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CRM Idol 2012: The Second Season is Here! Cue the Music.

Okay, I'm done teasing.  Without further ado, welcome to CRM Idol 2012.   The submission period opens today.  We are pumped and we are ready to roll this year. Without saying this to hype it (mostly), we think that this, our second season, will be more exciting and bigger than last year - and have more impact.

Face it, last year, we did it by the seat of its pants, improvising as we went, changing the rules - well, tweaking them when they needed to be tweaked. For example, realizing that we need a semi-finalist round which wasn't in the original plan or the original announcement.  But we are WAY past that stage now. We have a great strategy, the program is solid, the participation on the judges' side is up from 45 to 75 this year with more and more influencers joining the effort.

So what's different?  The submission process has dramatically altered. We realized last year with the overwhelming response we got that we had as many people on the waiting list as we had participating. We thought it probably wasn't exactly fair, though it was necessary, that about 60 companies didn't get a chance even though they were able to submit in a timely way but not the fastest.

So this year, we've eliminated "first come first serve." The submission period starts today and closes at 6pm Pacific Time on May 25.  There are no exceptions after that date. Rather than first come first serve, the Brain Trust - the original primary judges will select the contestants - 40 from the Americas; 20 from EMEA, and new to CRM Idol 2012, 20 from Asia/Australia.

The trick is that this year an email declaration won't do. There is a submission form that you can get and must get at the CRM Idol website.  You'll note not only are the same stuff as last year there but also a few new items. EVERY single thing, including financial information, must be disclosed.  The financials will be kept confidential; we are not asking for documentation, we just need a true number from you so we can assess eligibility.  If you're reluctant to do that, please don't apply.   See below for the application procedure.  I don't want to bore you with more details here.

This is exciting and there is some actual measurable benefit for you, if you are an emerging technology company less than 7 years old and with under $12 million in revenue (requirements are up at the CRM Idol website).  For example, on the most dramatic side, 3 CRM Idol contestants were acquired. In the case of one, we were explicitly told that their position in CRM Idol was a part of the valuation.  We have been told by countless other contestants that their experience with CRM Idol, which puts them in front of the most experienced and influential people in the CRM and related industries changed the nature of how they do business today.   Heady stuff for us at least.  And valuable for you.

Don't forget we have the mentoring program that comes along with it.  The extended judges are assigned a contestant company and work with them to prepare the briefing/demo (changes there too. See the site) that they need to impress us primary judges as to why you are the without a doubt the worlds greatest company.

Plus the prizes -ranging from free consulting, to free lead gen webinars to free software/services to pitches to VC firms, with more added every day, - are worth it by themselves, even if you don't interact much with the species.

So suit up, companies. Here's what you gotta do.

1. Go to the CRM Idol website starting right now.
2. Read over the rules on the site.
3. Register on the site.
4. Follow the instructions that are provided after you register
5. You will be sent the candidacy form.
6. Fill it out COMPLETELY. Refusal to answer any question are immediate disqualification. If we see something left out, we'll ask you to fill it out.
7. When you have completed the form, send it to submit2012@crmidol.com ONLY.  If you send me or any judge the form or to any other CRM Idol address, it will be discarded. Seriously. If you have any technical difficulties accessing the address (e.g. bounced email) you can contact me and let me know of the problem at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com.  Don't send me your submission.  Just let me that you're having a problem.
8. May 25, 2012 at 6:00pm Pacific Time U.S. is the final deadline for submission. No late submissions will be accepted.
9. Watch the site and the twitter hashtag #crmidol, Twitter ID @crmidol and the Facebook page for updates.
10. On June 1, here and in the other media venues and of course on the site, we'll announce the contestants.

This is going to be a blast! Okay, so we're not Steven Tyler, Randi Jackson and of course, the inimitable J.Lo.  So what? We are who we are.

And we are ready for you.

Are you ready for CRM Idol 2012?

The Voters Speak! CRM Idol 2011 Announces Winners & Who Voted

Alright, I'm not going to keep you in any kind of suspense.  I'm going to let you know from the get go who won. Though please go to the CRM Idol website for more coverage of the winners.

The Winners

In the Americas - Get Satisfaction!

In EMEA -BPMonline!

The Americas contest was particularly hard fought with Get Satisfaction edging out two of the three other contestants. Edging out was the operant phrase. It was a tough race and there were differences of opinion between the judges and the popular vote.

