PGreenblog

Blog Carnival: The ROI of Social Media is The CRV of Revenue Impact

This post is part of the Social ROI Blog Carnival at Think Customers: the 1to1 Media blog. Visit the blog carnival post “Calculating the ROI of Social Media" to check out the full lists of posts from numerous well-known social media thought leaders.

ROI = Social Media CRV

There have been an amazing number of attempts to quantify the benefit of social media so that we can get a traditional result to measure against.  Most of them fail or are indecipherable stretches that really don’t apply.  The problem is that social media interactions are in a simplified world, only of a few types:

1. Identifying and capturing some unstructured information that is quantified by assessing the emotional state of the person’s who is the subject of the information.
2. Identifying a number of interactions which define the volume of interactions or the source of interactions
3. Taking an action based on the social media interaction -  capturing a lead and starting the process of lead nurturing or opening a case due to a social media based complaint.

But when social media is treated as a channel for the interactions and is integrated with CRM customer records and CRM systems, then the ability to measure an ROI for social media becomes not only possible, but also important.

What does that mean?

Well, lets start with this. To me, as we enter what I’m calling the era of customer engagement, we are seeing a more mature view of social media and its use as part of a multi-channel strategy.  Social channels have become one of the sets of channels being considered along with email, phone, etc. – They do represent a disproportionately influential segment because conversations in social channels have the ability to scale from one to one to one to many or even many to many.

What this implies is that the measurement of social media ROI has two components. One is strategic – and there it isn’t measured separately. It is part of the achievement of your planned overall return. The other aspect is tactical.  And this is where it gets a bit dicey.

Ultimately, any company trying to measure social media ROI needs to be able to think beyond the traditional marketing measures like reach.   But the problem is that many of those things that you’re looking to get a return on are nebulous when it comes to measurement.

For example, how do you measure your impact on influencers which is one area that social media is used for by some?  To do that, it implies that you know how to measure influence digitally.

“Do you?”  Well sure, you say, a Klout score.  Sorry. Not the case. Klout is good at measuring how engaged an individual is on social channels at any given time but doesn’t really measure influencers of the buyer kind or the industry kind.  Three weeks off the grid would lower your Klout score but wouldn’t necessarily impact your influence.  You see that don’t you?

But social media measurement ROI does need to be associated with meaningful metrics, nonetheless.

Measuring Advocacy

Bet you think that I’m going to talk about Net Promoter Score as a measure of ROI for social media, right?

Nope.

I’m going to talk about something far more important that begins to address the scalable power of social media and the most important return that social media can provide – revenue. Because we are talking about marketing to a large extent for this Blog Carnival, I’m going to stretch the definition to the more recent look at the alignment of sales and marketing that was initially discussed in 2009 by our hosts, Peppers and Rogers in their “Sales and Marketing, the New Power Couple,” report.

In his book, “Managing Customers for Profit,” Dr. V. Kumar speaks of an extension of customer lifetime value (CLV) that he calls CRV – customer referral value.  For those of you not acquainted with it, customer lifetime value is the measure of the economic value of a single customer and his/her household over the full length of a relationship that the customer has with a particular company. It is a measure of direct revenue impact.

But what customer referral value does is take a look at the power of a brand’s value in the social channels by operating under the assumption that customers who may or may not have a high CLV, could be strong brand advocates who will refer their friends and others to the brand. Then some of those friends and others buy the products or services based on the brand referral.   This is indirect revenue impact.

To determine that, there is data that needs to be collected from both social and traditional channels.  There are four questions that have to be asked to prepare to do that.  They are:

1. Would you recommend this company to someone you know  - the traditional Net Promoter Score question?  This signals intent.
2. Did  you recommend this company to someone you know?  The  key question – signals action on the intent. About 1/3 actually do recommend.
3. Did they become a customer?
4. Are/were they a profitable customer?

These four questions are the foundation for the ROI of social media. If you use social media to determine who the brand influencers are and then go a bit deeper to find out who those brand influencers actually influenced, you can get an actual ROI for your social media usage.  Which is what you want right?

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

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

Gamification becomes Serious Business

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

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

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

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

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

In other words this is starting to get big.

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

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

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

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

Insight Solutions will emerge as a technology category of its own

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s the good news.

The signs that this is still immature?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Bursts: Other Trends

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

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

The One By Itself

This is the most important prognostication for 2012. Period.

