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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

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

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

Personal Note

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

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

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

Seeing 2009 in the Rear...view Mirror

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

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

Yet Another CRM at the Speed of Light Chapter Excerpt: Chapter 3 - Definitions Galore, not related to the Bond Girl of the Same Last Name

Once again, another of the "I'm obsessed with the book" variety: a chapter excerpt from Chapter 3 which is titled "CRM, CMR, VRM or...Who Cares?

We'll do the usual - start with the Wordle tag cloud - they are depressingly similar for the most mentioned words - not unexpected though - CRM and Customer, but always unique when it comes to the next level or two down - e.g. social, VRM, CRM 2.0 etc.

Before I do that, I'm going to ask something again. I have to tell you that I'm a little disappointed in the lack of comments I'm getting after requesting feedback via comment or email. I have at least several hundred to an occasion four figure lurkers per day. I know you have cartographic vocal cords, but they aren't being exercised here. Don't take this as an admonishment, but it does make me a little sad. I'm really looking for some feedback. I don't mind criticism or suggestions. Maybe I'm just a jerk for doing this. Tell me if I am. I'm a New Yorker, I'm tough. I can take it. While I can't do much (though since these are pre-edited, I can do some) about the chapters I'm publishing, suggestions on improvement or something that I might have omitted inadvertently would be helpful. This is pretty daunting stuff.

How about a discussion around a concept that might provide further insight? Or even just "attaboy Greenie" wouldn't be out of line either. . Anything to indicate that there's actually interest in the subject would be nice. I know you're all busy - this is an industry that seems to be thriving on the economic downturn. But at the same time, I have a few really good commenters like Paul Sweeney, Glenn Ross, and Jesus Hoyos and then some occasional comments and then radio silence. We're not submerging so its okay to say something. I would truly appreciate it. Really. I'm working very hard on this book, almost literally 24X7, turning away income to make it happen and its probably the most difficult one I ever wrote because the subject matter of CRM 2.0 is far bigger and very differently focused than traditional CRM - so the book is written in a different way and different style. Makes me a little nervous, in fact, because its nothing like the first three editions. I've had to be obsessed with it because of the way that my publisher chooses to receive manuscripts - not the same as it was - and as a result - my deadlines are clinically insane. In the spirit of the social customer, I've made this a community effort and tried to draw in lots of people. But the one thing I seem to be failing at is getting you guys to comment. Some help please?

Okay, that's off my chest. Here's the Wordle.net Chapter 3 diagram and then....TA DA! The excerpt.

(1)From CRM to CMR?

In 2006, Seth Godin reported on his blog that Disney Destinations, the travel and vacation arm of Disney, had changed their acronym from CRM to CMR - from customer relationship management to customer-managed relationships. I'll leave it to you to figure out which was which. Here's a bit of the blog entry "CRM is Dead":

"It might be more than just semantics. Disney Destinations Marketing has a new department:

"Customer Managed Relationships

"Here's the quote from them that Tim shared with me, "CMR is our version of CRM - just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them."

Disney Destinations characterized this as "just a slight nuance." As much as I love Mickey and Goofy - though I'm NOT attracted to Minnie at all - I beg to differ with Disney here. This was by no means trivial; it was a big deal, because it was the reflection of the sea change going on and recognition that the customer was now looking for something quite different than they had in the past several years.

Why would I diss Donald Duck, you might ask? How could I call this more than a slight nuance?

Because in fact, this is a major company that is showing some foresight in the knowledge that the business ecosystem has the customer at its hub. And they aren't the only ones.

In August 2007, George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research put is as succinctly as one can:

"It's now a two-way conversation. Listen, respond and talk intelligently. Stop dictating to customers. It's your customers, not you, who have the power."

None of these are trivial nor and all of them have had real world impact or been driven by real world actions that forced the companies to think about how to handle themselves in this new business environment.

Remember back in Chapter 1, I mentioned Beth Comstock, President of NBC Interactive Media? Why she agrees with George Colony was made very clear in a Washington Post are article on October 21, 2006:

"NBC Universal announced sweeping cuts to its television operations yesterday, demonstrating just how far a once-unrivaled network must now go to stay competitive with YouTube, social networks, video games and other upstart media."

NBC wasn't doing this out of their love for customers or an attempt to pander to youth particularly. They were slammed with the changing business environment and had come face to face with the forces that were driving that change and it damaged them.

Their losses were material. They made $750 million in budget cuts and staff cuts of 750 directly attributable to "YouTube, social networks, video games and other upstart media."

This social change is not a joke, nor is it a trivial matter for any institution - and business is going to be particularly impacted by it.

What Disney Destinations was doing was making decisions to provide their customers and those just interested in testing their services the means to control their own experience with Disney Destinations. The idea was simple. Provide online tools such as a trip planner so that a family can plan its trip to a Disney property or through a Disney agency down to the details. They can identify the locations, length of stay, prices, extras, and means of travel. All in their time, all under their aegis. This would enhance the experience the customers had with Disney, making travel planning simple and not stressful - which as you know is a HUGE issue in travel planning. You know it, because you know how stressed that you get.

