PGreenblog

CRM 2012 Forecast–The Era of Customer Engagement Begins– Part II

To understand why I’m saying this, please go to Part I on my ZDNet blog here.

Gamification becomes Serious Business

No matter how old you are, human beings never lose their desire to play. Play makes us happy. Each of us, and I challenge you to deny this, wants to have a happy life. We do what we have to in life to improve our chances to have one. One of those things is to have as many happy moments as we can accumulate throughout our lives. Even if we aren’t all that universally happy (not projecting here), each of us has had times where we were that we can point to.

Gamification, while often over hyped and misunderstood, is a concept that has increasingly important business value. It doesn’t mean playing games; it isn’t game theory; it isn’t a form of hunting meat. My favorite definition comes from Constellation Research Group CEO (and key influencer) (and great friend) Ray Wang from his recent research paper, “Demystifying Enterprise Gamification for Business:Behind the Hype of Influencing Behaviors and Effecting Business Outcomes:”

“Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes.”

To see it in action, even in an unexpected place, take a look at how SAP has gamified Accounts Payable. As odd as that may sound, they’ve done a genuinely good job. Here is a post on it with screenshots at Enterprise Gamification.

These aren’t edge cases for a small niche. Gartner Group in April 2011 thinks that by 2014, 70% of all businesses in the Global 2000 will have “gamified apps.” Research firm, M2 says that by 2016, the gamification market, currently sized at $100,000,000 will reach $2.8 billion, with 200% growth in 2012.

In other words this is starting to get big.

The vendors are in the game too. Those who have enterprise ready gamification platforms out there include Bunchball, Badgeville, and of course, Gamify, all in all about a bakers dozen.

We’re already seeing sophisticated gamification frameworks being set up. Innovative small companies like the award-winning UK virtual mobile network operator GiffGaff used gamification to recruit their initial customer community prior to their beta launch by providing DIY tools to create videos – the best of which got a £5000 prize.

For a more complete discussion on gamification worth reading, please make sure that you read the posts by thought leader and Lithium Chief Scientist, Dr. Michael Wu. They are well worth it.

Ray Wong, Gartner, M2, all say gamification in a big way starting this year over the next few. I say, amen, brothers and sisters.

Insight Solutions will emerge as a technology category of its own

One thing that we can’t ignore (okay, that I can’t ignore) is that if customer engagement is to work, then insights into how customers want it to work are becoming increasingly necessary.

But again, we’re dealing with scale and we’re dealing with a dynamic social web with constant conversations that are liquid and changing continually. They are being carried out in multiple channels – channels that number all in all, in the thousands, both public and private.

The current generation of social media monitoring tools with a few exceptions – Radian6 and Attensity come immediately to mind – are somewhat passive tools that scour the web, find the conversations and organize unstructured data in the form of a report that provides the users with what is being said, usually in a positive, negative or neutral vein. The better tools provide strong analytic capabilities that give some insight into how customer segments are thinking or how “nodes” are responding. That would be Attensity, for example. Or they provide highly focused, highly specific, well thought out intelligence such as the sales intelligence focus of InsideView. Radian6 takes this to a whole new level with their Insights Platform which takes Radian6’s vast data mining and information organizing capabilities and integrate other technology tools that combined with Radian6 provide deep insight into individual customers, if that’s where you want to go. With the future capacity to tie this to salesforce.com or database.com or data.com transactional data, and contact information, we are beginning to see how an insight solution would work. It’s obvious limitation is that it will be tied to salesforce.com only customer data. But that aside, we are talking about something that at least foreshadows what are a future class of applications. Bryan Jennewein, the product manager for the Insights platform calls the results “social insight”, which is not an inappropriate term, in this case.

But Radian6 hardly plays in its own sandbox here. There are a number of emerging players in this space which I’m calling “insight solutions” who have been misplaced in or evolved from other market categories. Currently, the runaway number #1 of these for me is Coveo, which came from the Enterprise Search space. Following them is Allegiance, emerging from the Enterprise Feedback Management world and Lattice Engines, which inhabits the sales intelligence world uncomfortably. Another newcomer that has flown under the radar is WiseWindow, a "mass opinion business intelligence" (MOBI) provider, who specializes in vertical insights among other things and come from the BI world All four have the technology to provide insights. Each takes an entirely different approach to attaining the knowledge that can support insight, but each minimally provides dynamic data mining, collaboration and analytics. All four either can or do integrate with CRM, by the way.

This is not to say that more “traditional” analytics such as text and sentiment analysis, business intelligence, etc are going to be replaced or suffering. In 2012, they will be even more important than they are now.

Several vendors are either upping the ante or providing new ways of looking at the data – all in the name of recognition of the importance of insight – into customers primarily, but also employees, opportunities, processes, etc.

For example, Clarabridge is both upping the ante and providing a new approach to analytics by taking sentiment analysis to a whole other level beyond the traditional five-point expression (very positive, positive, neutral, negative, very negative) and ratcheting it up to eleven points using semantic analysis so that there is context to the sentiment, besides. Recently, SAP, despite the fact that they own the best analytics firm known to man – Business Objects, recently announced a partnership with social analytics provider Netbase to become a VAR that would sell “SAP Social Analytics by Netbase” to their customers. They realized like others before them, insight is 2012 table stakes and social data is the tableware.

Analytics as a whole is becoming fundamental to all business strategy. 2012 brings more of that than ever and the rise of a new category customer-focused solution that provides a combination the surfacing of dynamic information and the analysis of that behavior as dynamically as it is surfaced.

An optimal customer experience becomes the core of what CRM can provide. Finally.

