PGreenblog

Random Gems from SAPPHIRE (Get it?)

Found out that SAP has a deeper commitment to communities than I thought. They have a community called BPx that has 350,000 members consisting of business analysts and application consultants, IT project managers, and process developers on the techie side and BPM guys, UI experts, change management gurus on the functional side. Run by a really forward thinking dude named Marco ten Vaanholt. A "social-smart" guy. Title is Global Head, Business Process Expert (BPX) Community (see Marco's comment below that led to this correction). They also have a 1.2 million member developers community called SDN....

Mike de la Cruz, SVP of Mobility & Analytics (CRM related stuff) seems to be the guy who drove the execution of the SAP CRM Blackberry app and he did a GREAT job. What's funny here is that when I mentioned his name on Twitter, I heard from several of the Tweet-producers that they knew him or had gone to school with him. Amazing. He is REALLY known around the industry....

Eric Clapton did what turned out to be a great show because the second half of it was cranked up by Clapton considerably from the first half. He did all his old stuff in the second half and more acoustic, quieter blues in combination with some serious electric blues discharges the first half. But he left the crowd at the end roaring. He is a god. No doubt. I saw him in his last (until the 2007 revival) Cream concert in 1969 or 1970 whenever it was in Chicago with my brother. Their final U.S. tour....

One curious thing about SAP's thinking...they made a major effort to de-emphasize not just Business by Design but what they called the "By Design platform" at one point. In reference to Business by Design they kept saying they had "Business All in One" which, of course, is their on premise small business applications. Not a notable success either. Which is me saying its not a very good product in another way. That's upsetting. They may be having some development problems, which, Hennings Kagermann alluded to in one brief comment during one presentation (I forget which one) - delayed delivery. But the almost vehement shoving of Business By Design under the table (not the bus) was disconcerting, because to play, they are going to have to have it. This is not an option. I've heard too many different release dates from too many sources to speculate on which one is accurate. But SAP HAS TO RELEASE A SOLID ON DEMAND PRODUCT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CRM AND ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS WORLD. Their time is pretty short too. I hope they do. Because all the rest seems to be so on target.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Good for them.

Contemporary Irritations: Changing History

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

It gets particularly painful when companies I like do it.

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

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

This is the tale of a company that I like.

A Tale of Infusionsoft

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, before I get into it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn, I'm disappointed.

