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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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