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.

CRM Idol 2011 Update #2: We're Crankin' Now!

In case you need the full monty as CRM 2011 keeps rollin': here are the two links to the oh so passé past.

• The original rules and contest ideas, judges and prizes.
• Update #1

Now here are the latest updates:

Additions to the Judges

1. Lets give a big round of applause to Larry Ritter,  Senior Vice President & General Manager of CRM for Sage Software who joins our Extended Judges Vendor Panel . Larry is a long time industry veteran who not only knows software but knows small business too. A huge addition for the panel
2. Now, put your hands together for Chris Carfi, Vice President of Antseyeview and the man who just may have coined the term "social customer" with his incredibly popular blog. Chris is one of the first social influencers and one who knew the CRM market from the get go. He is also incredibly popular.  He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel.
3. We've got one more to clap those hands for and that would be Brian Vellmure, Founder and Principal of Initium, LLC. Brian is one of those Social CRM influencers who appeared about 2 years ago and just keeps getting more and more prominent. He joins the Extended Judges Influencer Panel too.
4. Also, give it up for Thomas Vander Wal, Principal at InfoCloud Solutions who joins the Extended Judges Influencers Panel. Thomas is a web legend who pretty much created social tagging and folksonomies and is the man who is defining the social "lens" that we look at companies, products and social interactions through.
5. Finally, last but not least, raise a glass to Kristian af Sandberg, Product Manager, Redpill Linpro, one of Scandinavia's foremost strategic implementation firms. Kristian is an EMEA leader who becomes part of the Extended Judges Vendor Panel.

The Mentor Program

We are adding another facet to the mentorship program. Where originally mentors were available to only the seven finalists on how to construct the content for their video, we are going to be able to expand that program to the 60 contestants on how to handle their demos etc with the primary judges. These mentors will be drawn from the Extended Judges panel and will be VOLUNTARY when it comes to which judges. Watch for a list to be published on the website at some time after the site launches.  The contact information will be made available PRIVATELY to the contestants for their knowledge only and the dates that the mentors will be available also will be privately provided. This is an exciting addition because it will provide invaluable advice on how to do things that will benefit the young businesses that are in this competition. Participation is strictly voluntary on both sides.

The Latest Calendar - May  5, 4:30PM ET, 10:30PM GMT

CRM Idol 2011 is closed. All the slots are taken but we've put together a waiting list. 

For all of the companies that have made it, please remember:

1. its provisional - dependent on your three references checking out. Once they do, we will send out notifications to everyone that will let you know the time and date of your actual slot.
2. I'm traveling and the other key judges are busy and we are all human beings so we might be a little slow in responding.
3. The waiting list is those Americas companies that submitted after closing of the competition. The order is based on the time stamped proper submission of the email. Any email that had something wrong with the submission has been asked to resubmit with the corrections. The resubmittal will be their actual time and date, not the original submission. Hey, it might sound sorta anal, but we haven't been asking much so reading the rules and making our lives a little easier isn't unwarranted, is it?

The Americas Calendar - FINAL (see #1 above though)

The Americas (all times are Eastern Time)

Date
	August 15 3pm – PhaseWare 4pm – Performance Solutions 5pm – Solucciones 6pm – Jaguar TPM	August 16 3pm – Relenta CRM 4pm – LuxorCRM 5pm – thedatabank 6pm –Connected	August 17 3pm –Assistly 4pm – SplendidCRM 5pm – RO/Innovation 6pm - GreenRope	August 18 3pm – Cosential 4pm – Media Funnel 5pm – Tasker.ly 6pm – Aplicor	August 19 3pm -FreeCRM 4pm – Interactions Corp 5pm – Antharia LLC 6pm – Relayware
	August 22 3pm – Lookout Software, Inc. 4pm – InvisibleCRM 5pm – Negoxia 6pm - CiviCRM	August 23 3pm –Vigilius LLC 4pm – Hyperoffice 5pm – SalesNexus LLC 6pm – Salestrakr	August 24 3pm – Brick St. Software 4pm – Stone Cobra 5pm – VIPorbit 6pm – Nimble	August 25 3pm – Front Row CRM 4pm – GetSatisfaction 5pm – ContactMe 6pm – FuzeDigital	August 26 3pm - bigWebApps 4pm – Loopfuse 5pm – Vertical Solutions, Inc. 6pm – Dovetail Software

EMEA - FINAL as of May 5, 10:30PM GMT

EMEA (all times are GMT)

Date
	September 5 3pm - Swivelscript 4pm – InTouch 5pm - Efficy NV 6pm - Jibe Company	September 6 3pm - Loyalty Factory 4pm – B-Kin 5pm – Atollon 6pm - Dimelo	September 7 3pm - Pipedrive 4pm – Akordis 5pm - Workbooks.com 6pm - BPMonline CRM	September 8 3pm – Iko System 4pm – Zestia Ltd 5pm - Really Simple Systems 6pm - Arten Science Ltd.	September 9 3pm –The SelfService Co. 4pm – Digita Srl 5pm –ABCrm 6pm - webCRM

Thus….Available Times as of May 5 at 1:30am ET, 7:30am GMT.

Americas (all ET)

• CLOSED

EMEA (all GMT)

• CLOSED

That's it. CRM Idol 2011 now has all its candidates for this year.  This is exciting. There is still room for those who don't mind being on a waiting list. Feel free to submit.In Other News

We are cranking on several other fronts that are in progress as this is written. Among them:

1. We are working on a CRM Idol 2011 website that will feature a Joomla! based content management system at the backend. This will become the source for all updates and queries when its ready. Watch for it in the near to mid future.
2. We are also working on a Facebook page for all you fans and friends out there.
3. We are working on a YouTube channel, which as of now, is going to be the system of record for the videos though because we are at 10 minutes as a video, we reserve the right to move this channel elsewhere should YouTube rules interfere.
4. We are working on the 1 hour session guidelines for all the entries so that you won't feel lost and we will see what we can do to set up a system of mentors that will be available during certains as yet ascertained period for advice for the one hours. That will be in July sometime I would reckon for the Americas and August for EMEA.
5. Finally, we are continuing to provide more possible prizes and will be refining the rules for prizes etc as we go on.  Stay tuned for more announcements.

 

Finally…CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season Is Here! Welcome to…Wherever We Are

PG Note: The post you see below represents the “official” launch of CRM Idol 2011 and is one that all eight primary judges endorse. For me personally, this is my “angelic” side – the side of me that wants to support an industry that has been good to me. On my more edgy side, some of the reason that this was hatched was because of PR agents who basically don’t do their homework and pitch me all day long without an inkling about me as an actual human. They think I’m an influential CRM cyborg. Dealing with that from the other side, Brent Leary and I will be launching a music video in a few months from Playaz Productions. Heh. Heh.

But the side of me that’s grateful to an industry and friends and those companies that actually have honored me by listening to me blather all these years, is enthralled by the idea that we may be able to give back to all of you through CRM Idol. So, thank you for everything over the years and welcome to CRM Idol 2011: the Open Season!!)

 

 

Okay, everyone this is the big one. CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season is here and we’re ready to take your companies and find out which one of you in the Americas and which one of you in EMEA is not the next CRM Idol but the FIRST CRM Idol.

The Idea

Most of what we’re trying to do was outlined in the pre-announcement announcement of CRM Idol last week. But it bears some repeating:

Small companies – at least in the CRM software related world – and that means social software world, in this case, too – abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. But, as we said, there are thousands of them. And, no matter how great your product is, if no one knows about it, well, then, oops. Not a good thing.

These small companies are all making efforts to get into the ecosystem that could benefit them – one which includes investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. While getting support from this powerful ecosystem is by no means a guarantee of success, it can be enormously helpful in getting well down the road there. But, those small companies are often thwarted in that effort by either really bad PR people, or just the incredible amount of companies out there trying to reach into the ecosystem who are pummeling the small amount of influencers, etc. every week with requests to demo or talk.

Now, to be fair to the influencers, they are human beings with lives that aren’t built around supporting this one company that really thinks they are it. All they know is that each of them is getting between 20-50 requests a week to take a demo or conversation with someone who owns or represents a company they’ve never heard of and never talked to yet. In addition to those that they know. Often enough, they are pitched by a public relations person who is either inexperienced or not really good at their job who makes no effort to find anything out about the person that they are pitching to. So the influencer, journalist, venture capitalist gets a generic curve thrown at them that doesn’t even break over the plate – guaranteeing that the email is going to be discarded as a matter of course before the first paragraph is even read. Or it could be that on a particular day the influencer got 10 pitches and had a headache and didn’t want to see any of them.

As unfair as generic pitches and high volumes of noise are to the influencers in the highly desirable ecosystem we are chatting about here, it is a problem because what are probably a lot of good companies are never given a chance to move ahead because of the difficulties inherent in the process and the vagaries of bad luck on any given day.

Which is why CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season exists.

The concept is simple, small companies out there. If you meet the submission criteria outlined below, you will be given the opportunity, first come first serve, to secure a time slot on a specific day that will put you in front of some of the most influential people in the CRM/SCRM world. They will spend an hour with you in a demo to hear about your technology product – software only – and they will write a jointly signed review of what they saw of you – that will be published in multiple venues as soon as its written. It can be a good review, a bad one, a mix or indifferent. There’s risk on your part to be taken here. But it is something that you need to be aware of. The reviews will go up as soon as the 5 judge sign off on the final content. They won’t be exhaustive reviews but they will be opinionated and fair.

Forty companies from the Americas and twenty companies from EMEA (that means ONLY Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will get a shot at this – again first come first serve (more later on what that means). Of the 40 in the Americas, 4 finalists will be chosen. (NOTE: There will be an APAC edition hopefully late in the year or if not, early 2012, depending on the success of these two events. Sorry, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, et.al. Logistics made it impossible at this juncture.) Out of the 20 in EMEA, 3 finalists will be chosen. Each of the finalists will be REQUIRED to do a ten minute video about their company and the product. Not a repeat of the demo but a video. Note I used the word REQUIRED here. Let me put it this way. If you make the finals and don’t do the video, we will publicly skewer your company. Know why? Because our judges are giving up what little free time they actually have in a summer to do this and it will take us 4 hours a day for 3 business weeks to do it. So if you can’t or won’t put in the effort to do the video, don’t bother to apply. Seriously. We’re trying to help out here and we want you guys all to succeed but it’s a two way street.

Okay, that rant out of the way. Once the finalists are chosen and the videos done, they will be posted online in multiple media outlets. They will be voted on in two ways:

1. Popular vote – see, crowdsourcing is important. All the votes for the one winner from the Americas and the one winner from EMEA will be tallied from the public sites – in aggregate. That’s 50% of the vote.
2. Extended Judges Panels – as you can see below, we may have assembled the greatest panels of judges – both leading vendors and influencers ever assembled in the history of CRM – not to be hyperbolic or anything. Each judge will select a specific winner in each of the Americas and EMEA from the 7 finalists. That’s the other 50% of the vote. The original judges will be voting as panel members.

The winners in each will get a major array of prizes, some of which are below, and be declared “CRM Idol 2011 Winner.”

