be willing to give free advice every now and then. But there are a few things to remember regarding this:

1. Influencers make some of their living being paid for their advice.
2. There is a limit, even if you’re a friend, on how often you should “tap the tree” for free advice.
3. When you want free advice, please be sure that you’ve got some sort of relationship with the person. It goes down so much better when you ask.

Here’s the thing. Each of the influencers as I mentioned get asked a number of times in a given day if they would be willing to take a demo. Usually, what the demo requester asks is for feedback when you take the demo, on what you think. While most of the influencers are polite enough to provide some feedback, be aware of a few things, if you’re one of these. Starting a relationship by asking them to take a demo and provide free feedback – meaning about $1000 worth of their paid time for free – is not the best way to do things. Though again, it’s okay to ask. Also, the feedback you’ll get is somewhat generic since you couldn’t possibly be providing enough information in one hour of time to get some deeply cogent information from the influencer – though its often surprisingly good.

Even if you have a relationship and are freely getting advice when you ask, don’t overdo it. This is how the folks you’re asking for advice make a living. For example, there is one company that I genuinely adore and love the people I deal with. For about 3-4 years, I’ve given them free advice because I do that and much of the level of the advice, because I know the company so well is what I would normally charge for. However, I don’t charge them and wouldn’t ask. The thing is that they seem so comfortable with this “arrangement” to never even offer a token gesture.

I’m not resentful about this but I do know I’m reaching a point where I’m going to have to start saying “no” even though my personal relationship with some of the key people at this company is through the roof great. I’ve never had an indication that they were even thinking about something despite the many hours that they’ve had of free advice. They aren’t a charity so there is a limit to pro bono from me because neither am I. There has to be.

What I’m saying is no matter what the situation – no relationship, close relationship, be mindful of the fact that the person whose advice you are asking has to earn a living too – respect it. Don’t kowtow to it. Often it’s a matter of a gesture of thanks, not necessarily a paid contract. It depends on the person. If you’re dealing with the institutional or the boutique firms, you’ll be less likely to get away with the free advice for too long. Though the influencers there are perfectly happy to do pro bono work when it suits them.

Regarding Paid Advice

This one is simple.

If you’re paying for advice, listen to it.

That might seem obvious, but it isn’t. Influencers who are consulting with you are partnering with you to figure out the best course of action based on what you’ve engaged them for. I can’t tell you the countless times I’ve had discussions with influencers who are frustrated because the advice they gave

But another piece of advice:

Don’t be uncritical just because you are paying for it.

You have every right (and even a responsibility) to challenge the influencer who is providing you with advice. Your challenges of what they are saying might range from “that makes no sense given our mission/vision” to “it doesn’t feel right” to “we want to move in a different direction than that.” When it boils down to it, you’ve hired them; they haven’t hired you. You need them to give you a perspective and a plan that can work or minimally suggestions that you can consider that come from a fresh perspective (theirs).

But if you agree with them, then work hard to do what they suggest. The advice doesn’t come from a vacuum and if its advice you can get behind – make sure that you have the internal resources to execute on that advice. If you are limited in your resources for one reason or another and you know that when you are having the conversations with the consultant/influencer – for god’s sakes, tell them! That way they can brainstorm with you on how to get it implemented or whether the plan will need adjustment. A plan in theory isn’t what you’re aiming at here. A plan in action is. So treat the influencer as your partners/fellow conspirator. They’re under NDA anyway and likely to know the corporate politics that you’re dealing with – if they’ve done their homework. So be straight so it can get done.

Things to consider prior to hiring influencers

There is a lot to consider before you actually bring an influencer on board:

Make sure that you have an idea of what you want from them – There is this strategy that a lot of companies practice which is to retain influencers to “be around” to answer questions and advise whenever needed within certain limits. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the strategy, what seems to inevitably happen with this one is that you pay the influencers for a full year in some proscribed way and then forget to use them all that much. So that the value you receive is not near the price you pay. Its great for influencers in one regard. We get paid whether you use us or not. The nature of a retainer. But it’s not so good in that we should be used, if you’re paying. Some companies are good at that. Some aren’t.

So rather than worry about use – whatever format you use to pay an influencer/consultant – e.g. deliverables, retainer – make sure that you have a clear and distinct knowledge of what you are going to use the particular person for. Having them around for some vague future use is not all that great a strategy for you.

Make sure they are the experts that you want – Forget whether they represent Gartner, Constellation or some independent. Does this person have the expertise you need to answer your identified questions? Maybe it’s a partner strategy? Or a product development requirement? Or an approach to getting on to the Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave? Or a messaging issue? Or a thought leadership/mindshare plan? Whatever. Ask the questions. Find the experts. Hire the experts. Get the answers. Implement the answers. If it comes from Gartner and an independent or two, then it does. Bring the horsepower you need to get results together and go for it.

Should you engage Gartner/Forrester because you have to? - Let’s make something clear. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Gartner and Forrester are the 800 and 400 pound gorillas respectively, but what makes them useful to you is that they do get a lot of customer queries and top of mind companies who are most often their clients do get referred. Second, they have some top-notch experts like Michael Maoz at Gartner and Bill Band at Forrester who can give you great advice. Companies feel compelled to deal with Gartner and Forrester but that’s nonsense. I am not a fan of some of their leadership but I am a huge fan of some of their analysts. Use them if you need to, not because you need to. Be brave. (J)

Who Has Done it Right? Vendor Influencer Programs That Work

To be clear, I’m going to deal with the influencer programs of technology companies because this is what I know best. I’m going to highlight five specific programs at five different technology companies that do it nearly completely right. Even though most of the companies have more than one program, I’m not passing judgment on the other programs. It’s just that these five stand out individually, for valuable and useful reasons. They also represent the universal best practices applicable to any influencer relations program for any industry. They take unique approaches and have unique strengths, though a few of their upsides are universal. In other words, they rock.

SAP Business Influencer Program

This program with the ineffable (and wonderful) Malcolm Kimberlin in charge is clearly a crown jewel in SAP’s AR/IR effort. Primarily tasked to deal with the independent influencers as individuals and as a force, Malcolm not only provides personal attention to each of the influencers he is responsible for and that he discovers, but has operated as a champion for their exposure at SAP, helping the influencers get to individuals they need to have a discussion with or attend events that they need to be at etc. So that the influencers can do their jobs well when it comes to SAP’s interests. He is also a friend to many of them on a personal level. Yet he never loses sight that SAP’s interests have to always be in the forefront and its part of his job to establish the relationships that are needed to help SAP get considered honestly from the influencers that are in his stable, which seems to be the genuine goal of the program. This program is recognized and lauded among the influencers who know it as one of the best, if not the best in the entire industry.

Lessons to Learn:

1. Influencers are individuals and treating them that way goes a long way to gaining their trust. Spend the time with them to get to know them.
2. Treat the influencers as partners rather than antagonists.
3. Treat the influencers as friends without kissing their butts.
4. Be a conduit for access to programs, people, and occasional work.
5. Make sure a good human being not an automaton is running your influencer program.

Oracle Blogger Program

This program is a smaller program at Oracle run by everyone’s favorite – Susie Penner who does a brilliant job. This is distinct and tends to be the where the independent analysts who not only blog but operate as consultants are harbored. Susie is literally personal friends with every single one and actually is genuinely excited to see them – each of them – when she does. The program itself involves access to key analyst events where the bloggers (again, in name only) are given access to things like Oracle’s annual Analyst Day which brings in several tens of analysts and bloggers for a partially-under-NDA program where Oracle exposes their messaging and several of their enterprise apps and hardware senior management to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, meaning questions that can be hard hitting from the analyst and blogger side (more on analyst days when we discuss the rudiments of a program.) Access to people, products and some paid work are all part of Susie’s offering but her program is small and highly selective because she is acutely aware of the balance between personal friendship and the business needs and value needed in return of Oracle.

Lessons to Learn:

1. Personal relationships matter a great deal (this one will be heard over and over)
2. Highly specialized programs are value based – meaning there has to be an assessment of what kind of value the relationship with the individual analyst – given strengths and interests – can bring is something that has to be done.
3. There is a fine line between the personal friendship and the business relationship. It’s not a matter of being crossed to one side or the other; it’s more a matter of making sure that both are balanced. That is the optimal situation.

Microsoft Analyst Relations Program (CRM Group)

This is unique because of the four it’s the only one that has both internal and external people working in sync as a single team. Microsoft employs Waggoner Edstrom to work with them and has for many years in multiple facets of the analyst relations program – many as distinctly different from CRM as you can get e.g. storage and servers. They incorporate all types of analysts into one big program even though they differentiate how they deal with them. So they will deal with Gartner analysts differently than Constellation analysts differently than independent analysts but they are all contacted within the confines of a single program. They consciously spend the time to network through influencers on who to talk to and because they treat the influencers well, they are given that advice freely. I’d say no one does that better than they do.

Their combined Waggoner Edstrom and Microsoft staff team work together exceptionally well and without friction. Both sides of the team are generally well like by the influencers. The Microsoft team changes a lot due to internal promotions or lateral moves, but the Waggoner Edstrom team has been pretty consistent with a few moves now and then. Waggoner Edstrom make sure that the influencers are frequently briefed and have a consistent point of contact, where the Microsoft staff provides the access to the domain (CRM in my case) senior management when necessary to get ahold of. It’s not really as neat as I’m making it. Waggoner Edstrom provides management access too and Microsoft staffers keep the influencers briefed. But it falls that way the slim majority of the time.

They have perhaps the most highly structured and relatively complete program for keeping influencers updated with:

1. Regularized outreach to those on their networks with pre-briefings on new announcements, changes, and other important events. They don’t bother influencers with lesser matters. They have an acute sense of what is a time-wasting non-starter and what’s important and always are concerned to proceed in the right way.
2. Regularized press releases dropped into email as FYI.
3. Specific outreach to individual influencers for particular things, always mindful of the influencer’s time.

They also make sure that the influencers are treated as individuals who matter to them one way or the other. They are arguably the most generous when it comes to making sure that expenses are covered for conferences and that the influencers are individually tended to.

Lessons to Learn:

1. Teams work if the chemistry is right. Don’t be afraid to engage an outside firm if it makes sense to support your influencer relations program. But remember there is a significant increase in cost to do it that way.
2. Regularize your outreach. This is very important. But there are ways to do it and ways to not do it (later chapter).
3. Personalize the outreach. Make sure that you’ve done enough homework on the influencers that you want to impact that you understand what interests them and what doesn’t.
4. Be mindful of the influencer’s time (they should be mindful of yours too but that isn’t the subject of this guide per se. Its all a two way street. Later on that one too).

Salesforce.com Analyst/Influencer Relations

John Taschek runs this program globally for salesforce.com and is supported strongly by Steve Gillmor and a team of enthusiastic and, for the most part, highly experienced IR/AR people. The interesting thing about this program is that John and Steve are among the more powerful vendor influencers themselves, so this tends to almost be a peer program rather than a company-to-influencer program. Each of them had a significant career outside of salesforce.com and carry that career, with the blessing of the company, into the program itself. For example, John was the #1 columnist in the entire computer world before he joined salesforce.com 7 years ago. He has retained his influence by his always-updated knowledge of the industry, his retained connections and his just outright decency. To underscore this, he is one of the few vendor members of the Enterprise Irregulars. Steve was (and still is) the host of the very influential Gillmor Gang on TechCrunch TV. He has a wide net of both followers and friends who not only think the world of the guy but also listen to his always cogent and irreverent thinking.

Now, note something. The way I just described the two was as influencers, not people instrumental in an influencer/analyst relations program. The idea of a peer running a program or at least participating in an influencer program is not a bad one (see Chris Bucholtz at SugarCRM for a similar, but not identical, idea)– and in fact – goes a long way to satisfy the comfort zones that are necessary when it comes to engaging and maintaining relationships with influencers. The more comfortable the influencers feel, the more likely they are to speak well of the company when it’s merited and to not speak badly of the company – sometimes even when its merited. These are no small things when considering the who of a program, not just the what.

But what salesforce.com has also done is bring in influencers as hires to other positions – outside the program. For example, they have former AMR/Gartner analyst Bruce Richardson as a VP of Strategy; Charlie Isaacs, a vendor influencer who is now a VP of Strategy at ServiceCloud; Dave Kellogg as SVP/GM of ServiceCloud. Again, this provides a strange but interesting level of comfort. It reflects/implies a trust in the talents and skills of influencers beyond their ability to talk to customers, investors etc. In other words, it says “we think you have value to provide, you aren’t just people we are forced to talk to.” Or, at least I think it indicates that – though I have no idea if salesforce is conscious of that or not.

Finally, what salesforce has done beyond the people running the program is have a really accomplished on-the-ground team – people like Carolina Grimm. They are not only articulate and personable, but they damn well know what they are doing and know how to balance the needs of salesforce.com with the often let’s-just-call-it “highly demanding” requirements of influencers (more on that later).

Lessons to Learn:

1. Peer programs are valuable because the comfort level with the external influencers is automatically great. The trust is there already due to a “known quantity” – if you’ve chosen the right person(s).
2. Having highly experienced on the ground folks as part of the program – makes a HUGE difference in how well the program works.

NetSuite Influencer Relations Program

Mei Li, NetSuite’s SVP of Corporate Communications runs this program and does it so well that it can be considered a paradigm for companies that aren’t spending the budget that the Big 4 spend on their programs.

What makes what Mei Li doing so valuable and almost unique is that they don’t have the somewhat narrowly defined view that you get from a lot of the influencer programs. They understand that:

1. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes and some of them are not necessarily digital or social, but quite traditional.
2. That they don’t all reside in the United States and that’s meaningful even to primarily U.S. companies (though NetSuite is global).