Technorati : CRM, Emarketing, InfusionSoft, Zoho

Pardot - Ummmm. I'm Uh, I Like....Not Quite

I sat down with a good man the other day - sat down via the phone (though the phone on my butt hurt) and the web, that is. That would be Derek Grant from Pardot, a company that does, interestingly enough Enterprise Marketing Automation on demand. He is a fine human being and the company seems to be young but reasonably well established with 33 customers in the last 18 months which for a young 'un isn't a bad pace. He ran me through a demo of the company's signature on demand marketing service (I always have to resist the temptation to call an on demand service - a "product" or an "application" though I suppose I could and no one would raise an eyebrow, much less yell at me). First, from the big picture standpoint, I found it a true "1.5" service - integrated with salesforce.com, SugarCRM and NetSuite - a wise thing to do because if there's one area all three of them - and just about every other CRM or CRMish company's services and products suffer from - its entirely weak marketing features and functions. And from that standpoint, Pardot's signature services had about all the traditional marketing functionality that companies from $5 million to $200 million (the lower end of the mid-market) could want. Campaign management that truly was solid as a rock, though not flashy; some analytics though they were a bit on the limited side - geared more toward page views and deep drill downs and whatever the activities the person on the site was engaged in. But enough for a company in their marketplace. Their ability to drill down to the specific activity of a web manque and then to score the prospect for both their level of activity (seemingly on a scale of 1-1000) and how close (based on the web surfer profile) the web traveler's profile was to the ideal prospect was truly impressive. So for example, based on what you did and your profile, if you had a score of 750 and an A or A+ profile, you were about as good a prospect as existed on the planet for some immediate love. Not only that, but what was most impressive of all, perhaps, was the incredibly smooth integration with the SFA side of salesforce.com (and I presume SugarCRM and NetSuite) which I saw and was REALLY impressed with. The pricing was fair too. Pretty much along the same lines as salesforce.com. Not much different. Actually identical with top price being $125.00/mo per user. So all in all, I see all of this and yet....yet....yet....I got a little creeped out. Why? Not because of anything I just mentioned - they were all good and worth a look. But there is one feature that in good conscience, was horrible - though seemingly innocuous. Here's how it works. You go onto a site that's powered by Pardot. You decide you want to download a document that the site offers for download. You fill out a brief registration form with your name address etc. and your email. You put in "paul-greenberg3@comcast.net." (How DARE you steal my email!!). Note comes back saying that you need a business email address so I'd have to put in some other email with a business address - not a well-known ISP (hotmail.com; aol.com etc. would be no-nos here). If you don't have it, leave the site and you're out of luck. That's not creepy particularly, just a bit annoying if you're a self-employed business person who uses an ISP as millions do or you're doing it in your off hours for yourself, etc. The Pardot rationale is that its worth losing some people rather than the business having to deal with the cost of false email addresses ($5 or so, I think was mentioned). But what is genuinely disturbing to me is that the service registers and then keeps your email (the "bad" one) and will send you a note of introduction in a few days or weeks or whatever despite the fact you didn't get what you were giving them the "bad" email for in the first place. Even though you got a message saying something akin to "tough luck" they are still holding it. I was told that there is no easy turnoff switch for this feature but it could be disabled with some form handling...or something to that effect. Do you see the problem here? Like Facebook keeping your profile after you quit the site (which is a considerably worse offense), this is taking control of something that is yours from you. The analogy I can think of is what we all did on occasion when we were kids - "you give me that at the same time I give you this. When I count to three....1....2....3!" and on 3 you snatch the thing from his hand and hold onto yours and run away leaving your counterpart with nothing. In a business ecosystem where the customer is truly understood to be in command, this blatant violation of an implied social compact, if not an implied contract, is a real negative because it removes my asset - the email - without my consent and then doesn't return to me what I'm expecting as part of the compact. Then I get an introductory email saying, without being too obvious I imagine, "Hahaha. Tricked you. Have your email and I'm letting you know, you silly putz." Its sad too. First because Derek Grant who did the demo is a truly good person who does get it. Second because the service has a lot to offer for "non-conversational marketing" - true and solid traditional EMA functionality. There isn't much in the way of CRM 2.0 features but they do what they do in 1.5 apparently very well (my caveat as always is that I don't see it in a production environment, but there is no reason not to trust what I see). But that one feature makes me want to stay away from it until they do something about it. Fix it. Your customers will appreciate it. Minimally, make it an opt-in feature for the business. Let it be on your client's conscience, not yours, Pardot. Optimally, don't even offer anything like that. If you do, I'll revisit what you're doing because I think otherwise you got something pretty good there. If you don't. I won't. Not even a link until then.

The Shootout Is On: Microsoft v. Salesforce.com

Just a brief one today. If you remember I wrote a posting on Microsoft Convergence a few weeks ago and I noticed that Steve Ballmer had claimed that the configuration tools that Microsoft CRM Dynamics Online nee Live had were "unparalleled" when it came to comparison with salesforce.com's. Now, granted, his job is to say things like that, so some of that is just marketing "stuff." But, it did raise the "whose configuration tools are better if anyone's are" question to me.

So I decided to issue a challenge to both Microsoft and salesforce.com. The idea is to for each company to take on an identical configuration task (or tasks) and then do them. A panel of independent judges would, using specific criteria and a scoring system, then judge the results and declare the winner - or a tie, which could be possible and we'd publish (to a point) the results of the contest online so that you'd have the comparison made.

I'm glad to say that both Microsoft and salesforce.com have accepted the challenge. The Configuration Shootout is a go (a better name would be appreciated). The judges are being recruited, the initial criteria (subject to approval by the participants) are being draw up and we should have something going pretty soon.

Stay tuned.

Technorati : CRM, Microsoft, salesforce.com

Microsoft Convergence - Some Right Stuff - Wrong Convergence

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

What Preceded The Keynote

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

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

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

The Fundamentals

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

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

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

The 4th Pillar - White Spaces, Missing Places

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

A Brief Subplot Before the Main Event....

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

....Now the Main Event

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

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

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

In Sum.....

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

Some Miscellany

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

I Shall BE Re-leee-sed - as Has the Siebel CRM on Demand Release 15 Embargo

Its 8AM, there's no one in the place, 'cept my baby and me......Okay, wait, wrong thing about 8:00am. Its 8:00am and its March 11 and the embargo on the Oracle new release (number 15) of Siebel CRM on Demand and a bit of their mobile apps is now OH-VER.

So I'm gonna talk about it.

I have to temper this with the fact that I haven't seen any of this in the production environment I have to that would allow me to give it a definitive stamp. But what I HEARD was exciting and if working well, might even vault Oracle to the head of the CRM 2.0 pack. But again, I haven't SEEN it yet so please read on with that caveat in mind.