Not too shabby is it? Vast amounts of media attention even if you don’t make the finals. If you make the finals at all, some prizes to you. The winners get everything that the ecosystem can offer but guaranteed success. But they do get all the accoutrements they need to support their increased likelihood of it.

That way, you small companies out there who have been victimized by bad approaches or just circumstance have the opportunity to bypass all of that and make something happen. It’s up to you to take the reins in hand but once you do, you have at least a serious chance at making yourself successful.

The Criteria

This competition is for small companies in the CRMish/SocialCRMish world. – see the categories below for some guidelines though please feel free to make the case if you don’t see yourself in the guidelines.

1. You have to have software that is commercially available by the time of the demo – that would be in August – again see below. No betas, alphas, release candidates allowed. If we find that you’re not commercially available, and you have a time slot, you’re out and someone else will fill the slot. So please be sure that you can verify the claim if you want to participate.
2. You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
3. You have to have revenue under $12 million U.S. your last fiscal year. As far as disclosure goes, you have the choice of making the claim that you do – though that will have to be stated in your submission and we’ll trust you or you can disclose your revenue in the submission with the knowledge that only the permanent judges will know what it is. If you make the claim, please be prepared to back it up if we ask. Your call on how.
4. You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
5. You have to fit a category – though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

1. Traditional CRM Suites
2. Social CRM
3. Sales - Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
4. Marketing – Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
5. Customer Service – all permutations
6. Mobile CRM
7. Customer Experience Management
8. Social Media Monitoring – requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
9. Customer Analytics – including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
10. Enterprise Feedback Management
11. Innovation Management
12. Community Platforms
13. Enterprise 2.0 – collaboration, activity streams etc.
14. Social Business
15. Knowledge Management – this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
16. Vendor Relationship Management
17. Partner Relationship Management

Once again, if you don’t see yourself in this list, don’t worry.  Just make the case as to why you have some customer-facing possibilities and the likelihood is that we’ll be cool with it. We’re trying to make this easier for you, not hard.

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

1. There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.
2. The submission will be by email ONLY to: [email protected]. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.
3. The submissions will occur starting today – Monday, April 25 and will continue until Friday May 13 or until all slots are filled, whichever is first (watch #crmidol on twitter for updates on that as it occurs). On May 13, should any slots be left, the remaining specific dates and times will be made publicly available and another final round of submissions for those remaining slots will occur from May 13 through May 20. After that the submissions will be closed.
4. Each submission will include the following:
   1. Your company contact and named person contact information Two date and time specific slot requests. ONLY two. If your slots are not available, you’re out of luck until May 14 – and then you can resubmit to any time slots that are publicly announced as still available. Though there is no guarantee that there will be any available slots at that time. (see below for examples of how to submit the dates/times)
   2. The category you feel you fit into - or if you don’t but think that you qualify – why.
   3. A description of what the product is/the company is. Be persuasive here that you meet the criteria, not that you have a great product. This is merely a qualifying discussion. URLs cannot be used as substitutes for this description. The submission needs to be all inclusive. However, they can be used as supporting documentation.
   4. The names of the three (3) referenceable customers – the company, the contact and the way to communicate with them – minimum of email and phone, please.
   5. A statement that says that you meet the revenue requirement along the lines of “our company states truthfully that our revenues in our last fiscal year 2010 were under $12 million U.S”. OR you can state the actual number with the knowledge that the primary judges in each of the Americas and EMEA will treat it as under non-disclosure. But please be aware those designated primary judges below will see the actual figures if you choose to reveal them.
   6. A statement that says, “if (you) make the finals, you are committed to making a 10 minute video for submission and public viewing as part of the conditions for entry.” Word it anyway you prefer but make the commitment clear.
5. If you are accepted, you’ll be notified privately but it will be posted that you’ve been accepted on the Twitter #crmidol stream. The time will only be sent to you privately. Just your acceptance will be posted. Please allow some time between your submission and the posting of it to the hashtag and your private notification, since we all still have to work for a living.
6. If you don’t include everything specified in the rules for submission, it means automatic disqualification and you cannot resubmit.

The Demo

The demo has few rules. Just be prepared to a. explain your company; b. show your product – live please c. answer questions from the influencers/experts.  Not much more than that. I’m sure many of you are experienced at this already so wed don’t have to tell you this, but just in case… A site for the demos with login etc. will be announced to the timeslot owners in early August.

The Video

The standards for the video will be mentioned to the finalists once they are named. To rest any unease, you won’t be required to spend lots of money to get it done. How much you spend and on what will be up to you as will the content and how you present it. We’ll issue guidelines when the time gets near, including how the video is going to be distributed for posting and voting.

The Judges

Here are the lists of all the judges. As you can see, we have what is likely to be the heaviest hitting list in the history of anything done in CRM when it comes to awards or competitions. Click on their names to get to their LinkedIn bios. They are in alphabetical order.

Primary Judges

The Americas

These five judges will handle the 40 entries for the Americas which consists of the United States, Canada, South and Central America.  They will all be involved in the one hour reviews each of the days over the two weeks and will jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the four finalists for the Americas.

1. Paul Greenberg – Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
2. Jesus Hoyos – Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
3. Esteban Kolsky – Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
4. Brent Leary – Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
5. Denis Pombriant – CEO, Beagle Research Group

EMEA

These four judges will handle the 20 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia etc.  They will all be involved in the each of the 1 hour demos/discussions from Sept 5 through 9 and will write and jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the three finalists for EMEA.

1. Laurence Buchanan – Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
2. Silvana Buljan – Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
3. Paul Greenberg – see above
4. Mark Tamis – Social Business Strategist, NET-7

Mentors

This is an exciting part of CRM Idol 2011. Each of these fine human beings has volunteered a day of their time – two during the finals and one with the winners – to provide the benefit of their experience to the contestants.  What they will do is noted by their name. This is an awesome idea that Anthony Lye actually cooked up. Each of these mentors has decades of experience in the software and venture capital world and is considered a leader in the CRM space. So if you make it to the finals, you have the benefit of their knowledge and their valuable time.  Amazing.

1. Anthony Lye – Anthony will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Anthony has had years of experience as a senior management person for enterprise CRM and a thought leader.
2. Joe Hughes – Joe will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Joe has been a leader in the CRM space for as long as we can remember and one of the more foresighted when it comes to the value of Social CRM
3. Larry Augustin – This is a prize for the winner of EMEA and the winner of the Americas. Larry who has years of experience as an executive in the software space and has been a successful venture capitalist will work with the winner to prepare them for dealing with possible investors including doing a VC matching with the winners.

There will most likely be other mentors announced as the competition gets closer to the demo dates.  We might try to make some mentors available to prepare you if you need them for the one hour demos but that’s still up in the air. We’ll keep you posted.

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

1. William Band – Vice President & Principal Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
2. Jim Berkowitz – CEO, CRM Mastery
3. Bruce Culbert – Chief Service Officer, The Pedowitz Group
4. Zoli Erdos - Publisher/Editor, CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars
5. Mike Fauscette – Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions, IDC
6. Josh Greenbaum – Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
7. Dr. Graham Hill – Partner, Optima Partners
8. Dennis Howlett - Buyer Advocate
9. Ian Jacobs – Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction, Ovum/Datamonitor
10. Michael Krigsman – CEO, Asuret
11. Marshall Lager – Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting
12. Kate Leggett – Senior Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
13. Maribel Lopez – Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research  Founder Lopez Research LLC
14. Jeremiah Owyang -Managing Partner, Altimeter Group
15. Sameer Patel – Managing Partner, Sovos Group
16. Scott Rogers – Customer Evangelist
17. Robert Scoble – Managing Director, Rackspace Hosting
18. Brian Solis – Principal, Altimeter Group
19. Dilip Soman – Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
20. Ray Wang – CEO, Constellation Research
21. Mary Wardley – Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC

The Vendor Panel

1. Larry Augustin – CEO, SugarCRM
2. Anthony Lye – Senior Vice President & GM, CRM, Oracle
3. Phil Fernandez – CEO, Marketo
4. John Hernandez – General Manager, Customer Care Business, Cisco
5. Jonathan Hornby – Director, Worldwide Marketing, SAS
6. Joseph Hughes - Senior Executive, CRM Service, Support and Social System Integration Lead, Accenture
7. Charlie Isaacs, VP, eServices and Social Media Strategy Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
8. Vinay Iyer – Vice President, Marketing CRM, SAP
9. Katy Keim - CMO, Lithium
10. Marcel Lebrun,- CEO, Radian6
11. Mitch Lieberman, Vice President, Marketing, Sword-Ciboodle
12. Chris Morace- Senior Vice President, Business Development, Jive
13. Zach Nelson – CEO, NetSuite
14. Bill Patterson- Director, CRM Product Management, Microsoft
15. Dileep Srinivasan - AVP - CRM & Social CRM, Digital Marketing & MDM, Cognizant
16. John Taschek –Vice President, Market Strategy, Salesforce

The Journalist Panel

1. Elsa Basile – Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
2. Barney Beal – Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
3. Anita Campbell – Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
4. Robin Carey – CEO, Social Media Today
5. Neil Davey – Group Editor, Sift Media
6. David Myron – Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
7. Valdir Ugalde – Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
8. Anne Van Den Berg – Senior Editor, CustomerTalk (Netherlands)

 

Media Partners

You’ll note that we have 8 journalists on a panel of judges. Well, each of them represents a media partner that will be broadcasting the competition and posting the videos for voting in the finals for the popular vote.  They are an awesome array of the most influential media sites in social media, CRM, and small business as well as local influencers in CRM in Latin America and Europe.  They will be significant in the lives of the contestants, the finalists, and the winners giving each what may be an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage. Their coverage will be supplemented by posts to the blogs and other sites that are owned by many of the judges so there will be significant reach for all 60 of the initial contenders.  Each of these partners will be getting exclusives from the judges and hopefully some of the companies too so that we can add a quality of coverage that would enhance the value to the SMBs participating. in all areas – CRM, social and small business directly.

We expect to add more media partners as we continue on throughout the competition.

The current partners and links to their sites (in alphabetical order, like every list here):

1. Call Center News (Argentina)
2. CRM Magazine/DestinationCRM
3. CustomerTalk (Netherlands)
4. Mundocontact (Mexico)
5. MyCustomer.com/Sift Media
6. SearchCRM
7. Social Media Today
8. SmallBizTrends.com

 

The Prizes…So Far

These are the prizes as of launch today. There are several others in the works that will be announced as the contest rolls out.

All Finalists

All 7 finalists will get to choose one day of consulting from the list of Influencer consultants below. The order of choice will be based on the popular vote on the video which will be kept confidential but used for the choosing. There will be more consultants added to the list as contest moves forward.

The Americas and EMEA Winners

Each winner will get to choose four prizes from the list.  Note – in the case where multiple prizes are being offered by a single vendor – the vendor counts as a single prize with all the items as part of that.