If you remember, back in April, I made the statement that this is an "easy contest to enter, but hard to win." Exactly what this proved to be. The process was long, though not grueling. There was a lot of interactions, mentoring programs, a lot of questions that had to be answered. We had to learn some things on the fly - like incorporating a semi-final round before the finals. It turned out to be absolutely necessary and important to have so we could learn more about the companies that were (and weren't) ultimately chosen for the finals.

Congratulations to both Get Satisfaction and BPMonline. Well played, teams, well played.

The Judges

The Primary Judges - me, Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant, Jesus Hoyos, Silvana Buljan, Mark Tamis and Laurence Buchanan functioned as the brain trust throughout this process and were responsible for making whatever changes were made to the process and deciding on things that had to be decided on - even beyond the voting - when it came to companies who did good things and bad things.  All are back on board for next year which is totally exciting.

Breaking Down the Vote

Ha! You thought you were going to get a breakdown of the vote totals for the finalists.  Not going to happen.  Too bad.  That would be prurient. Instead, let me tell you a few other things that would be prudent, not prurient.

The voting for CRM Idol exceeded our expectation with several thousand votes coming in.  I'll tell you a little about who voted and what it indicated. We had a series of additional (optional) questions that roughly 22% of the voters answered which gave us a flavor of who was voting and how they understood and implemented CRM. The results were interesting for sure.  Here's a few stats:

The voting was geographically pretty well divided with:

• The Americas - 44.0%
• EMEA - 38.4%
• Other - 17.6%

It was mostly users and manager/execs who voted with 29.9% and 27.9% respectively.

In the question that was "My Company uses the following CRM(ish) modules (choose all that apply) the results were a bit eye opening really - a little surprising. The top 5:

• Contact Management - 50.5%
• Sales Force Automation - 49.0%
• Help Desk - 41.9%
• Social CRM - 37.1%
• Marketing Automation - 36.2%

What is surprising here is that the #1 CRM application is contact management - which indicates a small business presence typically or a confusion between contact management and sales force automation which is something that has existed for years. (e.g. some people use salesforce.com for contact management. But others use ACT! for sales force automation).  Most surprising, to me at least, is that #4 is social CRM as distinguished from social media monitoring which was #9 on the list. Meaning there was an understanding that there is a difference. Also that so many companies feel that they are deploying it. That fascinates me because if it is any indicator at all, there is considerably more usage of SCRM technology than I had imagined. That's something that I'm going to dig into early in 2012 to find out about the actual usage of Social CRM technologies in business - and what people think that Social CRM is.

What people felt that they really liked about CRM Idol was overwhelming one of the actual reasons we created the competition.  Over 63% felt it was "learning about other companies" - by far the biggest reason. That means as far as what we wanted to do for these small companies vis a vis the general public - we did (pat, pat, pat on the back for us.)

What did the voters want to see more? That was pretty close.  Top choices - greater focus on CRM categories - a conclusion that we are taking to heart - and one that we've been talking about a lot as far as modifications for next year. The second most - more commentary from the judges. That one I'm not so sure of. If they mean more commentary from more judges - maybe.  If they mean more commentary from the primary judges - well, some things you just don't get in life. We were pretty stretched to have to review nearly 60 companies within 7 business days (or so) of their reviews and we did it. But it wasn't easy. More commentary from the 8 primary judges is highly unlikely, even if was a popular suggestion. I'm just sayin'.

Finally, we asked what would you like to see more of or less of for CRM Idol 2012? Interesting result. The biggest answer overwhelmingly was "None of the above (48.8%). Since "Other" with room to specify was also a category, and was the least answered, we have to assume that people who voted for none of the above were happy with what we provided and the way that we did it. That's a reasonable assumption, right? You would think so.

#2 on that, though, was CRM categories (though in a bit of a flaw in the questioning on our part, we don't know if less or more is what they meant). However that dovetails with the answer to "Next year I'd like to see" greater focus on CRM categories as the #1 thing. So we hear it LOUD and clear.

Coming Up

There's a lot to be done in the period between contests and I'm sure that next year, the preparation will be starting a lot earlier than it did this year. We learned a lot along the way and will be taking our lessons from the streets - though not mean streets, nice streets - and the feedback we get. We'll be making changes accordingly.

