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CRM Idol 2011 Update #2: We're Crankin' Now!

In case you need the full monty as CRM 2011 keeps rollin': here are the two links to the oh so passé past.

• The original rules and contest ideas, judges and prizes.
• Update #1

Now here are the latest updates:

Additions to the Judges

1. Lets give a big round of applause to Larry Ritter,  Senior Vice President & General Manager of CRM for Sage Software who joins our Extended Judges Vendor Panel . Larry is a long time industry veteran who not only knows software but knows small business too. A huge addition for the panel
2. Now, put your hands together for Chris Carfi, Vice President of Antseyeview and the man who just may have coined the term "social customer" with his incredibly popular blog. Chris is one of the first social influencers and one who knew the CRM market from the get go. He is also incredibly popular.  He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel.
3. We've got one more to clap those hands for and that would be Brian Vellmure, Founder and Principal of Initium, LLC. Brian is one of those Social CRM influencers who appeared about 2 years ago and just keeps getting more and more prominent. He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel too.
4. Also, give it up for Thomas Vander Wal, Principal at InfoCloud Solutions who joins the Extended Judges Influencers Panel. Thomas is a web legend who pretty much created social tagging and folksonomies and is the man who is defining the social "lens" that we look at companies, products and social interactions through.
5. Finally, last but not least, raise a glass to Kristian af Sandberg, Product Manager, Redpill Linpro, one of Scandinavia's foremost strategic implementation firms. Kristian is an EMEA leader who becomes part of the Extended Judges Vendor Panel.

The Mentor Program

We are adding another facet to the mentorship program. Where originally mentors were available to only the seven finalists on how to construct the content for their video, we are going to be able to expand that program to the 60 contestants on how to handle their demos etc with the primary judges. These mentors will be drawn from the Extended Judges panel and will be VOLUNTARY when it comes to which judges. Watch for a list to be published on the website at some time after the site launches.  The contact information will be made available PRIVATELY to the contestants for their knowledge only and the dates that the mentors will be available also will be privately provided. This is an exciting addition because it will provide invaluable advice on how to do things that will benefit the young businesses that are in this competition. Participation is strictly voluntary on both sides.

The Latest Calendar - May  5, 4:30PM ET, 10:30PM GMT

CRM Idol 2011 is closed. All the slots are taken but we've put together a waiting list. 

For all of the companies that have made it, please remember:

1. its provisional - dependent on your three references checking out. Once they do, we will send out notifications to everyone that will let you know the time and date of your actual slot.
2. I'm traveling and the other key judges are busy and we are all human beings so we might be a little slow in responding.
3. The waiting list is those Americas companies that submitted after closing of the competition. The order is based on the time stamped proper submission of the email. Any email that had something wrong with the submission has been asked to resubmit with the corrections. The resubmittal will be their actual time and date, not the original submission. Hey, it might sound sorta anal, but we haven't been asking much so reading the rules and making our lives a little easier isn't unwarranted, is it?

The Americas Calendar - FINAL (see #1 above though)

The Americas (all times are Eastern Time)

Date
	August 15 3pm – PhaseWare 4pm – Performance Solutions 5pm – Solucciones 6pm – Jaguar TPM	August 16 3pm – Relenta CRM 4pm – LuxorCRM 5pm – thedatabank 6pm –Connected	August 17 3pm –Assistly 4pm – SplendidCRM 5pm – RO/Innovation 6pm - GreenRope	August 18 3pm – Cosential 4pm – Media Funnel 5pm – Tasker.ly 6pm – Aplicor	August 19 3pm -FreeCRM 4pm – Interactions Corp 5pm – Antharia LLC 6pm – Relayware
	August 22 3pm – Lookout Software, Inc. 4pm – InvisibleCRM 5pm – Negoxia 6pm - CiviCRM	August 23 3pm –Vigilius LLC 4pm – Hyperoffice 5pm – SalesNexus LLC 6pm – Salestrakr	August 24 3pm – Brick St. Software 4pm – Stone Cobra 5pm – VIPorbit 6pm – Nimble	August 25 3pm – Front Row CRM 4pm – GetSatisfaction 5pm – ContactMe 6pm – FuzeDigital	August 26 3pm - bigWebApps 4pm – Loopfuse 5pm – Vertical Solutions, Inc. 6pm – Dovetail Software

EMEA - FINAL as of May 5, 10:30PM GMT

EMEA (all times are GMT)

Date
	September 5 3pm - Swivelscript 4pm – InTouch 5pm - Efficy NV 6pm - Jibe Company	September 6 3pm - Loyalty Factory 4pm – B-Kin 5pm – Atollon 6pm - Dimelo	September 7 3pm - Pipedrive 4pm – Akordis 5pm - Workbooks.com 6pm - BPMonline CRM	September 8 3pm – Iko System 4pm – Zestia Ltd 5pm - Really Simple Systems 6pm - Arten Science Ltd.	September 9 3pm –The SelfService Co. 4pm – Digita Srl 5pm –ABCrm 6pm - webCRM

Thus….Available Times as of May 5 at 1:30am ET, 7:30am GMT.

Americas (all ET)

• CLOSED

EMEA (all GMT)

• CLOSED

That's it. CRM Idol 2011 now has all its candidates for this year.  This is exciting. There is still room for those who don't mind being on a waiting list. Feel free to submit.In Other News

We are cranking on several other fronts that are in progress as this is written. Among them:

1. We are working on a CRM Idol 2011 website that will feature a Joomla! based content management system at the backend. This will become the source for all updates and queries when its ready. Watch for it in the near to mid future.
2. We are also working on a Facebook page for all you fans and friends out there.
3. We are working on a YouTube channel, which as of now, is going to be the system of record for the videos though because we are at 10 minutes as a video, we reserve the right to move this channel elsewhere should YouTube rules interfere.
4. We are working on the 1 hour session guidelines for all the entries so that you won't feel lost and we will see what we can do to set up a system of mentors that will be available during certains as yet ascertained period for advice for the one hours. That will be in July sometime I would reckon for the Americas and August for EMEA.
5. Finally, we are continuing to provide more possible prizes and will be refining the rules for prizes etc as we go on.  Stay tuned for more announcements.

 

Finally…CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season Is Here! Welcome to…Wherever We Are

PG Note: The post you see below represents the “official” launch of CRM Idol 2011 and is one that all eight primary judges endorse. For me personally, this is my “angelic” side – the side of me that wants to support an industry that has been good to me. On my more edgy side, some of the reason that this was hatched was because of PR agents who basically don’t do their homework and pitch me all day long without an inkling about me as an actual human. They think I’m an influential CRM cyborg. Dealing with that from the other side, Brent Leary and I will be launching a music video in a few months from Playaz Productions. Heh. Heh.

But the side of me that’s grateful to an industry and friends and those companies that actually have honored me by listening to me blather all these years, is enthralled by the idea that we may be able to give back to all of you through CRM Idol. So, thank you for everything over the years and welcome to CRM Idol 2011: the Open Season!!)

 

 

Okay, everyone this is the big one. CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season is here and we’re ready to take your companies and find out which one of you in the Americas and which one of you in EMEA is not the next CRM Idol but the FIRST CRM Idol.

The Idea

Most of what we’re trying to do was outlined in the pre-announcement announcement of CRM Idol last week. But it bears some repeating:

Small companies – at least in the CRM software related world – and that means social software world, in this case, too – abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. But, as we said, there are thousands of them. And, no matter how great your product is, if no one knows about it, well, then, oops. Not a good thing.