1. Accenture
   1. A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
2. Capgemini (for EMEA winners only)
   1. A half day workshop with Patrick James, Global VP CRM and Laurence Buchanan to explore joint go to market opportunities and help you refine and test your value proposition.
3. Social Media Today
   1. A blog post featuring the winner of the contest to run on both The Customer Collective and Social Media Today
   2. A single blast to the Social Media Today opt-in list (approximately 50,000 names) which will conform to their minimum standards (valued at $10,500)
4. Microsoft
1. 12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM
2. 12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions
3. Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services
4. Guaranteed access to exclusive Business and Technical On-Ramp program funded by Microsoft to accelerate entry
   and access to the Microsoft ecosystem
5. SugarCRM
   1. Free 10 user subscription to SugarCRM Professional or Enterprise
   2. Membership in the Sugar Exchange and free consulting on product integration with SugarCRM
   3. CEO Larry Augustin, a successful venture capitalist in his own right, does a mentoring & VC matchmaking session with the winners
6. Brian Solis
   1. One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
7. Paul Greenberg
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
8. Ray Wang
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
9. Sameer Patel
   1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
10. Influencer Consulting– free strategic consulting for 1 day or 8 hours from a variety of judges (in person travel expenses to be covered by winners)
    1. Esteban Kolsky (in person only)
    2. Paul Greenberg (on phone or in person)
    3. Denis Pombriant (on phone or in person)
    4. Mark Tamis (on phone or in person)
    5. Jesus Hoyos (on phone or in person)
    6. Brent Leary (on phone or in person)

 

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here’s the hardcore stuff:

1. The hashtag is #crmidol
2. The email for submission is [email protected]
   1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to [email protected]

 

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

We’ve put together an easy little table with all the relevant dates and times that you’ll need as you progress through the competition.

 

Dates/Times	Americas	EMEA
Submission Dates	August 15-19; August 22-26	September 5-9
Submission Times	3pm ET; 4pm ET; 5pm ET; 6pm ET	3pm GMT; 4pm GMT; 5pm GMT; 6pm GMT
Finalist Video Submission Date	September 30	October 14
Winner Announcement	October 17	October 31

 

 

 

 

A Note or Two

A little bit of unfinished stuff that will sort itself out as time goes forward.

• There will likely be a CRM Idol site (Joomla based) coming in the next month or so that will be an aggregate site for all the media outlets and streams.  However, this remains a work in progress that’s still under discussion.
• There will be more mentors and prizes added and possibly a judge or two.
• For now ongoing news will be found at the twitter hashtag #crimidol.

In Closing

That’s about it. Now its time to bring it. First come, first serve. See you, maybe as the 1st ever CRM Idol, in Vegas, Hollywood. London or on the Social Web. Somewhere anyway.

 

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

2011 CRM Forecast - What's Up Wit' Dat - Part II

I'm presuming that you've already read Part I of this 2011 CRM Forecast, oui? If not, scoot on over to ZDNet and do that before you read here. This is a continuation of Part I, not a repeat of it. I would HIGHLY suggest that you do this in order. :-) 6) Knowledge management replaces enterprise content management as a core requirement for large businesses - This might sound self-evident but it isn't. One of the most important conceptual transformations going in business is around the idea of Service Dominant Logic (SDL) which to put into its most simplified form would be - "rather than speak of the features and functions of technology that you need, try to think about the jobs that you need to get done. Then go from there." This dovetails directly with the idea that in order to understand the value of SCRM or CRM or any strategy or technology or process, you have to proceed from the standpoint of the self-interest of those involved as potential buyers or users. So what you are attempting to create is a commonwealth of self-interest. What are those things that can be done that will make the jobs of the persons involved easier when it comes to engaging customers? Knowledge management, unlike enterprise content management, isn't only the collection, storage and organization of documents but is the accessibility of information that answers questions. What it also involves is the delivery of that information and the timeliness of that information. That means it can be via FAQ, web self service knowledgebases that are accessible by both employees and customers; it can involve the delivery of dynamic knowledge based on ongoing wikis and threaded forums; it most certainly involves a highly effective search mechanism. This year we are starting to see the integration of knowledge management with CRM - especially around customer care through companies like eGain, Coveo, and perhaps most visibly, Inquira. In fact, while none of them made the Watchlist candidates (Inquira just barely missed) that's mostly due to this being a new and important technology integration and one that I didn't monitor as much as I should have - which I will rectify in 2011. But as more and more information becomes available, as more and more customers are providing answers to other customers questions through communities, social networks and threaded forums; as more and more customers are requiring increasing information from companies to make buying decisions and as more and more customer service reps are expected to respond with answers instantly, knowledge management becomes increasingly important. In 2011, KM will bubble to the top as a noticeably critical factor in both running effective customer service operations and in answering customers' questions. No longer will just content management (go here to download this document or look at this FAQ) be enough. KM in 2011 will rise to the top as a critical component of Social CRM and in the ensuing years be redefined and then adopted by the larger enterprises around the idea of "answering questions" not just "storing content." (9)Customer experience reasserts itself loudly as the core of CRM and SCRM - This one is kind of a no-brainer in a way. The core of traditional CRM even though it was always operationally focused was still the improvement of the customer experience and it was recognized that this was in fact the foundation for the success of how customers related to your company. But over the past few years, as CRM became more and more technology and process driven (rather than enabled) the core message disappeared into a dusty archive. Then along comes the distinctly right-brained focus of Social CRM. Then a flood of companies focused on collaboration, social software, community platforms and even those calling themselves customer experience management (CEM) vendors and strategies poured over the market. Traditional CRM vendors decided that they had to add social functionality to their traditional offerings adding another dimension. The market was confused about what to call itself, the vendors confused about how to message. But that forced the customer-driven intelligentsia - e.g. thought leaders, journalists, and analysts to rethink the value locus for companies at the point of interaction with the customer. There were two things that seemed to be generally agreed upon. First, there really is a social customer who is distinct from the customer of seven years ago. Second, and most germane to this forecast, is that the customer experience is the locus that we've all been missing and should be what companies focus on - whether the vendor thinks its providing or the practitioner thinks its implementing CRM, CEM, SCRM, a community (platform), listening, acting, social software, SMM, what have you. As a result, there is an increased focus on the customer experience on the practitioner side with programs primarily being evolved through loyalty/advocacy programs (see KLM's Club China, Marriott Hotels Rewards program, eBay's mobile efforts, etc.) or the messaging of vendors, which is dramatically shifting around to a focus on customer experience. You need proof? Check out the messaging of SAP, Oracle, Jive, etc. and you'll see a decisive shift in that direction. In 2011, not only will the focus of companies move in the direction of improved customer experiences through provision of products, services, tools, and consumable experiences, but the vendors messaging will both continue to align toward that end and the products that they provide will reflect that message. NOTE: Vendors, beware. Just because this will be happening at an accelerated pace, that doesn't mean that there will be a CEM market in 2011. CEM is not a market. It's a strategy that integrates with operational CRM strategies (I really don't care which one you think is dominant). Don't try to revive a market that was never really there by that name. Your messaging is around the customer experience, not a CEM market, right? (6) Co-creation and customer driven product innovation becomes more than just an advanced idea. Gains significant ground in the B2B space as a core necessity - Ideation isn't just a fad. Sure, in the past 2, 3 years, it was left to a few visionary thinkers like Steven Vargo, Robert Lusch, Graham Hill, Wim Rampen (I'd love to be included here but really, I'm just sipping at their fountains) and a few forward thinking companies like Procter and Gamble, Samsung and SAP. But the reality is that, as 2011 and beyond march ahead, customer driven product innovation is becoming something that companies are beginning to see true value in - with exactly the mutual benefits that we devoutly wish that SCRM would provide. In that same IBM Institute for Business Value mentioned above, they found that 78% of the customers would involve themselves in product innovation with the aforementioned companies. While I'm not sure how they derived this figure, the key is to see the picture being painted here - customers are more interested than ever - especially in the B2B space if you still believe that sort of thing - in participating with the company in the things that matter to them - the creation of the products that they buy. (8) Microsoft Azure emerges as a true cloud provider at the level of Amazon as cloud computing considers its rise to becoming a primary technology infrastructure - This may be my only vendor-specific forecast for 2010 because I think despite the hype of "we are cloud providers" that comes from an incredibly large number of the other technology vendors, Microsoft is the ONLY one poised to be true provider with the scope of Amazon, through their extraordinary Azure platform - a 9 billion dollar investment so far. I think they have the technology, the infrastructure, the platform and the storage capacity. They are willing to host someone other than themselves on their cloud infrastructure too - unlike the other claimants to the throne. Microsoft's sin if you will is that they are terrible at marketing Azure, which is a pity because as y'all know, its not good if no one knows about it. (5) Application marketplaces will become commonplace as companies look to platform providers to fill ecosystem needs, not just CRM - I think that we're already seeing a quantitative leap in the number of apps marketplaces out there. As we all know, salesforce.com was the first to do this with AppExchange, the first truly successful business applications marketplace that gave partners a chance to show off their wares - some of which have been quite good. ITunes of course, was the first great consumer marketplace to add applications with the launch of the iPhone. There have been multiple others since ranging from RIM having a Blackberry marketplace to Jive Software launching a marketplace in 2010 for their partners to provide the apps, add-ons, plug-ins to make Jive, not just a community platform but a community ecosystem. Of course, Google and Android are also in the mix as always. This is a trend that has nowhere to go but up in 2011. What could be wrong with easily consumable applications that support the ecosystem needs of the companies that are wedded to a particular vendor's platform? Expect to see a proliferation of these applications marketplaces in 2011. NOTE: Vendors, one cautionary note. I saw salesforce.com go through a period a few years ago when they were starting to ignore the difference between strategic partnerships and building an app on the AppExchange. Thankfully, they righted that ship reasonably quickly but not before I witnessed two instances of exactly that kind of thinking. Learn from that. An appexchange is no substitute for a strategic partner. Might sound self-evident, but if a company as smart as salesforce.com did it, what makes you any smarter - other than learning the lesson. (10,000,000) Yankees rebound and win the 2011 World Series - This one is, of course, the one that I am more likely to be right about than any other. 27 World Series, 49 pennants. That is substantiation enough. Forecasts I'd Like to Make But I Can't Defend There are a few things I'm just going to say. The problem is that these are just things that either come straight from the gut or are likely wishful thinking. I can't defend them - unlike anything else I have above. Those are defensible and I'll fight you to the death on them - My Forecasts, Right or Wrong as Patrick Henry, esteemed American patriot said during the War for Independence in 1776. Or was that My Country Right or Wrong? Whatever.

In any case, here are the unsubstantiated claims - the only ID will be a note that says, gut or wishful thinking.
1. Partner Relationship Management (PRM) finally ignites and takes off as a market. There are good products out there now (e.g. Relayware, Oracle Siebel PRM) but the market broke my heart twice now and I don't want it to happen again. (wishful thinking)
2. A few major practitioner companies come out with full-blown Social CRM strategies that they actually call "Social CRM." (gut)
3. Salesforce.com adds customer facing capabilities to Chatter making it a genuinely interactive community platform - Actually I heard Marc Benioff say they would have this in a year at a briefing in September but I'll have to see it to believe it. I think it's a matter of time. (gut)
4. Yankees get Cliff Lee (gut).

