PGreenblog

Closing the Loop: A New Beginning

Mitch Lieberman, a SCRM thought leader, pointed out to me that I should release this post on July 6, 2010 because it would be one year to the day from my release of "The Stake in the Ground." What a cool idea. Thank you Mitch.

The headline is far more dramatic than the subject matter, sorry to say. But starting this month, now that the Gartner Customer 360 Summit is done, I'm going to be moving further in the direction I already had been planning to which will expand the scope of what I'm doing. I've been intending to make these moves since I finished the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light. So I figured I'd tie up a few loose ends here, make a couple of incomplete announcements and then publicly set the bar to where I'd like to be, which I hope will make me publicly accountable too. If you don't care, don't read. If you do, read on.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Let me, if you don't mind, do some things in public that are G-rated, but important to me and, I would hope, important to the ongoing discussion around social CRM or Social CRM if it matters one way or the other to you.

The Social CRM Definition

Back in 2006 I created the CRM 2.0 wiki and recruited about 170 industry leaders and interested parties to help define what CRM 2.0 was. I thought at the time, naively as it seems to have turned out, that if the industry defined CRM 2.0 now Social CRM, then we wouldn't fall into the trap that we fell into with CRM when it came to self-aggrandizing definitions.

After about 3 years, I took all the extant material I could find, which incorporated all the research I did for the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light, and all the materials from the wiki and I put together what I thought was a relatively democratic definition. I figured I had two years of research materials that were constantly being updated and ended up being an 800 page book. With the book materials, I had the benefit of 60 plus superstar experts in the industry who I respected giving their view on what Social CRM was in the context of their areas of expertise. I had the benefit of the participants who contributed to the wiki who were in the book in some cases and weren't in others. But, I thought, I had a fairly solid foundation for laying out a broad definition of what Social CRM was.

Based on that foundation, I presented the following definition that I published in its first iteration in my post last July "A Stake in the Ground on Social CRM", which, for good or bad, was accepted as a groundbreaking and seminal post - and the definition seemed to achieve some widespread acceptance.

Here it is:

"Social CRM is a philosophy and 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 and transparent business environment. It is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

I thought and said frequently that I thought it was awkward, it introduced a couple of new concepts - such as social characteristics - one that I'll be writing on more frequently in the coming period - but that all in all it was a decent enough job for a first draft. Kind of, in my mind, a release to manufacturing level draft.

Jokingly - yes, jokingly - I identified the final sentence "its the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation" as the "tweetable definition." In retrospect that was a big mistake. But I'll get into that in a minute.

Over time, that tweetable definition evolved from ...the customer's ownership of the conversation", to "the customer's control of the conversation."

What has been utterly staggering, eye popping, mind blowing and any other expressive statement that fits the bill, is that the "I was just calling it tweetable as a joke" part of the definition led to a series of sometimes direct and other times thinly veiled attacks. Some of which are no problem - they are disagreements. Others which are clearly personal. But the focus is always on the tweetable definition, not the definition as a whole - which contains the tweetable sentence, folks. The tweetable "its the customer's control of the conversation, while meeting the 140 character brainpower limit requirement, is not the definition. Just thought I'd say it again for the 4th or 5th time in this piece.

Some examples:

• There was big to do about the notion of the customer's "control" of the conversation. WTF...? What that means, in the context of the definition as a whole is truly simple. The customer has ability to affect business of a company in a way that is outside company's control via channels the company doesn't own. Period. This is not some statement about a neo-fascist control of the entire business of a company by the customer. It doesn't mean that the customer has a dog collar around the business, pulling it around while saying "Hey business, you're my bitch now." How stupid would I be to think that? No business that I've spoken to thinks that "customer control" means that. As I've stated countless times, businesses still have their own operational requirements and corporate objectives to meet. Customer behavior has changed over the past 6 or 7 years as has customer expectations. The idea of the "social" customer is just recognition of that change. Businesses have to respond to the change or they will suffer. I wrote 800 pages on it with the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light and I defy any of those who disagree with me to come up with anything I've said in those 800 pages or outside them that talks about some absolutist control by the customer over the business. Its simply recognition of a power shift toward the customer in who can affect who more.