These small companies are all making efforts to get into the ecosystem that could benefit them – one which includes investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. While getting support from this powerful ecosystem is by no means a guarantee of success, it can be enormously helpful in getting well down the road there. But, those small companies are often thwarted in that effort by either really bad PR people, or just the incredible amount of companies out there trying to reach into the ecosystem who are pummeling the small amount of influencers, etc. every week with requests to demo or talk.

Now, to be fair to the influencers, they are human beings with lives that aren’t built around supporting this one company that really thinks they are it. All they know is that each of them is getting between 20-50 requests a week to take a demo or conversation with someone who owns or represents a company they’ve never heard of and never talked to yet. In addition to those that they know. Often enough, they are pitched by a public relations person who is either inexperienced or not really good at their job who makes no effort to find anything out about the person that they are pitching to. So the influencer, journalist, venture capitalist gets a generic curve thrown at them that doesn’t even break over the plate – guaranteeing that the email is going to be discarded as a matter of course before the first paragraph is even read. Or it could be that on a particular day the influencer got 10 pitches and had a headache and didn’t want to see any of them.

As unfair as generic pitches and high volumes of noise are to the influencers in the highly desirable ecosystem we are chatting about here, it is a problem because what are probably a lot of good companies are never given a chance to move ahead because of the difficulties inherent in the process and the vagaries of bad luck on any given day.

Which is why CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season exists.

The concept is simple, small companies out there. If you meet the submission criteria outlined below, you will be given the opportunity, first come first serve, to secure a time slot on a specific day that will put you in front of some of the most influential people in the CRM/SCRM world. They will spend an hour with you in a demo to hear about your technology product – software only – and they will write a jointly signed review of what they saw of you – that will be published in multiple venues as soon as its written. It can be a good review, a bad one, a mix or indifferent. There’s risk on your part to be taken here. But it is something that you need to be aware of. The reviews will go up as soon as the 5 judge sign off on the final content. They won’t be exhaustive reviews but they will be opinionated and fair.

Forty companies from the Americas and twenty companies from EMEA (that means ONLY Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will get a shot at this – again first come first serve (more later on what that means). Of the 40 in the Americas, 4 finalists will be chosen. (NOTE: There will be an APAC edition hopefully late in the year or if not, early 2012, depending on the success of these two events. Sorry, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, et.al. Logistics made it impossible at this juncture.) Out of the 20 in EMEA, 3 finalists will be chosen. Each of the finalists will be REQUIRED to do a ten minute video about their company and the product. Not a repeat of the demo but a video. Note I used the word REQUIRED here. Let me put it this way. If you make the finals and don’t do the video, we will publicly skewer your company. Know why? Because our judges are giving up what little free time they actually have in a summer to do this and it will take us 4 hours a day for 3 business weeks to do it. So if you can’t or won’t put in the effort to do the video, don’t bother to apply. Seriously. We’re trying to help out here and we want you guys all to succeed but it’s a two way street.

Okay, that rant out of the way. Once the finalists are chosen and the videos done, they will be posted online in multiple media outlets. They will be voted on in two ways:

1. Popular vote – see, crowdsourcing is important. All the votes for the one winner from the Americas and the one winner from EMEA will be tallied from the public sites – in aggregate. That’s 50% of the vote.
2. Extended Judges Panels – as you can see below, we may have assembled the greatest panels of judges – both leading vendors and influencers ever assembled in the history of CRM – not to be hyperbolic or anything. Each judge will select a specific winner in each of the Americas and EMEA from the 7 finalists. That’s the other 50% of the vote. The original judges will be voting as panel members.

The winners in each will get a major array of prizes, some of which are below, and be declared “CRM Idol 2011 Winner.”

Not too shabby is it? Vast amounts of media attention even if you don’t make the finals. If you make the finals at all, some prizes to you. The winners get everything that the ecosystem can offer but guaranteed success. But they do get all the accoutrements they need to support their increased likelihood of it.

That way, you small companies out there who have been victimized by bad approaches or just circumstance have the opportunity to bypass all of that and make something happen. It’s up to you to take the reins in hand but once you do, you have at least a serious chance at making yourself successful.

The Criteria

This competition is for small companies in the CRMish/SocialCRMish world. – see the categories below for some guidelines though please feel free to make the case if you don’t see yourself in the guidelines.

1. You have to have software that is commercially available by the time of the demo – that would be in August – again see below. No betas, alphas, release candidates allowed. If we find that you’re not commercially available, and you have a time slot, you’re out and someone else will fill the slot. So please be sure that you can verify the claim if you want to participate.
2. You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
3. You have to have revenue under $12 million U.S. your last fiscal year. As far as disclosure goes, you have the choice of making the claim that you do – though that will have to be stated in your submission and we’ll trust you or you can disclose your revenue in the submission with the knowledge that only the permanent judges will know what it is. If you make the claim, please be prepared to back it up if we ask. Your call on how.
4. You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
5. You have to fit a category – though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

1. Traditional CRM Suites
2. Social CRM
3. Sales - Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
4. Marketing – Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
5. Customer Service – all permutations
6. Mobile CRM
7. Customer Experience Management
8. Social Media Monitoring – requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
9. Customer Analytics – including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
10. Enterprise Feedback Management
11. Innovation Management
12. Community Platforms
13. Enterprise 2.0 – collaboration, activity streams etc.
14. Social Business
15. Knowledge Management – this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
16. Vendor Relationship Management
17. Partner Relationship Management

Once again, if you don’t see yourself in this list, don’t worry.  Just make the case as to why you have some customer-facing possibilities and the likelihood is that we’ll be cool with it. We’re trying to make this easier for you, not hard.

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

1. There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.
2. The submission will be by email ONLY to: nextbigthing@crmidol.com. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.
3. The submissions will occur starting today – Monday, April 25 and will continue until Friday May 13 or until all slots are filled, whichever is first (watch #crmidol on twitter for updates on that as it occurs). On May 13, should any slots be left, the remaining specific dates and times will be made publicly available and another final round of submissions for those remaining slots will occur from May 13 through May 20. After that the submissions will be closed.
4. Each submission will include the following:
   1. Your company contact and named person contact information Two date and time specific slot requests. ONLY two. If your slots are not available, you’re out of luck until May 14 – and then you can resubmit to any time slots that are publicly announced as still available. Though there is no guarantee that there will be any available slots at that time. (see below for examples of how to submit the dates/times)
   2. The category you feel you fit into - or if you don’t but think that you qualify – why.
   3. A description of what the product is/the company is. Be persuasive here that you meet the criteria, not that you have a great product. This is merely a qualifying discussion. URLs cannot be used as substitutes for this description. The submission needs to be all inclusive. However, they can be used as supporting documentation.
   4. The names of the three (3) referenceable customers – the company, the contact and the way to communicate with them – minimum of email and phone, please.
   5. A statement that says that you meet the revenue requirement along the lines of “our company states truthfully that our revenues in our last fiscal year 2010 were under $12 million U.S”. OR you can state the actual number with the knowledge that the primary judges in each of the Americas and EMEA will treat it as under non-disclosure. But please be aware those designated primary judges below will see the actual figures if you choose to reveal them.
   6. A statement that says, “if (you) make the finals, you are committed to making a 10 minute video for submission and public viewing as part of the conditions for entry.” Word it anyway you prefer but make the commitment clear.
5. If you are accepted, you’ll be notified privately but it will be posted that you’ve been accepted on the Twitter #crmidol stream. The time will only be sent to you privately. Just your acceptance will be posted. Please allow some time between your submission and the posting of it to the hashtag and your private notification, since we all still have to work for a living.
6. If you don’t include everything specified in the rules for submission, it means automatic disqualification and you cannot resubmit.