But this was only a first step and a harbinger of things to come less than a year later. Customers managing their own relationships were a step in the personalization of the customer's experience with a company. But personalization of the experience was still insufficient, however important it can be. It is only a first step in what is now….

(1)CRM 2.0

CRM 2.0. The reason this book is even being written. I have to admit, I'm a bit concerned that you might not listen to what I have to say. But that's at your own risk and come what may, this is the time for your adoption of these new strategies. If you can acknowledge that the customers are running the show, this would be a big first step. The sooner you do this, the sooner you can execute an appropriate CRM 2.0 program and strategy that will engage those very empowered customers. What I'll do here is begin by providing you with the first definition of CRM 2.0 largely shaped by the CRM community on a wiki that has around 300 participants. The purpose of the wiki is to come up with a definition of CRM 2.0 that is acceptable to the overall industry and its practitioners so that the self-aggrandizing definitions of CRM 1.0 will be a thing of the past - and we can commonly agree on something. A standard if you will. Here it the 1.0 definition of CRM 2.0.

"CRM 2.0 is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It's the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

You'll note there is a difference between the definition of CRM 1.0 and CRM 2.0 in this chapter. That difference actually implies an entirely different set of strategies, models, technology use and process conception.

(2)Differences Between Traditional CRM and CRM 2.0

The underlying principle for CRM 2.0's success is very different than its predecessor.

As I've already established, traditional CRM is based on an internal operational approach to manage customer relationships effectively. But CRM 2.0 is based on the ability of a company to meet the personal agendas of their customers while at the same time meeting the objectives of their own business plan. It's aimed rather at customer engagement than customer management.

In fact, my contention, in that strange dialect I call Greenbergese, is that the CRM technologies that we have been used to, such as sales, marketing and support applications, even the on-demand versions of those, are not the technical capital of the 21st century's "era of the social customer." In fact, because the customer is not just becoming the central repository for value, but wants to actively participate in value creation with business, it is the consumer technologies and those service offerings adopted as platforms for individually meaningful "life choices" that are where CRM technology needs to be. This doesn't mean that I'm saying goodbye to Siebel, Sage, Oracle, SAP or any of the on-demand vendors. However, their technologies will have to evolve and not just associate with some reorganized contemporary set of business processes. They will have to integrate the features of newer technologies that faciliate market conversations, social networking, user communities and the like - in other words, that exist to transform and operate businesses not just as process-pushing producers but as aggregators for and partners in the customer value chain (more on that below). That will probably come later than sooner - we may be a few years away from that. I don't know yet. But there are some things that are both happening now and need to happen now. Even though the on-demand "software as a service" (SaaS) paradigm is fairly new, it needs to begin moving now to a new paradigm of "platform as a service" (PaaS). So that when you as a customer buy a laptop or a cellphone for example, whatever your specific purposes, you are choosing a piece that will fit into the platform that you are going to use or are using for the services and associated goods you need to conduct your life - which among other things, consists of business services - meaning that there are businesses associated with them.

The differences are deep, though all the differences are permeated with either the principles or practices of managing customers or involving them in the activities of the company in a mutually beneficial way. Take a look at Table 3-1. This table is the differences as defined by a community of CRM professionals - some 300 of them - who are congregated around a wiki that's spending time constantly refining what CRM 2.0 is. If you want to participate, please feel free to go to crm20.pbwiki.com and jump right in. The password is CRM20.

Spend some time investigating here because the rest of the book is going to be spent in explaining all the things that you are reading on this table - with the experts who are involved chiming in to help.