Finally, What I Didn't Forecast

You'll note that I didn't say anything about the cloud this time, since I think that's become entirely self-evident and a forecast on the cloud getting "bigger" isn't going to be a particular useful one from me. Gartner actually says that 75% of all SaaS deployments can be considered "a cloud service" now, according to Gartner star analyst Sharon Mertz (take my word, if she says, you can believe it).That's an interesting figure because that means that 25% can't be AND that, as I love to keep reminding anyone who isn't sick of me, there is a distinction between on demand and the cloud. In any case, according to my checklist, we can stick a forecast into it, its done. Next up, The Watchlists. Those are going to be more fun than ever before. I'm at Dreamforce so watch for my live tweets under the #df10 hashtag. Then a post, THEN the Watchlists. Bye. See you at the tail end of next year with my look back at how stupid I was this year. Not. Maybe not.

Enterprise 2.0: An Idea Whose Time and Annual Conference Have Come: Guest Post from Steve Wylie

I'm heading over to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston on June 22. If you're interested in the social customer and how businesses should respond to them - and how workplace performance can be improved - this is the one conference you shouldn't miss all year. I mean that. Go. I'll hook up with you if you're there. Contact me via Twitter to set up some time. I'd love to make contact with you guys. Also, there are going to be a number of industry luminaries there like Ross Mayfield and Thomas Vander Wal and Mark Woolen from Oracle. Susan Scrupski of the Enterprise Irregulars and well, you name it, they're there. I'm going to be doing a panel sponsored by Radian6 on Social CRM with Brent Leary, Michael Thomas and Frank Eliason (the Comcast rocker) on the 24th from 5pm to 8pm. I'll publish the details soon.

To get across the fact that I really think you should bite bullets of time and money and come to this thing, I asked Steve Wylie, the GM and Conference Director for this knockout of a conference and all around good guy, to write a guest post because I don't think I'm persuasive enough and this guy has those needed mesmerizing powers to get you there - using rational thought as his hypnotic tool of choice. He is also the editor of the Enterprise 2.0 Blog, which means he can write a pretty mean posting to begin with. He'll give you an idea of why an Enterprise 2.0 event is even more cogent than ever.

SF-based Steve is an events industry veteran, having handled some of the biggest conferences around including the Interop mega-events in Las Vegas and New York. He is an IT industry veteran too, as the former program director for InteropNet, which ran a multi-vendor test lab geared to evaluate, improve and showcase early implementations of open-standard IT infrastructure technology.

I'm always amazed at what it takes to run an event. I think event planning is a magnificent and difficult venture. But Enterprise 2.0 is not just an event, but one with actual content - and plenty of networking. Oh, if you want to hang around with the rock stars of the social web, they hang there too. Here's where you can get more info on the conference.

I'd truly take advantage of this and make the effort to get there.

Take it away, Steve

The Next Phase of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

Paul kindly invited me to share my thoughts on the Enterprise 2.0 market and provide some highlights for the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. As the conference chair, I've got a fairly unique perspective on the state of Enterprise 2.0 and some ideas on where we're headed. We're roughly three years along since Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee first described this new category of enterprise software and organizational strategy that he dubbed "Enterprise 2.0". Someone recently asked me what's changed in the Enterprise 2.0 market from that point to present day.

For starters, we really didn't have much of "a market" to speak of three years ago. At that first Enterprise 2.0 Conference we described a new vision for business applications that included some truly ground-breaking concepts. Attendees were largely business users and managers, frustrated with the disparity between fast-paced, consumer technology innovation and the dated applications being supported by corporate IT. At that first conference we were embarking on a radical journey to turn these business applications and the corporate culture around them upside down. We were ready to take on the world.

Fast forward three years and those early aspirations are now grounded in reality. Momentum is building for what is now truly an Enterprise 2.0 "market" and we're seeing many early signs of success. But while we've made tremendous progress in three years, Enterprise 2.0 concepts and applications are still striving to reach more wide-spread, enterprise-scale adoption. There is an abundance of use cases around small or department-level successes but far fewer examples of large-scale deployments - examples of Enterprise 2.0 concepts and applications that form part of an organization-wide fabric for productivity and communication. Why is that?

While we could argue that this is a very new market and that businesses take time to change, I also believe that Enterprise 2.0 will be challenged by large-scale adoption until corporate IT is fully on board. Early adoption has been largely driven by business users and department-level managers. They had a problem to solve and were fed up waiting for IT to provide the solutions they needed. They took matters into their own hands by finding workable, web-based solutions and even celebrated this new found freedom from IT. With a few exceptions, IT took a reactive posture to Enterprise 2.0 and viewed it as a threat to be managed, secured and even blocked in some cases.

Three years later and I see that posture changing for many IT leaders. We're entering a new era where forward-looking IT leaders embrace Enterprise 2.0 as a strategic advantage and as part of a cohesive, company-wide system. This change is an important ingredient to the next phase of Enterprise 2.0 adoption.

So what should you expect from this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference? Expect to network with nearly 1500 people from over 40 countries. Expect our most comprehensive program to date with deep coverage of new topics like Social Media and Cloud Computing. Expect even more innovation from industry veterans and start-up vendors preparing for the next big thing. And expect to hear some really compelling case studies and speakers from organizations like the Obama Campaign, the US Army, Booz Allen Hamilton, Volvo and Jet Blue, all ready to share their experiences on how Enterprise 2.0 is transforming business - changing the world.

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Live from Orlando: Sapphire 2009

(Because I think this is important and I have no time, I'm producing this same entry on both this blog and ZDNET)

SAP is always a bit of a conundrum to me. They have extraordinarily talented people, an incredibly deep product portfolio that they are always extending, more often than not make good acquisitions that take some time but work out all in all, and seem to be actually dedicated to transforming their ecosystem - internal and network - when the world's conditions merit it. Which is more than I can say about a lot of similar companies. On the other hand, they make business decisions that I politely would have to say are perplexing and statements that they just simply shouldn't make.

All in all, I have to say, before I get too far into this post, I am a fan of the company. I find them to be innovative in places I don't expect; with some caveats, especially related to Territory Management, they've developed a CRM product, CRM 7.0 that will be highly regarded and is a valuable addition to the choices that that enterprises have. More on that in another post. They are innovative in ways that have nothing to do with software - but have more to do with culture (collaborative value chain) and with perception and intellectual influence - their unique and useful Business Influencers Group, an organization that is an exceptionally smart idea - and unlike any other at any company I know. But SAP has these flaws that just...just...shouldn't be there.

Leo Aptheker Keynote Kicks It Off

CEOs, as far as I'm concerned, need to be visionary, not salespeople. Several years ago, in 2003, Craig Conway, then CEO of PeopleSoft, went and did this almost literal song and dance routine about "no code on the desktop" when speaking about PeopleSoft's first web-enabled applications and it sounded like a sales guy making a hard core pitch with a bit of theater thrown in that shamelessly (though I'm sure he thought it was funny) included his young children. There was no vision, there was no sense that you were dealing with a leader - just a guy trying to sell a product to an audience of about 16,000. It was pathetic actually.

Now, I'm not sure of the size of the audience at Sapphire 09, Chris Musico, an associate editor and bright bulb at CRM Magazine tells me is 10,000 here and 8,000 virtually - they call it their largest audience ever but there are not as many here as there were last year - live humans that is. The numbers are impressive.

But what I am sure is that Leo Aptheker knows the message and believes in it. His sincerity, to my slight surprise, came across, to the audience and if you followed the Twitter feed on Sapphire 09, you'd see that.

But that doesn't mean the message was perfect. Nor the vision was totally clear.

Leo began his presentation by a grim look at the world economy and the effects of the recession on how the world of business is going to have to function. The net of that part of the discussion is that companies will have to function in a world that has limits and that is at greater risk. This means that in order to bring forward the next generation of business, its going to require "clarity." That means a clarity of purpose and strategy. Businesses must be able to make strong choices based on a realistic evaluation of "the situation" and then executing on those choices. It means full visibility into the operations of an enterprise with speed and accuracy. It means leaders who think clearly and act accordingly. He mentioned that he had hosted a conference of academics from around the globe and they all decided that it was urgent to rebuild trust and confidence with all stakeholders - especially customers and shareholders. That, I have to say doesn't take an entire conference to figure out, but it was still good to hear it.

Clarity, which consists of transparency, accountability and sustainability drove the core of his keynote. Around that, which was, of course to be expected, he pitched SAP software and services and SOA architecture. One point that i found interesting was that SAP now supports more than 25 industry specific best practices based roadmaps. SAP is working toward cross pollinating industry best practices, which in theory might sound good, but when it comes to best practices, history kind of bears out the idea that one company's best practices might be the reason for collapse of another company - so cross pollination of industry-wide best practices might lead to nothing more than a bunch of bee stings rather than honey. So to speak.

Without going on forever on this, there were two specific areas that I want to cover because I see them as exceptionally important - one good - excellent in fact, and one the continuation of a mistake that SAP just seems to keep making.

The Good: Sustainability

I get the fact that my speciality is CRM so I'm not the most qualified to talk about sustainability as an expert. My commitments to being green (beyond seasick), carbon footprint reduction and using less paper tend to be at the level of citizen who owns a house who is trying to reduce energy use without freezing to death in the winter. However, I am more than aware of what has to be done at the corporate level.

When it comes to this, SAP, as evidenced not just by the passion and sincerity of Leo Aptheker on the issue, but in their actions as a company and in the products they've acquired and produced are going to be if not already a leading force in sustainable business over the next several years.

Aptheker pointed out that in 2008, SAP had reduced its total corporate carbon footprint by 6.7% compared to 2007. In fact, Peter Graf has been named Chief Sustainability Officer to deal with all things sustainability at SAP including not only meeting their corporate objectives but also to provide their related products and services.

Their commitment went beyond just the achievement of their corporate objectives. Leo showed a Sustainability Solution Map that was comprehensive and valuable. Here it is.

They have not only committed to be a company that is socially responsible, but they've developed an initial blueprint for other companies to be socially responsible and sustainable. That is something that no other company has even considered that I know, much less done.

But they've also monetized it and kept it at a viable level.

For example, the always incredible Ian Kimball, who does many of the SAP presentations to loud applause (guy is a master of this), showed a web based ecommerce application an SAP Web Store (a construct) that had a product - GPS system - that you wanted to buy. Under the GPS system was a note that said, "Guaranteed: Most environmentally friendly product in its class." That doesn't sound like much until lan actually took us behind the scenes and showed us the algorithms and dashboards and KPIs built into applications that had the benchmarks for that guarantee built in. In other words, it wasn't just a claim, but it actually met standards that were provable via app.

But they went beyond even that. They actually have identified a path for themselves as a company that means a rigorous adherence to a set of sustainability KPIs that are probably a first for the industry.

All in all this is a world-class effort that they mean. This isn't a marketing ploy or a trick to play on the conference. This is a passionate and serious commitment by a mega-giant company that can affect the next generation business models if they can follow through. I think they can and will.

