PGreenblog: Industry Analysis

August 24, 2011

CRM Idol 2011: The SMB Vendor Jump to the Fore #2A

More and more and more...CRM Idol reviews keep coming. Here are three more from the last few days of judging. Please feel free to comment here on them. This round, Relenta, RightAnswers and Connected.

Here we go:

Relenta

Relenta is an interesting company, with a product that can stand on its own, but, as we will discuss later, might be better suited elsewhere. Founded by a highly experienced and successful entrepreneur, Dmitri Eroshenko, in 2004 and in beta by 2005, they showed a good enough value proposition around their "simplicity" mantra to capture their first commercial customer by 2006 and went to breakeven and debt free by 2010. While the range of users per company is from one to sixteen, the average number of users is "2.5." Their pricing model is subscription based. It ranges from a very small freemium model to a 30-user, lots of everything else, $250/month plan.

The best way to describe Relenta is a unified inbox with strong (for small business purposes) workflow and one click access between channels, activities and records. This solves what they see as a problem with "data fragmentation" which is probably, given the technical ramifications of that phrase, not the best way to characterize it. It would seem to us to be more like "fragmented data distribution."

: Relenta

Regardless, what Relenta does seemingly quite successfully is to take social data channels, emails and the traditional CRM transaction records and activities and aggregate the data in ways that are useful to what is primarily a sales person from what we were able to see from the Relenta demo. Aside from presenting traditional contact and account activity data such as invoices and sales history, it can incorporate social data in ways that are highly beneficial such as lead gathering or lead nurturing, or tracking the internal and external actions and interactions of an account or contact. It can pull in data through its pipes from Twitter, Facebook, and email bidirectionally and as you will see in the figure below, incorporate customer activity. That according to Dmitri, includes, "DMs" meaning Twitter direct messages though how that would work without permission is a bit of a mystery at this point. Also, noticeably absent in this was SMS, e-faxes and a whole host of other communications channels that are used by sales people in the 21st century.

Relenta's aggregation and integration of the data sources that they do provide for this unified inbox is effective in its ease of use. Because of its open source architecture, being built with Linux, Apache, PhP and MySQL, how you use the system is flexible, and, in this case, somewhat customizable. This architecture's open-endedness will allow it to be integrated with other like systems such as open source CRM systems (e.g. SugarCRM) or those like salesforce.com which allows for this kind of integration even though built on a different architecture. This fact has some bearing on some of the conclusions as you will see.

Relenta has what they call a "holographic system" which means that with their interface you can be in the CRM system, the email system or social channels and still be in the other systems though interfaced with one of them. How this is holographic we're not sure, but the point is well taken. Since Relenta drives for simplicity, lightness and one-click accessibility, this is a critical facet of their value and their differentiation. They claim 90% of the functionality (of CRM?) with 10% of the application weight. While that's a bit of a stretch, again, the idea is a good one for their target markets, which are small businesses and small workgroups within larger businesses.

For example, you can, after a tweet is discovered that is associated with a contact in your system who might have an active deal, read the tweet, dig out the deal information - available from wherever you are with a single click and then develop a response. It also provides you with the ability to tag the contact, or any other area for that matter, so that you can see other tag-related activity associated with that descriptor.

While Relenta says 90% of the functionality at 10% of the application load, it actually is closer, at least in CRM terms, to 25% of traditional CRM functionality. It really doesn't natively provide sales functionality like opportunity management or pipeline management or the dashboards that managers even of small teams might need to see how their sales teams and staff are doing. On the customer service side, what it provides really is something like find a twitter complaint, respond accordingly but it is a simple action reaction etc. kind of system. Not any real customer service functionality, at least from a CRM standard. And this is CRM Idol, after all.

But this doesn't mean we are dealing with a bad product, just one that is extremely light on traditional CRM functionality. What it does very well, is enrich the functionality available to what is just usually the back and forth of an activity stream. For example, you can not only show the deal that's being discussed in the activity stream but also the contact history so that you have much more information at your fingertips when you are collaborating, making this a good product for small groups - with the caveat below. For a very small businesses - those that average 2.5 users - Relenta works as a rich but simple SFA-lite system. Since his roadmap incorporates pipeline management (according to their website, "coming soon."), they are obviously interested in building the standalone sales functionality out a bit more than it currently supports. But for small workgroups in larger companies, they would be best suited as an integrated engine that would enrich the workflows, simplify the sales person's job and provide an increased useful value for the data that those small workgroups need - from other CRM systems.

While they integrate with Freshbooks, integration isn't a strong focus for them. It should be. They are very good at what they provide, and would be even better if they could provide it as something interwoven into multiple existing CRM systems.

GreenRope

Small businesses typically have few choices when configuring their systems. Either a small business takes out of the box functionality and learns to live with it or the company can invest its resources in customizing software to meet its needs. Larger companies have the same issues but their deeper pockets and greater resources make the customization route viable. Of course, any business can also fall back to using spreadsheet applications but that solution has its downside which has been well documented.

GreenRope tries to provide a third path. Founded in 2000 and located in Soland Beach, CA, the company offers something like a Swiss Army knife approach to business software for small businesses and consumer groups.

GreenRope may not match other CRM products feature for feature but given its audience, it doesn't have to. It provides an eighty-percent solution that combines CRM, social media, email marketing, surveys, event and project management, website content management, ecommerce and a private wiki. There's more than enough here to enable a small business to compete in the marketplace.

The big benefit for customers is that, as a platform for so many business applications, GreenRope can synchronize data and help coordinate various business activities thereby helping its customers to save money over point solutions and keep issues from falling through the cracks. Corraling business information helps the small business to keep more balls in the air and compete more effectively.

GreenRope has been around for more than a decade and as yet, has not taken any outside capital. The founders' roots are in email marketing and the product set is built around the assumption that email is an important channel for small businesses. Homogeneous consumer groups - associations, alumni and similar organizations - that have affinity among their memberships will frequently see this email approach as good and productive where others might put up the spam filters.

The product is highly configurable enabling even a small business short of technical expertise to still be able to modify its behavior. For more technical audiences the company also offers code access. The product runs a LAMP stack (Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software) and Perl/PHP/Python using both Perl and JQuery for applications. GreenRope's approach to the market also includes a VAR channel and private labeling so that associations can offer the product as a benefit of membership to members.

Historically small businesses first bought accounting software to manage their books and when business picked up a contact manager. Today multichannel customer access and a greater dependence on doing business online or through other indirect channels make it imperative for many small businesses that they find more efficient ways to bring their channels together to serve their customers cost effectively and efficiency. The GreenRope suite is a good step in that direction.

GreenRope has taken its organic growth approach about as far as it can. It is not the only CRM product attempting to address the small business market and that market could benefit from the richness and simplicity GreenRope offers. The company now needs to get better known and reach out to the market which may mean taking on outside capital and the structure and advice that comes with it.

GreenRope may not match other CRM products feature for feature but given its audience, it doesn’t have to.It provides an eighty-percent solution that combines CRM, social media, email marketing, surveys, event and project management, website content management, ecommerce and a private wiki. There’s more than enough here to enable a small business to compete in the marketplace.

GreenRope has been around for more than a decade and as yet, has not taken any outside capital. The founders’ roots are in email marketing and the product set is built around the assumption that email is an important channel for small businesses. Homogeneous consumer groups — associations, alumni and similar organizations — that have affinity among their memberships will frequently see this email approach as good and productive where others might put up the spam filters.

The product is highly configurable enabling even a small business short of technical expertise to still be able to modify its behavior. For more technical audiences the company also offers code access. The product runs a LAMP stack (Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software) and Perl/PHP/Python using both Perl and JQuery for applications. GreenRope’s approach to the market also includes a VAR channel and private labeling so that associations can offer the product as a benefit of membership to members.

Connected

It's a common story with emerging companies almost bordering on a cliché. The founders have a bright idea, maybe get some funding and try to bring their idea to the world. Often the world ignores the idea or if the innovator is lucky some early adopters pick it up and run with it though they will likely change the idea considerably along the way.

Connected (www.connectedhq.com) has all of the elements of a typical startup story plus one. Founded in 2010 the company launched its social CRM product in early 2011 with the help of angel investors Trinity, Ignition and 500 Startups. Founders Sachin Rekhl and Ada Chen Rekhi envisioned "SocialCRM Without the Work" and that is where the wheels could (but don't) fall off.

The plus one referenced above goes like this. Connected is not a very useful bit of CRM. The Rekhls envisioned a solution to the CRM adoption problem last seen in an off the cuff comment by an analyst many years ago that still lives in mythology. The Rekhls contend that the problem with CRM adoption is that CRM requires a great deal of data input before it can be useful and that many users balk at the data entry.

True enough but the same can be said of ERP in spades but you never hear of anyone tiring of plugging in those dollars and cents. It says something about our respect for existing money and our imperfect understanding of future money that CRM is supposed to help us get. At any rate you can't have CRM without data and it isn't all going to come in via osmosis, especially when you consider deal and other transaction data.

But all those shortcomings in Connected can easily be ignored if we simply ignore the founders' initial positioning. Connected has no conventional CRM back end and isn't really CRM but it is a superb contact manager. In fact to call Connected a contact manager is to redefine the category. If Connected manages contacts, other products merely warehouse them.

The heart of Connected is a Universal Address Book that Hoovers (as in a vacuum) in social and other relevant data from a growing list of social sources that includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Email, blogs and much more. Connected keeps you abreast of all the social meanderings of all your contacts and reminds you of things you need to know in business. Someone was promoted or changed jobs or that already old chestnut, somebody has a birthday today - Connected tells you without your having to search so that you can presumably do the right thing.

Connected has what the company calls Comprehensive Profiles so if there is something on the Net about one of your contacts you can reasonably expect it will show up in your Connected account. Same goes for companies you want to follow.

If think there's too much data and not enough information, the company has already reached the same conclusion and built a prescient Daily Agenda function - a daily email about your meetings and their context, recent status updates, reminder of all previous meetings. It's the equivalent of your personal daily briefing. This is significantly valuable for sales people for instance preparing for a busy day or commuting to a meeting. Just don't try to drive while you're digesting it all. Daily Engage Events goes deeper to inform you about what's happening in the lives of people around you, i.e. the birthdays etc.

So, ignoring the positioning, the founders have delivered on most of what they set out to do. They've built a tool that collects and presents a great deal of social information about your contacts without imposing the data capture on the user.

Of course capturing and using transaction data is still an issue and it will be solved as Connected gets connected to conventional CRM products in the months ahead. More likely this company is well positioned (in San Francisco of all places) to be scooped up by some smart and more well established CRM company that understands the value of social media in CRM and the overarching requirement to seamlessly integrate social and CRM. Who might that be?

Aug 24, 2011 7:00:00 AM | Business Models, Classic CRM, Industry Analysis, Social CRM

August 22, 2011

CRM Idol 2011: The SMB Vendors Jump to the Fore #1B

Its now 2pm ET and, right on time, here (and on ZDNet) are the next two reviews for CRM Idol - Soluciones S.A. and Jaguar TPM. Same rules apply. Please do me a favor and comment on what you think. You may be able to affect the semi-finalist choices if you do.

Here we go...

Soluciones S.A.

Soluciones S.A., an Argentinian based company and creator of Engage Business Solutions, is a well matured company focused on CRM solutions for both the Spanish Speaking Latin American and Brazilian markets. The company was founded in 1989 with offices and partners in Mexico City, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador and Brazil.