The Demo

The demo has few rules. Just be prepared to a. explain your company; b. show your product – live please c. answer questions from the influencers/experts.  Not much more than that. I’m sure many of you are experienced at this already so wed don’t have to tell you this, but just in case… A site for the demos with login etc. will be announced to the timeslot owners in early August.

The Video

The standards for the video will be mentioned to the finalists once they are named. To rest any unease, you won’t be required to spend lots of money to get it done. How much you spend and on what will be up to you as will the content and how you present it. We’ll issue guidelines when the time gets near, including how the video is going to be distributed for posting and voting.

The Judges

Here are the lists of all the judges. As you can see, we have what is likely to be the heaviest hitting list in the history of anything done in CRM when it comes to awards or competitions. Click on their names to get to their LinkedIn bios. They are in alphabetical order.

Primary Judges

The Americas

These five judges will handle the 40 entries for the Americas which consists of the United States, Canada, South and Central America.  They will all be involved in the one hour reviews each of the days over the two weeks and will jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the four finalists for the Americas.

1. Paul Greenberg – Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
2. Jesus Hoyos – Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
3. Esteban Kolsky – Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
4. Brent Leary – Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
5. Denis Pombriant – CEO, Beagle Research Group

EMEA

These four judges will handle the 20 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia etc.  They will all be involved in the each of the 1 hour demos/discussions from Sept 5 through 9 and will write and jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the three finalists for EMEA.

1. Laurence Buchanan – Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
2. Silvana Buljan – Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
3. Paul Greenberg – see above
4. Mark Tamis – Social Business Strategist, NET-7

Mentors

This is an exciting part of CRM Idol 2011. Each of these fine human beings has volunteered a day of their time – two during the finals and one with the winners – to provide the benefit of their experience to the contestants.  What they will do is noted by their name. This is an awesome idea that Anthony Lye actually cooked up. Each of these mentors has decades of experience in the software and venture capital world and is considered a leader in the CRM space. So if you make it to the finals, you have the benefit of their knowledge and their valuable time.  Amazing.

1. Anthony Lye – Anthony will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Anthony has had years of experience as a senior management person for enterprise CRM and a thought leader.
2. Joe Hughes – Joe will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Joe has been a leader in the CRM space for as long as we can remember and one of the more foresighted when it comes to the value of Social CRM
3. Larry Augustin – This is a prize for the winner of EMEA and the winner of the Americas. Larry who has years of experience as an executive in the software space and has been a successful venture capitalist will work with the winner to prepare them for dealing with possible investors including doing a VC matching with the winners.

There will most likely be other mentors announced as the competition gets closer to the demo dates.  We might try to make some mentors available to prepare you if you need them for the one hour demos but that’s still up in the air. We’ll keep you posted.

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

1. William Band – Vice President & Principal Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
2. Jim Berkowitz – CEO, CRM Mastery
3. Bruce Culbert – Chief Service Officer, The Pedowitz Group
4. Zoli Erdos - Publisher/Editor, CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars
5. Mike Fauscette – Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions, IDC
6. Josh Greenbaum – Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
7. Dr. Graham Hill – Partner, Optima Partners
8. Dennis Howlett - Buyer Advocate
9. Ian Jacobs – Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction, Ovum/Datamonitor
10. Michael Krigsman – CEO, Asuret
11. Marshall Lager – Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting
12. Kate Leggett – Senior Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
13. Maribel Lopez – Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research  Founder Lopez Research LLC
14. Jeremiah Owyang -Managing Partner, Altimeter Group
15. Sameer Patel – Managing Partner, Sovos Group
16. Scott Rogers – Customer Evangelist
17. Robert Scoble – Managing Director, Rackspace Hosting
18. Brian Solis – Principal, Altimeter Group
19. Dilip Soman – Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
20. Ray Wang – CEO, Constellation Research
21. Mary Wardley – Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC

The Vendor Panel

1. Larry Augustin – CEO, SugarCRM
2. Anthony Lye – Senior Vice President & GM, CRM, Oracle
3. Phil Fernandez – CEO, Marketo
4. John Hernandez – General Manager, Customer Care Business, Cisco
5. Jonathan Hornby – Director, Worldwide Marketing, SAS
6. Joseph Hughes - Senior Executive, CRM Service, Support and Social System Integration Lead, Accenture
7. Charlie Isaacs, VP, eServices and Social Media Strategy Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
8. Vinay Iyer – Vice President, Marketing CRM, SAP
9. Katy Keim - CMO, Lithium
10. Marcel Lebrun,- CEO, Radian6
11. Mitch Lieberman, Vice President, Marketing, Sword-Ciboodle
12. Chris Morace- Senior Vice President, Business Development, Jive
13. Zach Nelson – CEO, NetSuite
14. Bill Patterson- Director, CRM Product Management, Microsoft
15. Dileep Srinivasan - AVP - CRM & Social CRM, Digital Marketing & MDM, Cognizant
16. John Taschek –Vice President, Market Strategy, Salesforce

The Journalist Panel

1. Elsa Basile – Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
2. Barney Beal – Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
3. Anita Campbell – Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
4. Robin Carey – CEO, Social Media Today
5. Neil Davey – Group Editor, Sift Media
6. David Myron – Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
7. Valdir Ugalde – Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
8. Anne Van Den Berg – Senior Editor, CustomerTalk (Netherlands)

 

Media Partners

You’ll note that we have 8 journalists on a panel of judges. Well, each of them represents a media partner that will be broadcasting the competition and posting the videos for voting in the finals for the popular vote.  They are an awesome array of the most influential media sites in social media, CRM, and small business as well as local influencers in CRM in Latin America and Europe.  They will be significant in the lives of the contestants, the finalists, and the winners giving each what may be an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage. Their coverage will be supplemented by posts to the blogs and other sites that are owned by many of the judges so there will be significant reach for all 60 of the initial contenders.  Each of these partners will be getting exclusives from the judges and hopefully some of the companies too so that we can add a quality of coverage that would enhance the value to the SMBs participating. in all areas – CRM, social and small business directly.

We expect to add more media partners as we continue on throughout the competition.

The current partners and links to their sites (in alphabetical order, like every list here):

1. Call Center News (Argentina)
2. CRM Magazine/DestinationCRM
3. CustomerTalk (Netherlands)
4. Mundocontact (Mexico)
5. MyCustomer.com/Sift Media
6. SearchCRM
7. Social Media Today
8. SmallBizTrends.com

 

The Prizes…So Far

These are the prizes as of launch today. There are several others in the works that will be announced as the contest rolls out.

All Finalists

All 7 finalists will get to choose one day of consulting from the list of Influencer consultants below. The order of choice will be based on the popular vote on the video which will be kept confidential but used for the choosing. There will be more consultants added to the list as contest moves forward.

The Americas and EMEA Winners

Each winner will get to choose four prizes from the list.  Note – in the case where multiple prizes are being offered by a single vendor – the vendor counts as a single prize with all the items as part of that.