The Bad: Once Again On Demand

I am constantly perplexed by the on demand strategy of this company. Leo was both vague and ultimately defensive and didn't provide any real reason to let me see that SAP is on the right path to an actual Business ByDesign product that is anything but fluff. I heard Leo make a commitment to "on demand" or "on demand, on premise, hybrid or anything that you want to use." I even heard him speak on the "cloud coming to earth" and their architectural map had a bottom layer of private cloud - virtualization - and public cloud in that order. But the delivery dates? Unclear. Again. It was almost as if he said, "We are committed to on demand and we'll deliver it to you....someday."

He even then said, "if you think SAP is a newcomer to on demand, then think again. We've been doing it for five years. You can do your research."

First, they have been doing it for five years - and doing it badly. I had a conversation in Dallas with an SAP VP when the first "hybrids SFA" came out and was told that the reason for it wasn't to meet a market need but instead to stop the encroachments of salesforce.com on their customer base. Awful strategy.

Not much real progress has been made. I truly hope that SAP someday gets this right because its almost impossible to be in the market without a SaaS product. They have Business Objects BI On Demand which is an actually good product, but we heard nothing about that. I guess we can continue to wait, but the message was "we don't have much yet" whether it was intended that way or not.

The Press Conference

While this was a comprehensive press conference that covered a number of "ecosystem" announcements such as a smart and valuable global services partnership with Cognizant, it too was highlighted by one outstanding discussion/announcement and, in this case one horrifically stupid comment by someone who should have known better.

The Good: Business Objects Explorer

One of the most intriguing products that emerged this conference was Business Objects Explorer, an analytics application that SAP claims may change the way that decisions are made forever. For me, that is a hard thing to say and see but no matter what this is an interesting and potentially important product.

What makes Explorer important is that even a mathematical moron like me can use it to get results of real interest and it provides results lightning fast, so that you don't have to crunch numbers for hours or days before decision gets made.

For example, if you are doing a simple product analysis, and you want to look up all the refrigerators in a massive catalog - style and price - it takes milliseconds to get an answer. They did a run on some actual data from Sara Lee, one of their beta partners and they were able to go thru 266 million rows in a third of a second. It was breathtakingly fast.

But you can do more complex analysis - let's say a comparison of television models that are over 43" and cost over $2500 or more that are located in inventory in the southeast states compared with all the same criteria for the EMEA and that are plasmas and LCDS but not DLP or any other variety. That would take a couple of seconds of clicking and, apparently, since they didn't actually do this study, less than a second to get the answers.

Here's a screenshot to show you the simplicity.

Now, of course, there are questions - which mostly revolve around data types. In the press conference Ray Wang, a superb Forrester Group analyst, raised the issue of data quality - what is the quality of the data going in - how that affects it? All in all, it will obviously but that's out of the hands of SAP. He also raised the question of Master Data Management (MDM) - can it handle multiple data sources with different data types? They say yes, but how well remains to be seen. The SAP claim is that it can do that or it can operate as "accelerated Explorer" - which enhances queries power and speed when it comes to SAP own's Business Warehouse - especially those that are over a million records in length - which even they admit start grinding BW's analytic capabilities when things get that big. Explorer can easily handle it.

The combination of the extraordinarily intuitive interface and the speed of results makes this a truly interesting and potentially leading product.

That's the good thing in the press conference.

Shame on John Schwarz

It was just one statement and I truly can't imagine that he meant to put it this way. But John Schwarz, former CEO of Business Objects and a member of the SAP Executive Board, tripped and fell flat on his face when he....well, here's a summary (paraphrased):

I'm sure that you heard that there was an SAP reduction in force that affected 3000 SAP employees. I just want to say that I assure you there was little impact in that loss and that in fact, SAP will probably operate leaner and more efficiently as a result.

I wonder if Mr. Schwarz, who I'm sure rests on millions of dollars of personal wealth, remembered that these people, who in effect he is saying are useless (no impact) fat (leaner), have families and no livelihood. I wonder if he remembers that we're in a recession and its hard to find a job now. I can't speak for how many of the 3000 are still not working, but I'm sure a significant amount are still looking.

I could excuse this shockingly cold comment by saying that Mr. Schwarz didn't mean it and he may not have. But he is a member of the SAP Executive Board and what he says carries serious weight. This was a cold, cruel and callous statement that can't go unnoticed. Literally everyone at that press conference I spoke with later (about 5 or 6 others) - analysts, journalists - were aghast at this.

There is no other way to be. Mr. Schwarz should apologize.

Consistent Doesn't Mean the Same

Last year at Sapphire, one of the things that struck me funny was SAP's incredibly scripted messaging which was so minutely micromanaged that it sounded inauthentic. This was around the RIM - SAP SFA for the Blackberry announcement. Everybody, regardless of where the message was delivered or who delivered it mentioned that they used their Blackberries as an alarm clock. Everyone. I commented on this at the time and talked to SAP about it.

Damn if they didn't do it again - this time around their message of Clarity and Timeless Software. Not more than ten minutes after Leo Aptheker's on the whole excellent vision and speech, John Schwarz said the same thing about Clarity and Timeless Software in the same way. Scripted and micromanaged again. Inauthentic again.

I won't dwell on it. Suffice to say, there are two mantras I recommend to SAP that they repeat - in different ways and tones of course: 1. Consistent messaging doesn't mean identical messagings 2. Authenticity trumps consistency everytime

Develop the message and then free your spokespeople to present it in any way they want to. Stop telling them how to say they. They have their own personalities and styles and interests and vocal chords. Let 'em loose. You'll get much better results.

In Sum: Day 1

Day 1 is always the key to any conference. The tone is set by the visionaries and the spokespeople and the revelations. All in all, SAP continues to impress me. They are locked and loaded and aware of the changes going on in who customers trust and how they communicate and they are responding. Leo mentioned the growth of Gen Y's influence in the workforce (BRAVO!) and that 1/3 of the baby boomers are on their way to retirement. He got the recession down cold in terms of what to expect and how to think about it. SAP is responsive and working toward doing what it has to so they can meet and participate in the transformation.

But they still have weaknesses that their competitors can exploit especially in the SaaS space. They didn't help their public image either with the Schwarz faux pas.

But on the whole, they are a company that is not only competing but in areas that matter like sustainability in business, it seems they are becoming actual leaders who have both smart business plans and a moral and ethical benchmark that other companies might do well to imitate.

Let's see what today brings.

March Madness - Non-NCAA: Copious CRM Tidbits - News, Personal, References, Coolness

March has been one of the more incredible months for sheer action when it came to the world of CRM. First, every CRM-related company, large, small or medium had some announcements that were actually significant; then the social gang decided to get in on the CRM action, declaring Twitter "Social CRM" and some of the CRM oldies but goodies decided to get in on the social "thang" trying to find ways of figuring out how good ol' operational CRM fit in - or didn't. I was busy as....hell throughout the month rockin' through 5 cities (counting NY twice) and doing 5 speaking engagements - and moving my miles for 2009 up to nearly 30,000 already. I even went to Chicago and did two....webinars. Plus I have a really great business-personal announcement too. Which those of you who use Twitter - a.k.a. Social CRM-NOT, or Facebook will already know. AND some really good stuff got published that I'm going to point you to.

So, we action, drama, intimacy and love here, people. Let's get this party started.

Get This Party Started

Okay, I figured that I'd get this party started with a "Get This Party Started" by Pink video - though clearly the video isn't Pink's official one. If you'd rather see Pink's version, click on this to go to it.

First the Personal Business Stuff

The most exciting thing - for me at least - being a narcissistic sort of being - is that I've been asked to be the Chairman of the CRM Magazine conference this year. This year meaning in 2009 - and on August 24-26 in NY. And, I accepted. I'm totally pumped for this. We're already just about done with the speakers and their slots and will be announcing them this coming week (I think). Sponsors are next on my agenda so all you vendors out there, pony up, babies!! You won't be disappointed - or maybe you will - I can't speak for you. I have to admit, I have a few trepidations because I've never chaired a conference before and I'm finding out that its a LOT of work. A LOT. A WHOLE F-ING LOT. But its a blast because I get to work with David Myron, and Josh Weinberger and Marshall Lager and the whole CRM Magazine crew - and they are a crew. They are also incredibly cool to hang out with. Believe me. No wait. Don't believe me. Come to NY (what a segue!), get a conference ticket and see for yourself. The only thing I'll tell you about the conference right now is that there is going to be a Live Performance of CRM Playaz at the conference with me, Brent Leary and some selected guests. I'll post links to this as soon as I have them.

I just finished a slew of presentations ranging from the Linkage Conference on Customer Value in FL, to a private presentation for GLG Group private equity and hedge fund customers to webinars for InsideView and Sword Ciboodle and finally an incredibly well produced, classy effort by Liminal Group, run by the inimitable Scudder Fowler. The latter event which I did in NY at the knockout beautiful Asia Society - amazing venue - was co-sponsored by Sage, who of course you know well from their CRM products and partnered with both CRM Magazine and InsideCRM. Josh Weinberger did an astonishing series of tweets via that ever-controversial CHANNEL (not social CRM application) Twitter that just rocked (or as Gen Yers and pretend Gen Yers like me say RAWKED). Here's the current way to access the four of them that could be accessed - needless to say though of course if it were needless I wouldn't say it - dumbest expression in history - which is why I'll keep using it. Where was I? Oh yeah, The GLG one can't be seen and I can't find the Linkage one (but I'm working on it) but here's the links to all the others and the appropriate notes.

In order of appearance (click on image to go to the appropriate page) (Again, these are for archived presentations - ignore the registration note on the images)

Sword Ciboodle Webinar: Serving them right: Maximizing the value of customers in a downturn - and beyond

InsideView Webinar: Real Customer Insights and Strategies in the Year of the YoYo

Liminal Group:

This is a rebroadcast (a very high quality one) of my presentation on The Era of the Social Customer. Also presenting at this event are Dave Van Toor, SVP of Sage CRM, who I've spoken of on these pages, and Penelope Trunk, a Gen X Business Leader who is an expert in managing Gen Y in the workplace. Here's a link to a sample of my stuff at this conference.

NOTE. This one costs $25.00 to see the entire rebroadcast. But, if you type in CRM20 its 20% off - meaning $20.00. The times and dates are:

Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 12pm - 2pm ET

Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 12pm - 2pm ET

Worth it. really. Click on the diagram and see the page for details and registration.

PERSONAL BUSINESS ANNOUNCEMENT

This one has me psyched! I've been honored with the chairmanship of the DestinationCRM/CRM Magazine national confab in August this year. That means that I get to speak, be MC, play around, put together the speakers lists (we have over 130 submissions/requests to speak), develop the program, play around, help drive sponsors and attendance and, play around. We have so many speakers of note and quality that we have three tracks this year. I'll keep you posted but for now just let me tell you that:

1. Its August 24-26, 2009
2. Its in NYC at the Marriott Marquis
3. There are marquis names speaking (what a segue)
4. I don't have the pricing but do have the sponsorship package.
5. I'm totally pumped about this.

Know why I'm pumped? I get to work with some of my favorite people in the world of CRM (and, in the world for that matter). That would be David Myron, who is the Editor in Chief; Josh Weinberger, who is the Managing Editor; and Marshall Lager, who is the Senior Editor. Truthfully, that's even more appealing than the conference itself, which is entirely exciting. They are wonderful people who are just a joy to hang with.