In 2011, we saw a significant shift away from the pure left-brained messaging of CRM toward a much stronger focus on customer interactions, engagement and behaviors. Traditional CRM vendors for reasons that are both good and bad began to rebrand their messaging around the idea of technologies that can support an enhanced customer experience. The good reason is that they needed to do that and they did. The bad reason is that they did it as a reaction to historic CRM bad press a lot of times, rather than just recognizing that the context had shifted and we were entering a period that demanded that customer experience and engagement got attention. Right results, sometimes wrong reasons.

Vendors like Sword-Ciboodle have taken it further and begun to present their product portfolios not as a menu of features and functions but around solution sets that help you do your jobs better. The name for it is jobs-based thinking. The academic framework for that is Service Design Logic, something that is gaining increasing credence in the business world. If you look at the Sword-Ciboodle site, you’ll see that it’s got a roles-based focus. The reason for this is that there is a recognition that we are dealing with behaviors – both customers and employees, not just products.

But the interest in providing the “right” customer experience high. Witness these numbers that come from the “2011 State of Customer Experience Management” put together by ubër-expert Bruce Temkin, the leading customer experience influencer and best of the lot in my book. These numbers are indicative of both where things are (not new but embedded) and where they can go (toward maturity). Temkin found that:

• Nearly 60% of the companies surveyed have a senior executive in charge of customer experience
• There are 30% of the companies that have 20+ employees who are delegated to the customer experience
• There have been positive results (measureable ones, people!) from Voice of the Customer programs in 84% of the companies using them
• The percentage of companies that received a moderate or better competency rating rose from 22% on 2010 to 30% in 2011.

That’s the good news.

The signs that this is still immature?

· “Only 3% of companies reached the highest level of customer experience maturity, which (Temkin calls) a Customer-Centric Organization

· Only 17% of respondents believe that their executives regularly support decisions to trade off short-term financial results for longer-term customer loyalty.” (source: Temkin, 2011 State of Customer Experience Management)

That means that there is a lot of room to grow and in 2012, I expect that we’ll see a continuation of these efforts to improve and get measurable benefit, though nothing dramatic.

The only real “trend” that will likely stand out when it comes to customer experience in 2012 is that I think vendor messaging will be increasingly focused around it. That’s not really much of a trend, if you think about it. You feel me?

Social marketing becomes an integral part of an explosive marketing automation sector

Social marketing and the broader, customer-facing interactive marketing are becoming ubiquitous as customer engagement becomes the increasing focus of companies thoughts.

Chief Marketer in their 2011 Social Marketing survey found that 73% of the respondent companies were incorporating some kind of “social messaging” into their marketing campaigns and in 2012 an additional 10% (meaning around 83%) would be doing the same. What’s interesting is the primary reason that the respondents were doing so. Fully 85% of them felt it was a way to “reach customers at multiple touchpoints.” That’s 25% more than the next reason, which is that customers are spending more time on social networks. In other words, there is a recognition that social channels are now part of the mainstream and that they are additions to the channels that we’ve reached customers on traditionally. To get a feel for how big a deal this really is, in August 2011, Forrester Group came out with their “U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011-2016” and saw the market spend up from $34 billion in 2011 to nearly $42 billion in 2012 and $77 billion by 2016. The bulk of the spend will be in the more traditional channels of interactive marketing – e.g. display ads and search marketing with emerging marketing such as mobile and social increasing about 250% in that time.

This is not surprising and if you look at it, the technologies available are once again more primitive than the efforts expended by the practitioner marketing departments.

The vendors are beginning to recognize the value of social marketing and are trying mightily to catch up and either incorporate it into their existing marketing automation or revenue performance management (sigh) applications and services. There are only a few genuinely useful pure social marketing or niche related apps out there at the moment, notably CRM Idol 2011 finalist Crowd Factory. One example of a niche related vendor would be the FuzeDigital reputation engine.

However the larger marketing automation/revenue performance vendors are taking note too. We are seeing social features being incorporated into more traditional applications from Marketo, Eloqua and Silverpop for example. Analytics giant SAS, rather than incorporating too much social into their marketing automation application, built and social media analytics application to take the pulse of the brand conversations going on out there. Companies like Infor, who provide customer interaction engines like Epiphany are using them to engage their prospects.

2012 will bring us continued explosive growth in marketing, especially social marketing because we have reached ubiquity when it comes to utilizing social channels as part of campaign planning. The more engagement is on the table, the more that marketing – with social marketing functionality as a prerequisite for a contemporary marketing suite – will grow dramatically. Forrester has it partially right with the increase of some 20% year over year in interactive marketing expenditures.

Think I’m wrong? Prove it. Launch a campaign on Twitter to do that. Ha!

Short Bursts: Other Trends

These aren’t meant to be full blown prognostications – just short takes on interesting trends that I’ve noticed that I want to make you aware of. There is too much in the sections above for me to draw these out but I didn’t think I should ignore them even if I don't spend a lot of digital ink making the case.