1. Accenture
   1. A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
2. Capgemini (for EMEA winners only)
   1. A half day workshop with Patrick James, Global VP CRM and Laurence Buchanan to explore joint go to market opportunities and help you refine and test your value proposition.
3. Social Media Today
   1. A blog post featuring the winner of the contest to run on both The Customer Collective and Social Media Today
   2. A single blast to the Social Media Today opt-in list (approximately 50,000 names) which will conform to their minimum standards (valued at $10,500)
4. Microsoft
1. 12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM
2. 12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions
3. Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services
4. Guaranteed access to exclusive Business and Technical On-Ramp program funded by Microsoft to accelerate entry
   and access to the Microsoft ecosystem
5. SugarCRM
   1. Free 10 user subscription to SugarCRM Professional or Enterprise
   2. Membership in the Sugar Exchange and free consulting on product integration with SugarCRM
   3. CEO Larry Augustin, a successful venture capitalist in his own right, does a mentoring & VC matchmaking session with the winners
6. Brian Solis
   1. One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
7. Paul Greenberg
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
8. Ray Wang
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
9. Sameer Patel
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
10. Influencer Consulting– free strategic consulting for 1 day or 8 hours from a variety of judges (in person travel expenses to be covered by winners)
    1. Esteban Kolsky (in person only)
    2. Paul Greenberg (on phone or in person)
    3. Denis Pombriant (on phone or in person)
    4. Mark Tamis (on phone or in person)
    5. Jesus Hoyos (on phone or in person)
    6. Brent Leary (on phone or in person)

 

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here’s the hardcore stuff:

1. The hashtag is #crmidol
2. The email for submission is nextbigthing@crmidol.com
   1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to pgreenbe@gmail.com

 

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

We’ve put together an easy little table with all the relevant dates and times that you’ll need as you progress through the competition.

 

Dates/Times	Americas	EMEA
Submission Dates	August 15-19; August 22-26	September 5-9
Submission Times	3pm ET; 4pm ET; 5pm ET; 6pm ET	3pm GMT; 4pm GMT; 5pm GMT; 6pm GMT
Finalist Video Submission Date	September 30	October 14
Winner Announcement	October 17	October 31

 

 

 

 

A Note or Two

A little bit of unfinished stuff that will sort itself out as time goes forward.

• There will likely be a CRM Idol site (Joomla based) coming in the next month or so that will be an aggregate site for all the media outlets and streams.  However, this remains a work in progress that’s still under discussion.
• There will be more mentors and prizes added and possibly a judge or two.
• For now ongoing news will be found at the twitter hashtag #crimidol.

In Closing

That’s about it. Now its time to bring it. First come, first serve. See you, maybe as the 1st ever CRM Idol, in Vegas, Hollywood. London or on the Social Web. Somewhere anyway.

 

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

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)

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

Tools to Talk & Do Anything But Converse By - Mobile Social Media

There's a mindset and level of effort that's necessary when you're writing a long book with a short deadline that can only be defined as "obsessive." As I'm writing CRM at the Speed of Light's 4th edition (does anyone mind if from time to time in posts in the future I refer to it as either CRMSOL4 or "the book."?), I'm finding that I'm getting immersed into a 24 hour, 7 day a week sticky cloud that allows me to do things other than the book but only when I'm thinking about the book during that time. In other words, I'm writing, writing, writing, writing, getting a haircut (thinking about writing something in particular, or someone who I need to get involved in the book - just thought of someone actually....back...I had to put his name on my To Do list), writing, writing, driving (thinking about something CRMSOL4....), writing, doing a blog entry (thinking about "the book" related stuff)....

What I'm also finding is that in order to be mobile for the writing of this book and to engage resources and to hang out with friends at least the digital ones during this obsessive, immersive period (to end August 10), I'm relying more and more on tools that are actually voice-related to do my work and to be more effective. They are translation tools for the most part that involve speech to text and they allow me to take care of tasks both book related and "necessary to let people know I'm alive related" - most are mobile and are favorited on my iPhone (and will be on my new 3G iPhone come July 11).

Here's what I'm using and for what. Links will get you to them. They aren't all just iPhone apps. They are universal. They happen to work on the iPhone among others.

Cha Cha - This is an amazing service. Phone a number that you get after you register and you have a search engine that runs with human beings. Here's how it works. You call the specific number you get - a local number - ask a question of an automated response thingee. A human agent then researches it. You then - in a few minutes to an hour or so - get an answer via SMS to your question. For example, I was out with someone and told them that my wife and I are going to walk the Great Wall of China next summer. She asked how long the Great Wall was. Good question. I called up Cha Cha, asked them that, and within minutes had a text message saying it was 6400 km (4000 miles) long. Just-like-THAT. They've only failed to answer one question - though it was kind of important. It was "Are there any tornado warnings out in Fairfax County, VA now?" They didn't answer it. Kind of important since I was driving through it. Turned out there was. Maybe it was better I didn't know at the time....

Twitterfone - This one works better than expected. I simply hit my favorited number - it dials up to some location - I leave a short message. It shows up on Twitter. Thus I can query my Tweet-buds or simply vent or do whatever it is I do on Twitter. Works great for that.

Utterz - This one is new to me but works like a charm. I used to do Audioblogs but the service I used kind of went away. Now I can do it again. I can audio blog for free with Utterz and post text and video that will associate with the blog's audio entry if I do it within 10 minutes of the time I recorded and "published." Again, I call a phone number and I go for it. Works great and there are multiple ways to use this one - and multiple channels to access it.

Jott - This site translates my voice into email to particular people or groups or to messages to social sites friends. In a Twitter exchange between uber editor of CRM Magazine Josh Weinberger and social customer king of dudes Chris Carfi, Chris suggested using Jott to do rough emails that you send to yourself to edit when you get home. Hat tip (as Mr. Carfi would say) to Chris on this. Again, a very useful function.

All of this is usable while driving, though of course only if you're hand's free. Safe driving. Ahem.

I'm now thinking of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred to help me with some of the book too. That's on premise but hell, anything to capture random thoughts in a way that makes this easier. Not sure of that one yet, but use the tools above. They are genuinely awesome and totally cool. Impressive in how accurate they are. Now if only I could be that accurate when I write this damned book.....

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Cha Cha, Jott, Twitter, Twitterfone, Utterz, mobile, productivity, social media

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.

A Few Items of Note Part Ten Million

Got an announcement, a request to everyone, a recommendation, and one thing I think is kinda cool.

The Announcement

I've been getting a fair amount of industry buzz for the Microsoft - salesforce.com configuration tool shoot out that I called for (and that Microsoft and salesforce.com) accepted. As a result, we've gathered up a great group of judges that I think can both be fair and know their stuff better and hold some sway all in all in the industry. You've probably heard of some and maybe not others, but the reality is that they all are knowledgeable, smart, and long standing experts in the industry. I tried to mix it up with technical folks and with business side folks so that all those who needed to be represented by judges were.