Period.

Status of the Microsoft-Salesforce Shootout

I figured it was time to let you know where the MSFT-SFDC configuration Shootout stood since it seems to have disappeared. Seems to have might be the operant term here. Its alive and well. And proceeding. For those of you who don't remember, about a year ago, I was upset with Steve Ballmer's declaration about the badness and "non-existence" of salesforce.com's configuration tools and the goodness of the MSFT CRM configuration tools so I put it to the test. Microsoft and salesforce.com agreed to a configuration shootout with each of them providing a team who would build certain processes and tasks and an independent panel of judges would decide which one did it better. The results would be announced.

Well, the rules are done; the tasks/processes are done; both Microsoft and salesforce.com have had them for a couple of months (the slow response is my fault not theirs. I've been on the road. Both have been exceptionally cooperative). Next steps are the following:

1. Finalize the agreement between the companies on the rules with the judges.
2. Start the shootout
3. Judge
4. Declare winner
5. Publicize results.

I'm estimating that we're either going to do this in the next month or so - OR we'll announce the results at the DestinationCRM/CRM Magazine conference in August. That's a little bit self-serving on my part, but might still be a cool thing. Any preferences? Next 4-6 weeks? CRM conference? Who cares? Let me know and I'll bow to the will of the people.

Now...The News

There is a news plethora, panoply, and pandemic. Let's look at it.

• The Open Cloud Manifesto - To a ginormous thud, IBM announced an "Open Cloud Manifesto" which basically seems to be a response to Amazon, Google, salesforce.com and others leading the cloud computing market - such as it is at the moment. The OCM was notable for the presence of a few like SAP, Cisco, EMC and others, but even more notable by the absence of all the market leaders. For more on this by me and others go to my blog posting on ZDNET. Also, in that ZDNET posting, I left one important (and really good) take on it by Josh Greenbaum. His perspective is right on the money. His second to last paragraph: "This is truly a case of getting so far out in front of a nascent market that it starts looking a little silly. Can we please organize our efforts around defining value for customers, instead of moving quickly to create a vendor war over a market that still needs a lot more careful thinking and definition?" Amen, Brother Josh.
• Sage Announces SalesLogix Online Community - Sage continues its accelerating thrust into becoming a "practice what you preach and provide" CRM (enterprise) vendor. Yesterday, they announced a SalesLogix Online Community for SalesLogix customers that does what communities do - engages customers. This is another forward thinking move by Sage in their efforts (successful so far) to revamp so that they are what they eat. A great move and welcome one. Here's a video tutorial on how it works that's worth a look.
• Salesforce Adds Twitter to ServiceCloud - Aside from the sex appeal of this offering - kind of like Brad Pitt teaming up with Angelina "Twitter" Jolie after he's already been with Jennifer "Facebook" Aniston - this is a great move by salesforce.com because it provides a decentralized channel-friendly approach to their ServiceCloud offering. While this is not the first offering like this - SAP seized that ground months ago - what it does do is both provide a useful capability to the customer service offering, cement salesforce.com's credentials as a full CRM suite provider (in addition to their platform offerings) - though their marketing apps are still weak - as are most of the CRM suite providers' marketing apps - and, most importantly, add to their portfolio for innovation leadership. I'm going to be writing a ZDNET blog entry on this, but, suffice to say here, salesforce.com might be moving back into the leadership of a CRM 2.0/Social CRM offering with the integrations with external social networks, the Ideaforce. offerings, and a number of other pieces they've added to the puzzle in the last few months. I'm truly impressed. I was worried for awhile that they were becoming too conservative a company in the places they shouldn't be - but I'm starting to think I shouldn't have been concerned.
• NetSuite Joins PaaS Battle Royal - On March 19, NetSuite unveiled SuiteCloud, their Platform-as-a-Service offering, entering the already crowded fray. This took their already well regarded NS-BOS operating system and combined it with a number of new tools and the SuiteCloud Developers Network, a network similar to the SDN at SAP or the developers network at SugarCRM (is that also SDN?). What makes their offering interesting is that it builds upon the NetSuite suite that already exists and, unlike the PaaS offerings of most of the vendors, it covers the enterprise applications gamut - from ERP to CRM so to speak (STS). NS-BOS was already an unusual offering because of it's purpose - building vertically specific apps for NetSuite through mostly its partner channel. There is more news coming from these guys soon. Stay tuned here and ZDNET.
• Sage (Again?) Adds SalesLogix Today Appliance to Offerings - SalesLogix Today is an internet plug-and-play appliance which means its a pre-configured appliance with SalesLogix locked and loaded. While I can't say this is a bad idea, I also am not as excited about this one as I was about the Online Community. This simply puts them in the camp of Cast Iron for CRM offerings - and Cast Iron has a big lead there - with applications pre-loaded on their appliance for salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow, Oracle CRM OnDemand, Microsoft Dynamics CRM - all as SaaS offerings and a host of on-premise offerings too. Then again, Cast Iron doesn't offer SalesLogix..... All in all, won't be easy and I'm not sure of what a good value this is. I'm going to need to be convinced. Brent Leary has a box and is running a test. I'll report back when I hear what he has to say.
• WhasSUP, SAP? - SAP continued its smart mobile strategy (I wish they'd be as smart with SaaS) by forming a partnership with Sybase to create a mobile Business Suite 7. Sybase? Sybase? The database Sybase? The one that you haven't heard a word from forever? THAT Sybase? Yep. The very same. Interestingly Sybase has one of the most advanced mobile platforms on the planet with Sybase iAnywhere - their Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP). This allows you to take any mobile application and, get this, on the fly, adapt it to the mobile operating system or platform that any device has on it. So you can take an SAP CRM application that has been optimized for mobile delivery and send it to a Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia Symbian phone simultaneously and it will in real time (that's what on the fly means here, dudes) be usable on that phone's operating system. No special moves made. On the fly. Sybase's mobile platform has been named #1 by Gartner this year. SAP, in conjunction with their RIM partnership, is moving to take a strong position - and maybe even lead - in the mobile CRM/enterprise applications battle -which is a big, big deal. Obviously, time and results will indicate whether they are leading or not but right now, this is one smart move. And...Sybase? Sybase?
• Microsoft-Neighborhood America Integration: Social & CRM Integration Continues - This one is not suprising and surprising. Neighborhood America, one of my favorite companies in the world with great culture and a very, very good platform allied with Microsoft CRM Public Sector and integrated their social networking platform with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Not surprising is that Neighborhood America is involved in a significant step forward for the CRM 2.0/Social CRM strategists out there. Surprising is that Microsoft took a huge, though a little tentative step and was the one who led the way. Not surprising though, is that it starts in the public sector. With the Obama Administration firmly committed to open standards, transparency and citizen participation, public sector is not only one of the natural places for CRM and social platforms to meet up but is of real importance in the restoration of faith in the government. Neighborhood America has a lot of background in public comment so they know something about the public sector. They also have the current president of the CRM Association on board, Michael Thomas, and they already had a proclivity towards CRM so their role in pushing forward in this integration is not at all a surprise to me. Microsoft on the other hand is just starting to feel its new innovation legs as they wobble back on land so they are a surprising player but a welcome one in the evolution toward CRM 2.0. To take a look at the initial integration go to the Microsoft Public Sector Idea Bank.
• Helpstream Named "Cool Vendor of 2009" by Gartner and 2009 Rising Star in Customer Service by CRM Magazine - What can I say here? I'm gonna crow a bit. I KNEW I was right. I had these guys pegged for something special for a good long time now. Top-flight application, ownership of the category Customer Service 2.0 or Community-driven Customer Service; great knowledge of what 21st century customers needed - and how companies needed to respond. Ate their own dogfood. Great management (personable too!) with guys like Tony Nemelka and Bob Warfield, among others. All in all, my closest thing to Application Nirvana 2.0. Now the rest of the world is figuring this out. I'm really happy for these guys. They deserve the recognition. Of course, now they have to keep deserving the recognition so to speak. Their Rising Star award isn't up online yet, but is out with the April 2009 CRM Magazine print edition.

I'm done. See you guys with Episode #4 (later this week) of CRM Playaz. Got some announcements around that too. A bunch.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - NOT LIVE FROM SF #10 - and Final

I've had a couple of days to rest my hands and brain, and think about Oracle OpenWorld away from the excitement of it all - which can generate a somewhat buzzed view. Let no writer tell you they are objective or dispassionate - especially in the face of passion and among the noise of 43,000 people who, for all you Shakespearian fanboys, were there to praise Oracle, not to bury it. Not only that, the distractions are now gone, like my 3G iPhone not allowing me to use (by crashing) every single app that was loaded onto it - except the default, Apple-loaded ones - which created enough of a grrrr condition to at times keep me from concentrating.

So, now, its time to review Oracle OpenWorld 2008 from a perspective that I can - CRM, and all things 2.0ish - and thus, you NEED to recognize the limitations of this review. There was a LOT more going on at OpenWorld than just CRM.In fact, the big announcement was that Oracle was going into the hardware business in an alliance with HP - The Exadata Storage Server - which, according to Oracle is an intelligent data server that uses the intelligence to direct the stream of data to allow for faster access and, for example, query results. There is a pre-configured version called the HP Oracle Database Machine - which is a series of the Exadata Storage Servers all running, what else, Oracle's database with Oracle's Enterprise Linux. I'm astounded at Larry Ellison's consistent fascination and commitment to hardware - given that he runs a software company - of course, with particular reference to his "the new model of computing is the appliance" - and the subsequent (in 2000) network appliance - which failed primarily due to it being prescient, not contemporary. Something like the steam engine invented by Hero of Alexandria during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus. There was no cultural framework or infrastructure to make the steam engine anything but a curiosity so it ended being used as a weird toy until the centuries later "re-invention" by James Watt in the 18th century. (I remember this from reading Charles Beard's History of Business - given my age - I read it during Augustus' reign). Same with that "network appliance" which has made its appearance again as a thin client based on the Internet, with the culture and infrastructure there. So, I won't put it past Ellison to be right about the Exadata Storage Server ((I say this with grudging respect, given what I really think of the man) and the Oracle incursion into hardware.

Ellison also managed to get in an attack on cloud computing, I presume to maintain his image as irascible, with the following statement:

"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

"We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud."

You'll note that he's "not going to fight this thing" because, I presume, walking the catwalk can be a way of generating some serious revenue, especially given the Oracle commitment stated at OpenWorld that they are going to probably be selling more CRM On Demand than on premise within a few years, so this might have been a bit of "bad boy" posturing. The discussion on cloud computing seems to sum up as "I think its ridiculous and stupid and I know we can make money from it so I won't do anything about it but fake a rant."

But I digress.....