The big deal is that Siebel CRM on Demand Release 15, officially released today is a dramatic leap forward in the vendors drive toward Social CRM or CRM 2.0 - whichever you'd rather call it (or something else....). It incorporates what I have been talking about for the last two years - the operational (more traditional) CRM functionality with the social functionality - but social functionality that actually has value to business - and the customer. It isn't just there for the sake of coolness which is something that I can't say for others in the realm. This seems to be something the Oracle/Siebel/PeopleSoft CRM cabal at Redwood Shores has really thought through and, if it is all that it seems to be, would have something to be pretty excited about.

What makes this new version so apparently compelling is that it incorporates the social components exceptionally well - and with an eye toward improving the relationships between companies and customers. And, if you absorb the bigger picture into your cortex, it does something that I love - incorporates the customer into the value chain while respecting the customer's personal value chain.

What do I mean? Well, for example, you can collaborate by establishing a "friendship" between internal employees via the use of social profiles along the lines of something like Facebook would do - for example, sales person to sales person. This, as with other social applications, allows you to reveal whatever it is in your profile that you want to reveal to that salesperson buddy you've developed. That means for example, becoming part of the "sticky note social network" that gives all friends tied to it access to updated information. AND, update it once from the source and everyone is updated simultaneously.

But what makes this even more intriguing is that you can "befriend" your contacts at the accounts that you own as a salesperson!! The workflow associated with this social application is so strong that you can trigger actions based on changes to the contact profile. One example used on the conference call last week was if your contact moved to another company, you could be alerted to the change in his profile and the contact could be reassigned based on the delivered alert.

Now, I don't think you can poke that contact, flirt with that contact, throw Britney or sheep at that contact or rate the hotness of the contact, but the business value is potentially huge.

But its not just the social networking that drives this new version of Siebel On Demand. The use of social media and Web 2.0 tools is more extensive than any other major CRM vendor so far, though salesforce.com and SAP are coming up fast as are some smaller vendor like Zoho.

Anthony Lye characterized it as "composite media types are parameterized in the application." To translate, that means you can embed RSS feeds, widgets, and rich media (e.g. YouTube videos) directly into the account page so that appropriate, specific information related to your account is available in context as opposed to the more typical approach that we've seen in the less evolved CRM applications - RSS feeds on the home page of the single sign in user - which is good but not nearly as good as this feature is.

Its funny. Despite the historic weakness of past versions Oracle CRM and the historic strengths of Siebel CRM and of the original Siebel CRM on Demand - Upshot, it was Oracle CRM, not Siebel that was the one of the first to start adding features that were end user, rather than just management, focused. That came with their Oracle CRM sales force automation quoting system - features that, back in 2004, were designed to appeal to the end user. All in all, they are carrying out that good part of their tradition and incorporating that characteristic - end user focus - into applications that have been technically outstanding, feature rich, but not terribly user focused.

Even more interesting is the context sensitivity that seems to be inherently a part of release 15. The widgets a.k.a. desktop gadgets usage can be based on roles, specifically relevant information, and they are authenticated against the CRM system passwords.

Now to add more end user fuel to the Social CRM fire, Oracle is also announcing the release of the Blackberry-compatible Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant. Probably the key to this one is to think about the merger of CRM and a personal information manager (PIM) that can be accessed offline as well as online. Maps can provide you with directions to your clients, salesdude, and salespeople can exchange information with each other. The most frequently viewed and/or most recent items are cached so that they can be seen even when disconnected. There is single click access to account information, customer contact information, appointments. Communication is through email, phone, SMS and IM. In other words, lots of functionality aimed at end users and collaboration on that little device.

All in all this is a breakthrough for Oracle, if it all works as well as it sounds. While I'm going to hold my final judgment until I see it for real, I think that this could be an important step for Social CRM in the vendor world and customers should at least take heed and look at it.

Never in a million years did I think that I would be saying that about Oracle.

Never.

But I am.

If you get a chance, check out my bud, Denis Pombriant's discussion on this on his blog Beagle Blog. Its not out yet. Its going to run on CRM Buyer too. Just think, "Deuce Coupe."

Also, check out datasheets for the products if you're interested. But remember, datasheets are marketing collateral.