Without further ado, our judges:

• Denis Pombriant - for those of you who know him, you know him as the star analyst in the on demand world - not just CRM. He has a long and honored track record and is one of the most insightful and foresighted analysts in the business. Each year he issues his WizKids report (for 2008, go here) which gives exposure to up and coming companies in the world of on demand in particular though can extend beyond that certainly. He has his own blog and his own company, Beagle Research. YAY Denis.
• Brent Leary - if there is anyone who knows what small business needs when it comes to CRM, on demand technologies and Web 2.0 technologies, he is it. Brent is a popular radio/podcasting host, with his show, Technology for Business' Sake; a man who just simply "gets it" when it comes to how SMB and CRM work together. He and I are going to be partnered in the world class, super hot, awesomely spectacularly videocast,CRM Playaz by Summer 2008 which is easily going to be the best show on the Web for business - and where cool people want to hang out. That's because not only is Brent smart, he's cool.
• J. Bruce Daley - Having him on the team is just an outright honor. He is not only influential in the CRM and enterprise applications world, he is a serial entrepreneur and colorful quote in the major press when it comes to matters of software - and he is just a good man. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Siebel Observer and now is the CEO of Test Common - a software testing company designed to hurry up the software development path. He knows from whence he speaks.
• Peter Churchill - Peter is the Director of CRM and Outreach Technology for the Center for American Progress - one of the smartest thinktanks in Washington D.C. - and one of the most influential. Peter is a CRM veteran, having been a CRM technical expert for the last at least 13 years. Because he brings, lets call it, a "wry sense of humor" to his work, he is a perfect person to judge this kind of contest because it needs an expert with some technical brilliance who can also laugh out loud. He is that man.
• Matt Witteman - Matt is the vice president of the CRM Practice at consulting firm, Customer Connect, based in Charlotte, NC. When I announced the shootout - before Microsoft and salesforce.com agreed - Matt stepped to the plate and said that his company, which is partnered with both companies was capable of doing the effort if that was the route I chose. While I chose the "get the parents to pony up" route, it occurred to me that what better judge than someone who knew both companies initimately. Matt, a clearly savvy guy, graciously agreed and that made me very happy.

That, folks is our judges panel for the shootout. Stay tuned for the next details. More coming.

The Recommendation

You know, I've been a reader of all the CRM sites that have been out there ranging from the venerable (Customerthink) to the upstart (InsideCRM - who I'll be writing a monthly column for starting in May). There are a good nearly dozen of them and I'll be straight. They all have value, they all have some good (and some bad) stuff on the sites but the reality is that the best of them is the most underserved and one of the least known in the U.S. That would be MyCustomer.com. MyCustomer.com has some of the best writing, the deepest content, the most engaging thinking that I've read. Its UK based and has a significant readership (I think that I've seen 80,000 as a number somewhere though I'm not sure of that). Its organized well, the content is forward thinking and cutting edge and still manages to be fair to the traditional forms that we deal with. They don't spare vendors their wrath - but only if they deserve some upside the head clubbing. They have strong opinions and state them. I mean, holy crap, they are just friggin' excellent!

I'm going to do an assessment of the CRM sites and their strengths and weaknesses (someone is welcome to do mine if they want.) in the near future - maybe even with a grade attached. I'll do it here and I'll do it as a list on my podcast, Experience on the Edge sometime in the coming weeks. But until then, make MyCustomer.com a daily stop on your reading route. They are the best out there - bar none.

The Request

Could you all put a link to this blog somewhere in your blogrolls please? I'm asking because I want to expand my reach and also I'm testing something. I would appreciate it a great deal. Really.

The Cool Thing

For those of you who don't know, the Kindle Reader is Amazon's e-reader that can wirelessly get books and subscriptions anytime and anywhere because its tied into Sprints EV-DO 3G network. It has been wildly popular - something akin to a small Wii-sellout - and is backordered for about 100 years or so - even though its really ugly. That said, there are 80,000 books that have been chosen out of Amazon's millions to be Kindle-ready e-books and I found out, by sheer accident, that CRM at the Speed of Light, 3rd Edition is one of them. Isn't that way cool (it is to me at least)? That's certainly a reason for you to go out, spend $399.00 plus shipping, wait about 5 years to get the backordered device and then order my book over the air for an additional $17.81 plus shipping, isn't it? Well, isn't it? Why aren't you saying anything........?

Bye.

Technorati : CRM at the Speed of Light, Center for American Progress, Microsoft, salesforce.com

The Weather Outside's Delightful: My Predictions Last Year Were Frightful

Okay, time for some truly sincere self-flagellation. I'm willing to impale myself on a stake by reviewing how utterly poorly I did on my forecast of a year ago - so here it is. I'm actually cutting and pasting it in without looking at it first so whatever I said and whatever I write about it isn't pre-scripted - so consider this I(trickling) stream of consciousness (barely) as I do it: (My new comments will be in red, though the green ratings are from last year and are my level of confidence which might be a new number this year: (Shattered)

Note that you'll see a number in color after the bullet and prior to the text. That's what I think my odds of being right are. (10) means I have total confidence that I'm going to be vindicated when this long trial is...I mean I'm going to be spot on when the year is done. (5) means, I'm right...no, I'm wrong...no, I'm right...no, I'm wrong...I'm.... (1) means I'm taking a really stupid shot here but ain't I brilliant if I turn out to be right? I'm the next Amazing Randy.

• (8) CRM 2.0 will become more than a buzzword in 2007 and the inexorable march toward the death of "traditional" a.k.a. "classic" - Coke, okay, CRM in 2008 will continue. This will be done through partnerships and alliances rather than home grown "pure" CRM products. However, there will be a marriage of the "social web" products and services with the CRM technology vendors partnering with the blog producers, wiki whackers and especially social networking softwares/services (or acquiring them) to provide a more useful collaborative experience for customers and partners/suppliers/vendors. The framework for CRM will finally change to the point that the old META definition of operational, collaborative, analytic will be put to rest once and for all. Watch for a new feature-function-business rules-technological architecture CRM 2.0 framework by 4th quarter of 2007. (OK. I was partially right about this. The social web products and services are now part of the CRM landscape but they were homegrown, not too much in the way of partners at all -as we saw with the Oracle OpenWorld and SAP announcements in December. Also, I would say that the framework, while dramatically advanced by the salesforce, Oracle, SAP, etc. platform push in 2007, is not done yet but technologically on its way. So, my head and heart were in the right place, but my feet and hands seemed to be where my hands and feet should have been. I'd call myself CLOSE ENOUGH)
  
• (5) The customer experience will be the defining characteristic of 2007 corporate strategy and the old CRM formulation of People-Process-Technology will be replaced by a focus around mapping customer interactions and providing the tools to enhance the customer's experience with the company. This is already a work in progress with companies like Disney Destinations changing their approach through changing their acronym from CRM - customer relationship management to CMR - customer managed relationships. However, this doesn't mean that PPT will be entirely replaced. It does mean it will be subsumed to new strategic formulations built around the customer experience and experience mapping and design will be a major component of contemporary corporate activity. That is presuming both the CRM world and the experience design worlds which currently co-exist, can get over their arrogant attitudes to each other. With CRM trying to stuff the experience design/mapping into a convenient CRM pothole and the experience design guys trying to poo-poo CRM entirely. Why don't both of you big babies get over it and just work together (C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now...) (My waffling was entirely justified by this because while more and more companies recognized the value of the customer experience in shaping their business success as 95% of the respondents did in a CScape 2007 survey, only 38% of them were even mapping out the customer touchpoints AND traditional CRM software continued to sell at a record pace ($7.4 billion or thereabouts in 2007 according to Gartner), AND there was no discernible change in the relationship between the traditional CRM advocates and the CEM advocates, proving once again, humans can be stubborn a-holes when they want to be, despite the glories of the species. I'd call myself EH, SORTA RIGHT, SORTA WRONG on this one)
  