CRM 1.0 Features/Functions	CRM 2.0 Features/Functions
Customer facing features - sales, marketing & support. Still isolated from back office, supply chain	Fully integrated into an enterprise value chain that includes the customer as part of it
Tools are associated with automating functions	Integrates social media tools into apps/services: blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking tools, user communities
	Automate interaction history for lead nurturing and relationship building
	Utilize knowledge in context to create meaningful conversations
Models customer processes from the company point of view	Models company processes from the customer point of view
	Recognizes that the customer relationship encompasses information-seeking and information-contributing behavior
Resided in a customer-focused corporate business ecosystem	Resides in a customer ecosystem
Utilitarian, functional, operational	All those plus style and design matter
Marketing focused on processes that sent improved, targeted, highly specific corporate messages to customer	Marketing is front line for creating conversation with customer - engaging customer in activity and discussion - observing and re-directing conversations among customers
Business produces products & creates services for customer	Business is an aggregator of experiences, products, services, tools and knowledge for the customer
Intellectual Property protected with all legal might available	Intellectual property created and owned together with the customer, partner, supplier, problem solver
Business focus on products and services that satisfy customers	Business focus on environments & experiences that engage customer
Tactical and operational	Strategic
Customer strategy is part of corporate strategy	Customer strategy IS corporate strategy
Innovation from the designated	Innovation from both internal and external sources
Focus on Company Customer Relationship	Focus on all iterations of the relationships (among company, partner(s), customer(s)) and specifically on identifying, engaging and enabling the "influential" nodes
Company manages the relationship with the customer	The customer collaborates with the company
Technology focused around operational aspects of sales, marketing, support	Technology focused on both the operational and the social/collaborative and integrates the customer into the entire enterprise value chain
Relationship between the company and the customer was seen as enterprise managing customer - parent to child to a large extent	Relationship between the company and the customer must be peer to peer (C2P or P2C so to speak) and yet the company must still be an enterprise in all other aspects.
Insights and effectiveness were optimally achieved by the single view of the customer (data) across all channels by those who needed to know. Based on "complete" customer record and data integration Insights are a considerably more dynamic issue and are based on 1. customer data with single view being important; 2. customer profiles and the social characteristics associated with them 3. customer participation in the activity acquisition of those insights	Insights and effectiveness were optimally achieved by the single view of the customer (data) across all channels by those who needed to know. Based on "complete" customer record and data integration. Insights are a considerably more dynamic issue and are based on 1. customer data with single view being important; 2. customer profiles and the social characteristics associated with them 3. customer participation in the activity acquisition of those insights

Table 1: Differences between CRM 1.0 and CRM 2.0 (source: CRM 2.0 Wiki)

(1)CRM 2.0 Technology: Features, Functions, Characteristics

The differences don't stop there. Even the technology and the approaches to the technology are different.

Traditional CRM technologies have always been defined by features and functions. What are the technology tools and available automation that the vendors provide that can make the operations of a company more effective when it comes to managing the customers' interactions with the company - or, as CRM got increasingly sophisticated, optimizing the customers' experiences with the company.

For example, here's how the data sheet reads for Maximizer CRM 10.0 Sales Force Automation:

• Maximizer CRM 10 for Sales
• Features
• Account and contact management
• Time management
• Task management and automation
• Sales force automation
• Sales forecasting
• Marketing automation
• Email marketing
• Customer service management
• Microsoft Office integration
• Outlook & Exchange synchronization
• Accounting integration
• Business Intelligence
• Workflow automation
• Partner relationship management
• eBusiness
• Access options: Windows desktop,
• Web, mobile devices, remote
• Synchronization

Entirely straight forward listing of what is generally included into the CRM 10 for Sales application - one, which incidentally, is well suited for small and the low end of medium businesses. These features are also representative of those offered by most small and medium business (SMB) -focused CRM suites.

But Maximizer CRM 10 for Sales is not a CRM 2.0 application by any stretch of the imagination. The closest "feature" that fits a CRM 2.0 technology profile is mobile device access. The rest is the historical and traditional CRM that we know and….whatever we think of it.

However, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, "there's nothing wrong with that."

But it isn't enough when it comes to customers whose trust lies in their peers and the personal interactions with those peers are the bonds that strengthen the trust.

(2)The 360° View Isn't Enough

But why isn't the Holy Grail of traditional CRM, the 360° view of the customer with a single customer record enough to monitor the interactions and provide the insights?

After all, if you could achieve that complete customer record and make it available consistently across departments, you had what you needed, right?

You'd think so if you heard these quotes:

"When running a multichannel retail operation, the most valuable resource is having a single view of leads, prospects and customers across different channels." (DM News, March 2007)

"Nationwide Gains a "360-Degree" View of the Customer to Advance Its "On Your Side" Promise" (Tech Republic White Paper)

"You and everyone else in your organization want to know everything possible about your customers. You want a single view of the customer that everyone across the enterprise can use. There's nothing new about this. Businesses have been trying to get a single view of their customers and prospects for years." (Informatica marketing collateral)

In fact, if you Google (in quotes) "single view of the customer" there are 107,000 references to that exact phrase.

Yet, while certainly valuable (and we'll discuss more on it in Chapter 18 on Customer Data Integration), it is DATA. That is d-a-t-a. That means NOT insight, NOT behavior, NOT a substitute for judgment, NOT a way to engage customer. It is a state devoutly to be wished when the ecosystem is owned by the company, not the customer, because when the ecosystem is owned by the customer, the customer is carrying on important parts of the business conversation well beyond the company's walls and out of the company's immediate earshot. Certainly the 360° view is valuable because it can provide you with a customer's transaction histories and the interactions with the different departments that he or she has had which gives you some knowledge to begin to develop an increased understanding of your customer. But this former Holy Grail is now just a pre-requisite for customer insight, not a state of grace to be achieved.

(3)Doing More to Get Their ATTENTION!

Why is so much knowledge needed and why a great depth of insight? Why not just basic patterns of activity or a reasonable but not deep knowledge of the customer's other interests?