Data Sheet Siebel CRM On Demand Data Sheet for Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant

Technorati : CRM, CRM 2.0, Oracle, Siebel On Demand, social media
Del.icio.us : CRM, CRM 2.0, Oracle, Siebel On Demand, social media

Facebook Is Not Your BFF - But It Is F----d

How frequently can someone screw up? How badly can someone wreck something that coulda been a contender? I think that Marc Zuckerberg and company are dedicated to finding out the answer to this incredibly stupid set of questions - and they are passionate about it. Its getting to be old news when its news - Facebook Screws Up Again! The headlines don't even scream it out anymore. Its more like, "hey dude, Facebook f----ed up again, ja hear?" "Yeah, ja hear that Tina and I are getting back together?" "NO WAY!" "Way." Or this text message: U hr Fbk f-ed up? K. TTUL. That's how commonplace their major league screw ups have been. Look, I get it. They want to turn a buck or two in revenue and a half a buck or so in profit. Been around, have 60 million "assets" a.k.a. friends a.k.a. profiles that should be MONEY (in all ways you can translate that). But they keep forgetting that their social network has evolved to the point that there are "rules of conduct" and there are "privacy concerns." Thats spelled p-r-i-v-a-c-y, Facebook moguls. That they may be masters of their Facebook universe but they are slaves to its behaviors. They have no way out. Yet, even after the Beacon fiasco of a few months ago, they seemed to have not learned ANYTHING. On Friday, an op. ed. appeared in the Washington Post by staffer Catherine Rampell called "What Facebook Knows That You Don't." The piece highlights a series of recent articles that say:

even if you "deactivate" your account, Facebook holds on to your profile data. This disclosure has gotten privacy groups and consumers up in arms. All the commotion about how Facebook hoards outgoing users' data got me wondering whether we're missing the more important privacy question: What happens to all the data we active members choose to delete, for privacy reasons or otherwise? Facebook's privacy policy is disturbingly cryptic on this issue. It says the company "usually keep[s] a backup copy of the prior version [of updated profile information] for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information." Facebook declines to enumerate how many days (or centuries) constitute a "reasonable period of time." Facebook users do not have access to this information, so it's unclear who exactly would be doing the proposed "reversion."

How incredibly stupid can Mark Zuckerberg and his minions be? Why hasn't he fired his entire legal department? This one is worse than Beacon. Basically, if you interpret what they are doing, its insidious. It basically is removing all control you have over your profile - or, in other words, what you care to record of your life online. So that if YOU decide that YOU don't want to be a member of Facebook - fine, as far as Facebook is concerned. THEY still will own YOUR profile. If YOU decide that YOU made a mistake and revealed something YOU shouldn't have or needed to get past something that YOU had done and recorded, that's fine as far as Facebook is concerned. THEY will still own YOUR history. One of the key psychological benefits of a social network is not just the peer-to-peer communications that it fosters. It is CONTROL of the life that is being exposed by the owner of that life. That is translated to a profile when it comes to a social network and the actions on that profile. What makes Facebook particularly nasty here is that it says to the "friend" - "your ownership is an illusion. Once you commit - you commit. And then, heh, heh, heh, the data is MINE, MINE I tell you. MINE!! I AM FACEBOOK - LORD OF THIS UNIVERSE - MASTER OF THIS SOCIAL DOMAIN." OR to put it in little kids terms: What's mine is mine. And what's yours is mine. Some of this is understandable - though not forgivable. They want Facebook to be a business, not a hangout, and thus they treat the profiles as assets. This is no different on the surface of it than the salesperson who is treating their contact database as their asset and leverage (in their case, to protect their livelihood). But there is a different protocol that governs social networks. Peer-to-peer trust is one major facet of that governance. As a social network there are three things that have to be remembered at all times:

1. The social network is responsible for providing a reasonable expectation of privacy for each and every member of the network. That means that the individual who provides the profile retains ownership of the profile and is, in effect, licensing the use of that profile in a limited way.
2. That the terms of the "license" must be mutually agreeable and always transparent. There are no hidden or undue uses of the profile by the social network.
3. The social network is must do what it has to so that it is trusted AS A PEER by the individual members of the social network. This one is the most important and is critical to all businesses now. I'll be elaborating on this in future entries. For now, suffice to say, the social network can't be seen as an abstract entity by the individual members. It MUST be seen as a "trusted peer" to be successful.