Soluciones S.A. has a network of partnerships and alliances that include companies like Oracle, Microstrategy, SPSS, Microsoft, Atos, Telefonica and Deloitte. With a staff of 60 employees, Soluciones manages the product development, software sales and professional services in the entire region.

Engage Business Solutions (EBS) main focus is to provide efficiency, profitability and competitiveness to the unique Latin American market. They have been accomplishing this by providing a solution that has BPM, CRM, Collections and Analytics - an all-inclusive solution. EBS solution targets small business as well as large enterprise in Latin American, from banks and to insurance and from cable to telecommunication companies.

Their main market is the financial industry which represents 40% of their customers. Other industries where they have key customers are insurance, telecommunications, government and automotive. They have an impressive list of customers that represent who is who of banks in Latin America like Banco Columbia, Banco Fallabela, Banco Comafi, GE Consumer Finance, Banco Ripley, Meridian Financial, BBVA and others. DirecTV is also one of their showcased customers in Latin America.

When the CRM decision is local to the market, they compete very well with CRM vendors like Siebel and Microsoft, since EBS offers local best practices in CRM and especially in Collections. Also, their integrated BPM technology and the local pricing are very attractive to many Latin American companies.

The EBS solution provides the traditional CRM modules such as marketing, sales and service, but it also provide loyalty, collections and BI modules - all integrated. This includes functionality to manage different touch-points with consumers such as call center, web, branches, mobile and CTI. One unique factor is that EBS is tailored for the B2C market more than the B2B market.

Their technical architecture provides a complete data integration between the application and integration layers. In terms of middleware they are capable of connecting to MQ Series and Web Services, among others. MQ Series is a popular option in Latin America for integration services, especially in the financial industry. Additionally, EBS is database independent; it can work with most popular databases.

One of the key benefits of EBS is their Business Applications Library. They have created 100s of business applications to manage all types of processes from credit validation to collections and from marketing to sales. The library includes processes, forms, metrics and formulas. These business applications are based on local and regional best practices. This is a unique competitive advantage against their competition and a benefit for their customers.

The solution also provides 50 predefined reports and dashboards using an embedded OLAP engine, including metrics such as RFM, Time Analysis, Collections, Customer Scores and Geographical Analysis, among many others.

Soluciones S.A. have found a good niche in the Latin American market due to the fact that they can serve the large enterprise and small business markets in a B2C environment, and most important in the financial industry. They can help large enterprise with complex processes in the typical Latin American environment. This is a unique differentiator. The know-how of the region is an excellent competitive advantage.

Today, most of their customers are using EBS under the on-premise model. However, they currently have a SaaS solution for small businesses. They see some challenges ahead such as replicating their success in Argentina in other countries, increasing their partner network and moving to the Cloud.

Their user interface is designed for call center reps and only provides Spanish and Portuguese support. The user interface really needs improvement; it is not that user friendly and looks like a client/server or mainframe screen deployed in a web interface. This look and feel could be fine for the Latin American market, but if they eventually want to enter the market in United States, EBS will need to improve some key aspects of the user interface and support the English language.

If you are a multinational company with operations in Latin America, EBS should be in your short list of CRM vendors. They have the local know-how, the local best practices and the local support. Soluciones S.A. is a matured CRM vendor with great opportunities ahead and worth considering.

Jaguar TPM

Founded in 2009, JaguarTPM is a management consulting and systems integration firm focused on CRM and trade promotion management solutions for consumer products companies. Cofounders John Mazan and Rick Davies bring extensive CPG industry experience in strategy and implementation from leading firms such as IBM, KPMG, and McKinsey & Company.

According to research provided by JaguarTPM, there are approximately sixty-six thousand consumer products firms in the US, employing fourteen million people, and accounts for $2.5 trillion in annual revenues. According to various reports, these companies spend anywhere from 10-30% of revenue on trade promotions. JaguarTPM is focusing their efforts on providing small and midsized CPG companies the ability to compete for distributors and retailers with an integrated set of trade promotion management (TPM) and CRM tools larger competitors typically have at their disposal, but at a fraction of the cost of high-end solutions from vendors like Oracle and SAP.

Lack of integrated planning between trade promotion planning, volume forecasting and account management is a key challenge of TPM. Most TPM systems require a substantial investment in human resources and IT. JaguarTPM's main objective is to bring down barriers to implementing a systematic approach to managing TPM from both a sales promotion and financial management perspective - at the SMB level. Prices start at $150 per user per month.

Built on top of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, JaguarTPM leverages account management, contact management and reporting capabilities from that platform, and integrates a complete trade promotions management module specifically for the CPG industry. Their industry template focuses on adding/extending the following capabilities:

Account and contact management customized for handling relationships with both distributors and retailers
Product Planning at the SKU or product group level
Volume Forecasting (performing "what if" analysis for adjustments)
Trade Promotion Activity Planning
Integrated trade promotion with forecasting
Merchandise retail execution (information on how retailers place/showcase products)
Distributor Portal integrated with Dynamics CRM to allow distribution partners capability to provide depletion information back to manufacturer allowing for more accurate forecasting

The company is currently working on a customer service extension called JaguarQ. The extension will not only manage the quality of product delivery to distributors and retailers, but also look at consumer side service.

JaguarQ will take into account lot number, and the product location. If a call comes in and says something was wrong with a product, (e.g. found a product defect) a set of workflows will kick off to see who needs to be contacted and what procedures need to be followed.

Additionally they are exploring the concept of having QR codes as part of the packaging so that someone can take a picture, send it in, which will allow users to tell how the product got there, when it got there, where it is in the distribution channel, and how long it's been there.

JaguarTPM can be deployed as an on-premise solution, or over the cloud. Originally they looked at building their solution on top of "cloud-only" solutions, but some of their larger customers preferred the option of having an on-premise or a cloud-based service.

Although they are a Microsoft Certified Gold partner, JaguarTPM does not target Dynamics CRM customers, and doesn't focus their business on reselling Microsoft products. They also don't look to Microsoft as a channel for leads. Due to their experience and expertise, they view themselves as a TPM/CRM solution for CPG, and not primarily as a reseller.

Even though Oracle and SAP are the main players in the space, particularly at the high end of the CPG market, JaguarTPM's price point should be attractive to companies growing their product catalogue and distributor/retailer network. Educating the SMB market, in addition to providing an integrated CRM/TPM solution will be key to JaguarTPM building a successful niche in this area.

Also, JaguarTPM believes more CPG manufacturers view social networking as an interesting avenue to create opportunities for direct conversations with consumers to offer trade promotions to them Tighter integration with social will provide for richer conversations between vendors and consumers enabling vendors and retailers to better manage promotional dollars. This would allow manufacturers to gain valuable customer insights in order to create more attractive products and offerings to distribute. JaguarTPM sees this as a potential selling point that could drive interest at the SMB level for an integrated approach to CRM and TPM.

JaguarTPM's deep experience and expertise in the CPG space, coupled with their focus on small and midsized organizations, is a combination worth paying attention to. The solution makes it possible for smaller manufacturers to have a much better handle on trade promotion activities, as well as a better system for managing key relationships with distributors and retailers. And as their need to spread promotion dollars into more products over a wider distribution network, JaguarTPM's integrated approach to this challenge should make it an option worth considering.

Aug 22, 2011 1:50:00 PM | Business Models, Business Practices, Classic CRM, Industry Analysis, Social CRM

CRM Idol 2011: The SMB Vendors Jump To the Fore #1A

From now on through the next few weeks, I'm going to bombard you with the reviews that an esteemed panel of judges (well, esteemed except me) are writing for the companies that are participating in the CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season competition. This thing has burgeoned into something rather large - at least within the confines of the CRM industry - and is a chance for small companies who are attempting to penetrate the CRM, SCRM and related markets (despite the proclamations of its death) and are being given a stage to be declared after an easy-to-enter, hard-to-win CRM Idol 2011 - the best of a heavy vetted lot of small companies with a real future.

Even those who don't win deserve their day in the sun. So in addition to these reviews being published on the CRM Idol website, we would like to get them to you guys to read elsewhere too. And to comment on them.

See what's going to happen is that there will be semi-finalists chosen and your comments on the website, on our blogs, at the press sites that are covering the reviews (more on this later this week) will matter in the selection of those semi-finalists.

What I'm going to do is to get these out to you as I get them. Roughly, 2-4 a day will be published and some days even more than that. Please spend time reading them, looking at these companies, give me your thinking on these companies in the comments section of this blog, PGreenblog, or the CRM Idol website or all three.

The First Reviews

Each review has been signed off by all the CRM Idol Primary Judges - currently for the Americas and in early September for EMEA. So these are all jointly done in effect. They represent a distillation of the understanding of the companies and their products from the principals who did the demos and briefing with us throughout last week and through the end of this week. This time 39 in all, due to a withdrawal of one company for inescapable reasons.

What you'll see here right now is four companies: Phaseware, Performance Solutions S.A., this morning and Soluciones S.A. and Jaguar TPM later this afternoon. I hope that you'll not only learn something of these companies but respond with what you think.

Thanks for taking the time.

Phaseware

Phaseware was co-founded in 2005 by Randall Nelson (CEO) and Hoyt Mann (president) two industry veterans who first worked together at RamQuest Software. The company made its first sale in 2006 and achieved profitability in 2007. Phaseware dedicates itself to providing customer service solutions to SMB companies in the five million to twenty million dollar revenue range. Phaseware has just ten employees serving more than one hundred thirty five customers.

Phaseware has no outside capital and plans to continue its organic growth focusing on a variety of industries including software, medical device hardware and outsources services. Phaseware goes to market in two modes on-premise and on-demand using the same code base a trait enabled by the Microsoft platform. The customer base is roughly evenly divided between premise based (55%) and cloud (45%) and the company enjoys high levels of customer retention, which it describes as being in the "upper 90 percent" range.

One reason Phaseware can run so lean is that it relies on a Microsoft stack including .net for application development. The company leverages the Microsoft partnership for its foundation and focuses on customer service and feature development.

The Phaseware product suite consists of five related products.

Self Service Center (customer web portal). This customer portal offers a clean and serviceable though somewhat dated user interface enabling customers to search for information in the vendor knowledgebase. Customers can generate a service ticket through the web interface to initiate a deeper service process.

Knowledge Base. Phaseware uses Microsoft Silverlight for content management for documents FAQs and articles. The knowledgebase is accessible through the Self Service Center as well as the Tracker products.

Integrated Chat. There are two chat channels available in the system including one for vendor to customer communication and another for supervisor to agent for training and monitoring purposes.

Event Engine (business rules automation). Phaseware put a great deal of effort into the product to enable its customers to define business rules for processing customer requests. Ad hoc search boxes in the system enable customers and vendor agents to drill into customer, product and other parameters to identify issues and their resolutions.

Tracker and Tracker on Demand (agent desktops). The company offers two agent desktops (Tracker) for remote and premise based agents. Through Tracker agents can define business processes using the rules engine and customize business processes. Users also have the ability to design and manipulate screen design to better reflect their work styles.

The system comes with a full array of functionality designed to make the agent productive and provide a quality customer experience. Some functions and features include alerts, automatic case escalation, targeted email, customer forums, auto reminders to customers and automatic report distribution.