  BTW, Mike Boysen's recent great post on the issue of customer control really is what is sparking me to deal with this.

• The veiled attacks are the worst but then again - for example someone using the sequence that went something like this (This is a paraphrase) "Seeing SCRM as a philosophy or a strategy is esoteric." This was one of those veiled attacks, since I'm the ONLY person who uses philosophy and strategy in a sequence at all. So that's a bit low. But what is really the key here is how ANYONE can possibly think that strategy is esoteric? That is a dangerously wrongheaded view. SCRM is a strategy for customer engagement - which no one but apparently one person I think would disagree is a key component of corporate strategy in the 21st century. Don't call it Social CRM if you don't want. Who cares? But recognize that outlooks, frameworks, programs, and strategies for engaging customers are necessary components of business thinking and operations for contemporary success.

There are many other definitions of Social CRM out there that are every bit as good or better than mine. Mike Fauscette's for example. Take the one that you want or the pieces from the ones that you want. Create your own if that's the way you roll. But I need to do two things so I can, one year after I said I was going to move on, move on for good to where I need to be. So let me say the following:

1. Forget focusing on the "tweetable definition" as if its the whole definition. I said that it was tweetable as a joke. That last sentence is a. intimately tied to the entire definition and b. is not a literal statement but one that is a concentrated metaphor, explained by the entire previous part of the definition. PLEASE do me the honor of thinking of it that way. Otherwise, I feel cheap (Sniff. Sniff...)
2. So, given that, and now that I have to get past the "tweetable definition" thingee, I've made a couple of small tweaks to the definition that a. serves it well, given what I now realize I should have said and b. Puts the tweetable definition to rest. Here 'tis.

   "Social CRM is a philosophy and 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 and transparent business environment. It is the company's programmatic response to the customer's control of the conversation."

   Note the small tweaks. First, control now "officially" replaces "ownership in the last sentence. Plus I've added the word "programmatic" to that same final sentence. The reason for that is I realized that what was missing in the definition was the idea of a defining yet dynamic framework for that engagement. A strategy is not enough. You have to institutionalize the strategy and create a framework to execute the plan - i.e. a program. That's not an unimportant change. Plus, as far as ownership v. control - the latter is simply a more accurate term. Hopefully that gives you more to chew on. Enough from me on that.

   What I Need to Say One More Time

   I said it a year ago and I'll say it again. We have a job to do. SCRM is now at least a mainstream discussion. It doesn't mean that its suitable for all companies; it doesn't replace CRM; it doesn't mean that if a company doesn't have a holistic SCRM program that encompasses every aspect of it, it's doing something wrong. Piecemeal or partial programs are perfectly appropriate for many companies - as long as the implications are understood. If you read CRM at the Speed of Light's most recent edition, you'll note that each chapter can be an entity unto itself. While the book is designed to be a holistic continuum that stitches all the pieces of an SCRM strategy into place, you can draw on the engagement strategy that would affect sales or marketing or customer service or the enterprise value chain, or the cultural effect and, I hope still get some benefit from that. I worked hard to make the book work that way. Realistically, just as in traditional CRM, few companies ever adopted an overall program that encompassed a complete picture. They tended to focus - and tend to focus - in one area be it sales or customer service. How you go about crafting the strategy for that one area - with a recognition of its impact on other areas of the company - is still part of SCRM planning. But there is nothing wrong with implementing "pure" traditional CRM or even "pure" social media. What you think you need to do, you should do. The best that folks like me and others of our ilk can do is show you the big picture, the use cases, the frameworks, the potential pitfalls, etc. and give you some guidance. As much as we have a whole group of folks out there in the CRM/SCRM world on a self-aggrandizing mission, the reality is that its your business and your decision on how you want to support your current and future customers.