1. Mobile CRM - As in 2011, the creative development of mobile CRM will be driven by the tablet market and by the ability to analyze large amounts of data quickly that will show up on the tablets. The iPad will still be the dominant driver of mobile CRM application development. But we will see more activity around mobile payment than we will around anything else as Near Field Communication (NFC) is deployed on devices to a much greater extent than 2011 and Google Wallet grabs share of….mind as more and more businesses adopt.
2. Small Business SCRM – The success of Hubspot in 2011 and the emergence of a myriad of other technology platforms and companies who are small business focused (see CRM Idol again for many of the technology companies who concentrate on small business) is an indicator of the interest that small business has when it comes to doing business using social channels. I’m going to leave the details to Brent Leary in a forthcoming post here on the small business CRM market in 2012.
3. Big Data Becomes Really Big Data - The issue of how to data the massive increase in data and especially desirable data becomes possible the highlight of 2012. This is being fueled by the substantial increases in unstructured data on the social web, in the use of video, images, audio files and other rich data and by the growing ubiquity of the cloud all leading to what IDC feels is going to jump to more than 2.7 zettabytes (that would be 1021) in 2012, which is 48% higher rate of growth than 2011 – and 90% of it will be unstructured (Source: IDC Predictions for 2012: Competing for 2020). Managing this data will drive not only the storage and infrastructure markets, but will make even more “traditional” areas like Master Data Management (MDM) something that businesses will be investing in. This is a massive opportunity and a massive issue.
4. Acquisitions – The shrinkage of the market via acquisitions and it’s strengthening via strategic partnerships that support Social CRM and social business ecosystems will continue as they did in 2011. IN 2011 we saw, among others, salesforce.com acquiring DimDim, Radian6, Assistly, Model Metrics and Rypple; Oracle acquiring Inquira, Endeca and RightNow; SAP acquiring SuccessFactors and Microsoft acquiring Skype. We also saw a key strategic partnership between IBM and SugarCRM which was crucial to both companies. There will be more of the same in 2012 with interesting acquisition targets (at least interesting to me, not because I heard anything. Just to be clear) will be Marketo, InsideView, Coveo, SugarCRM and a handful of others including several of the CRM Idol contestants. Though, as always I’m sure I’ll be surprised and completely wrong. But acquisitions and partnerships will be the stars of 2012, whether I’m surprised or wrong or not.
5. The Cloud – 2012 continues the bandwagon though the hype will slow. This year not only did we see Amazon continue to be the cloud to beat, but companies like Oracle announce their “public cloud” and SAP went deep into the cloud as they announced at the recent SAP Business Influencers Conference not only buying SuccessFactors shortly after they announced that they wanted to significantly compete in the cloud but also announcing that from here on they are going to architect what they produce as cloud and will adapt it to on premises, rather than the other way around – a 180° turn in philosophy and development strategy. We also saw the cloud become the delivery system of choice, if you take it from the rate of adoption, not the amount of deployments out there in the on premises v. the cloud competition. Since this is short, let me recommend the always fantastic, quiet thought leader, Louis Columbus’ great aggregation post on cloud adoption. Read that to get the picture. On premises still is the dominant installation for CRM and other business technology, with hybrid deployments a popular option – and one offered by companies who have historically been invested in on premises software. In fact, all the leaders but salesforce.com offer it as part of their portfolio. More of this in 2012 as the unstoppable cloud juggernaut continues to gain delivery mechanism share.
6. Innovation/Co-Creation – This will continue to be in the purview of the most progressive companies – the leading edge of thinking and practice in business. But only at the lowest levels – feedback etc. will it be pre-eminent. The true practitioners of co-creation are just beginning to make their appearance on the global stage. I expect we’ll see most of this in the Fortune 3500 companies. I’ll be writing more on this and you’ll be seeing guest posts on this subject in 2012.
7. Knowledge Management – while there will be no slacking off of the existing models for knowledge management – accessible knowledgebases being the core of that – there will be considerably more focus on dynamic knowledge with as close to real time response as possible and the use of knowledge for insight (via analysis). The technologies to meet the requirements for the latter are just beginning to appear in the market. Knowledge grabbed from customer user forums and other external "unstructured":
8. Applications Marketplaces – Application marketplaces are becoming increasingly prevalent as more and more companies begin to view things from the standpoint of providing their customers with customized/configurable ecosystems. So now, in addition to the technology company marketplaces we know and…whatever emotion you want goes here….we are seeing even government agencies like the U.S. General Services Administration or the U.S. Army providing these application marketplaces to their constituents – in the former case, the other U.S. federal agencies and the latter case, varying Army commands. There is no reason to think that this is going to slack in 2012. In fact, look for it to accelerate.

The One By Itself

This is the most important prognostication for 2012. Period.

The Yankees Win the World Series – Locked and loaded. Our starting pitching straightens itself out, Teixeira gets his batting average back to a normal .290 or so; A-Rod revives his career enough to be a difference maker; Jeter just continues from his 2011 second half and Rivera of course is Rivera. Thus, The Yankees Win. The Yankeeeeeees Wiiiiiiiiin! Yay!

Finally

Look. This may be the most uncomfortable "forecast" I've ever made. It wasn't easy. I'm evolving a perspective I've had for almost 10 years and it has implications that are important, though not that dramatic, for how the industry will be developing and the strategies that need to be considered - if I'm right.

And that makes me uncomfortable. But I've learned a few things in my 62 years that I think have done me well over the years - some of it due to adversity that makes my skin very thick. Let's just say criticism doesn't exactly phase me.

First, I've learned that you are always learning.  That means that what I am writing here while I think its useful is only the beginning of something that I hope will have some impact but that will be constantly evolving even as it does due to collegial inputs from smarter people than me and those who are testing out what I'm hypothesizing here and finding how to tweak it or to show me that I'm wrong.

But if there is one thing I've learned that probably will never change, there is a way to think about all this. You make as good a case as your observations allow and then get on with your life and see how the next phase plays out. Which is what I'm now doing for 2012.

Compelling Compilation: Videos That Make the Case for Something

I figured I'd fling a few videos onto this page that make the case for something that touches Social CRM or the customer experience or whatever else I feel like putting up. :-)

#1 First up, a really powerful case for the transformation of communications via social media from John Dodge of PC Pitstop. Its called Socialnomics 09 and it just throws stats at you that makes you think that we're on to something.