In the interim, we are going to encourage all companies that have been participants to keep participating. First, because we have a community now of the competition organizers who are influencers in the industry and subject matter experts par excellence and companies that are now emergent, whether they won or not. Plus the prospects for the 2012 competition will be invited in to join the community in advance of next year so they have a shot a some visibility and great interaction with the influencers and this first graduated class of CRM Idol participants. Our slogan/mantra has been "once a participant always a member" and we will take that seriously.  To that end, the inestimable Kelly Craft has volunteered to be our Community Manager and we all gratefully took her up on her generous offer. The woman has mad skills, passion, enthusiasm, and serious chops when it comes to all this.

I can assure you of one thing. Next year we are going to take paid sponsors for the contest so we can hire someone to handle some of the logistics which was massive. I spent 2-3 hours a day for 7 days a week from late April thru now - with some hiatuses - doing this and it was more work than I ever anticipated. Plus financed the bulk of it out of my pocket. Though I have to say that Brent Leary generously paid for some of the costs and DRI, the Portuguese open source solution company did the website for nothing, saving thousands for us and doing a brilliant job.

I'm not complaining. I chose to do it that way. But honestly, I'm going to need help for the logistics and sponsors will be important to helping finance that.

So, I'll keep you posted of course on the things upcoming and I'm sure I'll be trying to wangle some participation time out of you to help out next year so that we can keep highlighting these companies and their great potential.

Stay tuned here.  Thank you to the primary judges, our media partners, our extended judges panel, our voters and of course, those that spent the time and effort to participant in CRM Idol 2011.  It has been awesome - and will continue to be.

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: nextbigthing@crmidol.com. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.
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 nextbigthing@crmidol.com
   1. If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to pgreenbe@gmail.com

 

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

A Note or Two

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

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

In Closing

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

 

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

SAP Business Influencers Summit - Technology Strategy Dr. Vishal Sikka (SAP Labs)

Dr. Sikka begins by talking about what SAP is calling "Timeless software"

First up, In Memory Computing

THe idea is to incorporate column stores in main memory with use of multi-core processors provide up to 1000 times performance gain. The business value of doing analytics with in memory computing is apparently phenomenal. One billion rows of data are analyzed in a sub second. The applications become simpler and faster. Real just in time calculations can be done. The TCO associated with the layers and intermediate stores literally "goes away." Can "add columns on the fly" and add "more blades on the fly." From data to hardware, extensibility becomes possible. Inventory mgmt. Shows a blade with a terabyte of main memory. All transactional data of most large customers can be stored on it. Data by columns in main memory allows us to deliver brand new applications, not just analytics. Another commercial for "real real time computing." Lauding sales info that was available "befor the customer left the store." Data delivered in less than 2 seconds. Data is compressed in mory. Can do the calculations on an iPhone, in office, "on the beach." Snapshot of biz as it exists "this second." Commercial over. Now going to show us a demo of In-Memory Computing. "Timeless Software" as "software that takes no time." Showing Business Objects Explorer. Very fast. (PG: Seen it before. Almost instant). Have an interesting UI. Can do the same using Excel interface and it goes as fast as it did when shown on its native interface. Sub-second response for 275 million records. Showed its use with Microsoft "haptic" technology (PG: A.k.a Microsoft Surface). Now

Cloud Computing

Low cost infrastructure, scaling and operations via cloud computing (using Google's approach). See the in-memory based cloud apps (PG: Stringing their new initiatives together) Dispensing "the myths" of cloud computing.

1. Everything won't be running on the cloud
2. SAP does run in the cloud. Says that the Apple Store (ITunes) running in the cloud on top of an SAP system. The way its being positioned is that "SAP powers many Internet-scale, mission-critical cloud services." (PG: Are they integrated with someone else's cloud capacity or providing it themselves? Not clear)