Phaseware fits its niche well and prides itself on its customer care responding to its customers within a two hour window (using its own products). Its close alliance with Microsoft and dedication to the platform help ensure the Phaseware can continually bring its customers a steady stream of updates and enhancements. Looking ahead, Phaseware is well situated to continue improving its product line selling into a broad market for SMB customer care and customer service systems and growing organically.

Performance Solutions S.A.

Performance Solutions S.A. creators of the customer service product suite Blitz, was founded in 2006 in Lima Peru by its current managing director, Marcia Garcia-Smith. They have 16 team members who include a number of employees and contractors who are working for Performance Solutions. As with most of the competitors in CRM Idol, only a small number of the team members are employees who function as part of a team consisting of those employees and contractors and the management of the company. In fact, the employees on the demo call went out of their way "we don't work for Maria. We work with Maria," something that Maria confirmed, which indicates a closely knit organization with a relaxed and somewhat (please note the use of somewhat here) non-hierarchical organizational culture.

The company is bootstrapped, funded primarily by Ms. Garcia-Smith and one member of her family. There are no outside funds.

They have about 20 customers that are distributed across multiple verticals including financial services, telco, airlines, and health services. Their market has been until very recently strictly focused in Latin America with customers primarily in Peru and also Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina, although the latter four countries has been more consulting customers than product/solutions directed customers. But in the last several months, they've had their first English speaking customer in the United States, which led them to accelerate their program to get to the U.S. market, which as we'll see shortly has implications for their product that are quite important.

To date their regional customers has been widely scattered among banks, retail stores/chains, insurance, hospitals, airlines and a government agency. What makes it a bit unusual is that they also have a strong "vertical" area in economic groups - Latin American based family-owned businesses that control a variety of interests. For example, one economic group using Blitz controls 120 companies of varying sizes.

What remains a bit unclear, besides their interest in going to market in the United States, is their future go to market strategy because they have such general penetration in the Peruvian market in particular, though still a small customer base and because the customers in the other countries are primarily consulting customers.

Their portfolio, called, all in all Blitz, consists of two products and what they call a "platform. It is geared to customer care centers, an increasingly crowded market and one that takes in general exceptional performance and a high level of differentiation to make any real progress in all in all. But the products are very focused around some particularly interesting capabilities so that there is a decent chance, with some caveats, that they can do well in this busy marketplace.

Business Model

Their business model, according to their own literature: "Blitz is a platform that has a complete set of tools to help Business SERVICE & SUPPORT their customer base, in a BOUTIQUE CONSULTING mode. (Their capitalization)." This is something we find confusing given their line of reasoning to us which was more supportive of a solutions based model more akin selling the products; provide professional services to implement them. Strategic consulting did not seem to be something that they were terribly interested in.

Additionally, another point of confusion in the model is in the following excerpt from their differentiators:

"•Twitter, Facebook, emails, mobile enabled and Portal Self-Servicing as well as those traditional Call Center and Sales Force Support...."

We saw no evidence of sales force support in their offering, though a highly customizable offering can, we're sure provide that with some work.

Product

Blitz is a customer service product suite that consists of three offerings: two products - a Self-Service portal; a Channel Manager and what they call a platform -CRM Service and Support Workflows.

Their entire portfolio is built on a Microsoft SQL and .NET framework with an MVC architecture that allows them to port the products to DB2 and Oracle databases if need be. Their roadmap is geared in a few directions in 2012 and beyond with an increased use of webservices and cloud APIs, many already used in their Channel Manager product. These not only allow for better mobile offerings beyond their current Blackberry effort, but stronger integration with other CRM products like salesforce, SugarCRM and vTiger - three they specifically named.

What they do have to their great credit is a highly and somewhat easily configurable platform and product set that allows deep customization, which, given the disparate kinds of customers they have is a definite and important quality of their portfolio.

While they have three offerings, they are clearly focused on Channel Manager, the one product that the judges had a chance to see in depth in the course of the demonstration. Channel Manager functions as more than just an aggregator of social and traditional contact center channels. It allows the agents to not only record the interactions, and view them on screens that are clean and easy to read, but also to respond to the queries, questions and problems and ties the customer's interactions to any service level agreements they have with the companies they are communicating, with. One great strength of Channel Manager is the ability handle social inputs such as Facebook and Twitter and more traditional channels such as email in a matter of fact way - as part of the agent's life, rather than something that stands out as a "wow isn't this cool" set of screens every time it pops up. It reflects a recognition (that we applaud) that social channels are just that - channels, no more, no less and they are used for more inputs from and insights into customers.

We didn't see evidence of any way to handle phone calls which might have been an oversight in the demo, so we'll just leave it as a comment.

They have a small analytics set with a simple, easy to access and use personal dashboard that provides some basic, though not much more than that, metrics for an agent or manager's perusal. Here's a screenshot to give you an idea of what this looks like.

What still remains a little unclear is their scalability to the larger enterprises in the U.S. market which are considerably larger than the larger enterprises in LATAM. However, they do claim to have their enterprise product now and ready.

Final Thoughts

The Blitz Channel Manager, the only product we're qualified to speak of, is a well thought out LATAM focused customer service product that on the one hand, suits their current market but has some challenges for North American markets. The biggest challenge is the obvious one. As of now, they have only a Spanish version, though they recently acquired their first U.S. customer, putting them on the spot to complete the English version in the near future.

Their roadmap is prudent yet ambitious, not only incorporating some re-architecture of their product around Websphere, depending on an opportunity to partner with IBM. More definitive is their future inclusion of other channels and capabilities into their product suite, particularly SMS, Online Chat, fax-to-email and native Mobile to go with both the social and traditional channels they already incorporate.

What seems to be a little skewed or at least unclear, is their business model or what they present as their business model. Consulting is not the course of action we recommend for them but rather a solutions-focused model that uses professional services to implement them. If that is the way they go to market, then they need to align their messaging much more appropriately to their business model. Additionally, it would be valuable for this small company to pursue some partnership for additional exposure to the U.S. market once they complete their English edition.

What is clear is that they have a very good product that is what it claims. It's easy to use, yet customizable to a degree that is laudable. What is also truly smart is their treatment of social channels as no more than another set of channels for agents or managers to use in their quest to provide customer service effectively. Their roadmap for the future with the incorporation of text, online chat etc. shows that in spades.

(Later today, Soluciones S.A. and Jaguar TPM. Check back at 2pm ET.....)

Aug 22, 2011 6:50:00 AM | Business Models, Business Practices, Classic CRM, Industry Analysis, Social CRM

May 03, 2011

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.

Now here are the latest updates:

Additions to the Judges

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
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.
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.
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.
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:

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.
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.
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:

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.
We are also working on a Facebook page for all you fans and friends out there.
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.
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.
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.

May 3, 2011 9:39:56 AM | Classic CRM, Customer Experience, Enterprise 2.0, Industry Analysis, Lessons Of Customer Service, Marketing, Mobile World, Social CRM, Social Networks, Software As A Service - & Permutations

April 23, 2011

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:

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.
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.

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.
You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
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.
You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
You have to fit a category – though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

Traditional CRM Suites
Social CRM
Sales - Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
Marketing – Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
Customer Service – all permutations
Mobile CRM
Customer Experience Management
Social Media Monitoring – requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
Customer Analytics – including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
Enterprise Feedback Management
Innovation Management
Community Platforms
Enterprise 2.0 – collaboration, activity streams etc.
Social Business
Knowledge Management – this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
Vendor Relationship Management
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

There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.
The submission will be by email ONLY to: nextbigthing@crmidol.com. (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Paul Greenberg – Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
Jesus Hoyos – Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
Esteban Kolsky – Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
Brent Leary – Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
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.

Laurence Buchanan – Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
Silvana Buljan – Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
Paul Greenberg – see above
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.

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.
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
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

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

The Vendor Panel

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

The Journalist Panel

Elsa Basile – Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
Barney Beal – Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
Anita Campbell – Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
Robin Carey – CEO, Social Media Today
Neil Davey – Group Editor, Sift Media
David Myron – Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
Valdir Ugalde – Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
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):

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.

Accenture
1. A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
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.
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)
Microsoft

12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM
12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions
Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services
Guaranteed access to exclusive Business and Technical On-Ramp program funded by Microsoft to accelerate entry
and access to the Microsoft ecosystem

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
Brian Solis
1. One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
Paul Greenberg
1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
Ray Wang
1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
Sameer Patel
1. One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
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:

The hashtag is #crmidol
The email for submission is nextbigthing@crmidol.com
1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to pgreenbe@gmail.com

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

Apr 23, 2011 9:37:00 PM | Business Models, Business Practices, Classic CRM, Customer Experience, Enterprise 2.0, Industry Analysis, Lessons Of Customer Service, Mobile World, New Media, Social CRM, Social Networks, Software As A Service - & Permutations, User Generated Content, Vendor Relationship Management, Web/Tech

April 04, 2011

CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season, Begins! Small Companies Let Us Know

Okay, everyone. Sit down and listen close....C'mon. Sit already. God, this is like herding cats. Shhhhhhh. I have a big announcement...or should I say WE have a big announcement. You'll understand what I mean in a minute if you just sit down and shut up.

Starting now, we are opening the doors for the first annual CRM Idol: The Open Season. YES! CRM Idol the Open Season launches today and it is something that will be here every year from here on. Something that....well let me tell you the story.

Why the Hell?

Because there are so many companies coming into the "CRMish" market, the market for customer facing programs and activities, there is little chance for smaller players to get much visibility among thought leaders, analysts, journalists, venture capitalists and even the general public. One company seems like another and they are all vying for attention. They either do their own public relations or hire public relations firms that are often, lets just say, until Brent Leary and my next public skewering of them, deficient in their public relations skills, sending ill considered emails that indicate no research done - and thus, the influencer, analyst, journalist, doesn't give it the time of day.

Know why not? Because each of us gets some 30-50 of these emails per week and because we want to have a life, we can't read or even respond to all of them. Consequently, it takes something special to get through to an individual who may be able to help the small company. The irony is that this small company may have a great product, but no one will ever know, because of the bad PR work or simply the overwhelming amount of possible competitors vying for attention.

There is another thing that makes it tough on all of these companies too. Many of them, rather than try to be smarter, get whiny. For example, when I issued my CRM Watchlist 2011 and placed SugarCRM on it, one SugarCRM competitor wrote this incredibly waah waah comment on the blog post that said something to the effect "why is it that when SugarCRM changes a palette color, they get coverage, but we add a workflow and business rules engine and no one covers us." This is a paraphrase. I can't do justice to the childish, petulant nature of the commment, but incidences like these turn off the switch when it comes to coverage too.

So all in all, partially due to the inability to provide something attention capturing, partially due to the complaining, but mostly due to the high volume of requests for demos and briefs which limit the influencers in making a choice, the small companies are not able to get the traction or visibility that they need to solidify their market position and make themselves known.

Until now.

What's going to be different? CRM Idol The Open Season.

The thinking behind what you are going to hear in just a few is simple. These small companies should have a chance. It isn't their fault that there are a million other companies out there trying to reach the same 100 plus people they are. It isn't their fault that the ability to penetrate the influencer's nearly impenetrable walls due to email/etc. volume, is beyond the skills of a goodly percentage of public relations professionals. And it isn't their fault that some of their colleagues/competitors are sucking their own thumbs.

Thus CRM Idol: The Open Season 2011 is born

What in Hell is It?