#2 Next, a video that make you realize how much impact the use of technology in compelling ways can impact the brand experience with the customer. What Ross Ching did with this video is use the Ken Burns effect (making still shots seem to be moving) in combination with amazingly well done presentation of the lyrics superimposed on the photos/videos and as a result, you get a wow that makes you want to do business with Ross Ching.

Death Cab for Cutie - Little Bribes from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

#3 Finally, Derek Jeter's 2722 hit at Yankee Stadium to surpass Lou Gehrig. The important thing (besides me being the Yankees fan I am) is the crowd's interaction with Jeter. There is a powerful message that gets transmitted here - how the unique confluence of multiple individuals is able to interact as a "hive community" with a single human being. Even though the crowd is a structured but organic social organization it speaks with a single voice and communicates with an individual person in this instance. I'm not sure entirely how to think about this but its powerful when it comes to structuring a customer experience that can affect others. It also means that a "company like me" is a possible concept. It also means that the Yankees are by far the best organization in baseball and the fans are awesome! :-)

Technorati : CRM, Social CRM, Video, social Media
Del.icio.us : CRM, Social CRM, Video, social Media

The Pure Arbitrariness of It All....Sunday is a Great Day For That.

This is a pure gathering of absolutely not-coherently-tied thoughts and ideas.

Favorite Rock Groups of All Time - Top 7 in No Particular Order

1. The Who
2. CCR
3. Traffic
4. Cream
5. Jimi Hendrix Experience
6. The Rolling Stones
7. The Beatles

Movies That Made Me Cry - I'm A MAN I Swear!!

1. Glory
2. Field of Dreams
   Old Yeller

Favorite Songs Of All Time Without You Reading Anything Into The Choices

• Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones
• Bad Moon Rising - CCR
• The Weight - The Band
• Hey Jude - The Beatles
• All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

Commentary on the Yankees

Joe Torre landing in LA with the Dodgers and Joe Girardi as the manager of the Yankees, makes some form of cosmic sense to me though I have NO idea why that is. I've read the articles that said, its good if Joe goes to LA because he's a native of Brooklyn, where the Dodgers orginated, and I suppose I like Girardi as the manager of the Yankees because he's the only graduate of my alma mater in the majors. That would be Northwestern University. So that's pretty cosmic, too, I think - especially if he gives me tickets. Now, we have to sign Posada and Rivera. A-Rod is a total putz and I wouldn't want the guy back - and I have been a supporter of his from the get go - even when he was bombing in the post-season and endured the wrath of the fans. But $350 million? 12 years? What an inflated ego. Enough is enough. I hope he lands no deals.

Back to CRM tomorrow.

Technorati : Beatles, CCR, Cream, Glory, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones, The Who, Traffic, Yankees

LABEL WARNING!: This is on the Yankees, NOT CRM. Read at your own risk.

Its truly amazing when an organization that I have rooted for well over 50 years, makes such a classless move, when in fact, they've made so many before. Yesterday, the Yankees organization took the manager that was one of the primary reasons the Yankees pack in 50,000 plus at EVERY ballgame - break attendance records regularly, managed to make the playoffs 13 of the last 13 years, won 4 World Series titles out of 6 World Series appearances - this after 15 years of no playoff appearances in fact - and gave the Yankees a measure of dignity (though it wasn't easy with their idiot owner) after they had been called the Bronx Friggin' Zoo for years - and made him an offer that was performance based - with a nearly 30% pay cut for managing underperforming superstars and green rookies to the playoffs when they had been ruled out by everyone. Torre is a gentleman and a good soul who, while being of course a second-guessing fan, wasn't good at handling pitchers, but was superb at handling people and made ball players believe in themselves and perform up to their potential. But even more, the guy was a icon for NY. He's a native of the city and, perhaps with only an equal in Derek Jeter, was not just a manager but a face of the city. Which, being a New Yorker, believe me, needs a face like Joe Torre.

I know I'll go on to root for the Yankees. I know Joe Torre didn't die, for chrissakes. But how a team that I've invested 50 plus years of my life in to some extent - in a sport I totally love (me and Alyssa Milano) could do this craven thing astounds me. I not only wish Joe Torre well and the Yankees well, but wish that the classless Steinbrenner family - Dad and boys, and their toady president Randy Levine would just simply go away and own some other team. When ANY person is a dignified, classy person, they deserve to be treated with the dignity and class that they always showed. The Yankee management sure as hell didn't do that.

Maybe a boycott of Yankee Stadium in its last year..........

Technorati : Joe Torre, NY Yankees

Ninety Percent of the Game Is Half Mental - At Least

I'm never amazed to find that business and personal lives are entirely one and the same - especially among the business service professionals - in high tech and outside, with whom I work. I've always been far more amazed, astounded and flabbergasted by the people who are constantly stressing about how they're trying so hard to "balance their life" between business and personal. Or on the other hand, I'm equally stunned by who say (and seem to mean it when they do) that "it is (whatever it is, is) just business" when they make a decidedly cruel decision - one that spits in the face of compassion.

The fact of the matter is that unless they turn off their Blackberry Curves at 5:00pm and put them in their office desk drawer before they leave for the other side of the scales of justice and balance, there is no "just business" nor is there a "balance" between business and personal life that achievable - for the simple fact, we each are a single entity and have one life and what we do at work and at home, while different components of that single life, are, I would hope and think, governed by the same code of ethics, same principles, same ideologies, same emotional makeup and the same kinds of behaviors - with a few propitiatory tweaks here and there in a nod to whatever environment you're in at the time. But not tweaks to ethics and principles.

Theoretically.

