Freeland joins salesforce.com - Hmmm, I Wonder What THAT Means?

John Freeland has been associated with the CRM practice at Accenture as long as I can remember. Here are some observations.

I like what I heard of him as a person from those who know him.

I thought the book he was listed as the chief editor of,"The Ultimate CRM Handbook" was far too much of an ad for Accenture's voice and thinking and not enough of John Freeland's - unless he loved Koolaid for some reason. It was a somewhat boring, occasionally content-compelling compendium of Accenture consultants' writings on whatever was CRMish at the moment. That said, I actually found the section he wrote on "The New CRM Imperative" had some discussion of what were then new guiding principles that were genuinely foresighted - though I didn't totally agree with their approach (See below for a brief review of those)

Obviously, the man knows how to run a practice, since his CRM practice outstripped everyone else's in the industry by a long distance - at least as far as I publicly knew - 2001 revenues were $2.4 billion. Astounding numbers and a credit to him.

I have to also give him his props for being the ONLY consulting practice in CRM's big ones (with the possible exception of BearingPoint under Bruce Culbert and later Harris Gordon), to truly understand the value of thought leadership. Their sponsorship of Montgomery Research's "Defying the Limits" CRM Project is a prime example of their intelligence in this one area.

I have never met him, though certainly would be happy to. So what I go on is what those who know him tell me, those who know about him tell me, what I read and what I observe and observed. He has been a "large enterprise" dude who was extremely successful at that level.

That said, I've always absolutely hated the culture at Accenture, having dealt with them back in the Anderson Consulting days and during their Accenture incarnation too, though I will say I've known some fine people who worked there despite the culture. Their culture to me was worse or as bad as Siebel's at its worst.

So, about 5 minutes ago, I get a PR wire from some agency telling me that John Freeland, who, it says, is retiring from Accenture, is moving to salesforce.com as the President of Worldwide Operations. That makes me think, hmmm. I'm just not sure what to really think here. I remembered a few months ago (three to be exact) I read an article in Infoworld where John Freeland discussed salesforce.com; to wit:

"Showing growth isn't hard in the early years when you start from nothing, as Salesforce.com did in 1999, but the company's ability so far to sustain its momentum is winning over doubters like John Freeland, the managing partner of Accenture's CRM practice. "Eighteen months or so ago, I have to tell you, I was a skeptic on the business model," Freeland said at a Salesforce.com event this week where he announced Accenture's partnership agreement with the company.
When Freeland first began tracking Salesforce.com, he doubted whether it would move beyond the midmarket into the large, enterprise customers Accenture works with. But Salesforce.com's gains over the last year persuaded Accenture to devote additional staffing resources and executive-level attention to supporting the company; just recently, Accenture closed a deal to implement Salesforce.com at a major insurance company, Freeland said. And so Accenture, a longtime close partner to Siebel, will help Salesforce.com in its efforts to expand its enterprise presence."

While I applaud Marc Benioff for reeling in this big fish. I presume the message it is supposed to send is "we can play with the big guys now, so watch out Larry Ellison," though why they would want to send that message is somewhat dubious. They do add another lead vocalist to their stable of rock stars of CRM, I wonder what it means when it comes to someone so used to such a different culture. I know salesforce.com very well and I love much of (not all of) their culture. While not really dot.com culture, it is about as close as dot.com culture comes to 2005 without all the crap that dot.com culture carried with it. Marc Benioff, Jim Steele, Ken Juster (AWESOME guy - big Yankees fan too!!), Tien Tzuo (also amazing, but not a Yankees fan) and several others are truly an star studded gathering - one that any company with half a brain would love to have onboard. Where my question comes in with John Freeland is not his competence to run the operations of salesforce.com - I'm sure he'll be great with it. But if he even brings a whiff of the generic Accenture culture with him, that would be beyond too bad - that would stink worse that what our cat does when he gets mad that we're on a trip. Again, I have no problem with John Freeland as a person - I have no right to nor do I have a predisposition to thinking badly about him - I don't know him. But I do know Accenture's culture, have had multiple personally bad to horrible experiences with it over years (especially one that I'll never forget - or forgive) and would hate to see salesforce.com tainted by such an abominable sociology. So, John Freeland, welcome to salesforce.com. I hope that you're coming naked - in a cultural way of course.

Some Comments on Chapter 1 of "The Ultimate CRM Handbook"

This is actually the only section of the book that John Freeland wrote and its the best section in the book. He develops three guiding principles that he thinks governs the new CRM imperative:

1. Customer experience is essential to creating brand value.
2. Customer insight should inform and drive customer treatment.
3. CRM programs should be executed in a pragmatic way that mitigates financial and delivery risk.

My answers in order are:

1. RIGHT - Almost. He tends to define this in terms of brand value when the reality is that customer's hold the keys to value in the customer ecosystem. But I have no fundamental argument at all and applaud him for his statement "Brand strength and brand value are the sum total of experiences that customers have witht he company and all its products and services." I would say it that the company's capacity to receive long term value from the customer is dependent on the collaboration between the customer and the company to create a differentiable experience with the company's products and services. The products and services are not the differentiators anymore. That's what I would say. Yep. That's it. Uh. Huh.
2. RIGHT - Totally - Almost. He says that "Every contact customers have with a company contributes to their perception of the company and either enhances or destroys economic value." Again, right but two things. First, it destroys or enhances economic value beyond just that customer. You know how you love to talk - and you will to 16 others if you hate the company and 6-8 others if you like the company. And they talk. And they talk. And they chatter into infinity. So the insight is both into the customer per se but also into the networks that surround the customer.
3. RIGHT - Nearly. Obviously you want to mitigate risk and keep expenditure down, but just a caution here, cutting cost is not a driver, never was a driver and never will be a driver of CRM. Just a little bit of a warning that I wish he had stated directly.

On the whole, given that the book came out in early 2003, these three guiding principles are smart and now what should be de rigueur but sadly, aren't. But I'm doing what I can and I hope enough of salesforce.com rubs off on this talented fellow to get him to at least take care of 1 and 2 and be less concerned with 3 - tough thing with a job and a history like that. Maybe, I'll get to meet him and realize that, hey, man, no Accenture whiffs here. Still just good ol' salesforce.com cookin' on the wood stove. I hope so.

Comments

[Serge]

You should never compromise the quality of CRM for cost and expenditures since you might end up losing customers in the long run and this is something which businesses should avoid.

[Mario]

Hey Paul
How are you doin?
I have been checking out your blog for a while now and have only just noticed that you are wearing a tie in your picture!
I thought you didn't do ties!!
Take care
Mario