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

Finally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

The Idea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Criteria

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

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

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

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

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

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

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

The Demo

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

The Video

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

The Judges

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

Primary Judges

The Americas

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

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

EMEA

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

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

Mentors

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

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

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

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

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

The Vendor Panel

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

The Journalist Panel

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

 

Media Partners

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

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

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

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

 

The Prizes…So Far

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

All Finalists

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

The Americas and EMEA Winners

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

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

 

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here’s the hardcore stuff:

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

 

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

A Note or Two

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

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

In Closing

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

 

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

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:

1. The products you show must be commercially available when you show them. No betas. No alphas. No incompletes.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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

• Paul Greenberg
• Laurence Buchanan
• Mark Tamis

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.

A LOADED Comment - The Impact of Culture and Technology on Each Other in the Realm of Social Business

Mitch Lieberman, a VP at SugarCRM is a living proof of concept - vendors can contribute serious thinking to the ongoing discussion around how to create and apply business strategies to customers. Despite the cynical thinking of many out there. He recently did a presentation using the Prezi online cool tool (for some things) to describe his thinking on how Social CRM is perhaps the most significant pathway to the accomplishment of Social Business. Its well worth checking out and, thinking about. But, that's not what I want to address. There was a comment by someone with the handle munishgand on Mitch's post which reminded me of something that I not only have been mulling over for a long time but meaning to write about. Munish and Mitch inspired me to pen this thing. Here's the part of Munish's comment that I want address:

"To me, the picture “Old Organization + New Technology = Expensive Old Organization” (http://grab.by/grabs/f614c734bb56ed20df7f93b81fc5f74e.png) says it all. There is a big shift in culture required for a social business to thrive in the new environment. Else, why pave the cow paths? What I am wondering is the following. Changes in culture are notoriously difficult to accomplish. Should a company stop trying to get the tools in if it cannot make the cultural shift? Sometimes, an exposure to the technology provokes the cultural shifts needed."

Thanks for that, Munish. Its a good insight and, when it comes to the relationship of Social CRM and the more traditional forms of CRM, a very important question - because there is a distinct difference between how technology needs to be treated a.k.a. thought about in Social CRM then it was in traditional CRM.

Sometimes Mantras are Made to Be Interrupted

Probably the most irritating though significant discussion that's gone on in CRM since day one was "is CRM a technology or a strategy?" or its corollary "is CRM a technology or a strategy - first?" Those in the same camp as me have argued that CRM is a strategy and program that uses technology as an enabler. My original definition of CRM from CRM Magazine 2003 reflects that thinking.

"CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment."

What this reflects is that CRM has always been the program for development and execution of customer strategy - what are the things that you actually do to see that customers relationships to companies are always meeting the expectations (if not exceeding the expectations) of those customers. Traditional CRM was more about managing the relationships - which practically translated meant providing more automated processes and interpreting more data so that the company both understood the customer in a way that was useful to them - and at the same time, the customers received at least the minimum of what they needed to handle their relationship to the company. Accomplishing this would be a traditional CRM success, but traditional CRM was embedded in a business ecosystem that was still owned by the company. From almost the first day of CRM (which is mythic at this point), there was a fight to overcome the popular perception - among the practitioner companies that CRM was a technology that you bought. Despite the best efforts of the "CRM is a strategy first" camp, the technology persists as the "prime mover" of CRM to this day. That meant that when you were developing a CRM strategy you were implementing a CRM system not developing a CRM program. I was among the folks that pushed the idea that CRM was a strategy and program first and technology choice was the last facet of developing that program - as an enabler - not the primary focus nor the driver of a CRM strategy at a company. Regardless of what I or anyone else thought, the popular view of CRM was and still is that it is a technology and system first. That has been adopted at many many organizations as just that. The practical implications for this particular approach have been almost staggering in consequence. As a result of the technology system, not program outlook, hundreds or even thousands of organizations implemented CRM systems from multiple vendors without a clear vision of what they wanted to do at the company when it came to their customers or what it meant to have a customer-centric culture. The implementation was the thing. The sequence was:

"We want to be customer centric. Let's go out and buy a CRM system and put it in. We want the CRM system to have this feature A, and do this function B and we in the future could use this feature/function C. That will make us customer-centric."