I say theoretically, because there is incredible denial out there when it comes to work-life integration or that there is no separation between the codes that are at play in the part of your life devoted to work and the part of your life devoted to everything else.

If you google "work-life balance" there are 1,950,000 references to it. If you google "work-life integration" there are 37,700 references out there. So its clear which remains the buzz concept du jour. But work-life balance so called, aside from being some form of paradiso, nirvana or zen - depending on your bent - is a concept that can't be achieved realistically, nor do many people even in the 9-5 world live their life with that harmony. Far more of us actually do work stuff at home and home stuff at work - ranging from the simplest, "oh that's not a fair example" of calling the kids to see how they're doing or calling the spouse to remind them to do something - from work. Or at home, remembering you have to take care of something and going upstairs and sending an email after you had dinner with the family - and just doing it, no muss, no fuss.

Another easy example - when you have to remain late at work or often do a con call at night - you either remain late at work or go home and do the conference call. But the key here is....you do the conference call from either place. Fact is, telework is becoming something that employers and employees see as a benefit because it brings down office cost and clutter and is a much happier working environment. It is becoming such a prevalent trend that yesterday the General Services Administration (GSA) announced that they were looking to have 50% of their employees teleworking by 2010. That's amazing. That's a government agency. A gov-va-ment-a-gen-cy.

In fact, this is becoming an important enough topic for the Wharton School of Business to have conducted a Work/Life Roundtable on it.

What does this have to do with CRM?

A lot. The integration of our work and personal lives affects how customers deal with us and how we deal with customers. Physical location is becoming increasingly less important (though not unimportant) in how the customer-company relationship is conducted and the ability to be flexible and mobile more important. In fact, there is a reason that RIM - makers of the ubiquitous - and now cool - Blackberry (see the new wi-fi enabled Blackberry 8820 for something well worth it) have been rightly pushing mobile CRM and we're seeing an upsurge of interest in mobile CRM apps. The availability of CRM on the iPhone as the first identifiable business "category" to go to it, is also an indicator of what's going on with work/life integration and CRM itself (nb: I'm almost done with the CRM for the iPhone bakeoff testing. Teaser: mobile CRM on an Edge network with a rich environment is a friggin' bear. As cool as the iPhone is, CRM on a Blackberry, optimized for it, at the moment, is a better bet than CRM on an iPhone. More on the results after I get back from Gartner). Movin' and, successfully groovin' is becoming a 21st century mantra for how businesses and customers deal with each other. The office isn't the place the deal gets closed, nor is it the place the customer goes to find the company. As often as not, these days, its online that the bulk of the activity around the deals are done. Including conversation. Those activities, web or phone or whatever communications channel are done at the office, at home or on the road during the day or the night, depending on the time-related proclivities of the customer and the company rep. and the time zones.

All in all, an integrated environment. for work, home and anything else that engages you in your life.

Yogi Berra wasn't kidding when he said, "when you come to a fork in the road, take it." Because the two forks are really only one path.

Technorati : Blackberry, CRM, RIM, Yogi Berra, iPhone, work-life balance, work-life integration

So Where Does This Leave Brian Cashman: NetSuite Shows Coolness Once Again

I have to say it again. NetSuite is just an outright cool company that simply gets the world the way it should be gotten. Not only do they have an excellent product and great people working for them but they have STYLE. They are the epitome of Christina Aguilera's Basic To Basics "Ain't No Other Man" lyrics

"You got soul, you got class.
You got style, you bad ass..."

They got all that, and they are.

What makes me say such things?

Well, they went ahead and put Oakland A's General Manager, Billy Beane, he of "Moneyball" fame, on their Board of Directors. How cool is that? Though I personally would have put Brian Cashman, GM of the Yankees, (I tell this to all of you who reside on other planets or in other dimensions) on the NetSuite board and I hope then maybe that salesforce.com has the good sense to do it, but I have to admit, that NetSuite pulled off a good one here.

Not that they exactly had slouches on their Board of Directors before.

The management team that sits on the BoD now includes founder CEO Zach Nelson, who I think, no kidding here, one of the smartest CEOs of any company in the United States and one of the most vital personalities among them. Evan Goldberg, founder and CTO of the company who is a resident genius when technology is involved and, while quieter than Zach without a doubt, has a presence in the industry that is also good - and bigtime.

Additionally, they have a gaggle of others who I don't know well who are primarily tech guys and VC types who I presume are competent managers of the moneys they've invested in NetSuite - money that I trust when NetSuite goes public sometime this year, will be seen as very well invested. Though only the market will tell us the result of that later on.

But, Billy Beane is Billy Beane, a celebrity par excellence and a man who can make a genuine contribution beyond just being a really cool name added to the Board. He is one of the savviest baseball GMs around, much as I hate to admit it, keeping his spending down, getting good pitching and building contenders is a strong suit. NetSuite is a strong suite and I would imagine if they keep your spending down and build a contender, you'd be happy too, though I can't figure out how to bring in good pitching here (NetSuite sales people? To stretch the analogy beyond recognition....)

As I said, NetSuite is going public this year. In December, TechCrunch reported that NetSuite was looking for a $1 billion valuation which seemed premised on a BusinessWeek article that said that NetSuite was looking for $100 million for 10% of the company. Initially, I thought that this might be a high number but upon reflection realized that with $70 million in revenue and enormous promise including being highly savvy about what the business world wants, this is not an outrageous number by any means. Salesforce.com's current market cap is $4.5 billion on revenues in FY 2005 (ending on January 31, 2006) of $310 million. So this isn't a real stretch on NetSuite's part.