   That has a whole lot to do with at least my next phase, the one that I thought I would head into after I finished CRM at the Speed of Light, 4e. Took me a lot longer but I'm ready now. Much of what you see here will launch in August, some a little later.

   The Next Phase

   This is an expansion that has a purpose. I think its time to move the discussion to the level of "how do you do that?" Or, "how did you do that? But then again, I've thought that before too. A lot of good it did (that's kind of a Yiddish sarcasm).

   What has been incredibly exciting to me is that there is a significant body of knowledge out there waiting to be harvested that reflects the success of "SCRM thinking'. There are jobs that didn't exist in any significant way several years ago (e.g. community manager) that are now proliferating. There are books out on aspects of how to do pieces of SCRM from social marketing to traditional implementation to business strategy and SCRM is entering the curriculum as the foundation for some CRM courses. There are case studies that are examples of colossal success and monumental failure. These are companies that have attempted social solutions to customer service, sales, and marketing to one degree or the other.

   what I'm going to do is harvest that vast as yet untapped - or at least unorganized - knowledgebase and bring you the stories of success and failure from the perspective of the practitioner and/or the vendor and/or the strategist. In other words, I'm going to look at the real world attempts that are going on out there and then bring them into focus for those of you who are interested in learning from those who do - and those who teach.

   So my strategy for your engagement (and I hope enjoyment - nothing says I can't do this with a sense of humor) involves a program of expansion with a myriad of parts. Here's the plan.

   Two New Podcasts

   Thing is, I love podcasts and I think that we're spending an incredible amount of time blogging and little doing shows in this great medium. Aside from CRM Playaz, what do you listen to that reflects the CRM or SCRM industries? Name one. Well, my plan is to have two regular shows - one a revival of what I did a couple of years ago - Experience on the Edge and the other a new show called "The Real Deal."  Here's the plan:

   Experience on the Edge

   This show, replete with music and riffs will be my solo with a guest host occasionally. The idea will be similar to what it was when I last did it - in 2008 - which is an edgy take on the CRM industry including vendors - with their successes but also no holds barred razor barbs at them if need be. It will be in segments (still a little loose when it comes to what they will be but...) which will roughly break down to the

   1. The intro including music
   2. an opening commentary and what’s upcoming on the show 
   3. a discussion on news of the week
   4. Some thematic editorial
   5. Lists of Top 5 good or bad - hopefully listener submitted and finally
   6. a closing
   . This doesn't mean I won't completely deviate from the format and do a special show on something like attendance at a vendor show or something of topical interest. I will. I'll also have a guest host occasionally chosen by me from friends, interesting people or listeners.

   The Real Deal

   This one is a little more nebulous as far as the format goes. Rest assured, music will play a part in this one. No doubt. The big idea is that I will deal with how it is being done via case studies and who is doing it via interviews of people well known or not, who are doing the actual jobs or on the receiving end of the SCRM/CRM particulates. Will this show be segments - meaning say, a case study and then an interview associated with it? Maybe. Will it be a case study and an interview of some SCRM related person doing an SCRM related job? Maybe. Or something in between. Maybe. I haven't decided. Preferences out there can be put up as comments or sent to my email at [email protected].

   One thing of big general importance. These two podcasts are going to be carried exclusively (for now) on one or more of Robin Carey's Social Media Today properties. Why? Because I think they are terrific and not overwhelmed by the self-promotional efforts of some of the folks on the other properties. The SMT properties are compelling, get excellent traffic and are thematically clear. And Robin is just a great person, which has bearing on my decision. I'm thrilled and honored that they've agreed to do it.