Keep in mind, we're not talking about stupid companies with no plan. But their plan was geared toward what they wanted from the technology, given what they thought they needed to do with their customers. It wasn't what they wanted from their company given what they needed to do with their company. It was a system, not a program. While that's better than thinking that they don't have to be customer-centric, its still a real problem, because of two things:

1. it doesn't take into account the impact of being customer centric on the culture of a company - especially given that the likelihood of the company having been customer-centric is about zero so there is no cultural precedence for that customer-centric perspective or program;
2. the technology's success or failure became the foundation of the company's success or failure in CRM rather than merely an aspect of it.

The result of this was that even when the technology was technically proficient, the ultimate customer-centric perspective that the company needed to embrace wasn't. Does this mean that traditional CRM was a failure? Hardly. But what determined success was delimited by the capabilities of the software. It also meant that while the culture wasn't impacted by the software, the software was impacted by the culture - meaning that the existing culture wasn't changed and thus made adoption of the software far more difficult, because, no matter what the theory - software as a driver or an enabler - it still was, in practical terms, an enabler only, which meant, as CRM software, it was supporting an idea or outlook that wasn't part of the company's actual outlook. A square peg in a round hole. The early numbers surrounding the software adoption supported this. The primary reason for lack of adoption was the lack of involvement of the user from the beginning of the process (47% of respondents in an IDC survey on CRM user adoption in 2003). Why the lack of involvement? Because the cultures of the companies hadn't changed to understand that the user, and the customer drove the requirements, not the other way around. This also led to the higher failure rates of the earlier days - because the expectations of the results around CRM were driven by the software, not by a CRM program that used the software as a tool.

Ommmm. Ommmmm. Owwww. The Mantra Is Broken

But then along comes the social customer in 2003-2004. What does this social customer do that his more traditional brethren didn't? He communicates outside the corporate firewall with those he or she trusts the most - his or her peers. He uses what to communicate? Tools that AREN'T traditional CRM tools but are easily available social software, hardware and channels. That would be cell phones and now smartphones. That would be social networks (66.8%) even more than email(65.1%) (see Nielsen's Global Marketing Insight survey of March 2009). That would be Skype, (521 million), Facebook (400 million), Twitter (100 million), and hundreds of other channels not behind the corporate firewall. From 2004 on, people seized control of how they communicated 24/7. What devices they used, what tools they used, what channels they used, when they communicated, what they expected as a result of that communication, what kind of response they got, all shifted into the hands of the individual. In the world of business, communications about a company no longer needed some company venue to occur. For a communication or array of communications to affect a company, it didn't have to occur with the company's acquiescence. Even more telling, it could occur without the company's knowledge. This meant that the company no longer controlled its own destiny in regard to its customers, though it, of course, continued to control its own operations. (the fact that the company still needs to run itself is one of the things at the core of the difference between Social CRM and almost anything else with the word "social" in it) The conversation passed into the hands of the customers - meaning they could damage, grow. or affect somewhere in between, a company without the company having much to say about it. So what did this do to CRM?

Traditional CRM To Social: The Transition of Technology

The customer's ability to communicate outside the firewall and still affect the company, was of course noticed early on. From Dell Hell in 2005 to the recent Nestle's fiasco which took a minor incident of a snot-nosed customer service rep's arrogance and ended up with Greenpeace driven major viral damage due to Nestle's alleged use of Palm Oil from XXXXX, proves the point in spades. There was(and continues to be) a material effect on the fortunes of companies when the customer commands the storyline. CRM thinkers and doers began to realize that they had to open up channels from the corporation to the customer in order to minimally contain or capture the conversation going on outside their realm and optimally to interact (listen and act) with their customer in a way that supported the benefit of both. What did this take? The technology to do so. But that wasn't the only trend. In parallel with the growth of this social customer, Gen Y was entering the workforce and bringing the tools that they wanted to use to that workplace despite the rules of the enterprise that they worked for (52% of them were happy to ignore the corporate regulations to do so). Additionally, technology was becoming not just a utilitarian choice that one made, but a lifestyle choice and this too was penetrating the workplace. It was no coincidence that RIM released the Pearl in 2006, thus ending the era of high functioning but butt-ugly mobile devices. Thus, much of the technology that the CRM-morphing-to-Social-CRM thinkers/doers were considering in their efforts to open channels were the same consumer-driven technologies that their newly younger workforce were using. Also, it was the same technologies and channels that they (the decision makers among others) were using outside the workplace. Its no coincidence that Marc Benioff and salesforce.com actively trumpet their reliance on and adaptation of Facebook and Twitter for not only their new Chatter "cloud" (their term, most definitely not mine), but also for its impact on Service Cloud 2 and Sales Cloud 2. This isn't just marketing (though that certainly is a part of it); its actually the case. What makes this significant is that the penetration of consumer thinking and the use of consumer technologies in the enterprise has been in part a driver of the cultural change that the most advanced companies are embracing and the less advanced companies are reluctantly acknowledging. Yes, a driver, not just an enabler. This is something I NEVER thought that I'd be saying, but hey, what good are we if we can't change?