Now saying that Business By Design runs in the cloud and is running in-memory. (PG: I'd say BBD is running "in theory.") Saying that the Cloud applications are being built with Design Thinking. Showing an app for a contractor management system that is being hosted on Amazon (PG: FINALLY know who is hosting SAP cloud). Showing the app on the iPhone. (PG: Seen several apps from demos on stage to more private demo - all iPhone apps NO Blackberry apps. That's interesting given the SAP/RIM alliance that was so important at the 2008 Sapphire. IPhone seems to be gaining ground everywhere at RIM's expense - even at SAP. That's actually significant). With contract management - contract management running in the cloud is the consumable part but the integrity of the backend SAP system is maintained. THe SAP Contractor Portal also integrates with Google WAVE and other collaboration capabilities. Vishal says "ease of consumption has to be across the board" Now talking about Pervasive Connectivity and mobility. 4.1 billion mobilephones, 35 million iPhones, 5 Google Android-specific phones; new Blackberries; Facebook has 350 million users - 50 million in 2 mos.; SAP Community has 2 million. SAP thinks there is an enormous opportunity for clustered collaboration. Fidelity of the information is guaranteed by back end connectivity. The idea is to connect "the physical world with the system of record" This could be smart devices - e.g. smart meters etc. (PG: Best Example is Coca Cola Freestyle vending machine that records user choice and wirelessly sends the information to an SAP system back at Atlanta HQ. Wonder why SAP doesn't talk about that?). Discussing interoperable components: Looking at ambient-real time systems - "CESTBon" is the name of the system. CESTBon can look at an Outlook email and recognize relevant content associated with a system. So if "purchase request with a number" is in the email, it actually can link it automatically to the system's knowledge of the quote and bring up the data live in real time without having to go into the system. They've added a Supplier Rating that is based on social knowledge coupled with sentiment analysis that gives a rating. (PG: Now THAT is pretty cool. Social SRM?) That's it for this (AND my power is running low)

Hey What About Mini-You?

Okay, what I'm about to say isn't a particularly "oh wow!" kind of thing but its possible applicability to new business models might be interesting to those of you trying to wrestle with figuring them out as we move deeper into the Experience Economy a.k.a. the Customer Ecosystem and head off into 2006 to be more precise.

An article showed up a couple of days ago in the Washington Post with the 5 of a scale of 10 cool title of, "Self 2.0: Internet Users Put a Best Face Forward". It was about avatars, those little online versions of you and yours that you use each day to represent. Usually what it represents is a slightly darker, or goofier, or more urbane or wittier version of yourself . I don't have an avatar anywhere - however, I do use emoticons with MSN Messenger and Skype - you know those little smiley, drooly, kissy faces - I prefer the lascivious ones. If I had an avatar, it would be a lot skinnier for sure. Avatars are sometimes dynamic, sometimes pretty static but what they always are is personal. They are a digital "you."

As I keep attempting to wrestle with how to think about the new business models that will resonate with the new customer, there is something about the avatar that seems to be at least a piece of the puzzle. Once again, avatars are known more through the gaming community and games like Final Fantasy. Whether called avatars or not, they and their cousins so to speak are the individual game characters that you personalize with varying characteristics to your liking. There is one game called Fable, in which your decisions to do good or evil, actually dynamically evolve the character that you play toward being a superhero or a evil nemesis. Another game called Black and White 2 (the sequel to guess what?) allows you to play God (represented by a hand) and in the beginning of the game you choose an animal based (lion, wolf, a couple of others) avatar and your decisions to do good or evil affect the animal avatar, which also represents a What makes avatars interesting to me as part of the model for personalization is that they are something that makes the path to self-control of a customer experience potentially easier and much more personal.

Their applicability extends far beyond just gamers too. The use of avatars and the creation of simulated worlds represents a way of developing training labs for the real world.

Second Life is First to the Gate

There is a company out there that seems to have gotten the picture ahead of most others. Its called Linden Lab and it is the spawning ground for the use of avatars and virtual worlds for business. It has visionary legend and founder of Lotus Corp. (and,thus, Lotus Notes) Mitch Kapor on its Board of Directors and seems to be the leader in this whole virtual world initiative. I didn't discover them hidden away. They have an active presence and seem to be well known in the virtual reality space. They are the place where organizations like the International Center for Automated Information Research or NY Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy or the World Bank, The USC Center on Public Diplomacy, the Dept. of Homeland Security and multiple others buy "land" inside Second Life (their virtual world) and carry out avatar based scenarios. For example, the Dept. of Homeland Security is using a plot of land to develop emergency response training.

Second Life is tied to the real world and has a real world business models. First, it costs real money to do things e.g companies renting virtual real estate, even though there is a virtual currency (Linden dollars). So, for example, Democracy Island, the experiment funded by a $50K grant from the International Center for Automated Information Research (ICAIR), costs $1250.00 for 16 virtual acres and $195.00 month maintenance - real money. Democracy Island is being used to put up protoypes of parks for Queens, NY borough residents to check out and comment on - prior to their being built in Queens - giving the constituencies real input - a pipeline for determining what parks will be best for them in Queens without a major expense to the Queens Community Board. This is only one of the uses of this virtual world and its avatars.