Adding Billy Beane to the Board at this time pre-IPO couldn't be smarter. NetSuite continues to drive up their sex appeal and that coupled with their top notch improvements with version 11.0 make them rock. Money Ball has a whole new meaning now.

Technorati : Billy Beane, NetSuite, Oakland As, Zach Nelson

They Shoulda Waited

I promised on my latest podcast that I would report back to everyone on my "experience" at the Washington National's "Grand Reopening" of RFK Stadium this past weekend in a game on Sunday between the Cubs and the Nationals. The reason for this was that, in their zeal for improving the fan experience, for a last place team, they hired what is apparently a well-respected "customer experience management" firm (I HATE CEM as a term, though I admittedly use it in lieu of anything better at times), LRA Worldwide, though one that is unbeknownst to me, to train the Nats' stadium personnel in improving the "fan experience" at the ballpark.

For those of you who have been to RFK Stadium in recent years, "reopening" the ballpark is reopening the rift to hell - the ballpark is old, decrepit and has little charm beyond the team that's playing there - a team with little charm except for Alfonso Soriano, the astoundingly talented left fielding All Star for the Nationals - on his way to what may be the first 50-50 season in history - that's 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season, for those of you who aren't baseball cognoscenti.

Thing is, there is a new management. The Nationals, formerly the Montreal Expos, were owned until yesterday (or so) by Major League Baseball, but a management team headed up by real estate mogul Ted Lerner and Atlanta zillionaire (and Hawks NBA team owner), Stan Kasten, bought them and transferred $450 million in MLB coffers this week. So, in celebration of that, the Nationals, trying to get fans to the stadium despite their last place positioning in their division, decided to "reopen" the RFK sinkhole and at least they powerwashed it.

I'll give them credit. They tried very hard. Between outs they had constant giveaways and fan promotions, a new area for local cuisines and they did the aforementioned powerwashing. The announcer was funny with his pronouncements like "fans running on the field will be prosecuted and besides, how will it look when you tell your cellmate that you're in for running onto a baseball field?"

Not bad and he did a lot of that. Kind of the highlight of the thing.

The work of LRA Worldwide might have gone on - apparently they trained everyone for a single day in being attuned to the fans "thinking" and improving the customer ambiance via customer service training. But they get a C- at best, for any visible changes in stadium personnel. The only thing I can think about that might have represented their work was one of the staff who pointed us to our seat - remembered as an afterthought to say "enjoy the game."

Which I did, primarily because ex-Yankee Soriano hit a double and mammoth home run during the game. Otherwise, the experience was non-descript. Chances are if they needed such a vivid experience, even a CEM firm wouldn't help much because the state of the stadium doesn't encourage a new beginning or feeling of "new ownership" or renewal or anything but an old, old stadium with a last place team and fans who are lukewarm.

LRA either did a great invisible job or there wasn't much they could do. It was sad, because teams like the Philadelphia Flyers or the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Dallas Cowboys or the Packers generate a great deal of excitement when they are good or bad because they have the fans engaged in the experience and proud of the passion and commitments. They do what has to be done to make the fan part of the program. This was just a lot of marketing and polite behaviors (which was still welcome. The stadium staff were very nice) in a ballpark that will be replaced with a new one in 2009 in Washington D.C.

Maybe they shoulda waited until then to "open" rather than "reopen." Reopening the door to the bathroom doesn't mean it isn't a bathroom anymore.

Technorati : CRM, baseball, customer experience

Another Day, Another Random Set of Moments

I have to admit, there are times where I just like writing snippets based on what I see around me that might be interesting. No long tome. Just kind of random wanderings

This is definitely one of those days

Wanderlust

• Free CRM No Judgment, No Foul - I found a list of free CRM products published in Line56 magazine yesterday that were all from sourceforge.net. I have no idea how good or bad these are.. They are all open source. All but one seem to be aimed at at least the same three audiences - end user, financial services and telcos with the exception of Cream CRM which is a media org-friendly little trickster . Their descriptions of themselves are all standard and boring - definitely in the blah, blah, blah category. But they may be good applications. The one that I was able to demo - SourceTap was a hardcore SFA application that was simple, a a clean easy interface and much of the functionality you'd want, though its clearly for small companies who want a do-it-yourself-approach. At least for what I saw. For example, if you're into sales process, this wasn't for you. Its more than contact management though and could do for a small company's first SFA app. Try them at your own risk, but hey, at least they're available. Caveat emptor.
• ""You Like Me, You Really Like Me" - Adrants, which I've said that you should subscribe to a million times and shame on you for not listening, did a great small piece called "Boomers Boom, Gen X/Y Flat, Over 50 The New Black" that is great because it validates what I've been saying about my generation. Power to the Over 50- People Baby! It seems that results gleaned from a survey released by Survey Sampling International shows that the post-50 numbers will grow from that current now 89.3 million to 111.3 million in 2016 a.k.a. 25% increase when the world famed and oft ridiculous "demographic" of 18-49 that ad agencies just love to appeal to will grow 1 percent. Oops. But even more telling the post-50 posse sees itself in early middle age with old age beginning at 75. But the under 40 crew, who make up the "hip" ad agencies and creatives, think anyone over 56 is just ancient (phew. Luckily I'm 56, not OVER 56, though technically I suppose one day past my birthday is over 56. God NO!!!). I can't wait to see all the cool branded experience marketing folks figure out how to handle that one. Once again, a presumption for the customer isn't likely to be how the customer actually is thinking. Hee. Hee. Life might not be cool all the time, but it is grand.
• Sometimes a Great Notion - Ed Schlesinger is the creator of studentforce, the salesforce AppExchange service for students of all stripes and hues as long as they go to high school, college or later. It is a functionally comprehensive service with a lot of cool features, all of which were student suggested. Ed gets that the customers know what they want, so you see things like a research feature that Googles for you and a feature that allows you to IM from within the application with your friends. In fact, if it were combined with Facebook, it would be the complete university experience online, minus the stuff that goes on in your dorm room when you or your roommate have to stay out of the room for awhile. I've given it a once over and will be doing something more thorough on it later on down the line either here or on my podcast. Ed has this son, Craig, 15, who as we say in Yiddish, he is so proud of, he kvells . His son doesn't just want to be a sportswriter, he IS a sportswriter (and a student) who writes a weekly column/article for the Home News Tribune that covers Central New Jersey and even won an award for one of his articles. I know Ed because of Rutgers CRM Research Center which happens to be in coverage area of the newspaper. Ed has a relationship with Rutgers and frankly, I just really like the guy. Well, the purpose of this musing is that when Ed told me his story I realized he was following what is a real path to a dream he's had for quite some time. He's taken risks, he's a true believer in the studentforce services he's created, not just a dude with marketing hype and he's actually listened to the students.(CRM practitioners, listen and learn from that). While reading his son's article entitled "My Own Field of Dreams' both Craig's talented writing and Ed's determined travels to his dream merged into a single thread with the last line from the essay/article that Craig wrote. "After all, if we didn't think the impossible could happen, we wouldn't be on our way there." Great line, great dream, great kid, great dad and guy. Ed should kvell - about Craig, but also about himself.