   A New Blog - "Science of Business, Art of Life"

   I've made the statement many times that the only reason that CRM is interesting to me is that its the only science of business that attempts to reproduce an art of life. That would be the art that's involved in crafting good human relationships. CRM itself attempts to figure out an approach, a methodology and a program that will recreate how humans interact in good ways - but in what is a constrained business environment. This led me to thinking about the expansive nature of that statement "science of business, art of life" really is. It could be product reviews, business methodology, the underlying geometry of natural design, a discussion of psychology that extends beyond the usual Abraham Maslow "hierarchy of needs" that is out there once in awhile in a business environment. It could be how surrealism represented not only an artistic genre but a political movement. Etc. Hell, it could be about whatever it is feel like talking about - as long as the human psyche, human emotions, personal interactions and business consequences are somewhat involved. That gives me something of a wide range now, doesn't it?

   The idea is simply to write on big picture or smallest of the small issues in a lot less constrained way than, say, ZDNet or PGreenblog requires me. Katy Perry, anyone? No one? Okay, Woody Allen anyone?

   The CRM Playaz

   Needless to say, CRM Playaz remains near and near to my (and Brent's) heart. We're working on the best ways to take this full time to video. For example, we're thinking of doing a show using iPhone 4s Facetime video phone capability. Once. Otherwise, be prepared for a kick ass new "season" of our usual cogent but irreverent conversation including CEO Smackdown. More announcements later.

   Business Model Changes? Market Research/White Papers, Reviews etc.

   I've wanted to bring products to the market that were not the usual thought leader fare but more along the lines of market research. I've done it though I can't say, candidly, that I have a proscribed methodology that has a hyphenated name associated with it. What I do have is market knowledge and an extensive network and I know how to construct a valuable survey. That said, I'm going to partner with various people like Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant and perhaps the Altimeter Group folks (none of them know this BTW, but I can dream can't I?), to do joint market research projects - if, of course, they'll have me. And with others who might be interested - let me know this year folks if you can. I'll also "donate" my URL "www.socialcrmreview.com" to the endeavor so there will be site that can handle the content made available non-exclusively too. Things like case studies, or interesting (free) market trends analysis, or even potentially "for sale" information. This isn't a fully formulated idea but one that you can be assured I'll be involved with by 2011.

   SCRM and Government 2.0

   As the fall begins to hit and leaves begin to turn, you will be hearing more from me and my brother, who just did a star turn at the Gartner Customer 360 conference in his discussion on Virtual USA and SCRM in the Public Sector. We are going to put together an important venture to bridge the gap between Social CRM and the Government 2.0 crowds – and thinking.  Got you curious?  Stay tuned.  More pretty soon. Work is underway on the construction of our gameplan. 

   The University of Toronto CRM Center of Excellence/Institute for the Future of Business and the Customer

   This one is a big one to me. I've been asked to help spearhead the University of Toronto CRM Center of Excellence which will launch officially in the fall. I am on the Board of Advisors and am honored and excited to be a part of this. For those of you I've actually spoken to, this is a dream for me. Several years ago, I came up with the idea of creating what I was calling the Institute for the Future of Business and the Customer (IFBC). But I didn't really move ahead with it because I was so busy, I slated 2011 to make a serious attempt, though I did make several smaller and ultimately abortive attempts at it.

   Then along comes Frank Falcone, the Canadian CRM lead for Microsoft and boom, there is a permutation of what I've been wanting to get involved with for years! He convinced the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, to their incredible credit, to create a CRM Center of Excellence that would not only provide the curriculum of the future for CRM and SCRM, but also do the research to establish the frameworks, etc. in a neutral, agnostic environment. Wow. I will be heavily involved in this. More coming very very soon on this one.