Facebook is failing miserably at all of these and continues to make the kind of mistakes that will doom it in time to a footnote in the history of the social changes that have been roiling the world of human institutions in the last several years. That's sad. Look, I still like Facebook. I'll maintain my profile and you can see my Likenesses from PG to R rated. You can see who I'm poking (in a "good for all audiences" kind of way). You can read my conversations, see what other applications I use and what's going on with me from day to day. I have nearly 400 friends on Facebook and will keep growing that friends group. But at this point, I'll have a good time and put it to good use until it finally succumbs to the pressures of Google's OpenSocial API, Google's Social Graph API, some other social network that does get this and its own incredibly stupid mistakes - especially the ones that violate both public and private trust. In the meantime, I'll talk to my trusted peers on Facebook, as well as LinkedIn and Plaxo. But I have to say - Facebook, I don't trust YOU.

Loyalty Lab Converses With the Customer - Software-wise, That Is....

I read this dispatch (a lovely word for article in this case that conjures up romantic kind of war correspondent images - though in a cinematic way, not a real world way. I hate reality shows....), a couple of days ago on something that I find, at least on the surface, highly intriguing.

Loyalty Lab, a company I know next to nothing about, released version 3.0 of its integrated marketing platform which they call "Ready-Aim-Engage;" (Cute, but not that creative) While releases of software or platforms or services are hardly anything earth shattering - in fact, hardly anything glass shattering - this one caught my eye, because of what the platform purports to do. Here it is in short order.

1. Marketers can track responses wherever customers purchase or interact, providing what the company calls "a more accurate view of response rates and performance.

2. The standalone email marketing product provides data integration with "Ready-Aim-Engage." Theoretically, (since I haven't seen it in action at all) it enables marketers to link email to transactional (of course) and non-transactional behaviors -- so messaging can be relevant to social networks.

Up to this point, interesting for its non-transactional promise, but not REAL interesting.

But then:

1. R-A-E 3.0 records customer activities that go beyond simple transactional behavior, including:

• interacting with social media applications;

• recording important dates

• reading or posting to blogs; and

• referring friends.

Now THAT got my attention.

Why, you might ask in a puzzled way, with your brow furrowed and your finger (depends on which one) up in the air - all the while thinking that Paul is nuts.

The former features are ways of integrating traditional tools like customer segmentation, the operational kind of CRM and a non-traditional tool or two - like actions on non-transactional behaviors - to a traditional channel - email in particular. Nice, but not dramatically different than a number of things out there.

BUT

The latter recording, interacting, reading and referring tools is the approach a platform that truly believes that, as The Cluetrain Manifesto says, "marketing is a conversation" Which makes it completely NOT like all the marketing apps tied to CRM suites or best-of-breed approaches - the ones that I railed against in this entry....and this one.

There is a unique value in this approach that has a double edge (like Experience on the Edge...ahem).

First, this is actually allowing a company to create an actual dialogue with its customers and informing the company as to when the dialogue advances. That is BEYOND merely important - that is mission-critical to interacting with customers who control the business ecosystem.

The second side bears a little more explanation.

In her white paper of last April, "Social Technographics", Forrester Group social computing whiz Charlene Li, found that companies 1. don't know how their customers use social technologies and 2. are inexperienced with what works, when it works and where it works. Plus (not from the paper) its hard to measure and, because much of the behaviors generated are emotional (a.k.a. non-transactional in this case), the value is hard to understand. What makes the R-A-E 3.0 important is that it gives the enterprise social mavens the ability to capture interactions that involve the social media - blogs, social networks and so on. This is not something that has been easily available - especially in a framework. It seems that part of the technology solution is that they have pre-built bridges to social networks like Facebook and APIs to customize the connections between the social networks and the enterprise or to build internal social network applications. Plus, apparently they provide social network analysis tools judging from this line in their promotional stuff:

"Discover which customers are influencing the rest of your database."

AND all of this is on demand.

While trolling around the website, I found that they had a modestly interesting and certainly informally (entertainingly) written blog called Loyalty Dogs that basically covers topical areas like customer experience, loyalty (duh!), program analytics, technology trends and "interesting stuff." Additionally, they have a Loyalty Lab Library which is a compendium of recent articles that are drawn from the industry standard sources (such as they are) sources like DestinationCRM and 1to1 magazine again on topical subjects. What is GLARINGLY missing in their library is the blog resources that can add a LOT to their library or wiki resources or podcast links or....you get the message. But that is a small (big) niggling (painful) omission.

This is something worth looking into further. I'm not sure how well executed it is. I've never seen it in a production environment so I don't know if R-A-E 3.0 even works. But I have to say that Loyalty Lab at least seems to be not just paying attention to the customer that is now running the ecosystem; but also trying to capture what that customer is doing. And that is attention-getting.