This is a competition that is easy to enter but difficult to win. But as long as you enter, you'll get something out of it. Its time to let the small companies who are out there, fighting for that visibility every day, have a chance at some of it, with some of the top thought leaders/influencers in the industry. It's also time for the thought leaders to be more available and do something to support those small companies out there. So here's the game plan. First, the format. Then the rules.

The Format

There will be two versions of this competition/show. One based in the Americas - which will encompass the United States Canada, Central and South America - and one based in EMEA - which will encompass Europe, Australia and Asia for now.

The Americas Version

FFrom August 15 through August 19 (Monday thru Friday) and then again, August 22 through August 26 (Monday through Friday), (thanks LuxorCRM for finding my date booboo), each day, from the hours of Noon to 2pm ET (thus, 9am to 11am PT) and then again 4pm to 6pm ET (1pm to 3pm PT), a panel of three judges will hear, each day, 4 companies who will provide 1 hour demos of their products. That will mean 40 slots in total - all in the month of August. The only criteria for getting the slot (the criteria for entry will be seen below) is that you ask for it first in a period that starts April 18.

After each demo is over, the judges will score/analyze the company and its product(s) and, this is the kicker, will jointly publish in all their venues and in media sponsor venues, a review of the company -giving each of the 40 companies the widest possible exposure. But be on your game. Because I'm not saying the judges will publish a good review. It will be fair, it will be honest, but it could be great or bad or in between. That's up to you as a company.

When all forty demos are done and each of the articles/posts have been published, there will be four winners announced. The winners are obligated (yes, obligated. Don't join the competition if you are unwilling to do this) to put together a 10 minute video that highlights what their company does and how their products work - it can be clever, funny, somber, boring or whatever, but it has to highlight what the company is like and how the product works. This video will go up on multiple venues (including a YouTube channel for this) and there will be an expanded set of judges. The 4 winners will be judged by the public - and a much expanded panel of influencers (between 10 and 15). The publics vote will count for 50 percent and the expanded panel of judges will count for 50 percent. Out of those four finalists will come one winner who will be the CRM Idol 2011. Not only will this be published widely in all venues, but the winner will get a choice of several prizes which will be announced at the time that the four finalists are announced. They could range from a significant speaking slot at a conference to a meeting with a venture capitalist/angel who might be willing to fund the company to a meeting with a key potential vendor partner. More to come on that later. The combination of the prize with the publicity and the exposure to a significant group of thought leaders all with an easy entry point if you meet the criteria should be worth any small CRMish company's time. Take a chance.

EMEA Version

This is pretty much the same rules (three judges, final video, etc.) but there are a couple of differences. First, it will be only 20 slots. Second, the dates for this as of now are TBD. But watch these venues over the next week or two.

The Entry Criteria

Because many of us are giving up a good chunk of the little free time we have in the summer to do this, this is going to be a hardnosed set of criteria - and woe to you if you take up a slot and don't qualify - seriously. I don't want to get self-righteous, but none of the judges have much time to do non-work related things in a given year and we're giving up two weeks of that to do this, so please do me a favor, only bother if you meet ALL the criteria.

Here they are:

The products you show must be commercially available when you show them. No betas. No alphas. No incompletes.
You must have 4 referenceable customers. We will most likely send them notes or call them to check, so again, please make sure that they know they are referenceable customers who may get contacted by us.
If you are a finalist, you must do the 10 minute video describing your product. Its your call how you do it. It has to be able to be posted on YouTube though. This isn't optional for a finalist. This is a mandatory rule. Otherwise, we can't pick a winner.
You must be in an area related to CRM somehow. This could be marketing, sales, customer service, enterprise feedback management, social software, analytics, knowledge management, community platforms, social media monitoring, etc. Customer facing or something that captures customer data. There's a wide range. However, the judges have the final say as to whether or not they think you meet the criteria.
Finally, your revenues need to be $12 million U.S. or under.

How to Enter

On April 18, we all will announce through multiple venues the opening of the slots. That means that anyone who meets the criteria who wants to compete should send an email to the email address that will be announced the date we open. In that, please send company name, information about the company and products, the names of the 4 referenceable customers and a contact at your company. Additionally, identify two slot times. If one is taken by the time you send it, then you will get the backup slot. If both are taken, then you're out of luck unless there are slots still available at the end of the slot availability period (roughly 10 days). It is first come first serve then for those who missed - meaning the judges will look at when the emails were sent and if you're early enough, you'll be offered remaining available time slots. If you don't want any of them, then you're out of luck.

The Judges

Finally, the esteemed panels of judges for each event. (click on their hyperlinks for their bios)

In the Americas

Paul Greenberg
Brent Leary
Esteban Kolsky
UPDATE: We've added, CRM LATAM thought leader Jesus Hoyos to the judges panel in the Americas. YAY! Click on his name for his bio.

In EMEA

Even More Judges....

As I mentioned before there will be an expanded panel of judges for the finals. But I was dissembling a bit. There will actually be two expanded panels of judges for the finals. First, a panel that will consist of roughly 10-15 key influencers which also may (this is still under final discussion) include a venture capitalist or two; and second, a panel that will consist of a like amount of appropriate larger and well established technology vendors and large systems integrators/consulting firms. In other words, those companies that the small companies would love to get in front of anyway. Sitting on these panels, especially the latter, are potential partners and investors.

These will be responsible for 50 percent of the decision on the winner of the competition.

But it doesn't stop there. Wide exposure is going to be the minimum benefit (unless something bad is written, then its not much of a benefit) and so we are bringing in media partners who will non-exclusively carry the entire competition from beginning to end and will be sites from which the popular vote is tallied.

The first media property in is MyCustomer.com, a wildly successful CRM related online digital media outlet in both Europe and the U.S. with, all in all hundreds of thousands of readers.

The 3 full panels - influencers, vendors/consulting and the sponsoring media properties will be announced on April 18 when the "first come first serve" slots open up. The final prizes which will involve, among other things, companies and individuals who are willing to give the winner a crack at getting invested in, will be announced in the midsummer before the Open Season....well, opens on August 14.

That about does it. I'm all written out. So be prepared for this. This could be a big deal. Hopefully this will be both the break that some of you are waiting for and also will show us some of the companies that we should have been watching but weren't. We can close the historic gap and have a great time along the way. Watch for the "sound of the opening bell" coming soon. Remember, first come first served.

Apr 4, 2011 8:12:35 AM | Awards, Classic CRM, Industry Analysis, New Media, Social CRM, Social Networks, The Big Picture - Philosophy & The Universe, User Generated Content

November 23, 2010

Looking Back at 2010 - In 2010

Forecast season is upon us. Yeah, yeah, Christmas and Thanksgiving season too, but this is forecast season. Did you ever think about the etymology of forecast? I think this is broken down the following way. Fore - as in comes to the front. Cast as in wizardry and witchcraft and casting a spell - in other words, about the same level of science that goes into some sort of predictive model. Forecast. Voila. I'm sure that any true philologist will be utterly entranced by my discussion of this word's proper roots. In order to make room for my 2011 forecasts and so that you can understand the profoundly scientific methodology and approach that I'm taking in this effort, I've once again refined my what I see as rather brilliant (in the sense of light blinding me so completely I can't see anything) formula for the future that I am willing to share with you under any of the creative commons licenses you care to apply to it. Here it is with a complete revision history - changes/improvements are in bold red. 2009: The Original eu + gw (l*bl)/i = fw, where eu = eye use; gw = guesswork; l=luck; bl=blind luck; i=intuition and fw = forecast wisdom. 2010: 20x Improvement in Accuracy (eu*cl) + gw(l*bl)*ts/20 = fw where eu = eye use; cl = contact lenses; gw = guesswork; l = luck; bl = blind luck; ts = total speculation; and 20 of course equals the amount to decrease the inefficiency by because I want to. Key improvement for 2010: By adding contact lenses, and replacing intuition with total speculation divided by 20, we decrease the inefficiencies by 20x, thus improving the accuracy by 20x. Logical. I'm so proud. 2011: Increased But Conservative Long Term Forecasting Accuracy (eu*cl*(ew/2)) + gw(l*bl)*ts/20 = fw/2 where eu= eye use; cl = contact lenses; ew = extended wear contact lenses; gw = guesswork; l = luck; bl = blind luck; ts = total speculation; and 20 of course equals the amount to decrease the inefficiency by. Key improvement for 2011: By making the contact lenses extended wear, the long term accuracy of the forecast increases. Once again, a breakthrough in forecasting methodology, unparalleled in the 18th century. What do you mean this is the 21st century? Yeah right. I believe THAT. I'm leaving. Get me my horse. One final note before we move onto the look back. I invoke the Pundit Immunity Clause. For those of you who don't know it, it reads in its newly rewritten 2011 version:

"All pundits are immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and slings and arrows fired at them by outraged patrons when their forecasts go south. Despite the failures, We are still permitted complete access to all Pundits Lounges at airports across the world even when the failure rate exceeds 80% But if it exceeds 90% the wi-fi is no longer free."

See, we have skin in the game. Ha.

Okay, now the time to look back at how I did in 2010 - even though the year isn't over. Honestly, enough of it is over and I am so over the year that I think there will be little change post-Thanksgiving. But then again, that's a forecast isn't it?

The format: The 2010 forecast and then my assessment of how I did - which needless to say is totally biased, since I'm assessing me. Unlike my forecast for 2011 which will be split between ZDNet and PGreenblog so I can publish both halves on the same day, this will be on both blogs - but in full on each. The Watch List will be multiple posts and also duplicated not split on both blogs. So be there or be square as some unknown wag once said.

Okay, I've probably exhausted both all my means to procrastinate and all your good will, so I guess we'd better get down to it. I present to you - the look back at 2010 and how I did. The ratings are in the same format as last year - mostly. The ones that show I already miss the baseball season. As always, the highlighted particular forecast, my written assessment of how I did with it and some ratings designed for all audiences of all types to understand. The numbers in the front of the forecast was my confidence in how likely the forecast was to be on a scale of 1-10.