Because, my future and current colleagues and friends, readers and buds, the competition for that customer has left the halls of similar product offerings from competitive companies. Your competition is no longer your Coca Cola v. Pepsico. Its Coca Cola v. Pepsico and every single message that a single customer gets in a single day. You aren't competing for their purchase at this stage. Because of the incredible proliferation of information, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from multiple channels, you are competing for the attention of the customer. While we're going to cover that in a later chapter (Chapter 16 on the attention economy), the level of personal knowledge and insight you need for a customer is of a magnitude that is affected by the 3000 messages that each customer gets each day - a lot of noise that they may not answer, but they also don't differentiate often between you and that noise. Again, more later.

Before we take this to the deepest part of centerfield, let's look at what it is that's getting pitched. There is a combination of components that are critical for deep insight that are not the same components you might be used to - or, most of them aren't.

1. Data - This includes the information that the company can gather through the activities of the customer involving the company. That means purchase histories, returns, visits to ecommerce or website and time spent on different pages; marketing response to campaigns and customer service inquiries and problems, among many others.
2. Profiles - This is the "personal" information that is now so important in gaining customer insights into how a customer wants to interact with the company. This could be their movie and literary interests, their hobbies, their "style" likes and dislikes, their unstructured text comments in a community or social network that is either owned by you or deals with your company's interests e.g. Yelp for a restaurant or a geographically based retailer. With the growing interest in micro segmentation (see Chapter 16 on the Public Sector) - the deep dive into the customer's lives (hopefully, without being intrusive) to understand their style and selection choices for predicting future sometimes apparently unrelated behaviors, profiles become essential.
3. Customer Participation - This is their active involvement in supporting your development of insight into their interests including interactions through mapping experiences and customer's individual interests in fostering the relationship between the company and the customer. It's the difference between marketing presuming they know what the customer is thinking (which, take my word and check out Chapter 13 on Sales and Marketing, they almost always do) and actually asking the customer what they're thinking and expecting. Customer mapping (see Chapter 21) is one method of finding that out.

Okay, components, understood. What's the rest?

Technorati : CRM, CRM 2.0, VRM

Project VRM Meeting LIVE on UStream

Hey everyone, this is a DO IT NOW!! Blog posting. The Project VRM meeting is being streamed live from U-Stream. This is an important trend that represents the customer side of the CRM 2.0 equation. CRM 2.0 is the response to what VRM represents. It is a project run at Harvard and it is something I'm an ardent student and supporter of. Lots to go on this. Here's the stream.

If you prefer it on the site, click here on this link.

WATCH IT!! REALLY!

Technorati : CRM 2.0, VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, social media

A Company Like Me, Part 2: Neighborhood America

In February 2007, Senior Forrester Social Computing analyst Jeremiah Owyang published a list of white label social networking platforms that I have to say was the most extensive I've seen by a long shot. He published them without his comments - in fact, with only a brief marketing "one floor up or down of the elevator" pitch. Jeremiah is an astute analyst (I've read his stuff) and active participant in the social communications revolution (he is a Twitter friend, though we've never communicated any other way) and I respect him highly for his highly enlightening material, even though he claims to be a rookie. He also has one of the more influential blogs out there. Its called Web Strategist and is well worth reading and worth looking at for the links that he provides - he's like a human Mashable in scope.

Well, among those listed is Neighborhood America. As you might have noted in Part 1 of a Company Like Me, I like these guys a lot. But I'm going to explain because 1. it goes to the heart of the idea 2. I have a big mouth and am compelled to explain and 3. it will help me clarify stuff for the 4th Edition of CRM at the Speed of Light - thus doing double duty.

Jeremiah Owyang's one floor note is one that he obviously got from their website or they gave him from their website. It goes:

"The Trusted Leader in Social Networks for the Enterprise"

That may or may not be true - meaning I have no empirical verification except that I know their clients DO trust them since I've spoken to many of them. But that's not the subject nor is it suficient to understand why this company is as close to a "Company Like Me" (the acronym for the entry is gonna be CLM. Tough luck if you don't like it. Saves my gnarled joints from digital collapse) as I know.

First, I have to qualify something here. It is (need to stretch this fully for emphasis' sake) "A Company Like ME" NOT "A Company Like Everyone" In other words, the criteria I have both conscious and unconscious - I'm sure some is id-driven, some ego-driven and some entirely libidinous (heh. heh.) - are not necessarily the criteria you have for a CLM. What we are looking at here is what the characteristics need to be for me to FEEL that this company has been "humanized" - not just that I've had the means to craft personalized experiences. This is a holistic thing.

You know the feeling. I've asked thousands of people in classes and at speeches to tell me about a company that they just LOVE. Now love doesn't have a scale of 1-5. It's an intense feeling that you can identify with ease - as is like a lot, like somewhat, don't care either way or the negative versions of those. They are emotional states. Yet, why would you want to attach them to a company? A place that you are doing some business with - that you purchase from?