Consequently, when you go to a NetSuite event, you’ll see a remarkable mix of traditional media (e.g. reporters from say, the San Francisco Chronicle); international media (influencer freelancer journalists influential in the U.K.) and the digerati (Brian Solis, Ray Wang, and all of the above – social and traditional CRM).

As obvious as this may sound, this approach is not the norm. Most programs place spectacularly heavy emphasis on the digerati rather than the traditional and with the exception of European rock stars like Dennis Howlett who have a substantial presence in the United States, on American influencers. Not NetSuite.

Perhaps even more important (and this theme tends to run throughout the best programs) is the relationship that Mei Li has with the influencers. She has made them friends who would run through walls for her (among them, me). She has established relationships that are amazing and incredibly personal.

A story:

I was at one of the early dinners that she held for influencers – always mixing the crowds by the way – no separation between journalists and analysts at all - and there was this hard bitten San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was cynically wailing on technology and companies in the industry. It was a rather nasty diatribe and was being carried out to all who would listen prior to Mei’s arrival. About 10 minutes into his rant, Mei walked in. He turned to mush and wrapped himself around her finger. She had that effect on this otherwise harsh dude.

The other thing that Mei and NetSuite do well is treat all this with a somewhat wicked sense of humor in a rather posh (as my British compadres say) way. They provide goodie bags, bling things, swag bags, to the influencers that have essentially great chocolates and something particularly unusual – latest was a Lytro camera. While this doesn’t sway the influencers opinions it doesn’t hurt to be treated well either. It doesn’t extend to just the influencers either. They have a high-end outlook with a lot of class also – and that wicked humor. For example, many years ago, they held a large VIP dinner with about 150 in attendance. This was when Steve Cakebread was the CFO of saleforce.com. The prevailing story at the time (not sure it was true but it was the story) was that salesforce.com wouldn’t serve the excellent Cakebread Cellars wine due to a perceived conflict of interest since that was Steve Cakebread’s family. It’s also a pricey California wine. That dinner? Choice of Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc (I think – could have been a Chardonnay) or Cakebread Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. The joke is obvious, but it is also a superb wine. This is a company that applies its high-end instincts (most of the time using their customers’ upscale goods) to its influencer program due to Mei Li’s considerable clout and the personal regard with which she’s held. She is arguably the most beloved person in the technology company corporate communications world with a program that keeps influencers close and fully integrated with the company.

Lessons to Learn:

1. Remember there is real value to be garnered from traditional influencers.
2. Think globally when you think of your influencer networks.
3. In a high powered, high energy industry, high energy it doesn’t hurt to think upscale – and to use your customers’ products to represent that – if you can afford to.
4. Make sure that the person who runs your program has the personality and the smarts to do so. Not just one or the other. There is NO compromise on this particular matter.

SOOOOOO….

What’s been the idea for this chapter?

Not hard. There are reasons to engage influencers and there are best practices out there when it comes to doing so. This chapter covered the reasons and the best practices that do exist – at least in part.

Remember something though. What I outline here are programs that are specific to companies with specific purposes for the programs, specific results they are looking for and specific people who are running the programs – and thus, each is tailored to optimize the talents and objectives that are at hand for them. So they might not have the perfect program for you. But pay attention to the general lessons learned from each because they may apply and you can use any combination of them you want to in establishing your own program. But hopefully, you’re doing that because you’re already convinced that you’re going to have to involve influencers in your corporate life.

Okay. On to Chapter 3. There’s still a lot to cover and miles to go before I sleep, as a famous poet laureate of the U.S. once said.

Blog Carnival: The ROI of Social Media is The CRV of Revenue Impact

This post is part of the Social ROI Blog Carnival at Think Customers: the 1to1 Media blog. Visit the blog carnival post “Calculating the ROI of Social Media" to check out the full lists of posts from numerous well-known social media thought leaders.

ROI = Social Media CRV

There have been an amazing number of attempts to quantify the benefit of social media so that we can get a traditional result to measure against.  Most of them fail or are indecipherable stretches that really don’t apply.  The problem is that social media interactions are in a simplified world, only of a few types:

1. Identifying and capturing some unstructured information that is quantified by assessing the emotional state of the person’s who is the subject of the information.
2. Identifying a number of interactions which define the volume of interactions or the source of interactions
3. Taking an action based on the social media interaction -  capturing a lead and starting the process of lead nurturing or opening a case due to a social media based complaint.

But when social media is treated as a channel for the interactions and is integrated with CRM customer records and CRM systems, then the ability to measure an ROI for social media becomes not only possible, but also important.

What does that mean?

Well, lets start with this. To me, as we enter what I’m calling the era of customer engagement, we are seeing a more mature view of social media and its use as part of a multi-channel strategy.  Social channels have become one of the sets of channels being considered along with email, phone, etc. – They do represent a disproportionately influential segment because conversations in social channels have the ability to scale from one to one to one to many or even many to many.

What this implies is that the measurement of social media ROI has two components. One is strategic – and there it isn’t measured separately. It is part of the achievement of your planned overall return. The other aspect is tactical.  And this is where it gets a bit dicey.

Ultimately, any company trying to measure social media ROI needs to be able to think beyond the traditional marketing measures like reach.   But the problem is that many of those things that you’re looking to get a return on are nebulous when it comes to measurement.

For example, how do you measure your impact on influencers which is one area that social media is used for by some?  To do that, it implies that you know how to measure influence digitally.

“Do you?”  Well sure, you say, a Klout score.  Sorry. Not the case. Klout is good at measuring how engaged an individual is on social channels at any given time but doesn’t really measure influencers of the buyer kind or the industry kind.  Three weeks off the grid would lower your Klout score but wouldn’t necessarily impact your influence.  You see that don’t you?

But social media measurement ROI does need to be associated with meaningful metrics, nonetheless.

Measuring Advocacy

Bet you think that I’m going to talk about Net Promoter Score as a measure of ROI for social media, right?

Nope.

I’m going to talk about something far more important that begins to address the scalable power of social media and the most important return that social media can provide – revenue. Because we are talking about marketing to a large extent for this Blog Carnival, I’m going to stretch the definition to the more recent look at the alignment of sales and marketing that was initially discussed in 2009 by our hosts, Peppers and Rogers in their “Sales and Marketing, the New Power Couple,” report.

In his book, “Managing Customers for Profit,” Dr. V. Kumar speaks of an extension of customer lifetime value (CLV) that he calls CRV – customer referral value.  For those of you not acquainted with it, customer lifetime value is the measure of the economic value of a single customer and his/her household over the full length of a relationship that the customer has with a particular company. It is a measure of direct revenue impact.

But what customer referral value does is take a look at the power of a brand’s value in the social channels by operating under the assumption that customers who may or may not have a high CLV, could be strong brand advocates who will refer their friends and others to the brand. Then some of those friends and others buy the products or services based on the brand referral.   This is indirect revenue impact.

To determine that, there is data that needs to be collected from both social and traditional channels.  There are four questions that have to be asked to prepare to do that.  They are:

1. Would you recommend this company to someone you know  - the traditional Net Promoter Score question?  This signals intent.
2. Did  you recommend this company to someone you know?  The  key question – signals action on the intent. About 1/3 actually do recommend.
3. Did they become a customer?
4. Are/were they a profitable customer?

These four questions are the foundation for the ROI of social media. If you use social media to determine who the brand influencers are and then go a bit deeper to find out who those brand influencers actually influenced, you can get an actual ROI for your social media usage.  Which is what you want right?

The Voters Speak! CRM Idol 2011 Announces Winners & Who Voted

Alright, I'm not going to keep you in any kind of suspense.  I'm going to let you know from the get go who won. Though please go to the CRM Idol website for more coverage of the winners.

The Winners

In the Americas - Get Satisfaction!

In EMEA -BPMonline!

The Americas contest was particularly hard fought with Get Satisfaction edging out two of the three other contestants. Edging out was the operant phrase. It was a tough race and there were differences of opinion between the judges and the popular vote.

If you remember, back in April, I made the statement that this is an "easy contest to enter, but hard to win." Exactly what this proved to be. The process was long, though not grueling. There was a lot of interactions, mentoring programs, a lot of questions that had to be answered. We had to learn some things on the fly - like incorporating a semi-final round before the finals. It turned out to be absolutely necessary and important to have so we could learn more about the companies that were (and weren't) ultimately chosen for the finals.

Congratulations to both Get Satisfaction and BPMonline. Well played, teams, well played.

The Judges

The Primary Judges - me, Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant, Jesus Hoyos, Silvana Buljan, Mark Tamis and Laurence Buchanan functioned as the brain trust throughout this process and were responsible for making whatever changes were made to the process and deciding on things that had to be decided on - even beyond the voting - when it came to companies who did good things and bad things.  All are back on board for next year which is totally exciting.

Breaking Down the Vote

Ha! You thought you were going to get a breakdown of the vote totals for the finalists.  Not going to happen.  Too bad.  That would be prurient. Instead, let me tell you a few other things that would be prudent, not prurient.

The voting for CRM Idol exceeded our expectation with several thousand votes coming in.  I'll tell you a little about who voted and what it indicated. We had a series of additional (optional) questions that roughly 22% of the voters answered which gave us a flavor of who was voting and how they understood and implemented CRM. The results were interesting for sure.  Here's a few stats:

The voting was geographically pretty well divided with:

• The Americas - 44.0%
• EMEA - 38.4%
• Other - 17.6%

It was mostly users and manager/execs who voted with 29.9% and 27.9% respectively.

In the question that was "My Company uses the following CRM(ish) modules (choose all that apply) the results were a bit eye opening really - a little surprising. The top 5:

• Contact Management - 50.5%
• Sales Force Automation - 49.0%
• Help Desk - 41.9%
• Social CRM - 37.1%
• Marketing Automation - 36.2%

What is surprising here is that the #1 CRM application is contact management - which indicates a small business presence typically or a confusion between contact management and sales force automation which is something that has existed for years. (e.g. some people use salesforce.com for contact management. But others use ACT! for sales force automation).  Most surprising, to me at least, is that #4 is social CRM as distinguished from social media monitoring which was #9 on the list. Meaning there was an understanding that there is a difference. Also that so many companies feel that they are deploying it. That fascinates me because if it is any indicator at all, there is considerably more usage of SCRM technology than I had imagined. That's something that I'm going to dig into early in 2012 to find out about the actual usage of Social CRM technologies in business - and what people think that Social CRM is.

What people felt that they really liked about CRM Idol was overwhelming one of the actual reasons we created the competition.  Over 63% felt it was "learning about other companies" - by far the biggest reason. That means as far as what we wanted to do for these small companies vis a vis the general public - we did (pat, pat, pat on the back for us.)

What did the voters want to see more? That was pretty close.  Top choices - greater focus on CRM categories - a conclusion that we are taking to heart - and one that we've been talking about a lot as far as modifications for next year. The second most - more commentary from the judges. That one I'm not so sure of. If they mean more commentary from more judges - maybe.  If they mean more commentary from the primary judges - well, some things you just don't get in life. We were pretty stretched to have to review nearly 60 companies within 7 business days (or so) of their reviews and we did it. But it wasn't easy. More commentary from the 8 primary judges is highly unlikely, even if was a popular suggestion. I'm just sayin'.

Finally, we asked what would you like to see more of or less of for CRM Idol 2012? Interesting result. The biggest answer overwhelmingly was "None of the above (48.8%). Since "Other" with room to specify was also a category, and was the least answered, we have to assume that people who voted for none of the above were happy with what we provided and the way that we did it. That's a reasonable assumption, right? You would think so.

#2 on that, though, was CRM categories (though in a bit of a flaw in the questioning on our part, we don't know if less or more is what they meant). However that dovetails with the answer to "Next year I'd like to see" greater focus on CRM categories as the #1 thing. So we hear it LOUD and clear.

Coming Up

There's a lot to be done in the period between contests and I'm sure that next year, the preparation will be starting a lot earlier than it did this year. We learned a lot along the way and will be taking our lessons from the streets - though not mean streets, nice streets - and the feedback we get. We'll be making changes accordingly.

In the interim, we are going to encourage all companies that have been participants to keep participating. First, because we have a community now of the competition organizers who are influencers in the industry and subject matter experts par excellence and companies that are now emergent, whether they won or not. Plus the prospects for the 2012 competition will be invited in to join the community in advance of next year so they have a shot a some visibility and great interaction with the influencers and this first graduated class of CRM Idol participants. Our slogan/mantra has been "once a participant always a member" and we will take that seriously.  To that end, the inestimable Kelly Craft has volunteered to be our Community Manager and we all gratefully took her up on her generous offer. The woman has mad skills, passion, enthusiasm, and serious chops when it comes to all this.

I can assure you of one thing. Next year we are going to take paid sponsors for the contest so we can hire someone to handle some of the logistics which was massive. I spent 2-3 hours a day for 7 days a week from late April thru now - with some hiatuses - doing this and it was more work than I ever anticipated. Plus financed the bulk of it out of my pocket. Though I have to say that Brent Leary generously paid for some of the costs and DRI, the Portuguese open source solution company did the website for nothing, saving thousands for us and doing a brilliant job.

I'm not complaining. I chose to do it that way. But honestly, I'm going to need help for the logistics and sponsors will be important to helping finance that.

So, I'll keep you posted of course on the things upcoming and I'm sure I'll be trying to wangle some participation time out of you to help out next year so that we can keep highlighting these companies and their great potential.

Stay tuned here.  Thank you to the primary judges, our media partners, our extended judges panel, our voters and of course, those that spent the time and effort to participant in CRM Idol 2011.  It has been awesome - and will continue to be.