The 2011 Look Back at 2010

(7)Social Marketing technologies and strategies emerge as important aspects of corporate thinking - IF you took this at the surface of it - meaning that you read it with the emotion of the first sentence I think I could probably claim a major victory. But, in the interests of honestly, transparency, authenticity, and all 2010 social buzzwords, in the actual piece I saw an explosion of social marketing in 2010 and that didn't happen. 2010 saw the integration of features and functions that could be called "social" into existing marketing automation suites like Eloqua, or Oracle in their loyalty marketing programs, or even email marketing applications like Silverpop added powerful sharing features etc. Customer interaction engines, like Infor's Epiphany, added dynamic engines that monitored customer's live digital behaviors and adjusted marketing offers accordingly for example. While not strictly social marketing when it comes to sharing or campaigns on major social sites like Facebook per se, these customer interaction engines are monitoring behavior of the explicit social customer, deriving live insights and then using them to push real time marketing offers. We did see, on the strategy side, a huge upsurge of interest in how to develop strategies and programs that took advantage of the social customer's historic behaviors. In fact, Marketing Sherpa, in their 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Survey, that every industry across the board planned on increasing their budget for social marketing this year. Almost no one in any industry was going to decrease it. So, in that regard I was pretty damned right. Almost. Sorta. RATING: Double to left field, one run scores, but Gardner holds up at third. Left-Brainer: 3.75/5.0; Right Brainer: "Not...too....shabby" (Adam Sandler, Hannukah Song)

(9)Mobile CRM becomes a top priority for business and technology vendors - even more than 2009. It did just that. But I'm not sure what it got us. For example, SAP, in 2009, had a commitment to a partnership with Sybase's iAnywhere platform - now they own it because they bought Sybase. The mobile platform is worth about $400 million of the acquisition. Salesforce has a mobile Chatter application which consolidates activity streams to whatever mobile device floats your boat. REST APIs are being developed or have been developed by companies like Oracle so that Siebel and the iPad can work together, etc. who are ordinarily focused around service oriented architectures (SOA), are usually created for mobile applications. Not only that, the operating systems on the table are now digging deeply into RIM's once dominant market share, making the variety of platforms out there - even including Windows 7 Phone, peeps - intriguing for enterprise software cos. I'm not going to say much more since I need something for my actual forecast which will once again predict this - but suffice to say there is no question that the interest rose in mobile everywhere. In fact, Nielsen says that mobile is the fastest growing technology in history when it comes to usage. So there. RATING: There's a line drive to right field, its off the top of the wall! Jeter rounds second he's heading to 3^rd....and he's in there with a triple! Left-Brainer: 4.25/5.0; Right Brainer: "No time for losers, we are the champions...to the end." (Queen, We are the Champions)

(7)Technology companies embrace "social" versions of multiple parts of the enterprise value chain including (and especially) CRM, SCM, and maybe even ERP. This kind of depends on how I interpret it. IF (and I use the word IF in HUGE capital letters) , you take the other parts of the enterprise - the parts behind the firewall - and call "social" the collaboration features, then I'm spot on. Though frankly, the debate over Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, which is about as smart a debate as the one that we had as to what SCRM was, meaning not, might derail what I'm saying. But that aside, companies across the globe in the B2C space more than B2B but in both are working in in internal communities. Oracle, recognizing that this is a true trend, has done an amazing job by integrating enterprise collaboration into their Fusion applications. It's not a plug in or something awkward. It is seamlessly integrated throughout the applications regardless of which app we're talking about - HCM a.k.a. human resources or CRM or Supply Chain. This is in recognition of the social nature of businesses that is now in its early to maturing stages.

But on the other hand, Social ERP? Nah. Not yet. So how'd I'd do? Depends on the whole "glass half empty or half full" thing. RATING: A fly ball deep right, to the wall and...caught. But Granderson tags up and scores from third easily. Left-Brainer: 3.00/5.0 Right Brainer: "I'm sorry, but i'm just thinking of the right words to say(I Promise You; I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be (I Promise You); But if you wait around a while I'll make you fall for me(I Promise You); I promise , I promise you I will." (I Promise You I Will, When in Rome (thank you Martin Schneider)

(8)Companies are moving toward creating ecosystems to fill out social CRM portfolios -Looking aback on this one, I suppose this was my way of saying, companies are looking to integrate to provide best of breed solutions since most companies - technology companies that is - are realizing that they can't do it alone. That said, vendors like CDC Software came out with the opening stages of a suite - that would be Pivotal SCRM - and other vendors like Oracle and salesforce.com are slowly and somewhat piecemeal, putting the full monte in place, so technology partner ecosystems aren't the only game in town. But the social vendors like Lithium, Radian6 etc. are all realizing that they need to integrate with traditional CRM systems and InsideView continued its relentless drive to integrate with everything including the basil plants that are growing inside varying foodies homes - and they've been a happy success accordingly with integrations to most of the CRM standards out there. So I'm still right but the suite side, which I sorta poo-pooed and Gartner predicted was the way to go with this statement "Gartner believes that by year-end 2011...disparate approaches will combine to form social CRM suites.", is also on the table. RATING: There's a drive down the left field line into the corner and it bounces into the stands for a ground rule double for Posada, leading off the third inning. Left-Brainer: 3.75/5.0. Right Brainer: 'They were right, I was wrong; True love didn't last long; As the June light turns to moonlight; I'll be on my way, hey." (I'll Be On My Way, The Beatles)

(9)Open Source as a factor in CRM will no longer be a differentiator -I nailed this one. When was the last time you heard that open source was a key criterion in the selection of an enterprise CRM package. Even when it was a selection criterion for small business, it was because it was cheap, not because it was open source. Even SugarCRM doesn't emphasize anywhere nearly as much as they used to. RATING: There's a long drive....at the wall....at the track....see YA! A 3 run homer for Mark Teixeira and the Yankees take the lead. Left Brainer: 4.5/5.0 Right Brainer: "Step to the rhythm of a sho-nuff winner (winner) i been here before (yo!) i ain't no beginner (word)..." (Too Legit to Quit, M.C. Hammer)

(7)Customer service becomes the leading pillar from traditional CRM to adopt Social CRM practices and behaviors and technologies - I was right when I said, "In a certain way, this is a trend that doesn't matter much, since the value of Social CRM strategy is built around what your company and customers need in particular to engage - which may or may not be customer service."

The reality here is that customer service has been the driver for most Social CRM initiatives, primarily due to the social customer's proclivity toward activism. They either call you with their problems or queries - a customer service problem or they complain about you on social networks and in communities that you don't control - a customer service problem. Either way, the new channels are forcing companies to rethink how they perform their customer service operations. For example, Intuit is training core customer service reps in how to facilitate community activities or how to respond to problems on Twitter. This is not uncommon. Its no coincidence that the new players in SCRM are entering through customer service - check out Cisco's recent announcement of Cisco Finesse along with Social Miner. Get it? Customer service IS it. RATING: Another deep drive....GONE! Robby Cano, dontcha know, puts a ball that has to be 400 feet or more into the left centerfield seats and it's a three run homer for Robby. Left Brainers: 4.75/5.0 Right Brainers: "Oh,oh,oh,oh,oh,oh,oh,oh;I'm,I'm,I'm,I'm,I'm really,really Hot,Hot,Hot,Hot,Hot." (I'm Really Hot, Missy Elliot)

(9)Public Sector CRM becomes pre-eminent and actually helps drive the private sector. Weeeeell, not exactly. I guess I was still awash in optimism about the still somewhat fresh Obama administration. But its amazing what bureaucracy can do and as the saying truly does go, "old habits die hard." For example, as Brian Komar, Executive Director of Outreach for the Center of American Progress told me in a recent conversation - the culture didn't change and thus even with new media directors up the wazoo at the White House, sites like Recovery.gov, which had a chance to be an important site for constituent knowledge and involvement, put up data rather than told stories. In other words, with a few exceptions like Casey Coleman, GSA CIO and several of her ilk, the public sector has been bogged down despite large numbers of social initiatives by multiple agencies. But there are two things to be aware of. First, the public sector is still a big market for SCRM-ish things. The desire for constituent engagement remains. The intent is still there. It just hasn't unseated the entrenched practices in the way that it needed to for it to be successful. Second, the locus of public sector initiative is shifting from the federal government to the state and local level where the bureaucracies are still onerous but ultimately far less toxic. So I didn't do too well on this one, so I will hang my head. I was so certain. And so not right. RATING: The runner on third, representing the tying run, leads off. Cervelli swings and misses, he struck out, stranding the tying run on third. Left Brainer - 2.5/5.0 Right Brainer: "I'm cryin'. I'm cryyyyyyyyyyyyyin." ( I am the Walrus, the Beatles)

(8)Cloud Computing skyrockets to forefront of interest as #1 choice for business infrastructure/platform. This was a pretty bold prediction only partially mitigated by the (8) I gave it rather than a (10). Cloud computing most certainly has become an important priority with even the largest enterprises considering a move of some of their systems and operations to the cloud. The number of excellent cloud providers is increasing from Amazon to now the full blown cloud platform Microsoft Azure. Even Oracle, the bastion of on-premise history, announced in a painful way, the Exalogic box, a cloud based server that provides companies with a private cloud capability with a price starting at $1.075 million. Salesforce.com's third quarterly earnings call was so wildly success that its stock price rose 18% the day after the call - largely, according to pundits due to their deep commitment to the cloud services that they provide. In fact, cloud services are estimated to reach $45 billion by 2013 by IDC, up from 2009's $17 billion. RATING: Sabbathia winds up, the pitch...a called strike three. Inning over. Three up, three down. Left Brainers: 4.25/5.0 Right Brainers: "They say I'm crazy but I have a good time; I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime; Life's been good to me so far." (Life's Been Good, The Eagles)

(6)Niche success in Outlook-based social CRM in 2010 - I don't need to spend a lot of time on this one. For some reason, there is still a lot of interest in Outlook integration. Aside from the most obvious players i.e. Microsoft to smaller Outlook based leaders like Avidian, the larger companies continue to support Outlook integration. Oracle announced the integration of Oracle CRM on Demand with Outlook. Pivotal integrates with Outlook, even salesforce.com integrates with Outlook now. What more can I say? The reason I was right about this even beyond my imagination is that Outlook is as familiar as the cast of Glee on late night talk shows. RATING: There's a line drive that clears the right field fence and Nick Swisher puts a game winning, walkoff home run into the right field stands in the 14^th inning. The Yankees win. Thhhhhhhhhe Yankeeeeess WIN! Left Brainer: 4.75/5.0 Right Brainer: "I'm king of the hill, top of the heap" (New York, New York, Frank Sinatra)

(8)Governance, compliance, regulation begin to increase presence as transparency, open initiatives grow Look at what I said about the Public Sector. Multiply by minus three and you have my results for this year. Open initiatives grew and were stalled. Transparency in government didn't get a whole lot further than it did in 2009. Sigh. RATING: There's a high popup behind the plate, Mauer throws off the mask and he makes the play, ending the rally, ending the game. Left Brainer: 2.0/5.0. Right Brainer: "Nobody don't want me; I'm so sad so lonely; But I'm always landing on my feet." (So Sad, So Lonely, Matchbox 20)

(6)Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM will begin to merge as a concept and strategy; integrate as technologies and toolsets -Not only has this process begun, but I got to keynote the Enterprise 2.0 2010 Santa Clara conference about convergence of none other than....E20 and SCRM! The merger of the two became enough of a subject to justify that speech and an SCRM track co-chaired by the inestimably smart Sameer Patel and me at a conference which has never thought about that before. In addition, companies like Socialtext, the enterprise level wiki provider announced an integration with salesforce.com. On the other side of the fence, salesforce.com blew away even there own estimation of the success of their enterprise collaboration tool Chatter with, according to salesforce on its third quarter earnings call, over 2/3 of their customers adopting it. Couple that with the integration of collaboration tools with Oracle Fusion apps, including CRM and we are seeing a trend here that I think will only escalate in 2011. Oh, yeahhhhhh! RATING. At the wall, at the track, SEE-YA! A-Rod puts one into the upper deck in left field. That's GOT to be 450 feet. That might be the 5^th home run for the Yankees today. Left Brainers: 4.5/5.0 Right Brainers: "Now that's the way (Uh-Huh, uh-huh), We like It (Uh-Huh,uh-huh); That's the way (uh-huh,uh-huh) We like it (That's the Way We Like It, DJ Cool)"

(7)REST continues to gain especially because of mobile opportunities What can I say? When I'm wrong, I'm dead wrong. When I'm right, I'm killin' it. This is another one that I killed. Pretty much all the significant vendors have announced REST APIs, even when their architecture is based on a service oriented architecture. Think SAP here. Oracle here. Everyone here. Because mobile is so hot, and the REST API is used to connect and pass information to mobile platforms, REST is what is being hammered out in the high tech development steelworks. RATING: Gardner drives one into the right centerfield gap. He's got at least a triple...wait, he's going to try to score, the throw to the plate and he's....SAFE! An inside the park home run for Brett Gardner as the Yankees continue their assault on the... (fill in your least favorite team - unless you're a Yankees hater) Left Brainers: 4.5/5.0 Right Brainers: "I didn't know I was pretty,'Til I took a look at you; An' I'm rollin'Yeah Yeah Yeah I'm a' rollin'." (Rollin', Maria Daines)

(10 Gazillion)Yankees repeat in 2010 as world champions - F---ing Rangers. RATING: The pitch to Miranda, STRIKE THREE and Cervelli's going...he's OUT! A strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out double play. Left Brainers: 0.0/5.0 Right Brainers: "Too many teardrops for one heart to carry on" (96 Tears, Question Mark and the Mysterians) OR "You telling lies thinking I can't see; You don't cry cos you're laughing at me; I'm down (I'm really down); I'm down (I'm down (I'm really down); How can you laugh when you know I'm down; (How can you laugh) When you know I'm down." (I'm Down, The Beatles)

Overall, I've made famous little boy dictum status. When I was good, I was very, very good, but when I was bad, I really stunk up the joint. This year is probably defined more by extremes than any other year in recent memory, but then again, when you hit 60, recent memory extends only as far as an hour ago. Who are you people again?