   NOTE: While writing this I am watching Paul McCartney do a free live streaming AIDS prevention concert in Hyde Park in London. What amazes me is the power of music, McCartney and the Beatles. He sang "All My Lovin'" and then as he was, the cameras were panning over the audience and all these kids who could be his (and my) children or even with a stretch - grandchildren - are sitting there singing it word for word and CRYING - and I mean there were a lot of them crying, tears streaming down their face that weren't any older than maybe 25. They aren't old enough to remember the Beatles but such is the beautiful amalgam of music, history and emotions that it gets to the deepest part of the soul of any one of us as a human being, not as a member of a generation.

Blocking and Tackling: Not Football, CRM

The discussion on "social" is painting much of the business landscape, not with a brush but with a bucket thrown at the canvas. It has become so ubiquitous, so omnipresent and omniscient, that even the New York Times, in their long running column "On Words", had an enthused discussion on the word's very presence in the literary landscape (I have to say, I found out from a tweet that mentioned that I was in the article, much to my delight - since my interests are literary - though it called me a "customer relations management expert." Close enough, especially when I got equated with being one of the cognoscenti). But, even though it is the hottest of hottest conversations in any enterprise/business town, what has been noticeable also, has been what hasn't been spoken much of, besides giving it the appropriate lip service, not because of anything malevolent, but because of the excitement of Social CRM - and social media. Its what makes the two distinctive (among other things) that in fact is being somewhat ignored. That would be the basic blocking and tackling of traditional CRM that is still part and parcel of any actual strategy - and any implementation. The operational"stuff." Even with all the incredible roaring, growling, yelling, about social and even with the party-level polite conversation going on showing thought balloons (or tag clouds) with "social media", "Social CRM", "cloud computing", "Tweet (oh wait, that's a Scarlet Tanager that flew in the window)", "conversation", "mobile CRM", "Facebook CRM", "customer engagement" and any other sexy cool term with meaning, one thing we can't forget. That's would be that CRM - be it our contemporary Social form a.k.a. SCRM or even the traditional CRM which is still an instrumental part of many businesses - has some basic operational requirements and planning that has to go into the development of an overall program for customers that a business can use successfully to accomplish its particular aims regardless of the changed circumstances of the modern customer controlled ecosystem. What we are dealing with when it comes to SCRM is, simply, what kind of particular program does an individual business require to reach out to their customers and provide them with what they need to get what the business values in return?

A Program

The best way to think about SCRM/CRM for simplicity's sake is that it its a customer centered program. The program's focus/direction needs to change from time to time because of the business exigencies of a particular era. For example, five years ago I would have said it was a program for customer management, now I say customer engagement. Which is more than a po-tay-to, po-tah-to distinction. It has serious implications for how businesses need to conduct themselves. But the basic requirements for the program's construction remain the same. It needs these following components if CRM in any form is going to be executed successfully.

These are the basic building blocks of what comprise a CRM strategy and program. They were needed in traditional CRM and they continue to be needed in Social CRM plans. While the emphasis and approach to the components vary from era to era, and while there are some additions to the list, all of them still need to be thought through, decided on, budgeted, organized into something and then followed through and then tweaked, tweaked and maybe even rebuilt, to make the changes in how the business thinks and runs, not just thinks. If all of that is done, the customers' requirements for continuing to do business with your company can be met. When it comes to some of the things (note I said "some") that distinguish Social CRM from its older sibling, such as social media (as tools) and social networks (as channels/locations) they have to be factored in, but not at the expense of the other pieces. In a perfect world, all of them need to be incorporated into the planning. In that perfect world, technology is a part of the program, but not the program.