Closing the Loop: A New Beginning

Mitch Lieberman, a SCRM thought leader, pointed out to me that I should release this post on July 6, 2010 because it would be one year to the day from my release of "The Stake in the Ground." What a cool idea. Thank you Mitch.

The headline is far more dramatic than the subject matter, sorry to say. But starting this month, now that the Gartner Customer 360 Summit is done, I'm going to be moving further in the direction I already had been planning to which will expand the scope of what I'm doing. I've been intending to make these moves since I finished the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light. So I figured I'd tie up a few loose ends here, make a couple of incomplete announcements and then publicly set the bar to where I'd like to be, which I hope will make me publicly accountable too. If you don't care, don't read. If you do, read on.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Let me, if you don't mind, do some things in public that are G-rated, but important to me and, I would hope, important to the ongoing discussion around social CRM or Social CRM if it matters one way or the other to you.

The Social CRM Definition

Back in 2006 I created the CRM 2.0 wiki and recruited about 170 industry leaders and interested parties to help define what CRM 2.0 was. I thought at the time, naively as it seems to have turned out, that if the industry defined CRM 2.0 now Social CRM, then we wouldn't fall into the trap that we fell into with CRM when it came to self-aggrandizing definitions.

After about 3 years, I took all the extant material I could find, which incorporated all the research I did for the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light, and all the materials from the wiki and I put together what I thought was a relatively democratic definition. I figured I had two years of research materials that were constantly being updated and ended up being an 800 page book. With the book materials, I had the benefit of 60 plus superstar experts in the industry who I respected giving their view on what Social CRM was in the context of their areas of expertise. I had the benefit of the participants who contributed to the wiki who were in the book in some cases and weren't in others. But, I thought, I had a fairly solid foundation for laying out a broad definition of what Social CRM was.

Based on that foundation, I presented the following definition that I published in its first iteration in my post last July "A Stake in the Ground on Social CRM", which, for good or bad, was accepted as a groundbreaking and seminal post - and the definition seemed to achieve some widespread acceptance.

Here it is:

"Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

I thought and said frequently that I thought it was awkward, it introduced a couple of new concepts - such as social characteristics - one that I'll be writing on more frequently in the coming period - but that all in all it was a decent enough job for a first draft. Kind of, in my mind, a release to manufacturing level draft.

Jokingly - yes, jokingly - I identified the final sentence "its the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation" as the "tweetable definition." In retrospect that was a big mistake. But I'll get into that in a minute.

Over time, that tweetable definition evolved from ...the customer's ownership of the conversation", to "the customer's control of the conversation."

What has been utterly staggering, eye popping, mind blowing and any other expressive statement that fits the bill, is that the "I was just calling it tweetable as a joke" part of the definition led to a series of sometimes direct and other times thinly veiled attacks. Some of which are no problem - they are disagreements. Others which are clearly personal. But the focus is always on the tweetable definition, not the definition as a whole - which contains the tweetable sentence, folks. The tweetable "its the customer's control of the conversation, while meeting the 140 character brainpower limit requirement, is not the definition. Just thought I'd say it again for the 4th or 5th time in this piece.

Some examples:

• There was big to do about the notion of the customer's "control" of the conversation. WTF...? What that means, in the context of the definition as a whole is truly simple. The customer has ability to affect business of a company in a way that is outside company's control via channels the company doesn't own. Period. This is not some statement about a neo-fascist control of the entire business of a company by the customer. It doesn't mean that the customer has a dog collar around the business, pulling it around while saying "Hey business, you're my bitch now." How stupid would I be to think that? No business that I've spoken to thinks that "customer control" means that. As I've stated countless times, businesses still have their own operational requirements and corporate objectives to meet. Customer behavior has changed over the past 6 or 7 years as has customer expectations. The idea of the "social" customer is just recognition of that change. Businesses have to respond to the change or they will suffer. I wrote 800 pages on it with the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light and I defy any of those who disagree with me to come up with anything I've said in those 800 pages or outside them that talks about some absolutist control by the customer over the business. Its simply recognition of a power shift toward the customer in who can affect who more.

  BTW, Mike Boysen's recent great post on the issue of customer control really is what is sparking me to deal with this.

• The veiled attacks are the worst but then again - for example someone using the sequence that went something like this (This is a paraphrase) "Seeing SCRM as a philosophy or a strategy is esoteric." This was one of those veiled attacks, since I'm the ONLY person who uses philosophy and strategy in a sequence at all. So that's a bit low. But what is really the key here is how ANYONE can possibly think that strategy is esoteric? That is a dangerously wrongheaded view. SCRM is a strategy for customer engagement - which no one but apparently one person I think would disagree is a key component of corporate strategy in the 21st century. Don't call it Social CRM if you don't want. Who cares? But recognize that outlooks, frameworks, programs, and strategies for engaging customers are necessary components of business thinking and operations for contemporary success.

There are many other definitions of Social CRM out there that are every bit as good or better than mine. Mike Fauscette's for example. Take the one that you want or the pieces from the ones that you want. Create your own if that's the way you roll. But I need to do two things so I can, one year after I said I was going to move on, move on for good to where I need to be. So let me say the following:

1. Forget focusing on the "tweetable definition" as if its the whole definition. I said that it was tweetable as a joke. That last sentence is a. intimately tied to the entire definition and b. is not a literal statement but one that is a concentrated metaphor, explained by the entire previous part of the definition. PLEASE do me the honor of thinking of it that way. Otherwise, I feel cheap (Sniff. Sniff...)
2. So, given that, and now that I have to get past the "tweetable definition" thingee, I've made a couple of small tweaks to the definition that a. serves it well, given what I now realize I should have said and b. Puts the tweetable definition to rest. Here 'tis.

   "Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's programmatic response to the customer's control of the conversation."

   Note the small tweaks. First, control now "officially" replaces "ownership in the last sentence. Plus I've added the word "programmatic" to that same final sentence. The reason for that is I realized that what was missing in the definition was the idea of a defining yet dynamic framework for that engagement. A strategy is not enough. You have to institutionalize the strategy and create a framework to execute the plan - i.e. a program. That's not an unimportant change. Plus, as far as ownership v. control - the latter is simply a more accurate term. Hopefully that gives you more to chew on. Enough from me on that.

   What I Need to Say One More Time

   I said it a year ago and I'll say it again. We have a job to do. SCRM is now at least a mainstream discussion. It doesn't mean that its suitable for all companies; it doesn't replace CRM; it doesn't mean that if a company doesn't have a holistic SCRM program that encompasses every aspect of it, it's doing something wrong. Piecemeal or partial programs are perfectly appropriate for many companies - as long as the implications are understood. If you read CRM at the Speed of Light's most recent edition, you'll note that each chapter can be an entity unto itself. While the book is designed to be a holistic continuum that stitches all the pieces of an SCRM strategy into place, you can draw on the engagement strategy that would affect sales or marketing or customer service or the enterprise value chain, or the cultural effect and, I hope still get some benefit from that. I worked hard to make the book work that way. Realistically, just as in traditional CRM, few companies ever adopted an overall program that encompassed a complete picture. They tended to focus - and tend to focus - in one area be it sales or customer service. How you go about crafting the strategy for that one area - with a recognition of its impact on other areas of the company - is still part of SCRM planning. But there is nothing wrong with implementing "pure" traditional CRM or even "pure" social media. What you think you need to do, you should do. The best that folks like me and others of our ilk can do is show you the big picture, the use cases, the frameworks, the potential pitfalls, etc. and give you some guidance. As much as we have a whole group of folks out there in the CRM/SCRM world on a self-aggrandizing mission, the reality is that its your business and your decision on how you want to support your current and future customers.

   That has a whole lot to do with at least my next phase, the one that I thought I would head into after I finished CRM at the Speed of Light, 4e. Took me a lot longer but I'm ready now. Much of what you see here will launch in August, some a little later.

   The Next Phase

   This is an expansion that has a purpose. I think its time to move the discussion to the level of "how do you do that?" Or, "how did you do that? But then again, I've thought that before too. A lot of good it did (that's kind of a Yiddish sarcasm).

   What has been incredibly exciting to me is that there is a significant body of knowledge out there waiting to be harvested that reflects the success of "SCRM thinking'. There are jobs that didn't exist in any significant way several years ago (e.g. community manager) that are now proliferating. There are books out on aspects of how to do pieces of SCRM from social marketing to traditional implementation to business strategy and SCRM is entering the curriculum as the foundation for some CRM courses. There are case studies that are examples of colossal success and monumental failure. These are companies that have attempted social solutions to customer service, sales, and marketing to one degree or the other.

   what I'm going to do is harvest that vast as yet untapped - or at least unorganized - knowledgebase and bring you the stories of success and failure from the perspective of the practitioner and/or the vendor and/or the strategist. In other words, I'm going to look at the real world attempts that are going on out there and then bring them into focus for those of you who are interested in learning from those who do - and those who teach.

   So my strategy for your engagement (and I hope enjoyment - nothing says I can't do this with a sense of humor) involves a program of expansion with a myriad of parts. Here's the plan.

   Two New Podcasts

   Thing is, I love podcasts and I think that we're spending an incredible amount of time blogging and little doing shows in this great medium. Aside from CRM Playaz, what do you listen to that reflects the CRM or SCRM industries? Name one. Well, my plan is to have two regular shows - one a revival of what I did a couple of years ago - Experience on the Edge and the other a new show called "The Real Deal."  Here's the plan:

   Experience on the Edge

   This show, replete with music and riffs will be my solo with a guest host occasionally. The idea will be similar to what it was when I last did it - in 2008 - which is an edgy take on the CRM industry including vendors - with their successes but also no holds barred razor barbs at them if need be. It will be in segments (still a little loose when it comes to what they will be but...) which will roughly break down to the

   1. The intro including music
   2. an opening commentary and what’s upcoming on the show 
   3. a discussion on news of the week
   4. Some thematic editorial
   5. Lists of Top 5 good or bad - hopefully listener submitted and finally
   6. a closing
   . This doesn't mean I won't completely deviate from the format and do a special show on something like attendance at a vendor show or something of topical interest. I will. I'll also have a guest host occasionally chosen by me from friends, interesting people or listeners.

   The Real Deal

   This one is a little more nebulous as far as the format goes. Rest assured, music will play a part in this one. No doubt. The big idea is that I will deal with how it is being done via case studies and who is doing it via interviews of people well known or not, who are doing the actual jobs or on the receiving end of the SCRM/CRM particulates. Will this show be segments - meaning say, a case study and then an interview associated with it? Maybe. Will it be a case study and an interview of some SCRM related person doing an SCRM related job? Maybe. Or something in between. Maybe. I haven't decided. Preferences out there can be put up as comments or sent to my email at paul-greenberg3@comcast.net.

   One thing of big general importance. These two podcasts are going to be carried exclusively (for now) on one or more of Robin Carey's Social Media Today properties. Why? Because I think they are terrific and not overwhelmed by the self-promotional efforts of some of the folks on the other properties. The SMT properties are compelling, get excellent traffic and are thematically clear. And Robin is just a great person, which has bearing on my decision. I'm thrilled and honored that they've agreed to do it.

   A New Blog - "Science of Business, Art of Life"

   I've made the statement many times that the only reason that CRM is interesting to me is that its the only science of business that attempts to reproduce an art of life. That would be the art that's involved in crafting good human relationships. CRM itself attempts to figure out an approach, a methodology and a program that will recreate how humans interact in good ways - but in what is a constrained business environment. This led me to thinking about the expansive nature of that statement "science of business, art of life" really is. It could be product reviews, business methodology, the underlying geometry of natural design, a discussion of psychology that extends beyond the usual Abraham Maslow "hierarchy of needs" that is out there once in awhile in a business environment. It could be how surrealism represented not only an artistic genre but a political movement. Etc. Hell, it could be about whatever it is feel like talking about - as long as the human psyche, human emotions, personal interactions and business consequences are somewhat involved. That gives me something of a wide range now, doesn't it?

   The idea is simply to write on big picture or smallest of the small issues in a lot less constrained way than, say, ZDNet or PGreenblog requires me. Katy Perry, anyone? No one? Okay, Woody Allen anyone?

   The CRM Playaz

   Needless to say, CRM Playaz remains near and near to my (and Brent's) heart. We're working on the best ways to take this full time to video. For example, we're thinking of doing a show using iPhone 4s Facetime video phone capability. Once. Otherwise, be prepared for a kick ass new "season" of our usual cogent but irreverent conversation including CEO Smackdown. More announcements later.

   Business Model Changes? Market Research/White Papers, Reviews etc.

   I've wanted to bring products to the market that were not the usual thought leader fare but more along the lines of market research. I've done it though I can't say, candidly, that I have a proscribed methodology that has a hyphenated name associated with it. What I do have is market knowledge and an extensive network and I know how to construct a valuable survey. That said, I'm going to partner with various people like Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant and perhaps the Altimeter Group folks (none of them know this BTW, but I can dream can't I?), to do joint market research projects - if, of course, they'll have me. And with others who might be interested - let me know this year folks if you can. I'll also "donate" my URL "www.socialcrmreview.com" to the endeavor so there will be site that can handle the content made available non-exclusively too. Things like case studies, or interesting (free) market trends analysis, or even potentially "for sale" information. This isn't a fully formulated idea but one that you can be assured I'll be involved with by 2011.

   SCRM and Government 2.0

   As the fall begins to hit and leaves begin to turn, you will be hearing more from me and my brother, who just did a star turn at the Gartner Customer 360 conference in his discussion on Virtual USA and SCRM in the Public Sector. We are going to put together an important venture to bridge the gap between Social CRM and the Government 2.0 crowds – and thinking.  Got you curious?  Stay tuned.  More pretty soon. Work is underway on the construction of our gameplan. 