What is even more amazing is that it is inextricably linked to the real economy in the real world. It isn't just an ordinary simulation. I've become a member (free) and have been wandering around looking at cars like the Viper for 2006 (in fact, one hot avatar named Crystal Peart - fake name - asked me how to buy one of the Vipers. I, of course, didn't have a clue) and it was a dealership that had pix of real new model Vipers - a car I would never buy in real life but I could see the virtual showroom it was in. Look at this quote from ABC News to get a sense of the scope of this as of this year:

Second Life, for instance, has its own currency that is convertible to U.S. dollars at a fluctuating exchange rate. Users can buy the virtual currency using their credit cards, or sell it and get real dollars via checks or PayPal transfers.

Its 60,000 users trade $2 million a month, making its economy about the same size as that of the South Pacific island of Tuvalu. That's small, but large enough that it supports about 100 virtual jobs, according to Philip Rosedale, chief executive of Linden Research Inc., which created Second Life.

This leads to an actual economy where some literally run stores that sell goods that become checks in real dollars. No one is getting reach but there are a few making a living. For example, in the latest numbers I could find (2003), the users of Second Life had created over 250,000 objects, some for sale, some for show, 75,000 objects with scripted behaviors, and 300,000 items of clothing. Again, the users of Second Life had created....what turned out to be over 95 percent of all objects created in this virtual economy with real live economic activity.

The Implications Are Fascinating, Aren't They?

This is just a brief discussion of something that is entirely cutting edge that I'm sure some will see as a simulation, some will see as a suspension of disbelief - a sort of fantasy; some will see as a reality substitute - especially for those who are engaged more than 30 hours per week (there are those kinds of people. All of them I suspect apply. But there is a strong upside to what this virtual world is all about. The ability to not only customize your individual avatar to an extraordinary degree, to program your behaviors into it, to control and conduct the avatar around this virtual world with its malls and attractions, the ability to actually make money from and spend it for things related to the virtual world are a germ of something that several of us CRM-type pundits and multiple economists have been talking about for a long time or at least thinking about for awhile. This is an element or two of the prototypical new business model. It provides a customizable, personalized, individual experience.. It provides control of that experience. There is real world commerce going on that is focused not around the products or services being sold but the experience with the purchase in this case. Plus it is cool and fun. Sure there are issues and problems that are there and could eventually make the proposition let's say a litte iffier. But for now, this looks like another toolset in the continuing battle for the discovery of the experience economy's business logic. Another avenue to explore.

And explore you should. I'd seriously suggest you go to the Linden Lab website and sign up for Second Life to see what its like and to spark your creative juices. Its worth the trip and no matter how much you move around - and you can even fly if you want. Best of all there is no "drop" in this shop 'til you drop - you never get tired! :-) (See I told you I use them)

Tale a look at my avatar, Paul Faschning, resting after searching around Rick's Fine Jewelry Store (I'm the one in black with my back to you)

Optimally, we are looking at another practical example of one of the forerunners for value co-creation and the blurring of the lines between the producer and the consumer around the customer experience. Minimally, its a blast. Either way, check it out.

Coming to an Ear Drum Near You

Blogging is a sticky business. We blogger-types always have to be on our game. Witty, smart, insightful, clever almost every day. Its tough, I tell you. Really tough. But we try. Oh how we try. Every word crafted on a page a labor of love. Every insight something that the reader can't live without - though unfathomable as it is to me, I have to admit, its amazing how many readers and non-readers do manage to. Each pearl of wisdom a must-read literary gem - one that will remain memorable not just to those eyeballing the blog entry but to the ages - to history. If we fail, well then, western civilization, at least and perhaps even eastern civilization, is probably doomed. If we succeed, then we've led the way to a new age - one of peace, prosperity and consumer love (if we're into CRM or stuff) But luckily, we are an elect, an elite lot. All 14.2 million of us. We are anointed to handle this. Our opinions are world shapers, idea generators, opinion crafters.