How Does The Technology Drive It?

The mere fact that the technology is being brought into the workplace and used despite the rules attacks the company's culture. The carriers (Gen Y workers, many of the Gen Xers and a few savvy baby boomers - the catchall term is often "Gen C.") are also showing the value of the technology. - Thus, breaking the rules either forces the company to get rid of what is a productive workforce doing something demonstrably valuable or it adapts to the new circumstances - which forces the company to change its own behaviors, institute a new set of rules and at the same time empower a whole new layer of the workforce. For example, wikis in companies have often had the same effect. The most famous Enterprise 2.0 wiki case study, DkW, (thank you Andrew McAfee) showed how the introduction of the technology and the organic growth of its user base to 1200 dramatically altered the company's culture - making it collaborative and open where it hadn't been and with measurable productivity increases. The technology itself, the wiki, had been introduced to solve a practical knowledge-driven problem. The culture was transformed. This is becoming a more widespread phenomenon. After all, remember, what you use at home, if you're using it at work, is simply you using technology to function the way you are comfortable functioning as a human being. Not a customer, not an employee; a human being. How it gets realized is determined by what kind of interactions you have with specific kinds of institutions - social, economic, or business for example. But its more than just what I've said so far. Keep in mind, one of the key pieces in a Social CRM program is that the company provide channels for the customer to communicate in an easily usable/navigable bidirectional fashion. That means that the tools the customers use and that the company provides are either familiar to the customer and the company employees or become familiar easily. That's why you see the adoption of Twitter and Facebook as initial service (and marketing) channels for companies when it comes to that company-customer engagement. The company is recognizing that those customers are using the tools that they enjoy using and the company is then going to those customers with those tools so that the communication occur in a way that's familiar to both. Its no coincidence that Frank Eliason has been the reason for the success of Comcast on Twitter. He understood the tool/channel and its impact on both employees and customers. But Comcast is also an example of what happens when the cultural change isn't successful in this environment. Each year Bruce Temkin, Forrester's customer experience guru, puts out his customer service experience index on how big companies are doing. For example, companies like USAA get it - they are in the top 5. But Comcast is 126 of 133 in 2010. Know why? Because they think that what Frank is doing is great PR. Not a paradigm for how to treat customers. Great PR. They'd be 133/133 without Frank. What this says is that the technology as a driver isn't always successful. By itself, it probably never is successful. But in the world of Social CRM, because of the penetration of consumer technology and the importance of the tools in the transformation of communication, they are no longer, as they were in traditional CRM, just enablers; they now can both drive and enable.

What are the Practical Implications?

Actually, there are some very specific practical implications when it comes to the programmatic part of Social CRM. In the past, I would recommend almost universally and uniformly, that technology selection be the final stage of CRM programmatic efforts. Wait until you had a solid strategy, understood every process, had determined what you had to do and not, developed a program, and sufficiently transformed your culture, before you made your technology selection. Not that anyone listened to me that much. Though often enough, I guess, they did. Now, I think that parts of the technology selection can be made without a full blown "everything." For example, if you're developing a customer service strategy and it involves the development of a multimillion dollar contact center, you still can implement an alternate service channel using Twitter or perhaps Get Satisfaction, while the effort to build a contemporary contact center continues. What still has to be clear is that as the alternate channels are implemented by a company and used by customers, they will impact your culture and thus have an effect on the outcome of the development of the contact center (in this example). For example, where in your original contact center strategy, your agents were traditional help desk agents, perhaps due to the success of your alternate service channel, you expand the role of some of the agents to community facilitators who participate in some way in your alternate channel. In any case, while just one example, you get the picture. The impact of the use of technology for dealing with the social customer could (not necessarily will) change the culture of your company - unlike the older traditional CRM systems which, if the culture hadn't changed, were simply not used. Life in a company is a lot different now - or should be - and Social CRM has to reflect that. I just figured I'd try and shake out some more dust in at least my own thinking - and I hope yours. Let me know what you think. While I'm fully aware (and I hope you know this) that there are far more factors than technology driving change in a company's culture, the very fact its one of them - whether the most powerful or not (its not) - is a change unto itself between CRM and its baby kinder Social CRM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take it away, Steve