   The University of Toronto CRM Center of Excellence/Institute for the Future of Business and the Customer

   This one is a big one to me. I've been asked to help spearhead the University of Toronto CRM Center of Excellence which will launch officially in the fall. I am on the Board of Advisors and am honored and excited to be a part of this. For those of you I've actually spoken to, this is a dream for me. Several years ago, I came up with the idea of creating what I was calling the Institute for the Future of Business and the Customer (IFBC). But I didn't really move ahead with it because I was so busy, I slated 2011 to make a serious attempt, though I did make several smaller and ultimately abortive attempts at it.

   Then along comes Frank Falcone, the Canadian CRM lead for Microsoft and boom, there is a permutation of what I've been wanting to get involved with for years! He convinced the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, to their incredible credit, to create a CRM Center of Excellence that would not only provide the curriculum of the future for CRM and SCRM, but also do the research to establish the frameworks, etc. in a neutral, agnostic environment. Wow. I will be heavily involved in this. More coming very very soon on this one.

   NOTE: While writing this I am watching Paul McCartney do a free live streaming AIDS prevention concert in Hyde Park in London. What amazes me is the power of music, McCartney and the Beatles. He sang "All My Lovin'" and then as he was, the cameras were panning over the audience and all these kids who could be his (and my) children or even with a stretch - grandchildren - are sitting there singing it word for word and CRYING - and I mean there were a lot of them crying, tears streaming down their face that weren't any older than maybe 25. They aren't old enough to remember the Beatles but such is the beautiful amalgam of music, history and emotions that it gets to the deepest part of the soul of any one of us as a human being, not as a member of a generation.

Following On More Than Friday: The Experts Worth Checking Out

Note: I'm actually on a vacation, just finishing an incredible cruise through the Mediterranean and now on Day 2 of a 3 day stay in Barcelona. All in all a dream vacation to tell you the truth. Best ever. But I HAD to finish this post. An addiction. If I left you out and I actually do follow you as an expert, I apologize and will update this list in the near future. Forgive me. I'm loving this trip to much to worry about the rest of it all. Also, please let me know who teaches you. Not just who you read but who teaches you something of value - and moves you forward. Either ZDNet or PGreenblog which will have this post will be great for the comments. Please.

There’s was this list going around a few weeks ago that seemed to be saying that somehow those on it were "the" SCRM Top 50 "experts." After seeing yet another list of another group of experts or influencers in CRM, I realized I'm having a problem with all of these lists. The problem isn't who's on the list, though about 20% of the people on it, I've never heard of - which is highly unlikely if they are influential. The bigger problem I have with lists like this is in this case is that a list like this is now calling the chosen ones on it, "experts." This particular list is saying that the top 50 SCRM experts are sorted by a combination of some sort of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers, friends and other connections. Hopefully, the use of the word "experts" here was a poor unconscious choice of words, because I'm hard pressed to understand how these criteria are linked to expertise.

Look, I have a really hard time seeing a combination of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn compadres as a measure of influence,much less expertise. How this T+F+L combo scrubbed with an algorithm or two qualifies someone as an expert, I'll never know. (hat tip to Groucho Marx). I just get the feeling that even beyond this list (no offense intended, list producers), we are reducing the value of expertise to something that means "someone will listen to you beyond your mom and/or dad." All it seems to need in the world of Social CRM is a comment in an #scrm hashtag or some SCRM related keyword in combination with retweets, Facebook wall posts and god-know-what on LinkedIn to be anointed the god of an industry. Now to the authors credit, they said in their post to not take the numerical order of the list seriously. Which I didn't.

Whatever.

It’s just not the way I roll. Or most of the people I know either.

Please forgive me if I sound somewhat grouchy, but I’m seeing lists like this everywhere that are based on some quantitative calculation that are then being acclaimed as definitive. Reality is that they aren’t definitive and they actually provide little value and more confusion than not.

Here’s my take on all of this. The value of an expert is that they are able to teach someone something in a way that the person learning can understand. In other words, not only do they have depth in a discipline or domain of some sort, but they also think about who their audience actually is and what they do and how they live and, most of all, how they think. The reality is that each person, regardless of their proximity to a particular demographic, thinks differently than the next person. They think in different metaphors. The expert – at least the experts that I think deserve that designation are those that think about that audience. They aren’t just people who spout stuff about a subject or who build up a big Twitter following or who have lots of Facebook friends. They are people who have an expertise that they can impart in the metaphors of their audience so that their audience really understands what they are trying to say. These are people who think about doing that too.

The people that I’m going to recommend here are those I look to for learning. They are the ones who actually teach me something. They don’t just rehash others stuff, they don’t spend their lives arguing their picayune niggling gripes about "definitions"; they aren’t in business to maneuver themselves into leadership positions. They don't backstab or spit at others due their own inadequacies. They've become experts because they've earned the recognition, not because they are trying to get it.

These experts have ideas that create the seeds of new concepts, or they provide unique frameworks in how they look at a subject, or they are able to advance a discussion in a way that didn’t seem possible twenty minutes before I read the article/post etc. They are thinkers who love ideas and love executing on the ideas. I look to different ones for different things. There are many others who I read that I enjoy but they aren’t the ones that consistently move me to another place in how I’m thinking about something. The ones that I’m highlighting are those that do make me think differently more often than not. I'm going to specify what each does - for me, at least. Others who aren’t on the list, please don’t take offense. Its quite possible I simply forgot to include you - and for that I blame a senior moment or two. Or I enjoy reading what you're saying and on occasion you too move me to new concepts and ways of thinking. But the ones here are the ones who consistently move me to change how I think and change what I think about, and they are my gods and goddesses.

I've listed them by category – The links to their name are to their blogs. Or barring that, to their twitter handle. They are in no particular order at all. All of these are regular or semi-regular bloggers or writers. These are not book authors who don't blog much. That means you won't see Joe Pine II or Lior Arussy here since they don't blog enough - even though they are expert when it comes to customer experience. Folks like them will get a separate post when I lay out the books that affected my life and impacted what I think in business. They also are not those who own the social sites or the aggregators, so you won't see Robin Carey or Bob Thompson here, both of whom are true influencers. Also, for those here, there are overlaps with some of these guys being experts in multiple categories but I’m only putting a person in one category. There is room for only so much knowledge between my ears before it fries my brain.

Social CRM

1. Ray Wang
- Ray is not only one of the most astute enterprise analysts I've ever met but he has a solid grasp of Social CRM and how to apply it in the real world which is something that is painfully needed in business now. He also has a heart of gold and a great head for business. He was voted the equivalent of the Analyst MVP two years running for good reason. He is one of the few must-always-read-even-if-you're-in-a-hurry pundits around.
2. Esteban Kolsky
- This man will frame you. Well, okay, so I'm taking some dramatic license here. He is a master at developing the kind of insights businesses need when it comes to SCRM and then creating frameworks that actually make some sense for businesses to apply. He does this on a solid intellectual foundation and a practical history as a former Gartner analyst. Plus he is really very funny.
3. Brent Leary
- He is the master at the application of SCRM to small business. Very few people can even understand how to apply CRM much less SCRM to small biz. Brent does both and straddles both worlds - CRM and small business as an influential. He can be found on the American Express Open Forum, BET, hanging out with Anita Campbell and of course among the glitterati of the CRM world too. Watch his real world examples of small business success carefully. Plus watch our show The CRM Playaz. Wicked.
4. Jeremiah Owyang
- A year and a half ago, Jeremiah was a social media rock star, now he's put the enterprise into his bucket and he's not only learned it but he's actually begun to master it. His insights into companies he's in touch with are not only priceless but actually usable when making technology decisions. I keep learning.
5. Denis Pombriant
- What can I say about Denis Pombriant. For all things SaaS, all things macroeconomic and all things SCRM, he's da man. He is the one who realized that salesforce.com was not only an upcoming company but would be something of a force of nature in the CRM and enterprise world. He called them a "disruptive innovation" when no one else did. Now he's talking about sustainable CRM companies - take heed.
6. Prem Kumar
- this guy is actually the chief SCRM evangelist at Cognizant - a company that is actually beginning to get it and Prem is a guy who totally gets it. He has a keen sense of the technology and a fine sense of the strategy.
7. Mitch Lieberman
- a former VP of SugarCRM, Mitch earned his way up to thought leader even when attached to a vendor. He is an astute analyst who sees SCRM with a depth of perception that most don't. What Mitch does uniquely is take an idea out there and then drive into it so deeply that you can see all the implications and questions that are contained in the idea. Plus he can do it with a sense of irony.
8. Martin Schneider
- Martin has achieved that rare consideration. He is a current vendor employee (senior director in fact) that actually transcends his company's particular interests. Not terribly surprising in his case, since Martin was a leading analyst in CRM prior to his sojourn at SugarCRM. (they seem to spawn these types at Sugar don't they?). He understands Social CRM strategy and writes short cogent pieces on what to be looking at when thinking "strategy." Not many do that - or write as well as Martin. Or can play in a rock band as well as Martin. He was even a pro at that!.
9. Mike Fauscette
- I've known Mike for 12 years (he co-authored my very first book with me on PeopleSoft in 1998) and he never ceases to amaze me. Currently the head of IDC's enterprise applications practice, he has perhaps the best grasp of social business in the industry and a laissez faire attitude that I love. He genuinely sees how business needs to run when it comes to CRM and SCRM because he was a practitioner himself and also worked for vendors. His experience is perhaps unparalleled among SCRM thought leaders. And that counts for a lot. Besides, the dude can really write.
10. Brian Vellmure
- Brian is a big idea kind of guy. Look to him when you want to know the difference between, say, traditional CRM and social CRM or understand a concept like. He makes it easy to understand and makes me think "why didn't I think of that?" constantly.
11. Michael Maoz
- Michael is the 800 pound gorilla of the 800 pound gorillas. He is the most utilized Gartner analyst, bar none, I hear tell, and there's a reason for that. He is foresighted - having figured on this social thing for the last 5-6 years. He is ruthlessly honest, not really worrying about anything but doing the best thing and the most honest thing for his clients. And he has a unique take on the social CRM world - one that's actually realistic, rather than some of the fantasies that are floating around. He is one of the few analysts who has truly gotten Social CRM and remained connected to an analyst firm. Michael is one of the Gartner analysts responsible for the new Social CRM Magic Quadrant that they are releasing, I think, at the Gartner 360 CRM Summit, that I'm speaking at multiple times - once with the subject of this particular paragraph. Coolio.
12. Mark Tamis
- Mark is a smart dude. He drills down deeply into concepts ranging from how strategies work (and differ in customer-driven enterprises to the depths of transparency and authenticity. He doesn't write enough but he writes really really well. Moves the needle.
13. Chris Carfi
- Funny, just as I'm writing this, Chris Carfi joined Edelman Digital as a leader of a group there that will handle Adobe and make sure they stay in the social age. There might be no one better suited than that. Chris is arguably the guy who coined the term "social customer" having developed his blog "The Social Customer" some 6 or 7 years ago; long before anyone else was even thinking of what that social customer might be. He is one of the few who started out in the social and CRM worlds simultaneously and managed to magically and accurately stitch the info. A long time compadre of mine who I think has miles to go before he sleeps in the words of the immortal Robert Browning.

CRM

1. Bill Band
- Bill Band, who has had years and years of industry experience is not an expert on Social CRM though he fully understands it. But when you're looking at traditional CRM and its practicalities and how those practicalities are evolving; well, there aren't many who can give you the step by step than Bill does. Forrester is lucky to have him frankly. I only wish he blogged more than he does.
2. Jim Berkowitz
- Jim is the "tool guy" for CRM. Want to get a unique take on vendor capabilities when it comes to enterprise software? JB is your man and reading him is the plan, Stan. (that so dates me.). Jim spends incredible amounts of time understanding how features and functions can be valued when it comes to enterprise software and the businesses that are going to apply it. If you're trying to understand the selection process, he's your man. If you want to know what tools to use, he's your man.
3. Mike Boysen
- Mike Boysen is an iconoclast. A kind of retro-iconoclast who places a great deal of emphasis on what works and what doesn't when it comes to CRM. While he's not convinced that SCRM is going to be the harvest of bountiful plenty that most of us think, he is convinced that it has it's place in the world of traditional CRM where he is an expert - and an expert with a wry sense of humor. A very wry sense of humor. Land on earth is the location for Mike and how he moves the discussion on CRM forward.
4. Don Peppers & Martha Rogers
- I'm only putting them under this category because they are key business strategists who have shaped the industry for decades and continue to make their mark - and I'm not sure where else to put them. They have been a team forever and they have a quality company that comes from quality thinking - and a quality staff. Not only have they been the creators of 1 to 1 relationship marketing - the forerunner of personalized insight and interaction, but they also sparked the industry discussion with their notion of Return on Customer (ROC) - which transcends ROI. Whether you agree with them or not on this (I do with modifications), they moved the needle and continue to do so with their 1to1 publications.

The Enterprise

1. Josh Greenbaum
- Josh is tough. Really tough. I've heard him at vendor conferences asking what are perhaps the toughest questions that vendors will get at any time during the conference. But the answers are translated by Josh in ways that provide what is one of the most coherent voices in the industry when it comes to interpreting the complexity of large enterprise software vendors and the practitioners implementations of the large "stuff."
2. Michael Krigsman
- Michael has a unique role in the world of experts and influencers. He documents failure so that success can be learned. What he's able to do, which no one else can, is identify problems that have damaged other companies and then provide a foundation for not committing the same mistakes twice. He is thorough, thoughtful and has the good of the industry and interested parties in and around it at heart. He is a must follow who helps the industry.
3. Vinnie Mirchandani
- Vinnie is best known for his blog "Deal Architect" (see name link) which covers all things topical and enterprise; but he is best represented by his other blog - New Florence, New Renaissance and his new John Wiley published book out at the end of this month - The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations - which takes a look at innovation and transformation in the business world from the perspective of a renaissance of new ideas. If he weren't a Tampa Bay Rays fan, he'd be perfect.
4. Dennis Howlett
- Dennis is a man of ascerbic wit, passionate belief and devastatingly accurate insight into the enterprise - and he has NO problem saying what he thinks often with a very sharp tongue. He scares companies but actually makes his readers (among them me) think. He is a powerful influencer who understands the enterprise software industry better than most - especially the financial/ERP end of it - and has the chops to prove it.