A Clarification on Technology

Before I continue on, I need to clarify something. In my response to Bob Thompson's superb discussion on the Altimeter Group's Social CRM Pioneers Google Group, "Does Social CRM Need Social Media", I said emphatically no. That doesn't mean I'm opposing technology, nor do I think in a business, a Social CRM program can scale without it. But also remember at this point, when I say technology is needed to scale, then I'm also saying that social media is not the only technology involved in a Social CRM implementation. It just happens to be the one currently oozing sex. However, the traditional operational and transactional technologies such as a customer record - preferably with a single view, or a business rules engine, a workflow creation tool, a set of automated processes, communications channels etc. will continue to be as or more important than ever before. You still need to record transactions, you still will be wise to know what your customer is thinking and to use analytics help you ascertain that. You will still need to be able to track what your employees are doing with their customers, not just what the customers are doing. No way should you simply assume that you can substitute a customer's social interactions for recording a customer's transactions. You shouldn't underestimate the importance of having and knowing a transaction history. Knowing an interaction history simply gives a business the means for richer customer insight when used in conjunction with customer transactional behaviors. In fact, interestingly some of the more recent efforts by vendors like Oracle and SAP base their social knowledge of the customer on existing transaction records - not social interactions. The start to some pretty sophisticated customer insights and some really sexy customer-usable tools, starts with the historic transaction record. In fact if you look at what kind of IT framework you're going to need for Social CRM, you'll note some comfortably familiar faces mostly grouped on the left and underneath along with the scarily unfamiliar. Here's that.

What's sitting all the way on the left is what we think of as traditional CRM. They are on this tools map a necessary part of a larger framework of foundational architectures, web services, applications, services, and ways to deliver these services. The technology here is what's needed to run this thing at the enterprise level. This "thing" is CRM - be it traditional or social. Again, basic blocking and tackling stuff.

Let's Get Real

While what I'm saying may seem rudimentary to you - meaning you know this - and I apologize to you if it is. Unfortunately, the discussion on how to handle the basics has gotten somewhat lost in the social conversation. Businesses are primarily concerned with one thing - running their business and succeeding. If customer engagement is the key strategic parameter for success, they clearly would be smart to focus that way. To do that, they need to change how they run their business and figure out the impact that this change in strategy is going to have on all the things in the slide above. Then they need to run a program. Remember, their purpose is to be successful and meet their goals. Their purpose isn't to engage their customers. Their strategy is to engage their customers. The businesses have operational requirements that will exist even when the customer controls the conversation as they do now. That doesn't mean the business gives up running - it means it changes how it runs. But it still runs and the traditional CRM capabilities support that running of the business as well now as it did a year or three ago. But there is now more that needs to be done. That's where a Social CRM program comes in. The debates all recently have centered around what CRM used to center on. Is Social CRM a strategy or a technology? In some part the locus of the debate is due to my contributions to all this discussion among many others. For this somewhat of an incomplete discussion, I apologize for my role in propagating it. Above all, Social CRM is a program for customer engagement that encompasses a strategy, technology, system, processes, etc - just as CRM was. I'll probably tweak my definition in a post shortly to reflect that. At this point, Social CRM is a just a bit more than a construct that has some truly important but nascent practices that are associated with it that differentiate it from CRM. These are critical differentiators as you can see if you compare historic use cases against the best first take on the use cases that were done by Ray Wang and Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter Group last month. But they are not differentiators that don't incorporate traditional CRM somewhere in the mix. Social CRM is never purely social. All I'm saying here is that in the hot, steamy, hyper-charged sexy world of social everything that has revitalized the discussion around CRM - we can't forget what is basic and fundamental for businesses. They have to run, they have objectives that are not the same as the customer's when it comes to how they interact and they need to change with the times. The times require the them to consider Social CRM rather than just traditional CRM. Whether or not they decide to go with it won't change the basics of what they need to do to run, but it will change how they run. Maybe add some components to the basics. But the basics remain. And that is that.

Chatting (Not Chattering) About Salesforce - Part II

(This is a continuation of the analysis of what salesforce.com announced at Dreamforce 2009 last week that I started on ZDNet. If I were you, I'd go to ZDNet and read that first and then click on over to here to read the remainder of the article. I'm trying an experiment to span both blogs. Let me know if it works or is awkward, irritating and stupid.)