But, there comes a time when even a blog can't do it all. No. Really. I'm not kidding. There is actually a time when blogging becomes, well, not enough. After all, we have to maximize those who can hear our voice - the voice that begins in the wilderness of those hardy souls that are willing to risk their lives, nay, their sanity and read our momentous tomes regardless of consequence to their verbally irradiated grey matter. That means that when a blog alone can't do it is time......................................(dramatic pause, sigh, gulp and now-get-ready-to-speak) time to add to that din of gorgeous pontification, of bloggery, with something new, different and I am quite sure, unique.

A podcast

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to be adding podcasting to my repertoire of opinionated blather so you can hear what I have to say, not just read it. Lucky, lucky people. Not only will you be able to read my New York deli-style insights on CRM and the customer ecosystem and the global business changes and specific things ya just gotta do, but you can hear my nasal lightly (yeah, right) New Yawkish accented tones on my podcast, one of the 9 trends that Business 2.0 says you can forget (see more in the next blog entry on some of the other articles that Business 2.0 published this month) about CRM, the customer ecosystem, the experience economy and the new business models needed to meet the new requirements - in other words the specific things ya gotta hear. With or without Russian dressing.

I'd love to call this podcast "The Paul Greenberg Show" since, really, that's what a podcast is - a walking radio show that is run by someone who wants others to hear him or her or both of them on an IPod. But that's a pretty boring name. So I'm calling it, "You are What You Eat" and it will cover the world of the customer experience. That means that the shows will be about finding the companies and the little things going on in the world that are the harbingers of the new business model and the new logic that will be necessary to support the experience economy and its denizens. It'll be about twice a month to begin with and then weekly at the point it looks like I'm actually getting a life. That wouldn't do so 4 times a month will take care of that.

If you can figure out why I named the podcast "show" what I did and can give me a really lucid (or really funny) explanation, posted to this blog as a comment ONLY, I'll give you a $25.00 gift certificate to Amazon.com. But I have the right to reject your explanation as not lucid - or funny. Sorry. My blog, my rules (Ha!)

So start looking out for the RSS Feed for your IpodderX aggregator (What? You don't? Are you crazy? Follow the link) in the beginning of November (or MAYBE sooner. Don't hold your breath though. I don't want to lose you). The blog will, of course, continue. But now, also, you can have a piece of me.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT          Life, love and the customer experience.     Coming to an RSS feed near you.          NOVEMBER 2005

Who'd a Thunk It?

Information Week? You never know from whence the signs of progress come now do you? This is the third time in recent weeks they have done articles that have been really worth looking at - especially given their mainstream proclivities (just because I used the word "proclivities" doesn't mean you have to think about sex). The first was the article that Bob Evans wrote on "the experience economy" about 3 weeks ago. The second was the guest column by GM's Vice-Chairman of Global Development, Bob Lutz on the value of blogging for executives and now an article on the reason that wikis are dramatically altering the content management landscape by Ezra Goodnoe called "How to Use Wikis for Business."

I have to tell you that I'm actually impressed with Information Week's perspective. They've seemingly understood the changes that we're beginning to see and rather than coopt them to an elder's "life was good back then and thus we should not introduce things like electricity" POV, they are trying to work on the IT side of a new business model. Goodnoe, in the article makes the strong point that wikis, unlike content management applications are user controlled, not administrator controlled, create their own ontologies rather than having one enforced and are inherently collaborative (organically I think is the term he uses). He views them as something that work well behind corporate firewalls when it comes to business applications which I agree with in part. Where I differ is that since we are dealing with an extended value chain now (see slide below) the purely "internal" relationship of the corporation is fading fast. It is being replaced by a collaborative value chain that consists of multiple companies who provide a wide variety of services/products. This entire collaborative network, whether it is the brandholding company who is engaged by the customer or the courier service who delivers the products through the brandholder or the company that provides key components to the brandholder to manufacture the products according to a particular schedule or the partner who provides additional services to enrich and enhance the brand so that the value proposition the brandholder provides to the customer is something engaging and full of possibilities for the consummate experience the customer could have with the brand through the value chain's activities. To put it simply (pardon me, Hillary) "It takes a village to please a single customer." Consequently a wiki behind an internal firewall isn't necessarily the best collaboration - a wiki that serves the entire value chain is likely to have more intriguing results, greater productivity and a more global benefit with a wider audience all with a common purpose - to provide a marvelous experience for the brandholder's customer. So hiding it behind the internal firewall could be a detriment, not a benefit. Collaborating with your collaborators is not a particularly novel idea but one that needs to catch the wave a little better than it has. The age of proprietary thinking is over. That isn't to say that privacy and confidentiality isn't a concern or issue. They merit a good deal of concern. But thinking inside the internal corporate box is something that has to be eliminated for a new business logic to take root. The wikis are a great tool for that kind of collaboration and management.