Co-Creation/Innovation

1. Graham Hill
- Graham is always one step ahead - he is an innovative and brilliant thinker, a no holds barred fighter for new business ideas and someone who makes you think, not about social business 101 but about social business 202. Thing is, he isn't just academic either. He has years and years of experience of doing this for companies. Years. Light years. Check out his Social Business Manifesto from last November, his very last Cust0merThink post. A critical post.
2. Wim Rampen
- Eighteen months ago, I didn't know Wim. Now I do. I'm glad i do, because he is also a key thinker in the co-creation/innovation, social business 202 world. Guy has a brain that must run hot because he is always applying the lessons of co-creation to real life. Not easy to do, given the infrequency of success that the combination has. But he is an optimistic guy who is a forward thinker that simply should be read.

Enterprise 2.0

1. Sameer Patel
- Sameer is an enterprise software industry veteran, who is not only one of the best writers on collaboration out there but also a keen observer of what's going on when it comes to trends. He is someone who gets down to the core of an issue or digs out a strength where others may just gloss over it. He is one of the clearest voices and strongest influences in the Enterprise 2.0 space.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe
- Dion is a superstar. Joining the Dachis Group in April hasn't changed a thing when it comes to his incredibly comprehensive, cogent blog posts - often for ZDNet (see blog link at name). He is someone who blogs less often but when he does, his blog postings are blockbusters. They establish frameworks, interconnections (e.g. between Enterprise 2.0 and SCRM), maturity models, technology models, you name it. What is astounding is how clearly he does it. He is a serious must read in this space. Deep, deep knowledge. Plus an aggregator of resources of the first order.
3. Oliver Marks
- Oliver, who is partnered with Sameer Patel in the E20 space is also someone who you need to read. He is an astute thinker who covers issues in the collaboration space as often as he covers techniques and approaches. Someone who gets down to the core and is scrupulously honest in his assessments with no agenda but reality.
4. Andrew McAfee
- While I'm always called the Godfather of CRM, Andrew McAfee is the father of the Enterprise 2.0 - and has been since his 2006 publication in the Sloan Management Review of Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Honestly, aside from his deep commitment to the Boston Red Sox, the man has nothing wrong with him. He is the guy who created the SLATE model of E20 (see the article) and made the idea of using social tools internally at a company, not just interesting, but de rigueur. Someone that you must pay attention to because what he says in his writings and books is just right and provocative. Just get a load of his latest blog posting on the iPad, which is awesome, ascerbic, funny and pointedly right. He sits on the curve in a way that makes the curve move ahead of itself. If you catch my drift. But that Red Sox thing.....

Journalists

This category bears explanation. These are the journalists, some who blog, some who write regularly for publications - all of whom have a leadership position in the CRM and SCRM world one way or the other. Each of them is a terrific writer as well as an original thinker. Each of them, to one degree or another, falls into that hazy space between journalist and analyst, meaning they are journalists with a well formulated opinion. Their advantage over analysts is that they write better. You should follow them. You have to. You NEED to. You want to. When I snap my fingers, you will. AND you will feel refreshed, as if you came out of a deep and satisfying sleep.

Oh yeah, since they aren't all bloggers regularly, I'm going to point you to their articles if need be in the link of their name.

1. Josh Weinberger
- Josh is flat out brillant, insightful, always on top of the CRM/SCRM industry and actually practically conversant with all the tools of the trade, ranging from the software that runs businesses to the B2C stuff we are now discovering might have business value such as Foursquare. Read anything you can of his. Just do it.
2. Chris Bucholtz
- Chris Bucholz makes the industry a bit stronger for his range of knowledge, his writing skills and his sense of humor. He is actually the former editor of InsideCRM now the editor and chief writer for Aplicor's Forecasting Cloud - a compendium of daily writings in CRM, ScRM and even some ERP as of late. But don't let his cogent thinking get buried in all the other writing. Even if he wrote alone it would be worth it.
3. Ginger Conlon
- Ginger is someone who tries to keep her profile low (she is currently editorial director of 1to1 Publications) but can't because she is so good at thinking about things. I asked her to contribute to CRM at the Speed of Light's 4th edition, because I think so highly of her. She is a veteran of the industry, though not very old, with a background as editor-in-chief of CRM Magazine in her past. AND she gets all the social stuff. All of it.
4. Marshall Lager
- Marshall is something unique in the CRM industry. A great writer, with a rapier wit who has made the transition from pure journalist to analyst/consultant without losing an iota of his writing skills - making him well qualified to get across the ideas that he has to.
5. David Sims
- This guy might well be the most literate journalist with an opinion in the enterprise software world - and possibly the funniest. Thing about David, who has been writing for years - for TMC as a columnist and blogger, CustomerThink, etc. is that he has strong opinions and is an original thinker, but he does it with a literary humor that both enhances and masks the insight. He is SO worth reading. I've been a devoted fan (and friend) for years of this man. You should be (both) too.
6. David Myron
- David is a tone setter. As jefé of CRM Magazine, and one or two other Infotoday properties, he is not only doing what superb editors-in-chief do (don't forget I have a degree and an editorial work history in journalism, so I know what it takes to be an editor-in-chief), juggling all the time, but his editorial content sets not only the magazine's pace, but often sets the industry's pace. Be aware, be very aware of what David says.

Analytics, Measurement

1. Michael Wu
- Michael is the Principal Scientist of Analytics (for real) for Lithium and its rare I read someone who understands analytics better and more...analytically than Michael. For example, he actually is looking at what makes for identification of a true influencer - rather than the gross oversimplification that's going on now with T+F+L = Superman as the going industry standard. He shows me something new in the world of analytics, without any overt Lithiumesque interest in the writings. Most recently he is distinguishing between communities and social networks in a two part post. Part 1 and Part 2. Gotta read this dude.
2. Jim Sterne
- Not only is Jim Sterne one of the granddaddies (metaphorical, peeps, metaphorical) of Web analytics - and the president of the Web Analytics Association, but he is now a pioneer in social media analytics, the current author of a successful book in the field called "Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment" and is a constant presence in the refining of these newly developed metrics.
3. Dr. V. Kumar
- Even though he's really more of an author than a blogger - in fact, I don't think he has a blog, I'm going to break my protocol and include him here because he had such a seminal influence on my thinking when it came to the measurement of advocacy. I always knew that Net Promoter Score, while a good start, was hardly sufficient for measuring the social customer's power in and value to business. When he extended Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to include Customer Referral Value (CRV) among other measures and asked four questions with number 1 being NPS - would you recommend this company to someone you know - I thought - 'ohhh-kay". But it was question 2 that was both an epiphany and a "duh" moment - "Did you recommend this company to someone you know?" that I knew that I loved this man. He is a distinguished marketing professor at Georgia State University, the executive director of the GSU Center for Brand Experience Excellence and a must read. His book is "Managing CUstomers for Profit" and its a great start to a new version of measure for social business.

Social Media

1. Brian Solis
- Hard not to think of Brian. He's a vibrant, visible presence and what I've always called one of the "Big 3" of social...whatever. (The other two are the aforementioned Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan). He's easily one of most influential and most respected guys in the world of social media and is spending serious time putting thinking about Social CRM and what he sees as a successor to it, SRM. While I can't say I can fully buy into the SRM side of it, I do fully buy into Brian. Also, he is so active in social media that people forget that he is a highly successful PR guy and his blog PR 2.0 is actually fascinating. Plus he has a new book out called Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web which is a social marketing book more than a social media one. And really, really good.
2. Paul Gillin
- I've known Paul since he was the Executive Editor of SearchCRM about 7 or 8 years now. Not only is he an expert in CRM, but he is also an expert in social media from a standpoint that few others are. First, he has a B2B knowledge that is unparalleled in social media. Second, his expertise is eminently practical. Meaning he is not theorizing on definitions of things, he is telling you how to do something. Want to blog? Here's how, here is the supporting arguments on its behalf to your left brained boss, your right brained boss and your colleagues. Here are what you can and can't do...you get the picture. He has two books out now, The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media and Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! and a third coming in January 2011 on social marketing.He is also the only columnist I read religiously in B2B Magazine - even with my secular behavior.

Sales

1. Anneke Seley
-Anneke wrote a book on Sales 2.0 and she blogs on sales 2.0 and she knows sales 2.0 better than you do. She is a long time industry veteran with insight and is a delightful person. You'd think the latter is enough to make you want to make you read her blog but, honestly, her insights are the real reason.

Customer Service

1. Natalie Petouhoff
- I've known Dr. Nat for years. Many years. Though she's a lot younger than me. She is formidable. Tres formidable. While she is currently heading up all social media efforts at Weber Shandwick (good move, WS), she is still one of the foremost experts in "social" customer service that you will find in the world. She has a solid research background and methodology, an intuitive sense of what's right when it comes to treating customers well that overlays that, and is just a good person who is able to turn that goodness into something substantial and interesting. I'm not sure where her new position will take her, but I'll follow.

Marketing

I can't say that I really can find anyone that rocks my boat here though there are many that I read ardently. I think this is a transformational period and there's a lot of both good stuff and noise out there but I can't clearly distinguish one from the other yet, so I'm going to leave this category alone. Though some of my social media experts are also marketing guys - so just reiterate them.

Public Sector/Politics

1. Andrew Rasiej
- This guy is amazing. He not only runs PDF - the Personal Democracy Forum - one of the most influential progressive institutions in the country - with an activist bent - but also is one of the jefés of TechPresident, which could be the most significant political blog in the country. He's also a true New Yorker - acerbic and honest and an ardent Yankees fan. A perfect person.
2. Alan Weber
- This guy, now at Altimeter Group with Ray Wang, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang and a host of other superstars, has serious chops when it comes to the comings and goings of the public sector and the future of government as it links to the new technology paradigms. I have to say that I almost envy his depth of knowledge, ability to extract information from sources and his analytical skills. Public sector ain't easy to decipher yet, somehow he does it.
3. Alan Rosenblatt
- Alan is the Associate Director for Internet Advocacy at the Center for American Progress - the most powerful progressive think tank in Washington DC (I sit on their New Media Board of Advisors). Alan is also a tireless champion for constituency engagement utilizing the new social tools to empower citizens. He blogs for multiple sites including TechPresident, the CAP blogs and the Huffington Post. The man has mad advocacy knowledge and skills and if advocacy is something you think is important, whether in politics or business, then Alan is your man. Just read him, and if you meet him, offer him a single malt and you'll get the conversation you're looking for.

Mobile

1. Sheryl Kingstone - Sheryl works for Yankee Group. She is the Yankee Group star (no disrespect to any other Yankee Group analysts when I say this). She is the analyst most responsible for "the Anytime Anywhere Enterprise" that Yankee espouses - which of course includes a mobile component. Sheryl has been one of my ongoing beacons for mobile trends for as long as I can remember -which of course means since she was about 6 years old. I trust her thinking and judgment.
2. Michael Gartenberg
- Michael has been a bastion of mobile insight forever and a little longer. He is now at Altimeter, was at Forrester and was always someone that people just listened to. Among them me. For me, in the mobile world, he (and Sheryl) are it. 'Nuff said.

Others

These are those who either defy classification or who's category doesn't include that many but are exceptional thinkers who are actually ahead of the curve.

1. Doc Searls
- Doc is in his own category - and that would be Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). In principle, VRM is an important addition to the scholarship of social business. It helps define the customer's individual behavior when it comes to all businesses that he/she interacts with - in reality or potentially. It dovetails from my standpoint with what I call the personal value chain of an individual customer. Doc, one of the authors of the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto, drives VRM like no one else. Whether or not it becomes the "movement" (the labor movement for customers) it should be, remains to be seen. But what doesn't remain to be seen is Doc Searl's importance in the social business landscape.
2. Thomas Vander Wal
- What can I say about Thomas Vander Wal? He is the father of folksonomy and social tagging. He is the person who developed the social stack that I use for my discussion of social characteristics in enterprise software (that is software mimicking human behavior). He is constantly evolving new ideas on how to humanize the software and business processes that are supporting 21st century business so that business is able to gain greater insight into their customer base. YO'd be wise to read him because if you do, you'll be ahead of the curve - one that your business needs to be ahead of.
3. Lisa Stone
I love this woman (you know what I mean). She is a co-founder of Blogher, recently named one of 2010's 100 most creative people in America by Fast Company and one of the most generally astute bloggers anywhere. I am a fan who simply loves what she does. Its also nice that she's the significant other my my dear friend and influencer mentioned above Chris Carfi, making me thrilled to know them individually and as a couple.

Vendors Who Have Blogs that Transcend Pitches

I'm not going to go into a breakdown of each of these except to say that please check them out. Each of them has a unique perspective that's interesting and transcends their merely mortal business interests, though clearly doesn't ignore them. In the case of SAP, they have so many blogs that I've chosen the properties of SMT that they are the chief sponsors for and have some of their staff writing for. Also, interestingly enough, I'm noticing that the blogs that I do follow in marketing are mostly vendor blogs. Not sure what to make of that except that the marketing industry is still working it all out.