• (4) The 6Cs of the new customer will become the new business model that drives the era from 2007 beyond (if it were 2008, I'd make that a (7))
• 1. Collaborative - communities
  2. Contextual - Context driven advertising
  3. Content-driven - user generated content
  4. Connected - mobile & social networking
  5. Conversational - death of the 4Ps in marketing
  6. Creative - Co-creation of value
• What this means is that user generated content, experiential marketing, experiences as commodities and business as an aggregator of experiences that include products and services - among other things - will be more than just experimental but will break into the mainstream of both mindshare and market share. The Proctor & Gambles on the big boy enterprise side and the Threadlesses on the little guy disruptive side will become much more common than they have been. Because the customer is looking for it and wants it that way. AND it makes good business sense. (I think about 2/3 right on this. It certainly has broken into the mainstream of mindshare but I think that most companies are still wrestling with how to actually do something with what they know they should be doing. The impact of social media has been profound and the subject almost beaten to death in the business publications, the political world, and on that old school network TV news. But most companies still haven't figured it out - though about half of them have begun to do blogging according to most studies. A step in the direction. I'd say for me, PRETTY DAMNED CLOSE works)
• (7) As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that open source CRM will be a disruptive element in any way or set any bars. However, I think there will be some impact on the enterprise from the free CRM programs that are entirely web-based. Companies like Zoho who put on social networking tools like ZohoWiki and CRM tools that are functionally pretty decent like ZohoCRM, or Zimbra who have a collaboration suite that can be utilized online or through the salesforce.com AppExchange, will start to make some headway into the small business market since their price is nearly free or free. The reason for their increased access will be the vacating of the SMB market that I think we'll see in 2007 by salesforce.com, NetSuite and several other CRM vendors as they move upmarket and start scaling up to the enterprise level deployments that will put them in league with SAP, Oracle and even Microsoft. I don't think this will be much more than a trickle in the coming year because they don't have the buzz yet nor do they have the functional chops that the companies vacating the space have, but they do have enough value to grab a foothold in the SMB space. (I was right in that this year was a trickle. Zoho is going to make its bones in 2008 with the release of its business edition, I suspect, but actually there are a number of on demand and even on premise CRM applications and services that are moving in the SMB space like InfusionSoft and EBSuite who provide solid CRM functionality for small businesses that began to have an impact in 2007. The one thing I didn't see coming was that SugarCRM as an open source platform got interesting with the release of their 5.0 version and promises to be more interesting when they incorporate the social media tools - a different subject, still not disruptive, but a new value for open source CRM. I'd say NEARLY PERFECTO on this one)
• (7) Companies like Rearden Commerce will begin to show up on the horizon as service oriented architectures begin to blossom more fully and become the foundation of the bulk of the enterprise IT architectures over the next three or four years. 2007 is the year that the companies that provide business/prosumer services attached to their offerings will begin to become a niche unto themselves. Rearden will continue to own the space - especially in light of their deal with American Express. Rearden Commerce itself will have a breakout year as its deal with American Express begins to generate both market share and buzz like crazy. Also, it doesn't hurt that Rearden has the first fully realized SOA on the IT side of the house. First to market is HUGE for Rearden and 2007 is their year. (Right about SOA becoming the ubiquitous technological architecture - devoutly to be desired and actively pursued as the IT department architecture of choice. But not as right about Rearden Commerce. Did fine, wasn't so huge. I'd say PRETTY STRATEGICALLY COOL; BUT TACTICALLY DORKY for me on this one)

• (9) Social networking and other forms of 2.0 driven applications and services will be integrated with CRM and enterprise applications. But not as I originally thought - through building or acquiring the companies that make the assets. Instead we'll see partnerships and OEM relationships etc. between the social networking companies and particularly, the on demand vendors to integrate the functionality of social networking and user collaboration, especially with CRM vendors. The on demand vendors like salesforce.com & NetSuite in particular are best positioned to do this but I also see SAP being savvy enough to do this kind of collaboration, though if any one company would build their own, it would be SAP. This may portend something of a revival for Lotus Notes as a collaboration platform and toolset. Though maybe not. That's going to be up to IBM - who have good people at the Lotus helm, but have been terrible about their marketing and positioning of Notes. We all might be surprised - and not unhappily. (I must have done this on about an hour of sleep since this is awfully close to being the same entry as the first one. The only difference is that I said SAP might build their own and Lotus might surprise. Right, and not right, not wrong with that. What makes this entry all the more remarkable is that I gave the top entry an 8 and this one a 9! Wow. That shows you the value of forecasting. See CLOSE ENOUGH GIVEN THAT I WAS ASLEEP with the added two adjectival comments on SAP and Lotus as my result here)

• (2) Web 2.0 will finally get another name though 2.0 will remain the buzzword/cliche that drives us all to distraction when it comes to naming new technologies, applications, platform and ANYTHING that smacks of peer to peer. How about "the Social Web?" This works, n'est ce pas? After all, they have a name for Web 3.0 already - The Semantic Web - so why not 2.0? Come ON, papi. (Sadly, this one fully justified my 2 (dot oh). I was TOTALLY WRONG as Web 2.0 the Term 2.0 Continues 2.0 to Drive 2.0 Us 2.0 to Distraction 2.0)

• (7) I said this up top, so look to there for some of the rationale, but mobile CRM will become something to be reckoned with in 2007 with the Blackberry platform leading the way - especially as RIM continues to roll out successful Pearl-looking super-stylish phones that have their already heavy-duty and secure push functionality. Already significant numbers of vendors are developing mobile CRM applications/services and almost all are doing it for at least the Blackberry and then the Treo. (Pretty much CORRECTIMUNDO on this one with the caveat that I didn't see that the coming iPhone would be looked at as a business phone. To wit, SAP produces CRM for the Blackberry and the iPhone)

• (9) CRM and social customer related blogs, podcasts, and vlogs will continue to proliferate in 2007 in all kinds of interesting and unique ways that we have yet to "aha" about. This, despite Gartner's prediction that the blogosphere will level at 100,000,000. That's kind of a funny one actually. Because, what does it really matter whether it levels at 100,000,000 or 150,000,000 or 200,000,000? You or anyone you know gonna read most of them? Its a helluva lot of blogs no matter how you cut it and it also indicates the level of influence by sheer weight (not necessarily quality or originality) that the blogs carry. Speaking of which, there is a guy named Jesus Hoyos who runs a blog called "CRM En LatinoAmerica" that has a great listing of current CRM related blogs. Check it out here. This is the best compilation of CRM related blogs I've seen. The site is in Spanish and English but this is a universal set of links. (This one was easy. I was TOTALLY RIGHT. Interestingly, since last year, I've met Jesus Hoyos and he is amazing AND through BPT Partners, we are partnered with his organization Customers Forever - a Latin American consortium of CRM related companies, institutions and individuals)

• (25) I'm not going to predict "consolidation in the industry" since that's a cliche and consolidation in all industries is going to always go on. To predict "continued consolidation" is to predict "the sun will come up - tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar, that tomorrow, there'll be sun..." So screw it. I rank THAT one 25 on a scale of 10. (What can I say? Oracle alone makes this right every year. This year look at Cognos and Business Objects. Oh, that's right, you can't. They're IBM and SAP now, I forgot. This one is ALWAYS TOTALLY RIGHT)

So, all in all, not too shabby I don't think. I did better than I thought when I began cutting and pasting. So ruminate, comment, do your thing on this. Disagree and pound me into dust. Agree and make me feel like buttered cinnamon raisin toast or....something.