So that's it for the look back at 2010 even though 2010 isn't over quite yet. But its over enough for me. Now, next time you hear from me, minus an interim post perhaps or two, it will be with the forecast for 2011 - and there are some surprising trends that I'm beginning to pick up that I think will be of interest to you. Then the Watchlist.

Watchlist Update

On the Watchlist candidates... a brief update. I have 37 requests for inclusion that come directly from the companies or their advocates. So far, of the ones that I've gotten, there are two new ones that I'm including:

JitterJam
Spigit

There are 2-3 others under consideration. So the list is now bigger by two. We'll see where it takes us. Watch for further candidate announcements after. November 30. Or before.

One final note: Congratulations to my young social media star friend Maria Ogneva, She was married last week and that came on the heels of taking a new job as Director of Social Media at Nimble November 1. Great times for Maria and it couldn't happen to a nicer person.

See y'all later. BTW, you can use my forecasting formula if you want. At your own peril.

Nov 23, 2010 11:54:32 AM | Business Models, Business Practices, Classic CRM, Industry Analysis, Social CRM

July 06, 2010

Closing the Loop: A New Beginning

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

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

Tying Up Loose Ends

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

The Social CRM Definition

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

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

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

Here it is:

"Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

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

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

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

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

Some examples:

There was big to do about the notion of the customer's "control" of the conversation. WTF...? What that means, in the context of the definition as a whole is truly simple. The customer has ability to affect business of a company in a way that is outside company's control via channels the company doesn't own. Period. This is not some statement about a neo-fascist control of the entire business of a company by the customer. It doesn't mean that the customer has a dog collar around the business, pulling it around while saying "Hey business, you're my bitch now." How stupid would I be to think that? No business that I've spoken to thinks that "customer control" means that. As I've stated countless times, businesses still have their own operational requirements and corporate objectives to meet. Customer behavior has changed over the past 6 or 7 years as has customer expectations. The idea of the "social" customer is just recognition of that change. Businesses have to respond to the change or they will suffer. I wrote 800 pages on it with the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light and I defy any of those who disagree with me to come up with anything I've said in those 800 pages or outside them that talks about some absolutist control by the customer over the business. Its simply recognition of a power shift toward the customer in who can affect who more.
BTW, Mike Boysen's recent great post on the issue of customer control really is what is sparking me to deal with this.
The veiled attacks are the worst but then again - for example someone using the sequence that went something like this (This is a paraphrase) "Seeing SCRM as a philosophy or a strategy is esoteric." This was one of those veiled attacks, since I'm the ONLY person who uses philosophy and strategy in a sequence at all. So that's a bit low. But what is really the key here is how ANYONE can possibly think that strategy is esoteric? That is a dangerously wrongheaded view. SCRM is a strategy for customer engagement - which no one but apparently one person I think would disagree is a key component of corporate strategy in the 21st century. Don't call it Social CRM if you don't want. Who cares? But recognize that outlooks, frameworks, programs, and strategies for engaging customers are necessary components of business thinking and operations for contemporary success.

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

Forget focusing on the "tweetable definition" as if its the whole definition. I said that it was tweetable as a joke. That last sentence is a. intimately tied to the entire definition and b. is not a literal statement but one that is a concentrated metaphor, explained by the entire previous part of the definition. PLEASE do me the honor of thinking of it that way. Otherwise, I feel cheap (Sniff. Sniff...)
So, given that, and now that I have to get past the "tweetable definition" thingee, I've made a couple of small tweaks to the definition that a. serves it well, given what I now realize I should have said and b. Puts the tweetable definition to rest. Here 'tis.
"Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's programmatic response to the customer's control of the conversation."

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

What I Need to Say One More Time

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

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

The Next Phase

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

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

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

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

Two New Podcasts

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

Experience on the Edge

This show, replete with music and riffs will be my solo with a guest host occasionally. The idea will be similar to what it was when I last did it - in 2008 - which is an edgy take on the CRM industry including vendors - with their successes but also no holds barred razor barbs at them if need be. It will be in segments (still a little loose when it comes to what they will be but...) which will roughly break down to the
1. The intro including music
2. an opening commentary and what’s upcoming on the show
3. a discussion on news of the week
4. Some thematic editorial
5. Lists of Top 5 good or bad - hopefully listener submitted and finally
6. a closing
. This doesn't mean I won't completely deviate from the format and do a special show on something like attendance at a vendor show or something of topical interest. I will. I'll also have a guest host occasionally chosen by me from friends, interesting people or listeners.

The Real Deal

This one is a little more nebulous as far as the format goes. Rest assured, music will play a part in this one. No doubt. The big idea is that I will deal with how it is being done via case studies and who is doing it via interviews of people well known or not, who are doing the actual jobs or on the receiving end of the SCRM/CRM particulates. Will this show be segments - meaning say, a case study and then an interview associated with it? Maybe. Will it be a case study and an interview of some SCRM related person doing an SCRM related job? Maybe. Or something in between. Maybe. I haven't decided. Preferences out there can be put up as comments or sent to my email at paul-greenberg3@comcast.net.

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

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

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

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

The CRM Playaz

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

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

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

SCRM and Government 2.0

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

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

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

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

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

Jul 6, 2010 7:00:00 AM | Business Models, Classic CRM, CRM 2.0, CRM at the Speed of Light 4th Edition, Industry Analysis, Social CRM, Speaking On CRM, The Big Picture - Philosophy & The Universe

June 16, 2010

Following On More Than Friday: The Experts Worth Checking Out

Note: I'm actually on a vacation, just finishing an incredible cruise through the Mediterranean and now on Day 2 of a 3 day stay in Barcelona. All in all a dream vacation to tell you the truth. Best ever. But I HAD to finish this post. An addiction. If I left you out and I actually do follow you as an expert, I apologize and will update this list in the near future. Forgive me. I'm loving this trip to much to worry about the rest of it all. Also, please let me know who teaches you. Not just who you read but who teaches you something of value - and moves you forward. Either ZDNet or PGreenblog which will have this post will be great for the comments. Please.

There’s was this list going around a few weeks ago that seemed to be saying that somehow those on it were "the" SCRM Top 50 "experts." After seeing yet another list of another group of experts or influencers in CRM, I realized I'm having a problem with all of these lists. The problem isn't who's on the list, though about 20% of the people on it, I've never heard of - which is highly unlikely if they are influential. The bigger problem I have with lists like this is in this case is that a list like this is now calling the chosen ones on it, "experts." This particular list is saying that the top 50 SCRM experts are sorted by a combination of some sort of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers, friends and other connections. Hopefully, the use of the word "experts" here was a poor unconscious choice of words, because I'm hard pressed to understand how these criteria are linked to expertise.

Look, I have a really hard time seeing a combination of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn compadres as a measure of influence,much less expertise. How this T+F+L combo scrubbed with an algorithm or two qualifies someone as an expert, I'll never know. (hat tip to Groucho Marx). I just get the feeling that even beyond this list (no offense intended, list producers), we are reducing the value of expertise to something that means "someone will listen to you beyond your mom and/or dad." All it seems to need in the world of Social CRM is a comment in an #scrm hashtag or some SCRM related keyword in combination with retweets, Facebook wall posts and god-know-what on LinkedIn to be anointed the god of an industry. Now to the authors credit, they said in their post to not take the numerical order of the list seriously. Which I didn't.

Whatever.

It’s just not the way I roll. Or most of the people I know either.

Please forgive me if I sound somewhat grouchy, but I’m seeing lists like this everywhere that are based on some quantitative calculation that are then being acclaimed as definitive. Reality is that they aren’t definitive and they actually provide little value and more confusion than not.

Here’s my take on all of this. The value of an expert is that they are able to teach someone something in a way that the person learning can understand. In other words, not only do they have depth in a discipline or domain of some sort, but they also think about who their audience actually is and what they do and how they live and, most of all, how they think. The reality is that each person, regardless of their proximity to a particular demographic, thinks differently than the next person. They think in different metaphors. The expert – at least the experts that I think deserve that designation are those that think about that audience. They aren’t just people who spout stuff about a subject or who build up a big Twitter following or who have lots of Facebook friends. They are people who have an expertise that they can impart in the metaphors of their audience so that their audience really understands what they are trying to say. These are people who think about doing that too.

The people that I’m going to recommend here are those I look to for learning. They are the ones who actually teach me something. They don’t just rehash others stuff, they don’t spend their lives arguing their picayune niggling gripes about "definitions"; they aren’t in business to maneuver themselves into leadership positions. They don't backstab or spit at others due their own inadequacies. They've become experts because they've earned the recognition, not because they are trying to get it.

These experts have ideas that create the seeds of new concepts, or they provide unique frameworks in how they look at a subject, or they are able to advance a discussion in a way that didn’t seem possible twenty minutes before I read the article/post etc. They are thinkers who love ideas and love executing on the ideas. I look to different ones for different things. There are many others who I read that I enjoy but they aren’t the ones that consistently move me to another place in how I’m thinking about something. The ones that I’m highlighting are those that do make me think differently more often than not. I'm going to specify what each does - for me, at least. Others who aren’t on the list, please don’t take offense. Its quite possible I simply forgot to include you - and for that I blame a senior moment or two. Or I enjoy reading what you're saying and on occasion you too move me to new concepts and ways of thinking. But the ones here are the ones who consistently move me to change how I think and change what I think about, and they are my gods and goddesses.

I've listed them by category – The links to their name are to their blogs. Or barring that, to their twitter handle. They are in no particular order at all. All of these are regular or semi-regular bloggers or writers. These are not book authors who don't blog much. That means you won't see Joe Pine II or Lior Arussy here since they don't blog enough - even though they are expert when it comes to customer experience. Folks like them will get a separate post when I lay out the books that affected my life and impacted what I think in business. They also are not those who own the social sites or the aggregators, so you won't see Robin Carey or Bob Thompson here, both of whom are true influencers. Also, for those here, there are overlaps with some of these guys being experts in multiple categories but I’m only putting a person in one category. There is room for only so much knowledge between my ears before it fries my brain.