Okay. All in all, I've got the links for you. Click and read. Follow the yellow brick road.

1. Lithium
2. Attensity
3. SAP
4. Infusionsoft
5. Eloqua
6. Radian6 - in this case, look at the bottom of the page for their extensive list of blogs and podcasts
7. SugarCRM
8. Aplicor

Blocking and Tackling: Not Football, CRM

The discussion on "social" is painting much of the business landscape, not with a brush but with a bucket thrown at the canvas. It has become so ubiquitous, so omnipresent and omniscient, that even the New York Times, in their long running column "On Words", had an enthused discussion on the word's very presence in the literary landscape (I have to say, I found out from a tweet that mentioned that I was in the article, much to my delight - since my interests are literary - though it called me a "customer relations management expert." Close enough, especially when I got equated with being one of the cognoscenti). But, even though it is the hottest of hottest conversations in any enterprise/business town, what has been noticeable also, has been what hasn't been spoken much of, besides giving it the appropriate lip service, not because of anything malevolent, but because of the excitement of Social CRM - and social media. Its what makes the two distinctive (among other things) that in fact is being somewhat ignored. That would be the basic blocking and tackling of traditional CRM that is still part and parcel of any actual strategy - and any implementation. The operational"stuff." Even with all the incredible roaring, growling, yelling, about social and even with the party-level polite conversation going on showing thought balloons (or tag clouds) with "social media", "Social CRM", "cloud computing", "Tweet (oh wait, that's a Scarlet Tanager that flew in the window)", "conversation", "mobile CRM", "Facebook CRM", "customer engagement" and any other sexy cool term with meaning, one thing we can't forget. That's would be that CRM - be it our contemporary Social form a.k.a. SCRM or even the traditional CRM which is still an instrumental part of many businesses - has some basic operational requirements and planning that has to go into the development of an overall program for customers that a business can use successfully to accomplish its particular aims regardless of the changed circumstances of the modern customer controlled ecosystem. What we are dealing with when it comes to SCRM is, simply, what kind of particular program does an individual business require to reach out to their customers and provide them with what they need to get what the business values in return?

A Program

The best way to think about SCRM/CRM for simplicity's sake is that it its a customer centered program. The program's focus/direction needs to change from time to time because of the business exigencies of a particular era. For example, five years ago I would have said it was a program for customer management, now I say customer engagement. Which is more than a po-tay-to, po-tah-to distinction. It has serious implications for how businesses need to conduct themselves. But the basic requirements for the program's construction remain the same. It needs these following components if CRM in any form is going to be executed successfully.

These are the basic building blocks of what comprise a CRM strategy and program. They were needed in traditional CRM and they continue to be needed in Social CRM plans. While the emphasis and approach to the components vary from era to era, and while there are some additions to the list, all of them still need to be thought through, decided on, budgeted, organized into something and then followed through and then tweaked, tweaked and maybe even rebuilt, to make the changes in how the business thinks and runs, not just thinks. If all of that is done, the customers' requirements for continuing to do business with your company can be met. When it comes to some of the things (note I said "some") that distinguish Social CRM from its older sibling, such as social media (as tools) and social networks (as channels/locations) they have to be factored in, but not at the expense of the other pieces. In a perfect world, all of them need to be incorporated into the planning. In that perfect world, technology is a part of the program, but not the program.

A Clarification on Technology

Before I continue on, I need to clarify something. In my response to Bob Thompson's superb discussion on the Altimeter Group's Social CRM Pioneers Google Group, "Does Social CRM Need Social Media", I said emphatically no. That doesn't mean I'm opposing technology, nor do I think in a business, a Social CRM program can scale without it. But also remember at this point, when I say technology is needed to scale, then I'm also saying that social media is not the only technology involved in a Social CRM implementation. It just happens to be the one currently oozing sex. However, the traditional operational and transactional technologies such as a customer record - preferably with a single view, or a business rules engine, a workflow creation tool, a set of automated processes, communications channels etc. will continue to be as or more important than ever before. You still need to record transactions, you still will be wise to know what your customer is thinking and to use analytics help you ascertain that. You will still need to be able to track what your employees are doing with their customers, not just what the customers are doing. No way should you simply assume that you can substitute a customer's social interactions for recording a customer's transactions. You shouldn't underestimate the importance of having and knowing a transaction history. Knowing an interaction history simply gives a business the means for richer customer insight when used in conjunction with customer transactional behaviors. In fact, interestingly some of the more recent efforts by vendors like Oracle and SAP base their social knowledge of the customer on existing transaction records - not social interactions. The start to some pretty sophisticated customer insights and some really sexy customer-usable tools, starts with the historic transaction record. In fact if you look at what kind of IT framework you're going to need for Social CRM, you'll note some comfortably familiar faces mostly grouped on the left and underneath along with the scarily unfamiliar. Here's that.

What's sitting all the way on the left is what we think of as traditional CRM. They are on this tools map a necessary part of a larger framework of foundational architectures, web services, applications, services, and ways to deliver these services. The technology here is what's needed to run this thing at the enterprise level. This "thing" is CRM - be it traditional or social. Again, basic blocking and tackling stuff.

Let's Get Real

While what I'm saying may seem rudimentary to you - meaning you know this - and I apologize to you if it is. Unfortunately, the discussion on how to handle the basics has gotten somewhat lost in the social conversation. Businesses are primarily concerned with one thing - running their business and succeeding. If customer engagement is the key strategic parameter for success, they clearly would be smart to focus that way. To do that, they need to change how they run their business and figure out the impact that this change in strategy is going to have on all the things in the slide above. Then they need to run a program. Remember, their purpose is to be successful and meet their goals. Their purpose isn't to engage their customers. Their strategy is to engage their customers. The businesses have operational requirements that will exist even when the customer controls the conversation as they do now. That doesn't mean the business gives up running - it means it changes how it runs. But it still runs and the traditional CRM capabilities support that running of the business as well now as it did a year or three ago. But there is now more that needs to be done. That's where a Social CRM program comes in. The debates all recently have centered around what CRM used to center on. Is Social CRM a strategy or a technology? In some part the locus of the debate is due to my contributions to all this discussion among many others. For this somewhat of an incomplete discussion, I apologize for my role in propagating it. Above all, Social CRM is a program for customer engagement that encompasses a strategy, technology, system, processes, etc - just as CRM was. I'll probably tweak my definition in a post shortly to reflect that. At this point, Social CRM is a just a bit more than a construct that has some truly important but nascent practices that are associated with it that differentiate it from CRM. These are critical differentiators as you can see if you compare historic use cases against the best first take on the use cases that were done by Ray Wang and Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter Group last month. But they are not differentiators that don't incorporate traditional CRM somewhere in the mix. Social CRM is never purely social. All I'm saying here is that in the hot, steamy, hyper-charged sexy world of social everything that has revitalized the discussion around CRM - we can't forget what is basic and fundamental for businesses. They have to run, they have objectives that are not the same as the customer's when it comes to how they interact and they need to change with the times. The times require the them to consider Social CRM rather than just traditional CRM. Whether or not they decide to go with it won't change the basics of what they need to do to run, but it will change how they run. Maybe add some components to the basics. But the basics remain. And that is that.

SAP Business Influencers Summit - Technology Strategy Dr. Vishal Sikka (SAP Labs)

Dr. Sikka begins by talking about what SAP is calling "Timeless software"

First up, In Memory Computing

THe idea is to incorporate column stores in main memory with use of multi-core processors provide up to 1000 times performance gain. The business value of doing analytics with in memory computing is apparently phenomenal. One billion rows of data are analyzed in a sub second. The applications become simpler and faster. Real just in time calculations can be done. The TCO associated with the layers and intermediate stores literally "goes away." Can "add columns on the fly" and add "more blades on the fly." From data to hardware, extensibility becomes possible. Inventory mgmt. Shows a blade with a terabyte of main memory. All transactional data of most large customers can be stored on it. Data by columns in main memory allows us to deliver brand new applications, not just analytics. Another commercial for "real real time computing." Lauding sales info that was available "befor the customer left the store." Data delivered in less than 2 seconds. Data is compressed in mory. Can do the calculations on an iPhone, in office, "on the beach." Snapshot of biz as it exists "this second." Commercial over. Now going to show us a demo of In-Memory Computing. "Timeless Software" as "software that takes no time." Showing Business Objects Explorer. Very fast. (PG: Seen it before. Almost instant). Have an interesting UI. Can do the same using Excel interface and it goes as fast as it did when shown on its native interface. Sub-second response for 275 million records. Showed its use with Microsoft "haptic" technology (PG: A.k.a Microsoft Surface). Now

Cloud Computing

Low cost infrastructure, scaling and operations via cloud computing (using Google's approach). See the in-memory based cloud apps (PG: Stringing their new initiatives together) Dispensing "the myths" of cloud computing.

1. Everything won't be running on the cloud
2. SAP does run in the cloud. Says that the Apple Store (ITunes) running in the cloud on top of an SAP system. The way its being positioned is that "SAP powers many Internet-scale, mission-critical cloud services." (PG: Are they integrated with someone else's cloud capacity or providing it themselves? Not clear)

Now saying that Business By Design runs in the cloud and is running in-memory. (PG: I'd say BBD is running "in theory.") Saying that the Cloud applications are being built with Design Thinking. Showing an app for a contractor management system that is being hosted on Amazon (PG: FINALLY know who is hosting SAP cloud). Showing the app on the iPhone. (PG: Seen several apps from demos on stage to more private demo - all iPhone apps NO Blackberry apps. That's interesting given the SAP/RIM alliance that was so important at the 2008 Sapphire. IPhone seems to be gaining ground everywhere at RIM's expense - even at SAP. That's actually significant). With contract management - contract management running in the cloud is the consumable part but the integrity of the backend SAP system is maintained. THe SAP Contractor Portal also integrates with Google WAVE and other collaboration capabilities. Vishal says "ease of consumption has to be across the board" Now talking about Pervasive Connectivity and mobility. 4.1 billion mobilephones, 35 million iPhones, 5 Google Android-specific phones; new Blackberries; Facebook has 350 million users - 50 million in 2 mos.; SAP Community has 2 million. SAP thinks there is an enormous opportunity for clustered collaboration. Fidelity of the information is guaranteed by back end connectivity. The idea is to connect "the physical world with the system of record" This could be smart devices - e.g. smart meters etc. (PG: Best Example is Coca Cola Freestyle vending machine that records user choice and wirelessly sends the information to an SAP system back at Atlanta HQ. Wonder why SAP doesn't talk about that?). Discussing interoperable components: Looking at ambient-real time systems - "CESTBon" is the name of the system. CESTBon can look at an Outlook email and recognize relevant content associated with a system. So if "purchase request with a number" is in the email, it actually can link it automatically to the system's knowledge of the quote and bring up the data live in real time without having to go into the system. They've added a Supplier Rating that is based on social knowledge coupled with sentiment analysis that gives a rating. (PG: Now THAT is pretty cool. Social SRM?) That's it for this (AND my power is running low)

CRM Forecast 2009: Looking Back - Not Bad, Not Great

We're heading into that inevitable year end, "let's forecast the next year so that we can all be proven ridiculously wrong" state that we pundit types all end up in. That's only one level less than inebriated or for those of you less articulate, drunk. Getting to the "oops, wrong again" state is a lot less enjoyable, though better for driving. That said, it's time for me to do what I do every year which is to man up and admit what I did wrong, while of course, gloating in what I did right. Sadly, there is always probably more to man up to than to gloat over. Though maybe not.... This becomes the first in a series of three postings - this is #1, #2 is my forecast for 2010 and #3 is my Companies to Watch list which includes some commentary on how those companies from last year's list did. Some of which is sad. Gloomy face. Some of which is happy. Smiley face. Actually, before I do a.....

Personal Note

I've often said when teaching or speaking or writing that the reason I like CRM is that "its the only science of business that attempts to reproduce an art of life" which is how to interact with others in a way that is meaningful throughout life. Aside from being entirely true and heartfelt, it also allows me a lot of latitude in picking metaphors from the "art of life" part of the CRM equation. Plus, of course, lets me talk about my passion for baseball and the Yankees in particular. So, imagine my delight when I saw this quote from Derek Jeter, NY Yankees shortshop, a smart mid-30s kid who has become one of the best baseball players in history as a player and a true role model in how he conducts himself every day of his life. He calls his parents every day to his credit. Its not often I admire a sports figure who is 25 years my junior, but in his case I do. In any case, I read something he said in the Sports Illustrated article on him in the most recent Sports Illustrated that named him the SI Sportsman of the Year, which, in the world of sports, is an actual honor because it takes into account your on and off the field demeanor and actions. Here's what he said, which is a lesson to those of you using social media to brand yourself. The quote:

I never liked people who talked about themselves all the time, gloat. If you're accomplished and have done things, people will talk about it for you. I don't think you have to point it out. I'm not judging anybody. That's just the way I am."

I know that this rather humble statement is the way that it should be done. PR agencies take note in particular. See, there's the "art of life" translating to the "science of business." One again, latitude and license.

Seeing 2009 in the Rear...view Mirror

Without much further ado, let's take a holiday look at how my 2009 forecast turned out after all. The plan is to put the particular prediction - with the number that indicated the likelihood of the occurrence - all guesswork by the way - remaining e.g. 1-10 in parentheses. Based on the particular "what I said will happen" I'll point out what actually happened.