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - The Environs

First, you have to imagine the scene there - there being Moscone Center in SF. The city itself was DOMINATED by people in red badges, red teeshirts and red everythings else who were tied to OpenWorld. Every hotel near the Moscone Center was booked, reservations at restaurants were nearly impossible to get; the Moscone Center itself was packed with Oracleans who came from every country imaginable to be there. There were so many vendors who wanted to be on the Side of the Red that they had to break the Exhibition Hall into two exhibition halls - one with a third of the exhibitors and the other with (duh) two-thirds of the exhibitors. One entire street (Yerba Buena?) was shut down and covered with a tent top so that people had a place to go to eat lunch that was big enough to handle them. The scope was staggering. The noise and the buzz exciting - this is an "EVENT" not a trade show. Oracle has its fanboys and fangirls every bit as committed as the Apple variety. The difference is that the Oracleans do Oracle for a living.

Even the parties were huge. As I reported a few days ago, the Oracle Social CRM party was an event unto itself - which a projected pre-registered attendance of 400 which turned into a projected pre-registered attendance of 850 - before they shut off the spigot.

Huge.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - The CRM 2.0 (aka Social CRM)-related Concepts

This is where Oracle stood out. Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM, recently named by me as "The Secret Vendor Intellectual" in my 2008 CRM Personality Awards, was dead on with his discussion of the transformation of the business ecosystem. He gave large audiences in packed rooms (there was a HUGE interest at the event in Social CRM) a very strong framework that was focused around what CRM 2.0 (not Web 2.0) is: "CRM doesn't have a clue what a conversation is and social sites have no idea what enterprise data is. That is where social CRM comes in." He spent a good deal of time showing the crowds how the addition of social characteristics and social tools such as collaboration technologies, recommendation engines, review and comment capabilities and of course the ever popular blogs and wikis, have a material impact on businesses when they are integrated with the "traditional" CRM transactional features and functions.

Anthony made another really important point in an AM briefing:

"Social CRM is a complement to traditional transactional and analytical CRM. It uses the conversation as its basis. On top of these conversations, we allow communities to form. I am not a thought leader, I'm a fast-follower. I'm taking what's worked very well in the consumer market and leveraging it in the business market. Consumer applications like Facebook are fun but they don't drive business. They're great for reunions and hanging out and throwing things at your friends, but in business you need the enterprise space that's around it. You need to able to bring in the ERP and CRM data; stuff that you'd never put on the public internet."

These are mission critical for all CRM 2.0/Social CRM discussions and Anthony spent a lot of time driving that home throughout the days of the conference - as did members of his SocCRM Crew. The framework for Social CRM was hammered home and into place by the end of OpenWorld 2008 - a good move by Oracle.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - The CRM 2.0-related Content

There were two bows to the 2.0 world that I thought were culturally important and at the same time bolstered the Oracle argument that they were a true leader in the Enterprise 2.0 space (that said, they are A leader, not THE leader. Who that is remains to be seen. Long way to go yet).

Oracle Mix and New Culture

If you go to this URL, you'll run across something called "Oracle Mix." This is a social network that Oracle created, that was launched at Oracle OpenWorld 2008, but wasn't merely an appendage to OpenWorld. This is NOT an "event-driven social network" but a continuing one that was sparked by an event. What it consists of is a network with many subcommunities (groups) and a confluence of people, ideas, and reputations along with some social media tools thrown in which makes for a nicely organized appealing online community that is governed by the principles of what I call CRM 2.0 (though Anthony Lye, SVP of CRM at Oracle, doesn't like that term) or what Oracle and my good buddy Brent Leary call Social CRM. One and the same, always interchangeable. This is a walk the walk as well as talk the talk social CRM that Oracle is espousing. For example, as of this writing there are 73 members of My Oracle Open World Business Influencers Group - some who attended the conference some who didn't. Some are known business influencers and some aren't - known - but they might be business influencers. Here's a picture of my group:

Another sign of the times is the placement of bloggers/press tables in the Keynote Hall where the major keynotes were given. There were several dozen long tables that had electrical outlets on the floor with what turned out to be good wifi (at least for me) connectivity. The recognition of the importance of bloggers, while not a new event in the history of recent mankind, is still significant when it comes from a traditional software company that's re-inventing itself around a neo-culture that it wasn't very good at just a couple of years ago.

Like SAP, it seems that the cultural transformation of the company is being driven by a combination of external social forces and their specific CRM practice. Just as I saw at SAP's Sapphire event in May of this year, Oracle is also being changed - the "within" part being driven by the Social CRM group. They are not only engaged in their own applications development work, but are collaborating with other sections of the company - e.g. the Beehive people (Bee people?) and, from what I'm told, the Fusion folks to make their cultures collaborative and engaging - rather than siloed and suspicious - a HUGE change in how they do business and even act with each other. However, other than the CRM group, which is a major league outfit, they have a LONG way to go to get me to see a culture that is truly collaborative. But they are making strides.

Oracle Social CRM

This CRM related walking of the walk has been more than beneficial to what's coming out of the CRM group - its been materially transforming for parts of Oracle's culture. The social CRM applications that I saw at OpenWorld 2008 (#OOW08 for those who want to see the Twitterverse chatter) were considerably more complete than the ones I had seen just a month and a half before. Not only that, Sales Prospector was complete enough to be released as was Sales Library and Sales Campaign and their Social Marketing application was being developed in conjunction, with, gasp, a REAL CUSTOMER - L'Oreal in this case. The only weaknesses were a lack of any real customer service application that could be characterized as Social CRM.

I'm not going to cover the apps in major detail here - just a cursory look at one or two of them. First, I've done that before in prior posts. Second, they'll be in the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light. Third, this is meant to be coverage of CRM at OpenWorld 2008, not a deep dive on app features and functions. For a fresh look at them, check out Michael Krigsman's wildly popular ZDNet Blog, IT Project Failures in his take on the Oracle Social CRM apps - which I concur with wholeheartedly - from his look at the applications to his noticing the passion with which the Oracle CRM team works.

Oracle Social CRM was so prevalent and threaded so actively throughout the event, it was almost a theme of the conference. There were actually multiple demonstrations of the various applications and an astonishing number of presentations on them - almost too many if that's possible - done extremely well by Anthony Lye, Melissa Boxer, Mark Woollen, Tara Roberts, and Dipock Das. The demos of Sales Prospector, Sales Campaign, and Sales Library (my personal favorite) showed products at varying levels of maturity but still release-ready, if not client tested yet. The one that has the most to show - and the most to prove - is Sales Prospector.

Sales Prospector is premised on its ability, using the "like me" model, to forecast the rate of success of an opportunity. It "predicts" the likelihood of the deal closing, the time it is likely to close and the likely amount of the deal. It's based on the idea that the history of prior deals like "it" in combination with externally captured knowledge can generate a reasonably accurate map of the possibility of success - and uses the historic customer data of deals past to see which product mix would engender the best rate of success - in other words, an enterprise version of a recommendation engine. The purpose is to use history and social sources (external sources) to increase the likelihood of success - or, if you take the glass half empty approach, decrease the likelihood of failure.

Not only does Sales Prospector have this very useful purpose, but it looks pretty damned good too - with a UI that a salesperson can actually use. Here's a picture of it. Nice and clean. Almost easy to understand. Unfortunately, Oracle used this as their standard Sales Prospector demo slide and its a slide that only a high tech salesperson would love - I'd have been considerably more "ordinary" a.k.a. less complex than that. But, with that caveat, I think you can see how good the UI is for this under any circumstance.

Of course, the true test of Sales Prospector hasn't been passed yet. How accurate is it is pretty much what makes or breaks this app. If the forecast for likelihood of closure, time of closure and size of opportunity is close to accurate (100% would be a bit much to ask for anything made of digital pieces) then Oracle has a real winner that looks good too. If not....well. I'd give this some time. On the one hand, its been released and presumably is in the hands of at least a few customers at this point. So the test cases are coming. But, all in all, like all software, we have to be patient with the first phase of tweaks that will be necessary. We'll see how fast Oracle can roll them out as the results of the first "pilots" come in from real live production environments. I'm betting that they'll be fast because they are banking on the success of Social CRM for the whole company and this is easily the boldest and the riskiest of their applications.

Oh yeah, as a standalone it can be delivered with CRM On Demand. Forgot to mention that. Is that fashionably in the cloud?

Oracle Beehive

This is probably, at least the domain I can speak to, where Oracle just flat out fell down - though mostly due to the messaging - not the promise. Oracle Beehive was meant to be one of the dramatic surprises at OpenWorld 2008. It was surprisingly bad.

Presented as a Collaboration Server that, in effect, though the phrase wasn't used that I remember, was a Unified Communications platform that uses and integrates email, wiki, voice, conferencing, discussions, voicemail, blogs, chats as the communications channels and ties all of them to joint calendar, task, tags, contacts, search, presence i.e. the collaboration features. Sounds great, right up the CRM 2.0 alley and within the Enterprise 2.0 schema, but the demo showed us what? An Outlook interface, the ability to form groups within Outlook and the collaboration on a document - all in all something I could see five years ago on Lotus Notes or some whiteboard application - and less compelling that GotoMeeting.com, at least metaphorically. There were several problems. If that's how far along Beehive is so far, they should never have launched it or even pre-released it at this event - especially with the San Francisco citywide buildup it got. Ads on the sides of buses, for godssakes. If the functionality shown was an accurate representation of the development stage it was in, then it should NEVER have been show. If it was much further along than that, why show something that has long been surpassed by multiple other companies - like IBM?

Here's what it could look like in its ideal state:

The demo didn't even HINT at this, unless you allowed your imagination into almost impossible realms.

The idea of the Collaboration Server aka Beehive is smart and cool and progressive, though not game-changing. But when the best part of the Beehive event is getting a bee-shaped chocolate, there's a serious, though, no doubt, correctable problem. I hope that I'm shown to be wrong, because they have a potentially interesting product here - something built around a hot area in the world of Enterprise 2.0 - and especially CRM - and that would be Unified Communications - an area redefining the desktop and the way we actually use information technology to interact.

In Sum: Final Analysis

Personal expert biases aside, the discussion of Social CRM at Oracle OpenWorld 2008, was a major inflection point for Oracle's CRM applications. Probably the only criticism I have of it was that I thought that it was over-demonstrated - with a demo at the Oracle Social CRM party being inappropriate, given the expectation of a party was foremost on the minds of others - and it was a little repetitious throughout the conference. But all in all, the point was conceptually clear and the applications are just damned good. They need to get their services applications up to speed and their mobile Sales Assistant is nothing much to speak of, but everything else they have at this point is enterprise ready and will now be tested in the true battleground - the world of the enterprise. I think Sales Prospector is the one that is the most ready and carries the weight of risk on its shoulder - since its stated purpose is ultimately a more accurate forecast and a way of improving the odds of closing a deal. That's a lot to bear - but if it does - big time success - both for Sales Prospector and for proving that CRM 2.0 aka social CRM is now what companies considering how to engage their customers have to do.

This was an incredibly impressive event in sheer scope and level of organization. The Oracle CRM team did a great job of getting out the vote for Social CRM and giving it a conceptual framework. The failure was in Beehive which has some impact on 2.0 strategies of Oracle. Most of the other problems had had were not tactical or strategic but nitpicks not worth going into here. If I had to grade the event, I'd give it a B+. The Oracle Social CRM effort gets an A- and the minus is due to the spillover of the Beehive failure and the lack of a service component in any state of readiness for Social CRM.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - LIVE FROM SF #9

Par-tay!!!