Social CRM

Ray Wang
Esteban Kolsky
Brent Leary
Jeremiah Owyang
Denis Pombriant
Prem Kumar
Mitch Lieberman
Martin Schneider
Mike Fauscette
Brian Vellmure
Michael Maoz
Mark Tamis
Chris Carfi

CRM

Bill Band
Jim Berkowitz
Mike Boysen
Don Peppers & Martha Rogers

1to1 publications

The Enterprise

Josh Greenbaum
Michael Krigsman
Vinnie Mirchandani

New Florence, New Renaissance

The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations

Dennis Howlett

especially the financial/ERP end of it

Co-Creation/Innovation

Graham Hill

Check out his Social Business Manifesto from last November, his very last Cust0merThink post

Wim Rampen

Enterprise 2.0

Sameer Patel
Dion Hinchcliffe

Joining the Dachis Group in April

Oliver Marks
Andrew McAfee

Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

de rigueur

latest blog posting on the iPad

Journalists

This category bears explanation. These are the journalists, some who blog, some who write regularly for publications - all of whom have a leadership position in the CRM and SCRM world one way or the other. Each of them is a terrific writer as well as an original thinker. Each of them, to one degree or another, falls into that hazy space between journalist and analyst, meaning they are journalists with a well formulated opinion. Their advantage over analysts is that they write better. You should follow them. You have to. You NEED to. You want to. When I snap my fingers, you will. AND you will feel refreshed, as if you came out of a deep and satisfying sleep.

Oh yeah, since they aren't all bloggers regularly, I'm going to point you to their articles if need be in the link of their name.

Josh Weinberger
Chris Bucholtz
Ginger Conlon

she is currently editorial director of 1to1 Publications

Marshall Lager
David Sims
David Myron

Analytics, Measurement

Michael Wu

Part 1

Part 2

Jim Sterne

Web Analytics Association

Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment

Dr. V. Kumar

Social Media

Brian Solis

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Paul Gillin

The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media

Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business!

Sales

Anneke Seley

Sales 2.0

Customer Service

Natalie Petouhoff

currently heading up all social media efforts at Weber Shandwick

Marketing

I can't say that I really can find anyone that rocks my boat here though there are many that I read ardently. I think this is a transformational period and there's a lot of both good stuff and noise out there but I can't clearly distinguish one from the other yet, so I'm going to leave this category alone. Though some of my social media experts are also marketing guys - so just reiterate them.

Public Sector/Politics

Andrew Rasiej

PDF - the Personal Democracy Forum

Alan Weber
Alan Rosenblatt

Center for American Progress

Mobile

Sheryl Kingstone - Sheryl works for Yankee Group. She is the Yankee Group star (no disrespect to any other Yankee Group analysts when I say this). She is the analyst most responsible for "the Anytime Anywhere Enterprise" that Yankee espouses - which of course includes a mobile component. Sheryl has been one of my ongoing beacons for mobile trends for as long as I can remember -which of course means since she was about 6 years old. I trust her thinking and judgment.
Michael Gartenberg

Others

These are those who either defy classification or who's category doesn't include that many but are exceptional thinkers who are actually ahead of the curve.

Doc Searls

Vendor Relationship Management

seminal Cluetrain Manifesto

Thomas Vander Wal
Lisa Stone

Blogher

recently named one of 2010's 100 most creative people in America by Fast Company

Vendors Who Have Blogs that Transcend Pitches

I'm not going to go into a breakdown of each of these except to say that please check them out. Each of them has a unique perspective that's interesting and transcends their merely mortal business interests, though clearly doesn't ignore them. In the case of SAP, they have so many blogs that I've chosen the properties of SMT that they are the chief sponsors for and have some of their staff writing for. Also, interestingly enough, I'm noticing that the blogs that I do follow in marketing are mostly vendor blogs. Not sure what to make of that except that the marketing industry is still working it all out.

Okay. All in all, I've got the links for you. Click and read. Follow the yellow brick road.

Lithium
Attensity
SAP
Infusionsoft
Eloqua
Radian6 - in this case, look at the bottom of the page for their extensive list of blogs and podcasts
SugarCRM
Aplicor

Jun 16, 2010 3:53:10 AM | Business Models, Business Practices, CRM at the Speed of Light 4th Edition, Culture, Customer Experience, Industry Analysis, Marketing, Practitioners, Social CRM, Software As A Service - & Permutations, The Big Picture - Philosophy & The Universe

December 07, 2009

CRM Forecast 2009: Looking Back - Not Bad, Not Great

We're heading into that inevitable year end, "let's forecast the next year so that we can all be proven ridiculously wrong" state that we pundit types all end up in. That's only one level less than inebriated or for those of you less articulate, drunk. Getting to the "oops, wrong again" state is a lot less enjoyable, though better for driving. That said, it's time for me to do what I do every year which is to man up and admit what I did wrong, while of course, gloating in what I did right. Sadly, there is always probably more to man up to than to gloat over. Though maybe not.... This becomes the first in a series of three postings - this is #1, #2 is my forecast for 2010 and #3 is my Companies to Watch list which includes some commentary on how those companies from last year's list did. Some of which is sad. Gloomy face. Some of which is happy. Smiley face. Actually, before I do a.....

Personal Note

I've often said when teaching or speaking or writing that the reason I like CRM is that "its the only science of business that attempts to reproduce an art of life" which is how to interact with others in a way that is meaningful throughout life. Aside from being entirely true and heartfelt, it also allows me a lot of latitude in picking metaphors from the "art of life" part of the CRM equation. Plus, of course, lets me talk about my passion for baseball and the Yankees in particular. So, imagine my delight when I saw this quote from Derek Jeter, NY Yankees shortshop, a smart mid-30s kid who has become one of the best baseball players in history as a player and a true role model in how he conducts himself every day of his life. He calls his parents every day to his credit. Its not often I admire a sports figure who is 25 years my junior, but in his case I do. In any case, I read something he said in the Sports Illustrated article on him in the most recent Sports Illustrated that named him the SI Sportsman of the Year, which, in the world of sports, is an actual honor because it takes into account your on and off the field demeanor and actions. Here's what he said, which is a lesson to those of you using social media to brand yourself. The quote:

I never liked people who talked about themselves all the time, gloat. If you're accomplished and have done things, people will talk about it for you. I don't think you have to point it out. I'm not judging anybody. That's just the way I am."

I know that this rather humble statement is the way that it should be done. PR agencies take note in particular. See, there's the "art of life" translating to the "science of business." One again, latitude and license.

Seeing 2009 in the Rear...view Mirror

Without much further ado, let's take a holiday look at how my 2009 forecast turned out after all. The plan is to put the particular prediction - with the number that indicated the likelihood of the occurrence - all guesswork by the way - remaining e.g. 1-10 in parentheses. Based on the particular "what I said will happen" I'll point out what actually happened.