1. (8)Mobile CRM will be in increasing demand by sales organizations in particular - and vendors will continue to invest in it, downturn or not - I was close but not entirely perfect on this one. On the one hand, there have been an upsurge of releases in mobile CRM in 2009 with Maximizer releasing to all platforms especially with SFA; SAP allying with both Sybase and their iAnywhere platform which pushes content out to any mobile platform regardless of operating system and their actual release of the RIM/SAP alliance mobile SFA application promised in 2008; Oracle with social marketing applications for the iPhone; salesforce with a REST API that is designed to improve mobile; Sage with Saleslogix for the Blackberry; and too many others to mention here (so vendors not mentioned, please, stay off my case). This is a long way from what's been out there in the past. However, on the downside, I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER if sales organizations were asking for mobile apps. That was a shot in the dark as it seems to turn out. I've neither heard nor seen anything that indicates that sales organizations said a thing about mobile apps, frankly. But my heart was in the right place. RATING: A solid triple to left, scoring two runs. Left-Brainer: 4.25/5.0; Right Brainer: This is wicked cool!
2. (6)Large enterprises will buy CRM 2.0 tools; SMBs will look to simplicity in CRM and dabble in social tools - divergent approaches - While this is kinda true, tho' of course, its now Social CRM, not CRM 2.0 tools as of "Stake in the Ground", I'm not really sure this was a trend and frankly if I were to be thinking about this again, I doubt I'd call it one. I think that companies bought CRM tools, and social tools including the enterprise. I think that companies were and are intrigued with the idea of capturing unstructured data and populating their CRM customer records with it. I think that companies want to continue to operationalize their processes and actions so that they can devote more time customers. I think they want to engage their customers. But do I think they get Social CRM as a unified field theory - nope. Not yet. More of them are interested than before. Small businesses weigh a bit more heavily on the operational side of CRM than the interactions and engagement part but enterprises are not a lot better on their view of the integrated whole. RATING: a weak grounder to short, force out at second. Runners don't advance. Left Brainer: 2.25/5.0; Right Brainer: Kinda lame, Paulo. Actually....really lame.
3. (6) The debate over REST v. SOA as the small business architecture of choice will heat up in 2009 - Right on one count, not entirely right on the other. REST gained huge ground in the last year with SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com and many more SOA architected apps/services companies built REST APIs, recognizing that REST was not only here to stay but a potentially dominating (if not dominant) architecture that was important in the small and grand schemes of things. However, there wasn't much of a debate about it frankly. Most companies even those tied to SOA as an architecture, understood REST's value. Sage tried to pick a fight with SOA but that didn't go anywhere. However, that said, Sage was also the first serious player/vendor to really commit to REST as a primary architecture and it was a wise decision. RATING: a near home run that bounces off the top of the wall and back onto the field for a double, driving in a run. Left Brainer: 4.0/5.0; Right Brainer: Very smooth, my man, very smooth.
4. (9)Integration between traditional CRM and Web 2.0 applications, features, functions and characteristics will accelerate AND (7)Social software companies will increasingly integrate with CRM applications through APIs and plug-ins - I'm combining two of my predictions which were beyond on the money here. I nailed it. But why I made them separate line items in the forecast? I can only scratch my head. I don't know. This year was characterized by the traditional CRM vendors (e.g. Oracle, SAP, salesforce.com, Microsoft, NetSuite, RightNow, etc) and the social vendors who are providing apps and services ranging from community platforms (e.g. Lithium) to social networking platforms (e.g. Neighborhood America) to social media monitoring tools (e.g. Radian6) to social business apps (e.g. Jive) to sales intelligence tools (e.g. Insideview) all decided that they were in heat and they started to, ahem, couple. Meaning we saw a proliferation of APIs for integration that began with social platforms/apps/services and channels like Twitter and neighborhoods like Facebook and combined with salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft etc. The traditional vendors were no slouch in this department either with salesforce.com announcing Chatter, Oracle a hybrid kind of build and integrate approach, NetSuite linking to both Twitter and partnering with InsideView, SAP announcing a Twitter integration, Microsoft and Neighborhood America developing a joint Public Sector product and service and SugarCRM integrating social features into their 5.5 release. There also was a proliferation of companies calling themselves Social CRM which while a good thing for the branding of the tag, Social CRM was not entirely true of any of the companies that called themselves that. But all in all, 2009 was a banner year for Social and CRM integration, which of course, makes me very happy. RATING: A three run 450 foot homer to dead center. Breaks the game open. Left Brainer: 4.9/5.0; Right Brainer: OMG, This is just SOOOOOO AWESOME!!!
5. (10)Software as a Service becomes pre-eminent delivery platform for CRM - Judging from the (10) I gave it, I must have been high - though I don't use drugs (really). Sadly, I can claim that I simply meant the most talked about and fastest growing a.k.a. pre-eminent, but, to be honest, I meant predominant - meaning the most prevalent - even more than on-premise. But, if Gartner numbers are to be trusted, 2009 gave SaaS 24% of the market which hardly qualifies as predominant, so that would kind of wreck my prediction. Though in my defense, the SaaS market was the fastest growing market with an 18.8 percent increase in revenues from 2008. Now, with the cloud becoming of real interest here and with SaaS as its delivery platform, I suspect my "prediction" will be right a lot sooner than Gartner thinks, but I was probably overstating the case. Know what? I'm invoking the Pundit Immunity Clause here. RATING: Pundit Immunity Clause. Left Brainer: Pundit Immunity Clause. Right Brainer: Pundit Immunity Clause.
6. (7)Cloud computing becomes an increasingly important way of “doing business” and storing information - I was right about this wasn't I? The interest in cloud computing translated into incredible 2009 revenue predictions from the probably generously enthusiastic Gartner Group - $56.3 billion for this year and $150 billion by 2013. Minimally, whether true or not, it reflects the excitement around the cloud. Not only that, every company and their children were attempting to grab a piece of cumulus or two. Microsoft and Azure, Amazon - who, frankly, at this time seems to be the leader in the space, has its EC2 platform, salesforce.com is claiming that everything they produce is "a cloud" (see "Chatter as the 4th cloud) when in fact they do have a cloud framework, but its not the four cloud apps they have; Sun (now of course, in the hands of Oracle). We can go on, but won't. This is long enough already. Not only are the vendors producing, but the use of the cloud by the consumer keeps growing (think Google's gmail for example, which as of July 2009, had 146 million users). The U.S. government, led by U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra and General Service's Administration (GSA) CIO Casey Coleman are leading a massive cloud initiative, rolling out apps.gov as a GSA service and also using the cloud to ultimately reduce reliance on physical data centers (23 of them out there at the moment). All in all, cloud computing adoption has been up over 20% from 2008. So was I right or was I right? RATING: ANOTHER triple down the right field line, driving in two. Left Brainer: 4.5/5.0. Right Brainer: Uh huh. Uh huh. Uhhuhuhhuhuhhuh.
7. (6)Platform as a Service and Open Source platforms becomes highly competitive and one of the core ways that CRM offers customization capabilities and architecture AND (7)Open Source continues a slow but steady penetration in CRM - though not many new players show up What was I thinking here? First of all, the cloud superseded pure PaaS as an offering, though PaaS offerings such as force.com are powerful. But worse than that, PaaS never competed with Open Source. Open Source as a platform per se became a non-factor. That doesn't mean it wasn't good or useful. Just not one of the most important selection criteria for CRM technology choices. The reasons? First, there is no open source competition. SugarCRM is pretty much the only commercially viable open source platform at this point - Vtiger is making some progress but not enough to compete with SugarCRM. So the selection process is really SugarCRM when the word open source becomes mentioned. Second, most vendors are building in some form of open intellectual property, including source code into their normally proprietary applications. For example, in 2009, SAP got heavily involved in the Eclipse Foundation, which is dedicated to open source development. I can go on, but not here. Third, keep in mind, in the latest CRM at the Speed of Light, I call open source more of "a license and a culture" than an application architecture . I'm sure there are open source vendors who will debate this and please do and convince me I'm wrong, but even so, that still doesn't tell me of anyone out there beyond SugarCRM who can provide the basis for calling open source even a category for selection. I wasn't even right about the "not many new players." To my knowledge there were none. So I was just WRONG about these two. RATING: Struck out on a 2-2 curveball, breaking down and in. Left Brainer: 1.5/5.0; Right Brainer: Duhhh.
8. (7)Social characteristics join features & functions as vital pieces of CRM applications - identity, actions, reputation, influence, persuasion - Vital? No. Part of the discussion? Yes. Since Pricewaterhousecoopers issued their 2007 report "How consumer conversation will transform business", the idea of not just the numbers but the influence of individuals has been top of mind for me when it comes to thinking about Social CRM. When Thomas Vander Wal began to have the discussion of the social stack, it explained to me what in fact were the guiding characteristics of the social customer and what had to be considered in the processes and technologies that were going to be the mainstays of Social CRM support. Well, apparently, while there are a lot of discussions on the value of influence and the refinement of mere numbers that we were using to show "power", the use of those characteristics isn't so prevalent in software. There is the growing use of sentiment analysis, the continued niche field of social network analysis. Some great new tools like PeopleMaps (see my companies to watch in a few days) have created some buzz - and they fall into the influence and persuasion knowledge tools that indicate social characteristics, but they are not all that prevalent a group yet. So.... RATING: "Looks like its gonna drop in for a base...no! What a great catch!. That retires the side." Left Brainer: 2.0/5.0; Right Brainer: BOR-ing.
9. (9)Authenticity and transparency will become strategically important to companies - This may be hard to quantify exactly or to figure out how I did last year. It is clear that transparency at least is something we're seeing more and more of with the growth of communities like Innocentive which is 125,000 scientists and engineers who solve problems for companies. In order to do so, though, the companies have to expose some of their intellectual property, a bit of transparency which was taboo just a few years ago. But the companies that work with them, do so willingly. Additionally, we're seeing the growth of a willingness to be authentic, meaning "real" or honest, but it smacks often enough of that kind of fake, salesy authenticity - often of the self-deprecating "I'm such a tool for doing this but..." variety that you get from companies in lieu of actual honesty. Meaning when they do something uncomfortable, they don't really think they're tools. So I'm not sure how I did here so you know what that means. RATING: Pundit Immunity Clause (PIC). Left Brainer: PIC; Right Brainer: PIC.
10. (9) Growth in the public sector for social CRM continues in the face of recession - use of social tools accelerates rapidly in the federal, state and local government in the U.S. and elsewhere This one sure worked. The interest in all federal agencies thanks to the particular nature of this administration in constituent engagement - which is their particular form of Social CRM is being replicated throughout the state and local governments also. The underlying architecture of choice is not SOA particularly but the cloud. Part of the reason is cost reduction. Part of the reason is increased effectiveness. Witness the growing pre-eminence of geospatial projects using cloud based services like Google Earth which are being planned for integration with community and location based channels like Twitter. One that comes to mind that my brother is heavily involved in is Virtual USA born Virtual Alabama. This program is actually changing the way the government will respond to emergencies and how they will engage the citizenry. All of this is not a local U.S. phenomenon either. Nations like Singapore are investing heavily in providing tools to their citizenry that allow those citizens to provide significant feedback to the government - which is then being acted on. This makes Singapore, according to the 2009 annual Accenture Leadership Study on Customer Service on matters like these, the most engaged and trusted government in the world. This is becoming increasingly interesting to all governments with experiments or programs for engaging constituents growing worldwide. RATING: Towering drive into second deck in left field, solo shot. Left Brainer: 4.5/5.0; Right Brainer: (guest appearance from Christopher Walken here - More Cowbell - "I put on my pants one leg at a time. But after I get my pants on, I make gold records."
11. (8)Feedback 3.0″ will become an intimate feature of most companies' customer strategy - This one is easy. It didn't unless it was so intimate it reached the "do it but don't tell" level. Lots of companies and countries gave Feedback 3.0, which isn't just listen and learn but listen, learn and act, plenty of lip service, which I presume means that whoever produces lip balm had a banner year. But once again, not that much was done about it. Or when it was done, it was done in a siloed way. For example, Comcast, the new proud soon to be owners of NBC Universal, let service rock star Frank Eliason do something remarkable. Over the past three years, he's built a highly effective and paradigmatic alternate service channel using Twitter at Comcast that is beloved by customers and industry leaders. He's set a standard. But unfortunately, the company overall doesn't seem to learn from him. Consequently with all his ace results because of his listen, learn, act strategy, Comcast overall still sits at the bottom or near the bottom of customers' views when it comes to customer service. Feedback 3.0 is not an intimate part of Comcast except for the Eliason-managed Twitter channel, nor is it the core service view of very many companies at all, despite their desires for Facebook pages and Twitter channels. RATING: High pop-up. Infield fly ruled called. Outta there. Left Brainer: 1.75/5.0; Right Brainer: Dude, I'm bummed.
12. (7)Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) releases its first tools for the customer in 2009 - Being wrong on this one makes me really sad. I'm a VRM fan and have been a promoter of the idea for several years now. Doc Searls to me is the most seminal of the Cluetrain thinkers and VRM is an idea as the "labor movement of the customer" I can get behind. But, once again, I was thwarted in my always sunny VRM forecast with no tools for the customer coming out in 2009 - at least none with three weeks to go for the year. Doc Searls himself even said something akin to this in the ProjectVRM blog in mid-November with the following quote: "The problem is that VRM itself is extremely broad, and still lacks working code that applies to all VRM topics. In the absence of that code - some personal tool as universal in the digital world as the wallet is in the physical one - we end up scattered across many topics." Now, he didn't mean exactly what I meant, but the spirit is the same. Time for the VRM world to pony up something for the consumers to grab onto. I worry. RATING: Easy fly out, right field. Left Brainer: 1.5/5.0; Right Brainer: Dude. Dude. Dude. Sigh.
13. (100) Yankees will win the 2009 World Series - TOTALLY NAILED this sucker, didn't I? Huh? Huh? I did. I did. I did I did I did. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uhhuhuhhuhuhhuh. I will nail it again next year as you'll see in my Forecast 2010 piece when it comes out. RATING: WALK OFF GRAND SLAM HOME RUN IN FRONT OF FULL HOUSE AT NEW YANKEE STADIUM TO CLINCH THE WORLD SERIES. Left Brainer: 10.0 of 5.0 Right Brainer: IN DA HOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUSSSSEEEE! BBAMFIC (Big Bad Ass MFer In Charge)!!