Ordinarly, you wouldn't. Many of your purchases are strictly utilitarian - you buy because you have a need and the company you buy from has the right price, is convenient and/or fast, is familiar, whatever. You have a reason to be interacting with it, but beyond that momentary - even if a regular event - interaction, you don't think much about it.

But then you have your favorites. That could be the grocery store that you regularly shop at or where you get your coffee or the online ecommerce site (like Amazon) that you like for various reasons that are along the lines of "they have good values and good service and the people seem nice, though I don't know their names" or they have really effective algorithms (Amazon) even though you don't deal with people particularly. In other words you have a comfortable though not wildly emotional connection to the company. But it does what you want and even more.

But what about the companies that you're incredibly enthusiastic about? If I ask each person reading this, tell me about one such company - you, for the most part, will be able to. Know what's interesting about your deep emotional advocacy?

The question, "Why?"

Yeah, why? Why in the world are you so excited about this company? What is about them that makes it something you'd go to all your friends and tell about? Why should you have such a strong bond with an institution who's purpose is normally (causes excepted) to take your money in return for providing you with something of value to you? And that's about it - normally.

Ahhh, but there are those exceptions. That ne plus ultra experience that is hard to explain and harder to reproduce and yet is consistently reproduced by the company that you are enamored of. Which is why you love them, is it not (or if I were to continue the French...n'est ce pas?)

It's usually a combination of great products/services, great customer service, good people, and most important a cultural ambiance. There is a feeling of "goodness" associated with the company that makes you happy to deal with them and happy to talk about them. That means that even if that awesome rep you've been dealing with for the last five years leaves the company, while you might miss the rep. and even deal with the company they went to - because they are your "friend" of sorts - if not your actual friend - you will continue to deal with the company because of the built up lifetime of plus-worthy experiences AND the ambiance of "goodness" that the company emanates.

Please don't underestimate that ambiance of goodness. That is the culture of the company reflected in the interactions with you - both direct and indirect. It is what permeates all the aspecs of the company - from their messaging to their office environment to the "feel" of the company whenever you intersect them to the relationships you have with individuals and to the way that the processes and tools are made available to you. Check out my podcast on Sweetwater Audio if you want to get a feel for how this works. When you have the rare intersection of all of that pretty much positively, you have that "company like me" I'm talking about.

With all that, I'm going to tell you about Neighborhood America and why they are a "company like me" to me.

Neighborhood America

About two years ago (September 2006) I was in the middle of something or another when I got an email from a PR guy named Ian who asked if I was interested in talking to a company that specialized in enterprise social networks. I get about 10 or more of these requests to take a demo every week so, in order to have a life that I can at least partially control, I have to say no to most of them because I wouldn't be able to do anything else. But this one intrigued me because of "enterprise social networks." I hadn't heard of any company that did that - I had of course, heard of companies that built user communities like Communispace and Lithium but not "enterprise social networks." So I decided to take a shot with this one and hear what they had to say.

I was impressed because I heard (and saw) an actual enterprise service oriented architecture - not just advanced web services. I saw a platform that was developed for the enterprise to white label whatever level of robustness and scalability they wanted in their private social network - in other words, truly built for companies who wanted to develop B2C or B2B social networks. I saw lots of cool features too like a videochat conference as easy to set up as a bunch of webcams in multiple locations.

To be sure there were and are holes in the technology - all under development since, unlike many, this company actually listened to its customers (and to me, for that matter, which is a minor miracle) and are implementing the features that they asked for. They could be stronger on their social media tools though the ability to integrate with any other web services based tool, say like, Socialtext, one of my current favorites, is there (ahhh, the lovely SOA again).

But, that's not why I see them as a "company like me."

When I saw the demo, I was impressed and technologically, they've never done anything to make me less impressed. They are good that way. But, by coincidence, I was going to be in Naples, Florida the next week to speak at a RIM-sponsored event run by the Alexander Group - who I recommend you NEVER have anything to with, by the way. They are controlling and even nasty to their own people. They were running a sales conference for executives that they do every year and with the exception of one ex-Siebel guy working for them, who was a good person, ALL the reps I met there from SVPs to conference coordinators were either arrogant to a staggering degree or entirely controlling even interfering in their sponsors activities in a vicious and unhealthy way. Nasty folks. RIM hasn't sponsored them since I don't think. I only know how they treated me, the sponsors, some of the attendees and their own people by observation and it was sickening.

Whew.

Enough of my 2 year old rant.

So I decided that since I was going to be in Naples and Neighborhood America was HQed in Naples, I would accept their kind invitation to go to their offices while there.

I am SO glad I did that.

I was picked up by the brilliant and always nice David Bankston, their CTO and co-founder and taken over to their digs. By happenstance, I came during an employee appreciation week and got to appreciate both their employees and their culture. Employees were fully participant, not just recipient and they genuinely were appreciative about being noticed and feted and lauded. It was really nice to see. I got a chance that day to meet Kim Kobza, the CEO and co-founder, who is by nature a kind hearted man and an evangelist of the first order who's interest seems to be - no, is - in helping the world as much as it is in running a business. Kim, David and I spent and lot of time talking about their vision, their strategy and their execution - and it was all done within what was a really enjoyable cultural mesh.