• "You Didn't Like It, You Really Didn't Like It" - Okay, I surrender. You win. Nobody but me seemed to get the title or be thrilled by the name of my upcoming podcast. I WAS going to call it "You Are What You Eat" but that didn't elict much response other than puzzled looks in person or silence at the end of the phone. So the name clearly sucks. I need a new name for the show. While I diligently will be working to use the facile part of my cortex, that's kind of hard to trust fully, so I'd like your ideas on a new show name. If you give me one I use, I will give you a $100.00 Amazon.com gift certificate. I NEED A NEW NAME FOR MY PODCAST. I WANT TO TAPE THE FIRST ONE THE WEEK AFTER NEXT. HELP!!!
• NetSuite Gets Sexier, Sweeter, Yummy - Next Week - As some of you know, I'm often called an "industry influencer." That leads many things including being hired frequently by vendors and integrators to speak at conferences and to write white papers and to do consulting. I've had that relationship with most every vendor in the industry of major note in some fashion, I would say. Among those many clients has been one of my always favorites, NetSuite. Well, next week, I'm going to be in San Francisco, at their behest, to attend the launch of NetSuite 11.0 which,from what I've seen so far, is very, very cool. But that's from conversation. I'll give you more of a picture on the suite and what to expect after the launch, since I gots ta see it for myself and then I'll review it down the line too with the all the sex and the post-coital reality of the suite, too. You know the old saying. "Honesty is the Best Policy?" One thing my clients always know is that I have the right to be ascerbic and tough on them, regardless of the relationship I have with them. Period. So forget what's under the suite's covers, it's going to be what's under the sheets. So watch here and we'll see what goes down. I think it'll be good. You'll know if it will be or not. One thing I can say unequivocally though is NetSuite has style. They have remarkable base of stylish, upscale, lifestyle-focused clients like Jubilee Chocolates - a superpremium chocolate producer, My Flat in London, a super trendy London fashion accessories boutique and the Oakland A's (No link. They are the enemy.) - so when they do a launch - whoa what a launch!. That's primarily because both their CEO., Zach Nelson and their VP of PR, Mei Li, have this amazing sense of not just PR, but how to provide a genuinely exciting experience - one that they like as much a those they provide it to. The company is both classy and just gets how to do an Oscar-worthy program. Speaking metaphorically here, if the food tastes as good as the presentation, the new 11.0 is gonna be something to chew on.. But I will reserve judgment on that one until post-launch.

Have a great weekend, all.

Ahead on this blog - my stupid, cobwebbed, old school view of the platform wars, thoroughly revised. Stay tuned.

Random De Dum Dum

I feel sorta "random" today so I'm going to jot down some random thoughts and ideas that have been either observations or tidbits.