The Link to ZDNet Part I of this post

Custom Cloud 2

Despite the bad messaging, Custom Cloud, the marketing wrapper for force.com is perhaps salesforce's actual tour de force(no pun intended - really). For example, Chatter begins to makes sense as a "layer" (PLEASE don't take that too technically) inside force.com - as a set of components offered through the platform. Within the confines of force.com, Chatter's ability for "apps to talk to me" (as Marc said) meaning to create a feed for any data object in the system, regardless of application becomes something, that with some tweaking and refinements - critical refinements, is genuinely new and powerful.

That was highlighted by the above mentioned Vetrazzo demonstration where Vetrazzo CEO James Sheppard showed how they used force.com to develop an integrated system that combined order management, production planning, batch management and forecasting. More specifically, Customer Service and Order Management; Finished Goods Inventory Management; Production Planning and Scheduling; Raw Materials Management; Shipping and Logistics; Document Management; Warranty Management and integrated invoicing through Quickbooks. In other words, the supply chain and ERP not CRM. The Social Supply Chain and social ERP. They used Chatter's capability to create an RSS feed for any data object to monitor the activity of these systems and to respond to any system requests in real time or nearly so. What made this even more amazing is that they developed all these apps/services in less than three months. I'm going to be speaking with James Sheppard this week (we're already in touch) to do more on Vetrazzo's use of force.com. It really blew me away. It was in production too.

This gives you a good idea of what force.com is capable of. Even though there are complaints that development of force.com is in a proprietary language, Apex, and this is a bit of an issue, the reality is that most PaaS offerings in the cloud have at least specific programming languages e.g. Dot Net. Though, Apex doesn't speak to other platforms, web services do. Still, it would be nice if it were more open.

That doesn't denigrate the vast move forward for force.com. With the integration of the "Chatter layer", and the advances in the tools to the point that supply chain and ERP are not only possible, but being done, this is what I see as the core of what salesforce.com is going to be doing in the cloud and for the foreseeable future.

My rating: A home run with a man on. (for non-baseball left brainers 4.5; for non-baseball right brainers - " Ex -cellent!"

And Now, What You've All Been Waiting For.....

Yup. Salesforce Chatter. First, if you want the best expositions on Chatter from the conference, here are some posts that will scratch your itch. They are detailed and interesting takes on Chatter.

1. Esteban Kolsky
2. Sameer Patel
3. Michael Krigsman
4. Denis Pombriant

First, let me make one unequivocal statement. No make that two. Chatter is NOT a "fourth cloud" and it isn't revolutionary. What it is, is an aggregate of mostly already established features, functions and characteristics that have been done piecemeal by others - and often done more comprehensively - as individual pieces.

For example, here are the things that are done by others that Chatter has (all of them have etc. implied after. There are multiple examples)

1. Salesforce Chatter - Lotus Connections 2.5
2. Customer Communities - Helpstream
3. Twitter integration - SAP Twitter integration
4. Collaboration tools - SAP ESME, Socialtext, etc.
5. Social Content Management - Oracle Sales Library
6. External Community Integration - Microsoft Neighborhood America collaboration
7. Integration into CRM system - many social and CRM vendors
8. Enterprise Profiles - Lotus Connections 2.5 (particularly good treatment)

But those are just examples. There are three things that stand out for Chatter that I think both validate the Social CRM space and are unique to Chatter.

First....

Marc's homage to the penetration of consumer thinking into the enterprise is an important acknowledgment for the industry. While this has been the case for years, salesforce.com is the second (after Oracle) to acknowledge that consumer thinking and peer trust are governing the business environment at the moment. Its particularly important that salesforce.com does it, frankly, given its status among not just business but the digerati and innovators.

Second....