I've been hooked ever since. Sure, there's been turnover there and there are employees I'm sure who don't like the place or who don't fit and leave or get let go. Sure, there are some personality conflicts there and differences of opinion. There are failures to execute and failures to move quickly sometimes. They are a business and that business is comprised of human beings. But they have what is one of the warmest, personal cultures I've run across in a company ever. They treat me (and my wife Yvonne who loves Naples, Florida - a stunning area) incredibly well with their sheer friendliness. The people there are personal, they are technologically progressive (meaning they love to experiment with new technologies like Twitter - and they see the value of it). They are in a beautiful setting and appreciate and work with the community to do good there. The culture and the employees work together well with each other. The environment is busy but relaxed at the same time.

Interestingly, the employees are not only generally treated like human beings but the company is clearly sensitive to the generations that work for them - realizing that they have different requirements for what they want out of work. In homage to Gen Y, the offices have something of a space age coolness - without being too outlandish, which is in deference to baby boomers - and even Gen Xers. That coolness is reflected in how they carry out their day to day functions at the ever growing HQ in Naples. They use technologies that use plasma TVs that are wall mounted throughout the office and you can see the status of projects internally as well as information traveling on the screen that's coming in via RSS feeds. You have to see it. Very, very cool. George Jetson would be proud.

I know tha twhen I'm down there, they treat me like a "family member" (if a company has a family really. I always thought that was a bit of a stretch except as a metaphor, maybe) and even provide me with an office when I need it. They socialize with each other and have a good deal of respect for each other. The two honchos there - David and Kim seem to listen to and respect the expertise of their staff, rather than trying to lord it over them.

I could go on but I really have to get back to writing the book so I'm going to close out here.

This is one of my "Companies Like Me" - the first I can identify. There are a couple of others who I think might at some time reach that exalted level. I think these guys are great and I see the company as my peer in the exact way customers need to if they are to become advocates. What that means is that they meet MY criteria. They may not meet yours. What that also means is that in my role as an analyst/journalist/consultant they aren't exempt from me being critical of them, either. But fundamentally this is a company that I like so much as a company that I see the company as my friend - as well as individuals and would be happy to make intros for them to the appropriate parties to advance their business if I think it makes sense.

Believe me, it isn't easy to get me to do that.

But for Neighborhood America, the first "Company Like Me" I know - name it and its done, within reason of course. As we Mouseketeers used to say, "Why? Because we LIKE you."

Back to the book.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Neighborhood America, VRM, enterprise social network, platform, social media

VRM v. CRM 2.0 - For Real Difference or Not

Doc Searls wrote a crystalline explanation of what vendor relationship management is in the Project VRM blog yesterday, which got me to thinking. Is there a difference between CRM 2.0 and VRM? If there is, how much does the difference matter? If there isn't, should we call CRM 2.0....duh.....VRM? (for those of you not up on VRM, check out Harvard's Project VRM - tres importante)

Here's an excerpt of what Doc said. (I've never met him but he's one guy I hope I can meet. Chris Carfi knows him pretty well and thinks quite a bit of the guy)

"With VRM, our vectors are anchored on the user side, the customer side, the individual's side. The relationships we establish and manage are on our terms and not just those of vendors. We are not against vendors in the least, of course. Our logic is AND, not OR. But it starts with the sovereign autonomy and independence of each individual as a fully-empowered participant in the relationships that comprise markets and other social arrangements. '-driven' says that much more clearly and correctly than '-centric'."

This leads me to think that there actually (contrary to my prior statements) a difference between CRM 2.0 and VRM. VRM is something like the labor movement (in its more pristine formative days) and CRM 2.0 would be the approach business would need to take to accomodate that labor movement. While CRM 1.0 played in the corporate ecosystem and thought that "customer-centric" activity was da bomb, CRM 2.0 realizes that customer centric activity still means a corporate ecosystem and now everything needs to be customer-driven or simply recognized as customer controlled. CRM 1.0 tried to automate the approach to dealing with managing customers so data was everything and the holy grail of CRM 1.0 was the 360 degree view of the customer, CRM 2.0 recognizes that customers need to be engaged and since the ball is in their court (which is the standpoint that VRM starts from), then they have to play on the home court of the customer.

VRM starts with the idea that each customer governs a personal value chain. CRM 1.0 would exploit that. CRM 2.0 creates a collaboration between the personal value chain of the customer and the extended (to partners, suppliers, vendors) value chain of the company so that value (and values) are given and in return the customer provides value (and values).

These are all important concepts with a difference. Took me to today to realize that VRM is the one that actually starts from the customers' POV and life and CRM 2.0 is the company's way of figuring out the best way to engage and collaborative with that.

Another step in the evolution.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, vendor relationship management

DirecTV Doubles to Left

It's that time again.