Technorati : CRM, Loyalty Lab, customer relationship management., social media, social networks

SugarCRM Rocks - No Really - Literally

I was sick all this week (for the second time in three weeks) and didn't really blog my butt off exactly, but am back to good health so I have a lot to be blogging about. First, a recap of my trip to Microsoft in Toronto and SugarCRM in San Jose CA a week ago. Old news sorta but it was fascinating in all its glory and its demands. Then later expect a look at the mobile market and how social networking plays in it and a look at something I've been working on for a bit on peer to peer and the enterprise (not what you might think unless you are prescient and a MAJOR empath).....oh yeah, and when I can, something that I did for a vendor that actually could be groundbreaking but then, maybe not......but REALLY interesting. On that one, since it was a white paper I have to wait until they release it and then I can go ahead. I love being the industry's radical sometimes!! I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

Let's get moving so I can tell you about this trip to Microsoft and SugarCRM.

Microsoft, Toronto: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow....Oh, Did It Snow

I was invited to be a member of an expert panel at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 kickoff event in Toronto. This was one of 12 (if you can believe that. They go big when they go, don't they?) kickoff cities that Microsoft was launching CRM 4.0 in around Canada and likely to be the biggest of the events so, they figured, why not get a CRM generalist who can speak shallowly on anything in CRM on a panel. Actually, I was quite happy to do this one because, I like Microsoft usually although like several other companies it can be a tough love kind of liking, and because I love Canada, being married to a Newfie (for those of you who don't know the lingo, that's slang for a person from Newfoundland - which, for those of you who are geographically-challenged, is in Canada).

Problem with all of this was that I had to be on the panel at 4:00pm Toronto time on February 6 and then leave that night to get to San Jose CA to speak at 9:00am the following morning which meant arriving at the San Jose Airport at 1:30am and then getting to the Dolce Hayes Mansion (easily the oddest name of any place I've stayed) by around 2:15am and then going to sleep and getting up and.....wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sadly, on the 6th of Feb, there was a snowstorm forecast for Toronto and in the wee hours of the morning there was one that restricted the attendance. Out of 800 registered for this event about 500 showed - which, given that its a CRM application kickoff is an AMAZING number of people who braved a possible snowstorm. The event itself was well run - done by Frank Falcone, who is a Senior Director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Canada. Young guy, smart, and definitely friendly Had the thing for the most part running like clockwork. The panel was me and and three Microsoft Dynamics experts and the crowd was responsive to the panel. Bunches of questions - and my general stuff (on SMBs and CRM 2.0) seemed to be well received. The keynote had been Jeffrey Gitomer, author of a gazillion "little" "fill in the color" books of selling - sold about 4 million of them. He was a New Jerseyan who likes to growl at crowds in a pretty entertaining way. What he knows about selling is pretty extensive and while I'm not going into it, I agree with a good deal of it. What he knows about CRM is not much and it showed. But he was entertaining.

Microsoft is doing a lot for this launch of Dynamics CRM 4.0. They should. From the demos I've seen of CRM Live primarily and the thrust of the work, this is probably the first CRM product they've released that will have the impact they were expected to have when they came into the CRM market. As I've pointed out in several prior entries that I'm too lazy to link to, the product's single code base, while probably meaningless to most business people, is actually a useful attribute for the product - because it does make the on premise/on demand integration and/or transition relatively seamless. Which matters.

But the story to come is even better.... mo' better......

I was done with my panel and had to rush off to the airport (if you want some detail on the impact of singular touchpoints on the customer experience, I podcasted a bit on this and its relationship to my stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Toronto on the Experience on the Edge Episode #5 posted this week. As awkward as the previous sentence is, its still worth checking out). Imagine my surprise when I walked out to a limo for the airport and.....a BLINDING snowstorm with winds whipping.

What made this particularly difficult is that I had to go on Air Canada from Toronto to Las Vegas on a flight leaving at 8:40pm EST on the 6th and leave from Las Vegas on U.S. Airways at 10:30pm PST on the 6th and arrive in San Jose's airport at 1:30am on the 7th to get to the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose by around 2:15am on the 7th to go to sleep and speak at the SugarCon 08 SugarCRM national conference as a keynote at 9:00am on the 7th. One missed connection or the flight not going out and BOOM, I was stuck and would miss my keynote time. Plus I had little phone signal.

It took an hour and a half to get the 30 miles to the airport at 20mph roughly while trucks were jackknifing behind us on an icy 25 mile ramp to the airport from downtown Toronto. They were canceling flights at Pearson right and left. Only five flights left the airport that night.

I was one of them.