CRMish Stuff

• YAY CMC - I want to send a major shoutout to Customer Management Community. They simply don't get enough attention in the United States for their consistently interesting work, and very well organized site. I've never written for them, don't know a soul over there personally (my bad) which is unusual for me, but they have done some excellent work on things like public sector CRM (see this report on governments redefining marketing in the UK); customer service; some very good industry software/SaaS analysis; very good work on customercentricity and just a multitude of other things. I think if they have any weaknesses its that they don't focus enough on the emotional and behavioral side of the transformation to the experience-focused customer that we're seeing pretty acutely now and they need to do a lot more with that. They are fine when it comes to process and metrics. Generally, they are a winner all around and, though based in the U.K. with a strong Euro-flavored dollop in their tea, they are a site that American audiences need to pay attention to. Thank you, Stuart Lauchlan.
• THE "DUH" FACTOR #1 & #2 - Amdocs came out with a study on February 13, called "The Customer Experience Survey" which pretty much validates what some of us have been saying all along (so, of course, it must be accurate and right). It found that "both consumers and businesses say that they are more likely to stick with a telecom provider based on the quality of the customer experience than on the cost of its service." Another conclusion? Customers want more control over that experience "Self service also continues to grow in importance. More than three out of four consumer respondents asked for online access to their account to handle administrative tasks such as reviewing and paying bills." Money wasn't the issue, nor was paying for new services. Control and the experience were. Good for Amdocs. Finally a technology company survey done with some meaningful questions. I don't know Amdocs all that well but I've tracked them enough to know that they are on the path to recovering some of the ground they lost after the Nortel Networks acquisition. This survey was very smart so it now puts them back on my radar so watch the blog for something on them some time in the future (how's THAT for vagueness?) I don't have enough current knowledge of their products or services to make any definitive judgement - though ordinarily that lack of knowledge that doesn't stop me!
• GEE THANKS, I DIDN'T REALIZE I WAS THAT STUPID - I like CRM Daily most of the time. They and CRM Buyer keep me up with the latest CRM news and some of their authors (especially the incredible Louis Columbus at CRM Buyer) are neat-o writers. But when I read articles like this one from the CRM Daily on January 31, 2006 "CRM Resolutions for the Year Ahead" I can only wonder things like, "why do I exist?" I begin to wail loudly, knash my teeth and tear some follicle-based protein from from my increasingly thinning hairline. Listen to this one. This is CRM Daily's anonymous writer's advice for 2006 to all you apparently clueless CRM practitioners out there. Resolution #1 - Evaluate the integrity of your data. Resolution #2 - Take stock of your current CRM solution. Resolution #3 - Plan now for the year ahead. Does it really take a CRM expert to tell you these things? If it does, then here are some resolutions for you personally. Resolution #1 - Make money this year. Resolution #2- Make sure that you and your family eat food as close to daily as you can. Resolution #3 - Treat yourself to something once in awhile. Resolution #4 - What-EVER.
• YOU'RE IN THE FACEBOOK GENERATION - Sasha Cohen won the silver medal for her woman's individual figure skating performance last night. She deserved it. She fell once in the beginning of her performance and then nearly fell again about 10 seconds later. But she hung tough and skated elegantly and just picked herself up and got back in the race (Tha's a Frank Sinatra reference - The song? "That's Life"). That gave her a sweet #2 finish. Her maturation from being a youthful hothead to a smart young, articulate woman is both obvious and welcome. But her victory isn't the reason for this musing. After the competition was over, this 21 year said something that made me pause, not because she used buzzwords that were cool to me (though they were). Instead, what made me stop in my tracks was her reflecting on the "four minutes out of her life" that she skated last night I think with this unpretentious, unrehearsed thought, she expressed how her generation actually thinks so CRMers take heed. Here's her quote: "Ultimately, a medal just signifies what youve accomplished. My focus is not on the medal. Its the experience and the process." Not bad, Sasha. Those of you reading this can make of it whatever you want to. But don't ignore the thinking that went into her comment. She ain't alone in it.

Not CRMish Stuff

These really are my code words for talking about the Yankees or philosophy or something just arcane so one thought on each.

• Let's start by looking at the Yankees, arguably my favorite subject. You can check what I say in my Yankees box over on the right side of this blog but I have to tell you something. At first, I was really wary of Johnny Damon, the Yankee, because of his committments but he is trying SO hard to fit in, reporting early, trying to say the right thing and working overtime to be a "teammate" that I'm starting to like him, even though I think he's being too propitiatory. That said, we have one powerful team this year and when Randy Johnson can even be relaxed in front of the NY media during the early days of spring training, then the world spins, the tectonic plates shift toward the Yankees. Thus, the only disruptive innovation that I will be concerned with during the summer will be the disruptions of sleep that the Yankees will cause the diehard Red Sox, White Sox and Oakland fans (their teams are my picks for the other two division winners and the wild card - though maybe the Indians or the Blue Jays rather than the Red Sox).
• I find that when I muse over things blog-related or not, I often think about a question which could be a bummer for some -one that has been a concern of moral philosophers since the 18th century" such as Immanuel Kant and GWF Hegel: What actions should we take in our lives that are in accordance with the Highest Good? How does that constrain us? Or does it NOT constrain us and instead provide us with increased freedom? That leads me to wondering that if I'm doing what I think is good for goods sake and it seems to work against my own interest, is this good? OR On the other hand, if I do something strictly out of a sense of duty and don't believe in it, but it has a good result or result for The Highest Good, was it good - for me? Which boils down to the difference between self- interest and selfishness. It also identifies the conundrum of how you reconcile freedom and necessity. All of this is why I have no friends anymore, and I presume when you're done reading this, no blog readers either (you're probably thinking "where's the sex part?") Actually though, all of these questions impact the way I conduct business because they impact my moral and ethical code - which means, of course, how I'm currently conducting my life. That's why I think about them sometimes. This is one of those days.



• Just to not leave you on an existential note, here's a joke from one of my favorite comedians:

  
  Mitch Hedberg:"I'm a hard act to follow, because when I'm done, I take the microphone with me".

(PG) Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here all millennium

George Steinbrenner is Customer Centric 2006

A story today out of Arkansas about a 12 year old boy who was saving his money for a trip to Yankee Stadium - $1000.00 - who gave it up to save his school which was in danger of closing. As always in situations like these, so called tough businessman, so-called maniac owner George Steinbrenner did the right thing when he found out about, wrote the boy, replaced the money, told the boy that education was more important than baseball and invited him to NY for a personal tour of the Stadium and the field during batting practice. Steinbrenner's quote:

"Steinbrenner said the youngster was absolutely right, and it takes quite a man to give up his personal dream for a higher purpose."

For more on George's customer-centricity see my entry last year on the subject. He's a lot better a person than he's given credit for, despite whatever you see as his eccentricities. I really like him. He's got a heart and can be emotional. He's also overcome the issues of his more youthful days. He's a man facing his later years with actually a measure of decency.

Yeah, so there. I said it

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL OF YOU, NOT EVEN GENDER SPECIFICALLY!!!