Every two months as you probably know, Ellen Filipiak, SVP of Customer Care at DirecTV writes a blog entry on the progress they're making in both fixing the problems that they've had with a lot of their customers over a long time and the new stuff they're doing. While the reviews have been mixed, I have to admire Ellen for her absolute commitment for sending me something each two months and always on time. She's been awesome about that.

AND

This month, the discussion is considerably more straight - comparing where they were a year ago (when she came onboard) to where they are now - which is a legitimate horn tooting because it acknowledges the problems they've had in the past with their customers and shows what they're doing to fix them. The fact is, as a customer I want them to both acknowledge it and to then solve it. I don't want them to be bad. I want them to be good. This month, a real live set of steps. Not marketing hype. Straightforward. Good for her. Looks like she might be the person DirecTV needed.

Ellen, take it away.

Filipiak Steps to The Plate....The Pitch....And There's A Drive!...

Hello, Paul!

As 2008 moves forward, I thought I might return back to an earlier post from late last year to highlight actions we've made within DIRECTV as a result of our call center visits to learn more about the customer care organization and find ways to improve on current practices.

We also reviewed our online site and fundamentally asked ourselves how we answer each customer inquiry to discover better approaches to customers' questions.

Here are actions resulting from that review:

First, we made changes to our online platform. We made it much easier to register for online services; we reshaped our programming and hardware ordering areas; and upgraded our e-mail service to help customers find answers faster.

Regarding registration, customers requested two things: make it easier and provide flexible ways to retrieve their password and allow updates to their e-mail address at log-in. Our web team took this feedback and implemented these changes late last year. We've since received positive feedback from customers on these changes.

Until recently, adding hardware and changing programming was not intuitive or well-coordinated. Many of our new offerings are dependent on specific hardware tied to specific programming - so linking both made sense. Now, where programming and hardware choices are dependent and a customer has a decision to make, we added clearer messaging to help them make that decision. So if a customer decides to order our HD Access programming package, we now check their account to verify they have an HD receiver, and if not, we show clearer messaging that indicates it's required to have both. At this point, we provide the customer a choice to continue with their order with an HD receiver added or make another choice. Again, these changes were made by our web team based upon customer feedback.

We are also upgrading our e-mail software so that many questions can be answered while still on the site, rather than waiting for a person to respond. If the question requires a personal response, our new e-mail process will gather more customer information, helping our agents respond in a more timely and accurate manner.

Also, we will be adjusting our hours of operation on May 11^th. We will be available 24/7 to answer technical questions and our automated self-service options (web and phone systems) are also available 24/7. Since most customers call with billing, account, and installation questions during the day, we are changing our hours and are readying our staffing levels to match that. Our new hours of operation for non-technical calls are 8:00am to 10:00pm based on the local time of the customer.

Finally, we are in the process of revising which calls each representative takes to help resolve issues the first time a customer calls. For example, over 80% of the time a customer reports a problem ordering PPV, the issue is related to their bill. From a customer's perspective, it seems like a technical issue - PPV won't work. However, by sending these calls to a billing agent, we can resolve the root cause of the problem. For the small percentage of calls that require technical assistance, we can also get them to a technical representative quickly.

While each of these changes has been quite an effort by numerous teams here, we feel each will make a difference in how we serve our customers as we continue to listen closely to their needs and desires throughout DIRECTV.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to share the changes we are making and to hear your feedback. Enjoy the upcoming baseball season!

Regards,

Ellen Filipiak

Senior Vice President, Customer Care

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

Technorati : CRM, DirecTV, customer service

Microsoft Convergence - Some Right Stuff - Wrong Convergence

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

What Preceded The Keynote

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

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

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

The Fundamentals

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

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

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

The 4th Pillar - White Spaces, Missing Places

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

A Brief Subplot Before the Main Event....

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

....Now the Main Event

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

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

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

In Sum.....

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

Some Miscellany

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

Take Me Out To the Ball Game Cuz I'm a FAN, I'm A HUGE FAN

#1 - Story of the Pro Athlete and The Fan

There's this really famous story, see, about Stan Musial from the St. Louis Cardinals- a Hall of Famer, yes?

You might not know about Stan Musial, because you prob'ly weren't alive when he played ball in St. Louis, but he was goshdarn near to one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game and no slouch on defense, neeeether. Nope. One year, (think it were '47 er .48 or so) he hit somethin' like .376 with 39 homers and 131 ribbies or somethin' like that...there.

Story goes that one day, afore a game started, Stan was near the dugout of the Cardinals, mindin' his own beeswax, tossin' a ball up in the air, ketchin' it and tossin' it back again. This guy with his little kid, young'un about seven years old or so, came to the rail by the dugout and the kid began yellin' "Mr Musial, Mr. Musial!" Well, he caught Stan's eye - see Stan was just a regular guy, grew up in the steel town of Donora PA, and made it to the Bigs by talent, and made a little bit of money but he was a man (and is a man) with a big big heart. So, see, this kid catches his attention and Stan the Man (that was his nickname, see) comes over to talk to the kid and his dad. He autographs the ball and then the kid, bein' just a kid and not knowin' that you don't ast baseball player big shots this - sez, "Mr Musial, will you come to my birthday party tonight?"