As I was boarding the plane, the pilot was announcing that we would have to de-ice after we were all seated (delaying us of course by about 25 minutes) and that then we would be going a slower speed down the runway due to the icing of the runway. (Which of course sent a thought balloon through my head akin to something like "Hmmmm, doesn't a plane have to be at a certain speed for takeoff before the runway runs out and HOLY #*$@* we might CRASH!!!!")

I sat down in my aisle seat, provided by the Air Canada person who thought I may have to make a mad dash when I got to Vegas.

Lo and behold - Air Canada provided these big, beautiful touch screens with dozens, nay, hundreds of on demand movies, TV shows, games, and....did I tell you it was a touchscreen?

The Cro-Magnon male road warrior in me began to emerge - like in Alien with Sigournry Weaver - from my innards - TOUCHSCREEN, MOOO-VIES, GAMES, TEEVEE, did I say touchscreen.

Howling winds outside, no visibility at all in the snow, icy runways, lost time - but I had a touchscreen and I began to take that GUY finger of mine and push the buttons and push and push and poke, poke, poke, poke.

Just what the customer experience ordered.

Exactly.

Think about this for a second. I was in the midst of what could have been potentially a REALLY LOUSY takeoff and experience and I was content in just playing with this incredible touchscreen (with a plug for my laptop on the right and what seemed to be a USB or firewire port on the left) and I was just male-guy-Y chromosome-Cro Magnon-fine. The dangers and discomfort of the outdoor situation was forgotten and I was lost in my touchscreen experience.

Which is exactly what Air Canada should have desired. It made a major plus impact on my customer experience. A point to think about in this journey. The result they got was the result they should have gotten from me. No problem with my experience - even with that raging weather.

Smart. It shows how granular each touchpoint can be (this was a touchtouchtouchtouchpoint) and how important a role the weight given by the customer to the individual touchpoint's interaction and result is. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE WEIGHT. THIS IS THE MOST UNDERESTIMATED PART OF THE EXPERIENCE. A lot of customer experience technology only takes into account the moment and what happened - not how much importance the customer attaches to the moment in context (a.k.a. under the circumstances).

Okay. Lets move on.

SugarCon 08 Rocked - Literally, Figuratively and Whateverelsely You Can Think Of

So, with all of that I made it to my connection to Las Vegas and then made it to San Jose. No car there for me. They screwed up (the car service). I took a cab and got to sleep at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose by about 3:00am, got up at 6:00am (through no alarm. I just woke up) and spoke to about 400 people (I think) at the SugarCon 08 national SugarCRM conference on CRM 2.0.

I rocked. I was in great form and tired enough to have no inhibitions whatever. I could have stripped if I thought it would have advanced CRM but, while I contemplated it, I realized that might set back CRM by about 100 years so I decided to stay clothed.

I'm not going to go through my presentation. I may publish it to the blog and to Slideshare and to MyCRMCareer at some point really soon. I'll keep you posted. But I do want to tell you a bit about the SugarCRM national conference because it bears some telling.

I was more impressed than I ever had been about the way the event was planned and the personnel that SugarCRM have hired to make this thing work and some of what they are doing with their applications - though I've spoken to that before here.

First, to get a flavor of this event, you NEED to take a look at the Photo Album called SugarCon 08 Rocks at the column to the left of this entry. I'll get into that in a sec.

What's fascinating about SugarCRM and I've been a slow adopter and slow warmer to this company, is that the culture is reminiscent of PeopleSoft to some extent and of the high-tech companies of the early millennium. Before you get into the "uh oh Web 1.0 bubble" cortex frying, I'm talking about the culture here, not the business model. They have a fine business model - one that apparently investors like since they landed another $20 million last week, bringing their total funding to $46 million. Interestingly, CEO John Roberts (you gotta check out the photo album. Trust me.) says that SugarCRM is going to stay with CRM for awhile because its a big market. What makes this interesting is that SugarCRM is being used as a platform by their open source community of thousands of developers to develop well beyond CRM on the one hand (see this entry for that) and by their open source community to develop complementary CRM offerings on the other (see CarouselCRM for an example of that). I'm still a little diffident on their on demand offering since I'm unclear on how its being done - but that's due to a lack of knowledge more than anything but with the release of SugarCRM 5.0, they have developed a platform that can play in the world of platform offerings AND with the size and activity that their open source development community (30,000 strong) has, they can provide some serious output in lots of places/domains/vertical markets/non-CRM markets in a rapid and possibly cost-effective way. I've been told that SugarCRM 6.0 will be the one that has all the social offerings, not a point release later, and, if they get that to market soon enough, they will be ahead of the market. Even with 5.0 as is, they can provide what used to be called a composite application and now in the spirit of World Zen Speak 2.0, is called enterprise mashups - and that alone is an important feat for a platform. So they are getting a toe up now and with 6.0 whenever that is due a possible leg or pair of legs up, depending on the timing.