Okay, denizens, I'm going to tell you the story of a party - what will end up being the hottest ticket at Oracle OpenWorld, or, hottest wristband anyway, minus the Wednesday night (conference mandatory) concerts which are UB40, Elvis Costello, Seal and others. Though on that one, for my tastes, there is NO WAY that it will be SAP's Sapphire choice of Eric Clapton, who is my rock god. So maybe the Oracle Social CRM party, hosted by Anthony Lye, SVP Oracle CRM and about 15 partners including some of my favorites - Helpstream, Eloqua, and InsideView, oh yeah, and IBM - was the coolest of wristband wearing events.

I know this. The expected turnout was 400 or so. They had 850 (I think I sent about 150 their way) and they had to close out registration for fire marshall purposes and for probably, running out of food purposes.

It was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Palace Hotel, which makes you think that it was a elegant black tie affair - but it was "lose the black tie" and wear black jeans or business casual thang" Lots of drink, food and noise, vendor demo tables all rimming the room. When I arrived, I saw ubercool Oracle dude, Steve Diamond, a CRM Senior Director at the door, being the bouncer - though I didn't see anyone bounced on my way in. But Steve would do it, I'm sure, if need be, but in a nice way.

It was a blast.

Truthfully, it didn't start out that way. Given that this thing was at 8pm and ran until midnight (I limped off on my bad foot at 11:30pm or so), I'm not exactly sure why they made the decision to demo the Social CRM applications which had been seen at least twice during the day and probably by either a majority or plurality of this clearly ready to rock crowd - I do mean CLEARLY READY - who wanted nothing more than food, drink, and conversation. Lots of it. But there were an annoying number of speakers - of the electronic kind - situated so that even if you wanted to talk through the demo, you couldn't unless you left the ginormous ballroom and went outside.

Right after that, they played, again with the monster speakers, Siebel Trivia, which was great, I'm sure for all the Siebel vets there - and there were a HUGE amount of them - but escaped not only folks like me who couldn't answer questions about Siebel verticals and consumer packaged goods - but really wanted to eat, drink and party.

But luckily, those were the only glitches in a really cool evening.

I ran all around the ballroom, drinking Perrier with a twist of lime all night - no alcohol - my 58 year old body can't tolerate much more than one drink and I'm totally out of shape - not having worked out since the accident - so sparkly stuff was limited naturally carbonated H2O.

I think throughout the night, I ran into about 500 Siebel veterans (not trivia experts). For example, Kevin Nix, one of the nicest guys who ever walked Siebel's halls was there. When at Siebel, he ran all of product development for the company. Now he owns a cool start-up called Sky Data, that does social network aggregation for business on mobile devices including the Blackberry and Windows Mobile, and soon, the iPhone. Kevin and I were talking and about half the people in the room had either worked for him directly or knew him from his Siebel days. Oddly, this kind of environment created this interesting camaraderie that permeated the room, as old friends caught up and non-Siebel revelers were engaged to blab away the night. Anthony Lye was circulating the room and chatting up an incredible number of people, with a big smile on his face most of the night. Josh Weinberger, the managing editor of CRM magazine, and one of the best and coolest people in the industry - hell, that I know all together - was animatedly discussing several things that were not only engaging but were in perfect sync with his animation. (Parenthetically, Josh, who is someone I not only admire, but trust as a friend, gave me a totally amazing compliment, when he said I was "fearless." That scared the hell out of me! (take THAT, Alanis Morissette. Some of you will know what this means).

Denis Pombriant, key industry analyst was coolly walking the party grounds, wending his way through about a million groups of 3 or 4 playaz, and stopping traffic with those who wanted to talk to him.

Mark Woolen, Oracle's VP of CRM Products, was all over the place, always grinning, laughing and genuinely enjoying the company he kept.

What was interesting is that there were a LARGE group of ZDNet bloggers and Web 2.0 wunderkind there - more than I expected who were moving around conversing with the crowd. My personal favorite is always my friend and business partner Chris Carfi who is the holder to the keys of one of the best blogs on the net, The Social Customer. He actually is kind of a bridge between the enterprise world and the Web 2.0 world - from the Web 2.0 side. I play that role from the CRM side. Chris's buds like Steve Gilmore and Michael Vizard and one of my new favorites, Michael Krigsman, a long time enterprise focused ZDNet blogger who I follow and who turns out to be not only the excellent strategic writer I read all the time, but a genuinely kind person. Something I wouldn't have found out until I met him.

The party just kept going and it was actually good hearted and good spirited though sometimes too crowded - I mean 850 people can do that - and difficult to maneuver through. But the drinks flowed, the discussions were both business, highly personal and even sometimes revealing because all in all people felt the vibe in the room.

I spent my night talking with all of the above and many others like Alicia Wu, the Oracle Product Manager for Sales Library; with John Burke, Group VP of Applications. All relaxed fun informal. People were wandering over, new groups formed, melted, formed, reconvened, dissolved while certain other folks I knew I could hear everywhere.

One other thing that made the party a blast was its messiness. Not messy in that "stuff all over the floor" way, but a party that had a disheveled atmosphere. Hair messed up, drinks in hand, spilling a little, not a lot, smiles all around, kind of messiness.

All in all, a damned good party though next year - lose the demo and the incredibly LOUD speakers - maybe less of them - and it would be, at least within the confines of the CRM world, an A-lister.

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - LIVE FROM SF #7

Ed Abbo is up on the stage now - new session - he's the SVP of Oracle Product Development (something close to that) - talking about the Oracle app strategy:

1. Product Lines - teams dedicated to each of the product lines e.g. JD Edwards
2. Teams dedicated to processes across applications - can be vertical
3. Taking advantage of Fusion based technologies - which means reusable components across product lines. PG - Follow Chris Carfi on Twitter for this keynote. They are focused on process innovation and business innovation - the user innovation side of things - not very structured and bottom up. Over past 10 years have automated biz processes w/in company's four walls. 40% of actions are outside of this according to Gartner - partners, suppliers etc. - extended enterprise. But there is also the people here. Partners/customers/employees interacting for new product collaboration and same with suppliers. Need to find out who has the most influence so that for example, one customer more influential over another. Gen #1 technologies fall short. Social networks etc. need to be invested in. McAfee has research to prove it works to invest in this. Tata Motors - Minoj Jain - Tata Motors - largest automotive mfg. in India and one of the largest in world. Investing $$$ in bio-diesel engines etc. Recently acquired Land Rover and Jaguar. They are using CRM Dealer Management system from Oracle. They went from 58% same day delivery in 2006 to 79% in 2008; post service satisfaction up from 77% to 92% in same period. They are selling this cute little car for $2500. (PG: I know the path to this car hasn't been that smooth though. Read up on it a few weeks ago) Doing a demo of Interactive Dashboards for the CRM Dealer Management System - supply chain metrics - supply, demand, material repository. Demo is okay. Not too easy to represent. Claiming complete visibility. Real time interactions are also claimed. Josh Weinberger Tweet: @kitson #oow08 #Abbo #Tata Ed Abbo has the kind of conversational dynamic that builds rapport w/an audience. He should be out there more. Now Wells Fargo HR CTO Adam Christensen: I'm skipping this one though its pretty interesting. Not my kind of turn-on though. Hand rest time again. I'll transmit some good tweets if I see them. Hmmm....Adam C. is showing Wells Fargo equivalent of Facebook for the enterprise - if that's true then the HR information not under the control of the employee is tied to her profile information which is controlled by the employee but hasn't said that). Tied to metrics for business performance. Really good stuff. Sorry for the silent treatment. Melissa Boxer is on stage talking about L'Oreal. Melissa is a really bright and long experienced person on the Oracle CRM team. Abbo: go to website and point of sale, they know who the customer is. Melissa: helping L'Oreal transition to new channels - mobile. iPhone in particular. Showing Body Shop iPhone app. Knows all my details through profile and replaces the loyalty card with native iPhone. Pulls up native CRM data. Can search for products on iPhone like Vitamin E Skin care. Can not only see an expert advisor rating but a "Person with similar skin" set of ratings, reviews. Has a Promotions for Me button and there is a uniquely targeted promotion - app knows point balance and allows you to use loyalty points to get discount. Can share promotion with friends, donate the discount in cash to charity or take the product. Show the loyalty id on the iPhone at the store and the transaction is done and the new data is included in the CRM system. Can see the updates and transactions and status on the phone. (PG: Saw this at Gartner. This is one of the best applications I've seen for the iPhone. Really good. Love to see this in more than a demo environment. Not sure if its in production or its beta or its proof of concept. Will find out and let you know.) Melissa is gone. Ed is talking about all the iPhone apps in the pipeline including sales etc. Now he's moving on to business process innovation: Looking at it from specific industries and also doing things like streamlining order to cash. For public sector they are looking at constituent service, case management, SRM/procurement, financial management - for example. Developing process integration packs for multiple industries. So for retail they have Loyalty management, PIM for retail and Financial Controls. Also app specific maps including an SAP specific integration pack based on their AIA architecture. "Not waiting for SAP. Being proactive." (PG: again, the stupid, though mild swipe. Just make the comment that you're doing it. Good enough. We know you're competing.) Anthony Lye on the stage (You go guy!): Demo of social CRM. Familiar Oracle portal is now more like Facebook, LinkedIn or Ning. I can design them, create them and invite people to them - with a strong governance model - and the ability to introduce enterprise level data. You can go to employees, yes, but also partners and customers. Conversations are occurring on third party sites. But this aids, facilitates the conversation. The sales productivity tools "understand the container they are working in." They understand the blogs, etc. The data sets are put together by members of the network. I can find a presentation and open in directly in the application. Captured social metadata so we can see the presentation ratings within the context of the specific social network. I can take the most popular content that uses the wisdom of the crowd that allows me to develop a presentation that is based on the application that is most used and most popular. In Sales Prospect, can "subsegment the data set" to see how to position something to my prospects. Can also use the external data from Reuters etc. to help decide the value of the oppty. and the estimated time to close. Which customer stories are the likely references is part of this too. Can run a sophisticated personal campaign into the combined company. SP understands that I can get information from CRM and the internet (e.g Jigsaw) and download those contacts that Jigsaw provides. Not only that, I can monitor my results. CRM was a tool that was built for managers. But didn't help sales people sell anything. But it is a fundamental tool and data is fundamental. We can improve on this through the integration of the social applications with the traditional apps. (PG: Now doing the 'why use salesforce.com' Anthony jumped past it it seems - thank you sir - by focusing on transactional, analytic and social). Anthony did a great job. Ed A. is showing future investment. Very interested in Siebel PRM 2.0 that they seem to be investing in. Plus their Loyalty management applications. Talking about PeopleSoft Web 2.0 user experience investment though don't know what they mean by that. Showing a video so fingers resting. Now a list of customers on latest release. Ahold, Cisco, Intuit, Baxter, Tiffany's, Ed Abbo is summing up as this comes to a close. Enterprise social networking and closing out.