Well, the dad turns red as a beet, which can be good for you I s'pose, but Stan Musial looked that kid square in the eye and sez, "sure, kid. Write down your address. What time?" When he got the address and the time, he took his leave and went off to throw baseballs and be a god again - a god from Donora PA that is.

Well, the dad, knowin' his boy was going to be disappointed, said to him,"hey, you know, Mr. Musial is a very busy and important man, so he probably won't come." The kid hung his head so low he could see the underside of his shoes.

Well, round about 7:00pm, the birthday party was well underway, cuz you know how 7 year olds can be, and there wuz this knock - at the door ackshully. Dad went to answer it.

You cud guess the rest.

Yup. Stan Musial came to the birthday party of the kid.

True story. You could look it up.

#2 - Story of the Pro Athlete and The Fan(s)

This is the story of Chris Bosh, Toronto Raptor's power forward and his desire to be on the all star team and to meet his fans. How? This YouTube video on his drive to be on the All Star team. This has been viewed 454,241 times as of today; rated 1993 times; commented 1768 times, favorited 1898 times. According to Sports Illustrated this week, Bosh, who is a self-professed geek (even has a technology company, Max Deal Technology, which does solutions for high-end clientele, primarily in entertainment and sports. (Not bad for a great shooting, strong defending, All Star forward).

More numbers: December 27, 2007 - 313,983 All Star Votes. Released the YouTube video January 2008. Voting closed January 21, 2008 - 838,498 All Star Votes.

He has a MySpace page

Thing is how Chris sees all this stuff. Same SI article says he sees all of this as a "great way to connect with the fans."

#3 - Story of the Pro Athlete & The Fan - The Analyst (Not the Fan) In Me Shoots and Scores...No, Wait...Shoots...Off His Mouth

The eras are strikingly different. The means and methods entirely alien to each other. Even the psyches and cultures don't jive at all.

Stan Musial - humble, no publicity (no PR agent) - just connecting with the fans the way that he thought best - making a 7 year old boy turning 8, happy. Chris Bosh - not humble at all, getting twenty-five minutes of fame - connecting with fans with a giant, very funny public display (the accent really is good. Guy has other talents beyond basketball). Getting the votes, comments, favoriting, adulation. Not exactly the Stan Musial way.

But wait a minute before you go all "awshucksStanMusialisjustdoingawonderfulthinganddoesn'twanttobeseen" on me. While that's absolutely true, and Stan Musial was one of the greatest players ever and a humble, honorable, decent gentleman if there ever was one. AND that was what the culture was like in the late 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s.

But that was then and this is now as the trite old phrase we love to repeat says.

Don't see Chris Bosh's approach as self-aggrandizing. The reality is that he is an athlete connecting with his fan base the way that they want to be connected to NOW - not in 1946. Sure, he could show up at a 7 year old fan's birthday party and make him and the 25 or 30 kids his mom and dad invited feel really cool, but he's reached 454,000 fans or would-be fans with this YouTube video because that's the way that they feel connected to him. Look at the MySpace page. What you don't see is the comment field for him there which says things like "Great game last night, Chris!" which he is as likely to directly respond to as he isn't. How cool is that?

If you eat the dog food here (cat food in my case), and truly believe that we have a customer ecosystem that places the command in the hands of the customer - then figure out what LOGICALLY follows (much less non-linearly) in the Stan Musial v. Chris Bosh cases. The logic says there is no Stan Musial v. Chris Bosh. They aren't competing. Both are doing what made sense to them for the fans - based on how the fans wanted to interact with their heroes in the respective eras. Stan Musial's is more heartwarming and anecdotal and seems more personal. The elements are those of a movie - big sports hero, surprise visit to little guy on his birthday to make him a big boy in front of his friends and Stan the Man becomes more of a hero than ever.

But Chris Bosh is reaching out to the fans the way that they love being accessed. YouTube, MySpace and other digital media that are how they can feel all warm and fuzzy about Chris Bosh high fiving them - and its online so EVERYONE can see it - not just the 30 kids at the party. I mean, how cool is that for a 20 year old or 15 year old or 58 year old (not me, I'm a Knicks fan - for clearly no good reason)?

Way cool.

So times are what they are, memories are what they are and customers are what they are.

Recognize this from the CRM 2.0 perspective. Both of these guys did and are doing what their fans want and communicating with them in ways that are appropriate to their cultures.

Which is more than I can say for Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens, and about 98% of the National Basketball Association.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, Chris Bosh, MySpace, Stan Musial, YouTube, baseball, basketball, consumer in control, customer experience, user generated content

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

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

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

Consider this PC World article here a late present.

Happy New Year everyone.

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