Goodnoe is smart enough to recognize this even if his view is very tactical and even somewhat "old school." But he closes the article in an interesting fashion. "One of the fundamental challenges to all companies is to ensure that information flows through and between groups with as little decay as possible. A wiki is a highly effective means of handling this task. It turns document management into something that can be easily tuned to users' sensibilities rathan the preconceived notions imposed by the developers of content management software."

Smart indeed. Information Week is becoming a surprisingly useful bridge between the new generations of customers, the attempts to at least figure out a new enterprise logic and the reporting by the new generations of tools and by the traditional media. They've got my attention and I'm going to make sure that they continue to. Be on the alert for this publication. They are beginning to get somewhere useful and potentially important.

CRM Pundits, Where are You?

I have a lot of wonderful friends in the world of CRM. It's been good to me and I hope I have contributed something to it. But I have had a nagging feeling that a lot of the people I've been reading every day and even some that I know personally, are locked into what is now an inappropriate "old world" or "traditional" CRM - a term that's astounding to me just for the fact that something can be as newly evolved as CRM and become "traditional" in a matter of years - not decades. "Old world" in this case means the classic siloing of CRM into sales, marketing, support or operational, analytic, collaborative or whatever boxes - mostly cardboard - we all have been using over the past several years. Most of the approaches have been aimed at achieving a zen state often called "customer-centric" as opposed to, say, "sales centric"  or "corporate." Rightfully so. Part of the battle has been to redefine CRM from its original perception as a technology to more of an ongoing programmatic strategy that centers around giving value to and getting value from customers. That redefinition is now deeply rooted and has largely succeeded - more in lip service than actual practice but it has been a huge step forward for customer advocates in the business world.

But we CRM pundit-types still look at CRM with its "people, processes, technology" mantra as the technology of automating tasks and exposing pipelines to management and the processes of managing purchases and order histories and doing what we have to with a "single view of the customer." The "people" part is relegated to the changes in corporate culture that need to happen to make a company customer-friendly. And that's all good. But only to a point. And we've now reached that point - a demand for change in the way that CRM does what it does because the world has been undergoing a sea change in how the customer works and breathes and thinks and behaves.

The problem is that the Zuboff-labeled "standard enterprise logic" that I briefly referenced in Thursday's post is so deeply embedded that it operates as an agent of fundamental resistance, even when all this change in the world of the customer is going on. It is a logic that was forged in the crucibles of Henry Ford's smelters and mass production, not one that's lodged in the mesh of the worldwide web and self-actualization. This becomes meaningful as the changed nature of the individual customer becomes increasingly apparent in this striking exciting new paradigm - the customer ecosystem (see slide - hard to miss isn't it?)  that I've been pounding away at in presentations for the last couple of years. The discontinuity between the new customer's psyche, demands and actions and the old style corporate logic is both blatant, and, if recognized, a helluva business opportunity for the progressive thinkers out there in the world of contemporary capitalism.

What is ironic is that while some economists are tentatively but actively trying to embrace or at least address this new customer's outlook and the new models that are required - the CRM community/industry is so tentative that few even seem to be acknowledging the deep changes going on.

I can't believe that they don't see it. They are really intelligent people, some brilliant and frequently insightful to the point of "wow!"  The only explanation I can come up with at this moment (though I'm sure that I'll come up with others later) is that perhaps the CRM community members are trapped in the same logic that permeates the corporate structures they have to earn their living working in and with.

That logic is a powerful regressive force. Some of my clients (not all) are companies that are often resistant to doing anything uncomfortably different. It could be adamant refusal to changing some of their time-honored processes, even if they intellectually realize the processes' times have passed.  It could be not wanting to doing something impacting the budget because its THE BUDGET whether the expenditure makes sense or not. They are used to working a certain way and that's that. Those resistances can be immensely frustrating and negatively powerful. They are seductive because there is comfort in doing things the way they always have been done. It's easy. I  have to be on alert all the time to just stay away from that internal Siren-pressure.