Chatting (Not Chattering) About Salesforce - Part II

(This is a continuation of the analysis of what salesforce.com announced at Dreamforce 2009 last week that I started on ZDNet. If I were you, I'd go to ZDNet and read that first and then click on over to here to read the remainder of the article. I'm trying an experiment to span both blogs. Let me know if it works or is awkward, irritating and stupid.)

The Link to ZDNet Part I of this post

Custom Cloud 2

Despite the bad messaging, Custom Cloud, the marketing wrapper for force.com is perhaps salesforce's actual tour de force(no pun intended - really). For example, Chatter begins to makes sense as a "layer" (PLEASE don't take that too technically) inside force.com - as a set of components offered through the platform. Within the confines of force.com, Chatter's ability for "apps to talk to me" (as Marc said) meaning to create a feed for any data object in the system, regardless of application becomes something, that with some tweaking and refinements - critical refinements, is genuinely new and powerful.

That was highlighted by the above mentioned Vetrazzo demonstration where Vetrazzo CEO James Sheppard showed how they used force.com to develop an integrated system that combined order management, production planning, batch management and forecasting. More specifically, Customer Service and Order Management; Finished Goods Inventory Management; Production Planning and Scheduling; Raw Materials Management; Shipping and Logistics; Document Management; Warranty Management and integrated invoicing through Quickbooks. In other words, the supply chain and ERP not CRM. The Social Supply Chain and social ERP. They used Chatter's capability to create an RSS feed for any data object to monitor the activity of these systems and to respond to any system requests in real time or nearly so. What made this even more amazing is that they developed all these apps/services in less than three months. I'm going to be speaking with James Sheppard this week (we're already in touch) to do more on Vetrazzo's use of force.com. It really blew me away. It was in production too.

This gives you a good idea of what force.com is capable of. Even though there are complaints that development of force.com is in a proprietary language, Apex, and this is a bit of an issue, the reality is that most PaaS offerings in the cloud have at least specific programming languages e.g. Dot Net. Though, Apex doesn't speak to other platforms, web services do. Still, it would be nice if it were more open.

That doesn't denigrate the vast move forward for force.com. With the integration of the "Chatter layer", and the advances in the tools to the point that supply chain and ERP are not only possible, but being done, this is what I see as the core of what salesforce.com is going to be doing in the cloud and for the foreseeable future.

My rating: A home run with a man on. (for non-baseball left brainers 4.5; for non-baseball right brainers - " Ex -cellent!"

And Now, What You've All Been Waiting For.....

Yup. Salesforce Chatter. First, if you want the best expositions on Chatter from the conference, here are some posts that will scratch your itch. They are detailed and interesting takes on Chatter.

1. Esteban Kolsky
2. Sameer Patel
3. Michael Krigsman
4. Denis Pombriant

First, let me make one unequivocal statement. No make that two. Chatter is NOT a "fourth cloud" and it isn't revolutionary. What it is, is an aggregate of mostly already established features, functions and characteristics that have been done piecemeal by others - and often done more comprehensively - as individual pieces.

For example, here are the things that are done by others that Chatter has (all of them have etc. implied after. There are multiple examples)

1. Salesforce Chatter - Lotus Connections 2.5
2. Customer Communities - Helpstream
3. Twitter integration - SAP Twitter integration
4. Collaboration tools - SAP ESME, Socialtext, etc.
5. Social Content Management - Oracle Sales Library
6. External Community Integration - Microsoft Neighborhood America collaboration
7. Integration into CRM system - many social and CRM vendors
8. Enterprise Profiles - Lotus Connections 2.5 (particularly good treatment)

But those are just examples. There are three things that stand out for Chatter that I think both validate the Social CRM space and are unique to Chatter.

First....

Marc's homage to the penetration of consumer thinking into the enterprise is an important acknowledgment for the industry. While this has been the case for years, salesforce.com is the second (after Oracle) to acknowledge that consumer thinking and peer trust are governing the business environment at the moment. Its particularly important that salesforce.com does it, frankly, given its status among not just business but the digerati and innovators.

Second....

Chatter is the first fully integrated, aggregate social " foundation layer" to meet the requirements for supporting salesforce.com as a company that embraces Social CRM. That's great for the market. The aggregation and integration of the all those features, whether or not they are individually the best executed of those out there, is unique and important because, within force.com it becomes a powerful capability that supports collaboration and customer engagement since the tools for all of that are there. Honestly, I don't see the value the same way outside of force.com. As a standalone, at $50/user/month, Chatter is singularly unimpressive. Its expensive and is what has classically been called "a solution looking for a problem." However, inside force.com it becomes a powerful capability, mostly due to the third point here.

Third....

Chatter's ability to create feeds for not just people, but content and applications is both its unique feature and its most important benefit - though not without what are either flaws or questions, because it was hard to get answers. Any data object's status in your system including competitive vendor's systems e.g. SAP inventory management - can be delivered via an RSS feed. Thus you can not only get real time status on what your employees or customers or competitors are doing with internal or external information but you can also get inventory status, or order status or the status of telling you of updates to a presentation.

The enterprise level security is pretty good for this. While you can subscribe to the status (via RSS) of any object stream you want to, you can also be restricted to only having access to certain status updates and feeds. Salesforce calls this a "social sharing model" though it resembles a classic system administration model as much as anything else.

However, there is one real drawback to this otherwise important capability. There don't seem to be any filters at all. Each time Michael Krigsman (tip o' the cap, dude), who raised the question initially and others like me who also asked the question in 1 on 1s and interviews, tried to get an answer, they got "security" and "social sharing model." What that theoretically meant is "you can limit the feed noise by only subscribing to which feeds you want to." What that actually meant was "no there are no filters." Which, even for a version 1.0 is a boo-boo. The "social sharing model" is a "which content you choose to subscribe to"; the filter is a "what content you choose to get from your subscription." Not the same. I might want to know what inventory status for the products I sell as a sales guy. That means I don't care what the rest of the inventory is doing. If my feed is "SAP inventory status" I'm going to be getting a lot of stuff that I don't care about just to get the few things I do. Noise.

Other Chatter....

All in all, Chatter is a significant step forward for salesforce.com though hardly a fourth cloud. Could they have done things better with it? Sure. I merely am speaking of the tip of the iceberg. For example, their treatment of profiles is good but not as good as Lotus Connections which integrates human resources (I refuse to call it "human capital management") data such as who you report to and what projects you're currently on and your salary data into the personal profile information that you provide a la Facebook which is an immensely powerful way of dealing with the employee profile. But this is version 1.0 and that can be something of an excuse. Plus, Chatter isn't released and is only slated to be released sometime in 2010 so perhaps there's more than that.

But none of these early issues, with the exception of the lack of filters, reduces the value of Chatter as a part of force.com. It is important and also moves the Social CRM technology space an evolutionary step forward, if it delivers on its promise.

My rating: Double down the left field line with a runner to third, does not score (for the non-baseball left brainers 3.75 of 5.00; for the non-baseball right brainers "Niiiiice."

Backstage Notes

One of the most important things that salesforce.com has done that they never even mentioned is to create a REST API which will make all their capabilities "mobile-ready" as my Mobile CRM goddess, Sheryl Kingstone of Yankee Group pointed out. Given the sort of "technology focus" of Dreamforce, I'm surprised I heard nothing about it. This is a very important and big plus for salesforce.com's new generation of services.

The actual event, minus the need for stage management during the keynotes, was a major victory for all concerned. On the whole, Freeman, who ran it and particularly Kevin Richardson who was the man in charge for Freeman, deserve some serious kudos for making this work as well as they did. Any problems that might have existed were not noticed, which means "wow." The analysts and press (thus, me) were treated very well - in fact couldn't have been treated better - with special events - the code word for parties - and blogger/press/analyst tables with power cords and wireless that worked in the front of the room so we could actually blog and tweet and do whatever it was we did. So, Aimee Lynch and Erin Traudt - you ROCK!!! and thank you.

Technorati : CRM, Chatter, Custom Cloud 2, Sales Cloud 2, Salesforce.com, Service Cloud 2, Social CRM
Del.icio.us : CRM, Chatter, Custom Cloud 2, Sales Cloud 2, Salesforce.com, Service Cloud 2, Social CRM

Organic Social Networks, The Yankees & ...Wha? (UPDATE: WE WON OUR 27TH WORLD SERIES!)

Needless to say, being a Yankees fan of the entirely driven and committed sort, I'm biting every nail on my hands off and frankly, if I could reach my feet, would go at those nails too (Ugh.). I do that every time that the Yankees are in the playoffs or World Series particularly, though, I have to admit, I do it to a lesser degree, but to a degree during the 162 game regular season too. Meaning, from April through hopefully early November, I don't need nail clippers.

But this year is very, very different. Aside from being in the World Series for the first time since 2003, which makes it different, Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, push technologies and an iPhone make it different.

I no longer watch the game by myself though I'm the only person in the room (my wife, also a Yankees fan, is up in Newfoundland at the moment with her mom who's recovering from surgery). I'm not even just watching the game with friends of mine who are Yankees fans on Facebook such as fellow Yankees fan David Sims, who is without a doubt one of the all time great writers and columnists in CRM and other IT matters - and one of the funniest. I'm also watching the game with several thousand people who are actively conversing from the stands at Yankee stadium or watching it on TV themselves - all members of either subgroups within social networks communicating via channels or members of organic communities - outcome based communities that have come together for the World Series and the World Series only and who will, for the most part, disappear after the Series ends.

But note something, I said will disappear for the most part, not entirely, which we'll get to

If this were 2003...

If this were 2003, I think probably by now I'd be hating Josh Beckett (wait I still don't like Josh Beckett) for beating us and Jesus Hoyos, a CRM thought leader in Latin America, would be the happiest man on the earth because the Marlins had beaten the Yankees - though to his credit, he'd be happy if the Marlins had beaten anyone at all in the World Series because he's not a Yankees hater, he's a Marlins fan. But how would he be letting me know (if we knew each other - which then, we didn't)? An email maybe - a phone call? And only after the result itself was in and done. To communicate in some real time fashion with even one person was either cumbersome or expensive even then. Or at least more cumbersome and expensive.

But This is 2009....

While the Series isn't quite over when I'm writing this (prior to game 6), here's the picture so far and now.

The kicker is that I'm in Bogota Colombia, as one of the keynotes at CRM conference here, but no worries, broadband is solid and I have a subscription to MLB television on MLB.com which gives me streaming video live for the game. Or, I can watch it - yes watch it - using the MLB iPhone application streaming via Wi-fi that's readily available.Or if for some feverish reason, I'm sick of Tim McCarver and Joe Buck (which is a frequent occurrence) I can listen the audio/radio feed from NY with John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman - our homie broadcasters.

In the meantime, David Sims is getting ready to watch it from New Zealand somehow - TV or streaming maybe. The key Yankees bloggers for the press like Mark Feinsand are already starting to set their tweets out to the Yankees fan faithful to get prepared for the game. The conversations are already beginning on #yankees on Twitter and in the "enemy camp" at #phillies on Twitter.

When the game begins, I'm watching somehow or listening and in the meantime, between communities and sub-communities on Twitter and my Facebook buds, we're rarin' to go. So the night is a viewing experience and a conversation stream that organically evolved that includes my CRM colleagues, my cousins, a good friend who roots for the Phillies and other friends I have who happen to root for the Yankees or the Phillies who I had lost touch with but am now hooked up with primarily on Facebook. Plus there are the myriads of unknown folks gathered either physically at the park or watching on the tube or the web who are connected in total through twitter via their mobile device.

The conversation stream is real time and its intense and responsive to the game itself.

What's remarkable is what organically happened from the beginning of the playoffs. People who I've befriended over the last couple of years and vice versa, or who are mutual followers began yakking about something they are passionate about using not email but social networks and communities to correspond. Which dovetails with the Nielsen data from their Global Network Survey in March 2009. Their finding was that more Internet users correspond via social networks (66.8%) than via email (65.1%). WOW.

The Social Side

But think about this. I'm working on a personal social graph that is outcome based - i.e. built around an event - the World Series - that incorporates my family, sub-communities of CRM influencers; large communities of yankees fans who I only will know for the games - and phillies fans - and fans who are converging because of the World Series only - regardless of who they root for #WorldSeries - using social channels like Twitter and social networks like Facebook. What makes this even more fascinating is due to Facebook Connect, my tweets are carried to Facebook allowing my friends on Facebook who don't tweet much to comment and converse on the content of my tweets.

And this is all organic.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post on outcome based social networks (OSN) which was an excerpt from the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light. What was most prominent about it was that the OSN was pretty much archived when done. That's likely, hopefully after tonight. But in the course of this amazing playoffs, two things happened. I made some new friends and found a bunch of new people on Twitter who follow me and/or who I follow. I saw how quickly that even existing social networks and communities can morph themselves into new forms with new rich results and conversation - which tells you how important it is to not just understand the business value of the communications revolution that we've seen in the last five years or so, but the social value that's been added when it comes to being able to converse with "people like you" in real time in a few seconds after you decide you want to. Extract what business value and thinking you want from this observation. I've got to get ready with my laptop and iPhone, for the game, sitting at my hotel in Bogota.

Though I wish I could be at Yankee Stadium tonight