Next up: Number 3 of 4: The Analysts Forecast and I Either Agree or Mock Mercilessly.

Technorati : CRM, Forecast 2008, Web 2.0, customer relationship management, social media

Note that you'll see a number in color after the bullet and prior to the text. That's what I think my odds of being right are. (10) means I have total confidence that I'm going to be vindicated when this long trial is...I mean I'm going to be spot on when the year is done. (5) means, I'm right...no, I'm wrong...no, I'm right...no, I'm wrong...I'm.... (1) means I'm taking a really stupid shot here but ain't I brilliant if I turn out to be right? I'm the next Amazing Randy.

• (8) CRM 2.0 will become more than a buzzword in 2007 and the inexorable march toward the death of "traditional" a.k.a. "classic" - Coke, okay, CRM in 2008 will continue. This will be done through partnerships and alliances rather than home grown "pure" CRM products. However, there will be a marriage of the "social web" products and services with the CRM technology vendors partnering with the blog producers, wiki whackers and especially social networking softwares/services (or acquiring them) to provide a more useful collaborative experience for customers and partners/suppliers/vendors. The framework for CRM will finally change to the point that the old META definition of operational, collaborative, analytic will be put to rest once and for all. Watch for a new feature-function-business rules-technological architecture CRM 2.0 framework by 4th quarter of 2007. (OK. I was partially right about this. The social web products and services are now part of the CRM landscape but they were homegrown, not too much in the way of partners at all -as we saw with the Oracle OpenWorld and SAP announcements in December. Also, I would say that the framework, while dramatically advanced by the salesforce, Oracle, SAP, etc. platform push in 2007, is not done yet but technologically on its way. So, my head and heart were in the right place, but my feet and hands seemed to be where my hands and feet should have been. I'd call myself CLOSE ENOUGH)
  
• (5) The customer experience will be the defining characteristic of 2007 corporate strategy and the old CRM formulation of People-Process-Technology will be replaced by a focus around mapping customer interactions and providing the tools to enhance the customer's experience with the company. This is already a work in progress with companies like Disney Destinations changing their approach through changing their acronym from CRM - customer relationship management to CMR - customer managed relationships. However, this doesn't mean that PPT will be entirely replaced. It does mean it will be subsumed to new strategic formulations built around the customer experience and experience mapping and design will be a major component of contemporary corporate activity. That is presuming both the CRM world and the experience design worlds which currently co-exist, can get over their arrogant attitudes to each other. With CRM trying to stuff the experience design/mapping into a convenient CRM pothole and the experience design guys trying to poo-poo CRM entirely. Why don't both of you big babies get over it and just work together (C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now...) (My waffling was entirely justified by this because while more and more companies recognized the value of the customer experience in shaping their business success as 95% of the respondents did in a CScape 2007 survey, only 38% of them were even mapping out the customer touchpoints AND traditional CRM software continued to sell at a record pace ($7.4 billion or thereabouts in 2007 according to Gartner), AND there was no discernible change in the relationship between the traditional CRM advocates and the CEM advocates, proving once again, humans can be stubborn a-holes when they want to be, despite the glories of the species. I'd call myself EH, SORTA RIGHT, SORTA WRONG on this one)
  
• (4) The 6Cs of the new customer will become the new business model that drives the era from 2007 beyond (if it were 2008, I'd make that a (7))
• 1. Collaborative - communities
  2. Contextual - Context driven advertising
  3. Content-driven - user generated content
  4. Connected - mobile & social networking
  5. Conversational - death of the 4Ps in marketing
  6. Creative - Co-creation of value
• What this means is that user generated content, experiential marketing, experiences as commodities and business as an aggregator of experiences that include products and services - among other things - will be more than just experimental but will break into the mainstream of both mindshare and market share. The Proctor & Gambles on the big boy enterprise side and the Threadlesses on the little guy disruptive side will become much more common than they have been. Because the customer is looking for it and wants it that way. AND it makes good business sense. (I think about 2/3 right on this. It certainly has broken into the mainstream of mindshare but I think that most companies are still wrestling with how to actually do something with what they know they should be doing. The impact of social media has been profound and the subject almost beaten to death in the business publications, the political world, and on that old school network TV news. But most companies still haven't figured it out - though about half of them have begun to do blogging according to most studies. A step in the direction. I'd say for me, PRETTY DAMNED CLOSE works)
• (7) As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that open source CRM will be a disruptive element in any way or set any bars. However, I think there will be some impact on the enterprise from the free CRM programs that are entirely web-based. Companies like Zoho who put on social networking tools like ZohoWiki and CRM tools that are functionally pretty decent like ZohoCRM, or Zimbra who have a collaboration suite that can be utilized online or through the salesforce.com AppExchange, will start to make some headway into the small business market since their price is nearly free or free. The reason for their increased access will be the vacating of the SMB market that I think we'll see in 2007 by salesforce.com, NetSuite and several other CRM vendors as they move upmarket and start scaling up to the enterprise level deployments that will put them in league with SAP, Oracle and even Microsoft. I don't think this will be much more than a trickle in the coming year because they don't have the buzz yet nor do they have the functional chops that the companies vacating the space have, but they do have enough value to grab a foothold in the SMB space. (I was right in that this year was a trickle. Zoho is going to make its bones in 2008 with the release of its business edition, I suspect, but actually there are a number of on demand and even on premise CRM applications and services that are moving in the SMB space like InfusionSoft and EBSuite who provide solid CRM functionality for small businesses that began to have an impact in 2007. The one thing I didn't see coming was that SugarCRM as an open source platform got interesting with the release of their 5.0 version and promises to be more interesting when they incorporate the social media tools - a different subject, still not disruptive, but a new value for open source CRM. I'd say NEARLY PERFECTO on this one)
• (7) Companies like Rearden Commerce will begin to show up on the horizon as service oriented architectures begin to blossom more fully and become the foundation of the bulk of the enterprise IT architectures over the next three or four years. 2007 is the year that the companies that provide business/prosumer services attached to their offerings will begin to become a niche unto themselves. Rearden will continue to own the space - especially in light of their deal with American Express. Rearden Commerce itself will have a breakout year as its deal with American Express begins to generate both market share and buzz like crazy. Also, it doesn't hurt that Rearden has the first fully realized SOA on the IT side of the house. First to market is HUGE for Rearden and 2007 is their year. (Right about SOA becoming the ubiquitous technological architecture - devoutly to be desired and actively pursued as the IT department architecture of choice. But not as right about Rearden Commerce. Did fine, wasn't so huge. I'd say PRETTY STRATEGICALLY COOL; BUT TACTICALLY DORKY for me on this one)

• (9) Social networking and other forms of 2.0 driven applications and services will be integrated with CRM and enterprise applications. But not as I originally thought - through building or acquiring the companies that make the assets. Instead we'll see partnerships and OEM relationships etc. between the social networking companies and particularly, the on demand vendors to integrate the functionality of social networking and user collaboration, especially with CRM vendors. The on demand vendors like salesforce.com & NetSuite in particular are best positioned to do this but I also see SAP being savvy enough to do this kind of collaboration, though if any one company would build their own, it would be SAP. This may portend something of a revival for Lotus Notes as a collaboration platform and toolset. Though maybe not. That's going to be up to IBM - who have good people at the Lotus helm, but have been terrible about their marketing and positioning of Notes. We all might be surprised - and not unhappily. (I must have done this on about an hour of sleep since this is awfully close to being the same entry as the first one. The only difference is that I said SAP might build their own and Lotus might surprise. Right, and not right, not wrong with that. What makes this entry all the more remarkable is that I gave the top entry an 8 and this one a 9! Wow. That shows you the value of forecasting. See CLOSE ENOUGH GIVEN THAT I WAS ASLEEP with the added two adjectival comments on SAP and Lotus as my result here)