Chatter is the first fully integrated, aggregate social " foundation layer" to meet the requirements for supporting salesforce.com as a company that embraces Social CRM. That's great for the market. The aggregation and integration of the all those features, whether or not they are individually the best executed of those out there, is unique and important because, within force.com it becomes a powerful capability that supports collaboration and customer engagement since the tools for all of that are there. Honestly, I don't see the value the same way outside of force.com. As a standalone, at $50/user/month, Chatter is singularly unimpressive. Its expensive and is what has classically been called "a solution looking for a problem." However, inside force.com it becomes a powerful capability, mostly due to the third point here.

Third....

Chatter's ability to create feeds for not just people, but content and applications is both its unique feature and its most important benefit - though not without what are either flaws or questions, because it was hard to get answers. Any data object's status in your system including competitive vendor's systems e.g. SAP inventory management - can be delivered via an RSS feed. Thus you can not only get real time status on what your employees or customers or competitors are doing with internal or external information but you can also get inventory status, or order status or the status of telling you of updates to a presentation.

The enterprise level security is pretty good for this. While you can subscribe to the status (via RSS) of any object stream you want to, you can also be restricted to only having access to certain status updates and feeds. Salesforce calls this a "social sharing model" though it resembles a classic system administration model as much as anything else.

However, there is one real drawback to this otherwise important capability. There don't seem to be any filters at all. Each time Michael Krigsman (tip o' the cap, dude), who raised the question initially and others like me who also asked the question in 1 on 1s and interviews, tried to get an answer, they got "security" and "social sharing model." What that theoretically meant is "you can limit the feed noise by only subscribing to which feeds you want to." What that actually meant was "no there are no filters." Which, even for a version 1.0 is a boo-boo. The "social sharing model" is a "which content you choose to subscribe to"; the filter is a "what content you choose to get from your subscription." Not the same. I might want to know what inventory status for the products I sell as a sales guy. That means I don't care what the rest of the inventory is doing. If my feed is "SAP inventory status" I'm going to be getting a lot of stuff that I don't care about just to get the few things I do. Noise.

Other Chatter....

All in all, Chatter is a significant step forward for salesforce.com though hardly a fourth cloud. Could they have done things better with it? Sure. I merely am speaking of the tip of the iceberg. For example, their treatment of profiles is good but not as good as Lotus Connections which integrates human resources (I refuse to call it "human capital management") data such as who you report to and what projects you're currently on and your salary data into the personal profile information that you provide a la Facebook which is an immensely powerful way of dealing with the employee profile. But this is version 1.0 and that can be something of an excuse. Plus, Chatter isn't released and is only slated to be released sometime in 2010 so perhaps there's more than that.

But none of these early issues, with the exception of the lack of filters, reduces the value of Chatter as a part of force.com. It is important and also moves the Social CRM technology space an evolutionary step forward, if it delivers on its promise.

My rating: Double down the left field line with a runner to third, does not score (for the non-baseball left brainers 3.75 of 5.00; for the non-baseball right brainers "Niiiiice."

Backstage Notes

One of the most important things that salesforce.com has done that they never even mentioned is to create a REST API which will make all their capabilities "mobile-ready" as my Mobile CRM goddess, Sheryl Kingstone of Yankee Group pointed out. Given the sort of "technology focus" of Dreamforce, I'm surprised I heard nothing about it. This is a very important and big plus for salesforce.com's new generation of services.

The actual event, minus the need for stage management during the keynotes, was a major victory for all concerned. On the whole, Freeman, who ran it and particularly Kevin Richardson who was the man in charge for Freeman, deserve some serious kudos for making this work as well as they did. Any problems that might have existed were not noticed, which means "wow." The analysts and press (thus, me) were treated very well - in fact couldn't have been treated better - with special events - the code word for parties - and blogger/press/analyst tables with power cords and wireless that worked in the front of the room so we could actually blog and tweet and do whatever it was we did. So, Aimee Lynch and Erin Traudt - you ROCK!!! and thank you.

Technorati : CRM, Chatter, Custom Cloud 2, Sales Cloud 2, Salesforce.com, Service Cloud 2, Social CRM
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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
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