The Next Phase of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Notice: Penelope Trunk Worth a Look

About a month ago, I did a seminar sponsored by CRM Magazine and Sage for the Liminal Group, an exceptionally well run events planning and management consulting company. There were two of us speaking - me, of course and the very insightful and remarkably entertaining Penelope Trunk, whose blog, the Brazen Careerist, is a mecca for learning about what Gen Y is thinking and doing in the workplace.

Well, as it works out, there is a rebroadcast of Penelope's talk "Ignite Cross-Generational Sales & Marketing Workforce Efficiency coming up for your viewing pleasure starting today and running free of charge for an entire month. This is worth the time and effort.

My talk on "The Social Customer Controls the Business Ecosystem" is also going to be made available during that time frame but not for free. If you're interested, after watching Penelope, look up at the top of the page and you'll see instructions. The cost of mine is $10.00. I'd pay it, but I already know what I'm going to say.

Minimally, check out Penelope. She's got it down cold on Gen Y. Very cool speaker too.

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Heading to India

This isn't going to be my long winded usual post - partially because I'm writing it from my iPhone. But before I head out to Mumbai/Bombay, I wanted to raise a question which impacts more than just the parties to whom I'm speaking.

Now that we have President Obama in office, how he deals with the massive community organization he built using Web 2.0 tools is a huge issue for his administration - especially given his commitments to transparency and engagement of the citizenry.

The reason I say this Is because when you think about it his use of social tools was for marketing - how can you help the Obama campaign? Now they have to be put into action to serve the same constituencies. Meaning what can the Obama administration do for you? While there is mutual interaction on both propositions, the emphasis is radically different. What his administration does to meet that need can help shape the next four years.

OK. Off my soapbox and off to India. I'll report as best I can from there. I'm keynoting a conference on Loyalty. I'll keep you posted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.....

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - The Environs

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

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

Huge.

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

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

Anthony made another really important point in an AM briefing:

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

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

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 - The CRM 2.0-related Content

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

Oracle Mix and New Culture

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

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

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

Oracle Social CRM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oracle Beehive

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

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

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

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

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

In Sum: Final Analysis

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

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

So Much to Hear, So Little Time: Me, Brent, Jeremiah, and Sugar

Three things for you today.

First

A reminder. I have a webinar on Mobile CRM - the fourth and final in a series with SugarCRM that I've thoroughly enjoyed. The format is different. Few slides and a conversation between me and Martin Schneider, Sugar's Analyst Relations honcho.

Click here for the registration link.

Next....

Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior Analyst at Forrester Group and a social networking expert and rock star with a blog that's read by about 10 zillion did a podcast at Marketing Voices on the value of social networks to marketers. Its abso-friggin'-lutely solid as a rock with its focus to what has to be done by enterprises seriously considering social initiatives as part of their customer strategies. I would thoroughly recommend listening to it, since the CRM community is rather insular when it comes to acting on the changes it needs to make sometimes. This one makes you realize the importance of social networks for the enterprise in an era where the customer wants to be engaged, not managed.

Check it out and listen CLOSELY!

If

your browser doesn't support JavaScript, you can hear this at http://www.podtech.net/home/5308/forresters-jeremiah-owyang-the-best-and-worst-of-social-marketing

Finally...and of course most importantly

Brent Leary and I did a number on Cuil, the now totally maligned search engine on his popular broadcast, Technology for Business Sake. This was the predecessor for our much anticipated series (at least much anticipated by Brent and me) CRM Playaz, scheduled to debut someday either this year or early next year. That's why its anticipated. We kicked Cuil's butt around the table a little bit and had some fun with the clear issues that the engine had. Here's five minutes or so - consider it a preview for what you might hear on CRM Playaz. Way cool (not...oh you know).

Technorati : Brent Leary, CRM at the Speed of Light, cuil, social networks