• (2) Web 2.0 will finally get another name though 2.0 will remain the buzzword/cliche that drives us all to distraction when it comes to naming new technologies, applications, platform and ANYTHING that smacks of peer to peer. How about "the Social Web?" This works, n'est ce pas? After all, they have a name for Web 3.0 already - The Semantic Web - so why not 2.0? Come ON, papi. (Sadly, this one fully justified my 2 (dot oh). I was TOTALLY WRONG as Web 2.0 the Term 2.0 Continues 2.0 to Drive 2.0 Us 2.0 to Distraction 2.0)

• (7) I said this up top, so look to there for some of the rationale, but mobile CRM will become something to be reckoned with in 2007 with the Blackberry platform leading the way - especially as RIM continues to roll out successful Pearl-looking super-stylish phones that have their already heavy-duty and secure push functionality. Already significant numbers of vendors are developing mobile CRM applications/services and almost all are doing it for at least the Blackberry and then the Treo. (Pretty much CORRECTIMUNDO on this one with the caveat that I didn't see that the coming iPhone would be looked at as a business phone. To wit, SAP produces CRM for the Blackberry and the iPhone)

• (9) CRM and social customer related blogs, podcasts, and vlogs will continue to proliferate in 2007 in all kinds of interesting and unique ways that we have yet to "aha" about. This, despite Gartner's prediction that the blogosphere will level at 100,000,000. That's kind of a funny one actually. Because, what does it really matter whether it levels at 100,000,000 or 150,000,000 or 200,000,000? You or anyone you know gonna read most of them? Its a helluva lot of blogs no matter how you cut it and it also indicates the level of influence by sheer weight (not necessarily quality or originality) that the blogs carry. Speaking of which, there is a guy named Jesus Hoyos who runs a blog called "CRM En LatinoAmerica" that has a great listing of current CRM related blogs. Check it out here. This is the best compilation of CRM related blogs I've seen. The site is in Spanish and English but this is a universal set of links. (This one was easy. I was TOTALLY RIGHT. Interestingly, since last year, I've met Jesus Hoyos and he is amazing AND through BPT Partners, we are partnered with his organization Customers Forever - a Latin American consortium of CRM related companies, institutions and individuals)

• (25) I'm not going to predict "consolidation in the industry" since that's a cliche and consolidation in all industries is going to always go on. To predict "continued consolidation" is to predict "the sun will come up - tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar, that tomorrow, there'll be sun..." So screw it. I rank THAT one 25 on a scale of 10. (What can I say? Oracle alone makes this right every year. This year look at Cognos and Business Objects. Oh, that's right, you can't. They're IBM and SAP now, I forgot. This one is ALWAYS TOTALLY RIGHT)

So, all in all, not too shabby I don't think. I did better than I thought when I began cutting and pasting. So ruminate, comment, do your thing on this. Disagree and pound me into dust. Agree and make me feel like buttered cinnamon raisin toast or....something.

Next up: Number 3 of 4: The Analysts Forecast and I Either Agree or Mock Mercilessly.

The iPhone CRM Bakeoff: The Cookies are Good, But They Take a Long Time To Bake

I've got some preliminaries on the CRM iPhone bakeoff. For those of you with ADD or who really haven't paid that much attention for many a good reason I can even think of, a few weeks ago, I announced a "bakeoff" for iPhone CRM apps which for some reason proliferated quickly. At the time, I said I would review NetSuite, saleforce.com, Etelos, HEAP, and EBSuite. I decided in the course of it to not review salesforce.com because, to be fair, while they told me (and I believe them), that salesforce works on the iPhone, they, unlike the other four, didn't have version they specifically developed for the iPhone, so to review it in this bakeoff wouldn't be fair to the other entries. So I didn't.

That said, I will take a look at it but not in the context of the bakeoff.

Okay, here's the preliminary findings which I presume are no particular surprise. I've looked at NetSuite and Etelos so far so I'm going to give you the findings for them. Keep in mind, I'm not commenting on their general functionality here. I'm commenting on how well their iPhone specific versions worked - with the iPhone.

I have first tell you, both of them, and I suspect this will carry over with HEAP and EBSuite, are BEARS when EDGE is in play. Ain't their fault, its Apples and AT&T for hooking up with EDGE compatibility. It is PAINFULLY slow to use, even with the small amount of disturbingly limited functionality that Etelos has. With Wi-Fi working, though, its another ballgame. I wouldn't say its lightning fast but it works effectively and, most important, you aren't grinding your teeth or brushing them thoroughly while waiting for a screen to either refresh or come up. So, with the assumption that these things just ain't worth the agony with EDGE, but Wi-Fi advils away the pain, the bakeoff goes on.

I guess not surprisingly (though why I expected something different, I don't know) the functionality in both NetSuite and Etelos carries into their iPhone versions. Etelos functionality is as bad with the iPhone as it is with their CRM for Google app, and makes some strange choices for a CRM application (for Google - or anyone for that matter) like setting up roles for project manager and developer for a CRM (not a PLM) application. On the other hand, NetSuite is an end to end enterprise application that can compete with the on-premise giants for the completeness of its functionality for CRM and ERP and order management and....you get the picture.

So I was pleasantly surprised in the not-particularly-planned head to head that NetSuite was far less buggy than Etelos. Etelos crashed on me several times - just threw me out of Safari and I had to reload. NetSuite somehow got around this was was stable

For example, with Etelos, I got a message four separate times that I had too many screens open when I had one open beyond the one I was trying to open. This seemed somewhat random because I didn't get it other times in the exact same circumstance.

Never had that problem with NetSuite.

Aside from the EDGE problem which made NetSuite unusable with the iPhone, NetSuite's only problem is that its screens are so functionally rich that limiting the view to a 3.5" screen creates some navigation issues that are uncomfortable, if not insoluble. I used the iPhone "pinch" to expand screens far more frequently than I would have liked.

Both apps of course suffered from that other iPhone limitation, lack of security. Not much you can do when you can't guarantee the security of the data you are staring at when the phone itself is the limitation.

Frankly, using the iPhone for CRM on EDGE is probably not worth it unless the circumstances are dire - or soemthing akin to disastrous. Much as I love my iPhone and think its the coolest gadget I've ever owned and can actually use it for my mini-me business empire, you're far better off using the Blackberry CRM applications that are coded for the Blackberry itself. They are fast even on EDGE and even do the same things that - meaning that they are supposed to.

If you have LOTS of WiFi access, then NetSuite on the iPhone is clearly the way to go because its...well...NetSuite and its one of the best on demand applications on the market. Etelos just sucks whether its web-based or iPhone based. The child doesn't get too far from the mother here. They have a long way to go to prove that they should even be calling what they provide CRM - though, of course, they can if they want. But its up to you, whether you believe them or not.

Next up: EBSuite and HEAP for the iPhone. Will they transcend EDGE or fall off it?

Technorati : CRM, EBSuite, Etelos, HEAP, NetSuite, iPhone

It works

I'm writing this on my iphone using typepads new iphone mobile app. Its at i.typepad.com.