(8)Mobile CRM will be in increasing demand by sales organizations in particular - and vendors will continue to invest in it, downturn or not - I was close but not entirely perfect on this one. On the one hand, there have been an upsurge of releases in mobile CRM in 2009 with Maximizer releasing to all platforms especially with SFA; SAP allying with both Sybase and their iAnywhere platform which pushes content out to any mobile platform regardless of operating system and their actual release of the RIM/SAP alliance mobile SFA application promised in 2008; Oracle with social marketing applications for the iPhone; salesforce with a REST API that is designed to improve mobile; Sage with Saleslogix for the Blackberry; and too many others to mention here (so vendors not mentioned, please, stay off my case). This is a long way from what's been out there in the past. However, on the downside, I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER if sales organizations were asking for mobile apps. That was a shot in the dark as it seems to turn out. I've neither heard nor seen anything that indicates that sales organizations said a thing about mobile apps, frankly. But my heart was in the right place. RATING: A solid triple to left, scoring two runs. Left-Brainer: 4.25/5.0; Right Brainer: This is wicked cool!
(6)Large enterprises will buy CRM 2.0 tools; SMBs will look to simplicity in CRM and dabble in social tools - divergent approaches - While this is kinda true, tho' of course, its now Social CRM, not CRM 2.0 tools as of "Stake in the Ground", I'm not really sure this was a trend and frankly if I were to be thinking about this again, I doubt I'd call it one. I think that companies bought CRM tools, and social tools including the enterprise. I think that companies were and are intrigued with the idea of capturing unstructured data and populating their CRM customer records with it. I think that companies want to continue to operationalize their processes and actions so that they can devote more time customers. I think they want to engage their customers. But do I think they get Social CRM as a unified field theory - nope. Not yet. More of them are interested than before. Small businesses weigh a bit more heavily on the operational side of CRM than the interactions and engagement part but enterprises are not a lot better on their view of the integrated whole. RATING: a weak grounder to short, force out at second. Runners don't advance. Left Brainer: 2.25/5.0; Right Brainer: Kinda lame, Paulo. Actually....really lame.
(6) The debate over REST v. SOA as the small business architecture of choice will heat up in 2009 - Right on one count, not entirely right on the other. REST gained huge ground in the last year with SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com and many more SOA architected apps/services companies built REST APIs, recognizing that REST was not only here to stay but a potentially dominating (if not dominant) architecture that was important in the small and grand schemes of things. However, there wasn't much of a debate about it frankly. Most companies even those tied to SOA as an architecture, understood REST's value. Sage tried to pick a fight with SOA but that didn't go anywhere. However, that said, Sage was also the first serious player/vendor to really commit to REST as a primary architecture and it was a wise decision. RATING: a near home run that bounces off the top of the wall and back onto the field for a double, driving in a run. Left Brainer: 4.0/5.0; Right Brainer: Very smooth, my man, very smooth.
(9)Integration between traditional CRM and Web 2.0 applications, features, functions and characteristics will accelerate AND (7)Social software companies will increasingly integrate with CRM applications through APIs and plug-ins - I'm combining two of my predictions which were beyond on the money here. I nailed it. But why I made them separate line items in the forecast? I can only scratch my head. I don't know. This year was characterized by the traditional CRM vendors (e.g. Oracle, SAP, salesforce.com, Microsoft, NetSuite, RightNow, etc) and the social vendors who are providing apps and services ranging from community platforms (e.g. Lithium) to social networking platforms (e.g. Neighborhood America) to social media monitoring tools (e.g. Radian6) to social business apps (e.g. Jive) to sales intelligence tools (e.g. Insideview) all decided that they were in heat and they started to, ahem, couple. Meaning we saw a proliferation of APIs for integration that began with social platforms/apps/services and channels like Twitter and neighborhoods like Facebook and combined with salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft etc. The traditional vendors were no slouch in this department either with salesforce.com announcing Chatter, Oracle a hybrid kind of build and integrate approach, NetSuite linking to both Twitter and partnering with InsideView, SAP announcing a Twitter integration, Microsoft and Neighborhood America developing a joint Public Sector product and service and SugarCRM integrating social features into their 5.5 release. There also was a proliferation of companies calling themselves Social CRM which while a good thing for the branding of the tag, Social CRM was not entirely true of any of the companies that called themselves that. But all in all, 2009 was a banner year for Social and CRM integration, which of course, makes me very happy. RATING: A three run 450 foot homer to dead center. Breaks the game open. Left Brainer: 4.9/5.0; Right Brainer: OMG, This is just SOOOOOO AWESOME!!!
(10)Software as a Service becomes pre-eminent delivery platform for CRM - Judging from the (10) I gave it, I must have been high - though I don't use drugs (really). Sadly, I can claim that I simply meant the most talked about and fastest growing a.k.a. pre-eminent, but, to be honest, I meant predominant - meaning the most prevalent - even more than on-premise. But, if Gartner numbers are to be trusted, 2009 gave SaaS 24% of the market which hardly qualifies as predominant, so that would kind of wreck my prediction. Though in my defense, the SaaS market was the fastest growing market with an 18.8 percent increase in revenues from 2008. Now, with the cloud becoming of real interest here and with SaaS as its delivery platform, I suspect my "prediction" will be right a lot sooner than Gartner thinks, but I was probably overstating the case. Know what? I'm invoking the Pundit Immunity Clause here. RATING: Pundit Immunity Clause. Left Brainer: Pundit Immunity Clause. Right Brainer: Pundit Immunity Clause.
(7)Cloud computing becomes an increasingly important way of “doing business” and storing information - I was right about this wasn't I? The interest in cloud computing translated into incredible 2009 revenue predictions from the probably generously enthusiastic Gartner Group - $56.3 billion for this year and $150 billion by 2013. Minimally, whether true or not, it reflects the excitement around the cloud. Not only that, every company and their children were attempting to grab a piece of cumulus or two. Microsoft and Azure, Amazon - who, frankly, at this time seems to be the leader in the space, has its EC2 platform, salesforce.com is claiming that everything they produce is "a cloud" (see "Chatter as the 4th cloud) when in fact they do have a cloud framework, but its not the four cloud apps they have; Sun (now of course, in the hands of Oracle). We can go on, but won't. This is long enough already. Not only are the vendors producing, but the use of the cloud by the consumer keeps growing (think Google's gmail for example, which as of July 2009, had 146 million users). The U.S. government, led by U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra and General Service's Administration (GSA) CIO Casey Coleman are leading a massive cloud initiative, rolling out apps.gov as a GSA service and also using the cloud to ultimately reduce reliance on physical data centers (23 of them out there at the moment). All in all, cloud computing adoption has been up over 20% from 2008. So was I right or was I right? RATING: ANOTHER triple down the right field line, driving in two. Left Brainer: 4.5/5.0. Right Brainer: Uh huh. Uh huh. Uhhuhuhhuhuhhuh.
(6)Platform as a Service and Open Source platforms becomes highly competitive and one of the core ways that CRM offers customization capabilities and architecture AND (7)Open Source continues a slow but steady penetration in CRM - though not many new players show up What was I thinking here? First of all, the cloud superseded pure PaaS as an offering, though PaaS offerings such as force.com are powerful. But worse than that, PaaS never competed with Open Source. Open Source as a platform per se became a non-factor. That doesn't mean it wasn't good or useful. Just not one of the most important selection criteria for CRM technology choices. The reasons? First, there is no open source competition. SugarCRM is pretty much the only commercially viable open source platform at this point - Vtiger is making some progress but not enough to compete with SugarCRM. So the selection process is really SugarCRM when the word open source becomes mentioned. Second, most vendors are building in some form of open intellectual property, including source code into their normally proprietary applications. For example, in 2009, SAP got heavily involved in the Eclipse Foundation, which is dedicated to open source development. I can go on, but not here. Third, keep in mind, in the latest CRM at the Speed of Light, I call open source more of "a license and a culture" than an application architecture . I'm sure there are open source vendors who will debate this and please do and convince me I'm wrong, but even so, that still doesn't tell me of anyone out there beyond SugarCRM who can provide the basis for calling open source even a category for selection. I wasn't even right about the "not many new players." To my knowledge there were none. So I was just WRONG about these two. RATING: Struck out on a 2-2 curveball, breaking down and in. Left Brainer: 1.5/5.0; Right Brainer: Duhhh.
(7)Social characteristics join features & functions as vital pieces of CRM applications - identity, actions, reputation, influence, persuasion - Vital? No. Part of the discussion? Yes. Since Pricewaterhousecoopers issued their 2007 report "How consumer conversation will transform business", the idea of not just the numbers but the influence of individuals has been top of mind for me when it comes to thinking about Social CRM. When Thomas Vander Wal began to have the discussion of the social stack, it explained to me what in fact were the guiding characteristics of the social customer and what had to be considered in the processes and technologies that were going to be the mainstays of Social CRM support. Well, apparently, while there are a lot of discussions on the value of influence and the refinement of mere numbers that we were using to show "power", the use of those characteristics isn't so prevalent in software. There is the growing use of sentiment analysis, the continued niche field of social network analysis. Some great new tools like PeopleMaps (see my companies to watch in a few days) have created some buzz - and they fall into the influence and persuasion knowledge tools that indicate social characteristics, but they are not all that prevalent a group yet. So.... RATING: "Looks like its gonna drop in for a base...no! What a great catch!. That retires the side." Left Brainer: 2.0/5.0; Right Brainer: BOR-ing.
(9)Authenticity and transparency will become strategically important to companies - This may be hard to quantify exactly or to figure out how I did last year. It is clear that transparency at least is something we're seeing more and more of with the growth of communities like Innocentive which is 125,000 scientists and engineers who solve problems for companies. In order to do so, though, the companies have to expose some of their intellectual property, a bit of transparency which was taboo just a few years ago. But the companies that work with them, do so willingly. Additionally, we're seeing the growth of a willingness to be authentic, meaning "real" or honest, but it smacks often enough of that kind of fake, salesy authenticity - often of the self-deprecating "I'm such a tool for doing this but..." variety that you get from companies in lieu of actual honesty. Meaning when they do something uncomfortable, they don't really think they're tools. So I'm not sure how I did here so you know what that means. RATING: Pundit Immunity Clause (PIC). Left Brainer: PIC; Right Brainer: PIC.
(9) Growth in the public sector for social CRM continues in the face of recession - use of social tools accelerates rapidly in the federal, state and local government in the U.S. and elsewhere This one sure worked. The interest in all federal agencies thanks to the particular nature of this administration in constituent engagement - which is their particular form of Social CRM is being replicated throughout the state and local governments also. The underlying architecture of choice is not SOA particularly but the cloud. Part of the reason is cost reduction. Part of the reason is increased effectiveness. Witness the growing pre-eminence of geospatial projects using cloud based services like Google Earth which are being planned for integration with community and location based channels like Twitter. One that comes to mind that my brother is heavily involved in is Virtual USA born Virtual Alabama. This program is actually changing the way the government will respond to emergencies and how they will engage the citizenry. All of this is not a local U.S. phenomenon either. Nations like Singapore are investing heavily in providing tools to their citizenry that allow those citizens to provide significant feedback to the government - which is then being acted on. This makes Singapore, according to the 2009 annual Accenture Leadership Study on Customer Service on matters like these, the most engaged and trusted government in the world. This is becoming increasingly interesting to all governments with experiments or programs for engaging constituents growing worldwide. RATING: Towering drive into second deck in left field, solo shot. Left Brainer: 4.5/5.0; Right Brainer: (guest appearance from Christopher Walken here - More Cowbell - "I put on my pants one leg at a time. But after I get my pants on, I make gold records."
(8)Feedback 3.0″ will become an intimate feature of most companies' customer strategy - This one is easy. It didn't unless it was so intimate it reached the "do it but don't tell" level. Lots of companies and countries gave Feedback 3.0, which isn't just listen and learn but listen, learn and act, plenty of lip service, which I presume means that whoever produces lip balm had a banner year. But once again, not that much was done about it. Or when it was done, it was done in a siloed way. For example, Comcast, the new proud soon to be owners of NBC Universal, let service rock star Frank Eliason do something remarkable. Over the past three years, he's built a highly effective and paradigmatic alternate service channel using Twitter at Comcast that is beloved by customers and industry leaders. He's set a standard. But unfortunately, the company overall doesn't seem to learn from him. Consequently with all his ace results because of his listen, learn, act strategy, Comcast overall still sits at the bottom or near the bottom of customers' views when it comes to customer service. Feedback 3.0 is not an intimate part of Comcast except for the Eliason-managed Twitter channel, nor is it the core service view of very many companies at all, despite their desires for Facebook pages and Twitter channels. RATING: High pop-up. Infield fly ruled called. Outta there. Left Brainer: 1.75/5.0; Right Brainer: Dude, I'm bummed.
(7)Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) releases its first tools for the customer in 2009 - Being wrong on this one makes me really sad. I'm a VRM fan and have been a promoter of the idea for several years now. Doc Searls to me is the most seminal of the Cluetrain thinkers and VRM is an idea as the "labor movement of the customer" I can get behind. But, once again, I was thwarted in my always sunny VRM forecast with no tools for the customer coming out in 2009 - at least none with three weeks to go for the year. Doc Searls himself even said something akin to this in the ProjectVRM blog in mid-November with the following quote: "The problem is that VRM itself is extremely broad, and still lacks working code that applies to all VRM topics. In the absence of that code - some personal tool as universal in the digital world as the wallet is in the physical one - we end up scattered across many topics." Now, he didn't mean exactly what I meant, but the spirit is the same. Time for the VRM world to pony up something for the consumers to grab onto. I worry. RATING: Easy fly out, right field. Left Brainer: 1.5/5.0; Right Brainer: Dude. Dude. Dude. Sigh.
(100) Yankees will win the 2009 World Series - TOTALLY NAILED this sucker, didn't I? Huh? Huh? I did. I did. I did I did I did. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uhhuhuhhuhuhhuh. I will nail it again next year as you'll see in my Forecast 2010 piece when it comes out. RATING: WALK OFF GRAND SLAM HOME RUN IN FRONT OF FULL HOUSE AT NEW YANKEE STADIUM TO CLINCH THE WORLD SERIES. Left Brainer: 10.0 of 5.0 Right Brainer: IN DA HOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUSSSSEEEE! BBAMFIC (Big Bad Ass MFer In Charge)!!

Dec 7, 2009 12:06:30 PM | CRM at the Speed of Light 4th Edition, Industry Analysis, Social CRM, Vendor Relationship Management

CRM, Philosophy, Baseball & Universal Metaphors

August 24, 2011

Relenta

GreenRope

Connected

August 22, 2011

Soluciones S.A.

Jaguar TPM

The First Reviews

Phaseware

Performance Solutions S.A.

Business Model

Product

May 03, 2011

Additions to the Judges

The Mentor Program

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

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

The Americas (all times are Eastern Time)

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

EMEA (all times are GMT)

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

Americas (all ET)

EMEA (all GMT)

April 23, 2011

The Idea

The Criteria

The Categories

The Rules

Submissions

The Demo

The Video

The Judges

Primary Judges

The Americas

EMEA

Mentors

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

The Vendor Panel

The Journalist Panel

Media Partners

The Prizes…So Far

All Finalists

The Americas and EMEA Winners

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

A Note or Two

In Closing

April 04, 2011

Why the Hell?

What in Hell is It?

The Format

The Americas Version

EMEA Version

The Entry Criteria

How to Enter

The Judges

Even More Judges....

November 23, 2010

The 2011 Look Back at 2010

Watchlist Update

July 06, 2010

Tying Up Loose Ends

The Social CRM Definition

What I Need to Say One More Time

The Next Phase

Two New Podcasts

Experience on the Edge

The Real Deal

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

The CRM Playaz

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

SCRM and Government 2.0

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

June 16, 2010

Social CRM

CRM

The Enterprise

Co-Creation/Innovation