But enough of the product.

The Culture

I had the opportunity to speak to John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM for the first time actually, at a party they threw the night of the 7th at the Testarossa Vineyards (good wine - especially excellent 2005 single vineyard Syrahs (Thompson was one of them)) in Los Gatos, CA. Aside from the fact he looks so damned friggin' YOUNG, he is an articulate and passionate lover of what he does and is. He is committed to SugarCRM and actually, much to his credit, has a genuine vision - something I often find lacking in CRM related and enterprise applications related CEOs. Many of them (I'll do an entry on the visionary ones later this year maybe) are just salespeople who push a product. They have no vision. They're fish peddlers. One of PeopleSoft's CEOs was a mackerel pusher and it wasn't Dave Duffield, who was (and is) a total visionary and probably the best CEO to emulate on this planet. The other one wrecked the company culture and thus, the company.

That said, John is a visionary and I have to tell you, the highest compliment I could pay, a real person. He had no persona he was pushing at me and it was a conversation, not a sales pitch or a "CEO talks to analyst about his company, careful to tread" discussion. We blabbed with a glass of wine each and it was insightful. But the best was yet to come.

They had a ROCK BAND made up of Sugar employees. Again, the photo album. I got pictures taken by the talented and red hot Georgia Moore - the MyCRMCareer Business Development Director. Her pix were great. Take a look at two of them

First up, Martin Schneider. This is a guy I've known for several years, chiefly in his immediate past job as a great, great analyst at the 451 Group in NY - and he has that New Yawker attitude too. But normally he's dressed in suits and looks, well, analyst-like. He now is the Director of Analyst Relations etc. at SugarCRM and he is a HUGE asset for them. And, know what else, he can SERIOUSLY play a guitar. He came onto the stage in a teeshirt that was, of course, Satanic black and black leather pants - yeah leather pants, and has a HUGE tattoo of some unknown.....thing.....on his arm and he went into a Jet song - "Wontcha Be My Girl" (you know the one that Apple iPod made famous) and did some Hendrix like riffs on the guitar.

Then, son of a bitch, John Roberts got up wearing shades, yeah, the CEO guy, and he and Martin dueted with Helter Skelter - the Beatles John Lennon song by Paul McCartney - and just cooked.

Though, I hope that these guys don't hate me for this. They are awesome instrumentally and a bit vocally-challenged all told. They are very good but they have an industry standard to meet - and that would be the Raving Daves of PeopleSoft and now, I'm happy to say, Workday!! Still the greatest corporate band ever to hit the world and actually, just a good band....period. They are so good, check out their website. I think that SugarCRM should work at it awhile and challenge them to a play-off, post it on YouTube and we'll get everyone to vote. In fact, go here and listen to some of their music. Its something to think about, SugarRock v. The Raving Daves. Competition is good, right?

That said, this was not just a good party but the conference itself was extremely well planned and well done and had some of that high spirited sense of community. What was particularly interesting to me was to see the genuine interest the customers, the partners and the developers had for the company, the people and the product itself. They liked it, sure, but they were INTERESTED in it and where it was going . They seemed to feel they had a stake in its success, which is as Shakespeare said somewhere, a "devoutly to be wished" position for a vendor to be in. Part of that was there seems to be an open culture and I hear from my friends at SugarCRM that they enjoy the ride they are on. Not something I've been hearing from too many of the CRM companies these days. Now I hear all the time that they are well run or they are producing excellent products or that they are doing some great things (and all of that, for the companies I hear about that - is true) but I don't hear much about enjoyment of the work and the ride. I hear it with SugarCRM now (and with Workday) and used to hear it with other companies a few years ago. But to hear startup excitement and rocking in a company that's no longer a startup is exciting unto itself - and for that, SugarCRM, I salute you.

Does that exempt them from my critique of their products? No. But from me, it gets some real admiration. Life is short and since work is part of life, work should be enjoyable too. Not just play. But when you get to play well - while executing the business plan - and then instrumentally - Now THAT is a big, big plus.

Technorati : Microsoft, Raving Daves, SugarCRM

Murders and Acquisitions

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

Hah.

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

But, that's merely me shooti