So imagine, even as an outside consultant or someone that is a change agent, what it is to work inside that environment day in and out. The CRM consultant/thought leader is subject to pressures that say with sultry voices "why change anything? All is good. All is just soooo sweet." If you resist, the Siren turns into a nasty, ugly Harpy, trying to bend you to its indomitable (but still eventually beatable) will.

When you get directly into the logic of the enterprise, you are at the beating heart and transforming this is a bigtime PITA. What are you going to do? Redirect an auricle? Retool a ventricle?  No you have to replace the heart and that is nightmare central. But it has to be done. The enterprise logic has to be replaced so that there are new ways to deal with the new customer that is already out there.

The Social Customer

Value now resides in the customer and it is the company's task to get some of that value from the customer by collaborating with the customer to exchange a great experience with the company for some cash - in effect.

What is interesting is that this customer is now a social customer, with access to millions of other social customers who are engaged with each other without ever necessarily knowing their name. There is a sense of community nonetheless. For example, look at MMOs - massively multiplayer online games that are PC or console games that involve the player logging into a network - a "world" of sorts - and playing with and/or against potentially millions of other players.  World of Warcraft, the most popular of these subscription-based MMOs, has 3.5 million subscribers who work in "guilds" of typically anywhere from 10 to 100 players to build powers, defeat enemies and wander the world. In today's NY Times, Seth Schiesel writes about the emotional high that defeating an enemy through a "social experience" with your guild can bring.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Take a trot on over to Epinions and see what your unknown buddies are saying about some product they are using. You need to know what merchant to buy that product from? Well, check with your anonymous new friends at Bizrate to see not only what the wisdom of the crowd quantitatively rated the merchants selling the products, but what some of your freshly discovered pals in Morocco, the UK, China, and Peru personally said about that merchant. You may always know their email 'handle" and you may never know their name but it feels personal and the knowledge you gain is real. That kind of global wisdom can be individually empowering.

The desire for self-expression, for individuation, for carving out a personal niche in an increasingly available global mesh - and the desire for self-control of the "I wanna be me" variety is deep in this generation of "social customer."  Technorati, the premier online all-things-blog agency, does a state of the blogosphere report twice a year and the report's main man, David Sifry, just came out with these absolutely phenomenal numbers.

Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005

The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months

A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily

About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year

Technorati is tracking about 900,000 blog posts created every day

That's about 10.4 blog posts per second, on average

A blog a friggin' second!!  Over 10 blog postings per second!! That certainly supports the idea that people want to be personally heard and they are willing to put themselves out in the wilderness. If you take that 55% active number and do some math, you find that at leastl 7.8 million blogs are more than detritis on the web - they are real and busy with those 10.4 postings each second.  And that's just the ones that Technorati is tracking!! Amazing.

So the customer is now social, global, knowledge aware, ready to take control of their lives, and the repository of value. This is a new era - and we've only just begun.

A Challenge to the CRM Community

Okay, my CRM friends. I'm calling you out. I love you and you're my buds and I want to hang out with you, but we need to get off our butts and start addressing the deeper changes that go with the new social customer. We are supposed to be thought leaders and we should start talking this up - if you agree with what I'm saying. Let  our clients, readers, friends and others hear this or we're doing a disservice to the people who have honored us by listening to what we say. That also means that we should be paying attention to some of those who have figured it out. Check out my blogroll for some of the better ones out there and somewhere among my next posts will be some names from all walks that I think are worth paying attention to.

If you don't agree with me, bring it on.  Let's engage in a battle, debate, spirited discussion about these fundamental issues. We have been foresighted and progressive in the way we thought in the past. Let's let the winds blow through the trees and let's get moving on what should be an exciting new era that brings us collaboration with these neo-customers, and new business models and fresh air.

Analysts Report: CRM is healthy

Analysts write reports. Even when they don't love them, they write them because it is the source of their power (and revenue) and it is why vendors fear them. Around Gartner Magic Quadrant time or Forrester ranking time or whoever's magic pentagram with curse attached time, the vendors go through INCREDIBLE hoops to get ranked up there. I've been involved in the days long sessions to make sure not just that the information is there and correct, but that the messaging is tweaked exactly right or brimstone will burn the soles of your feet. For many of you more experienced CRMish readers, if I say "upper right quadrant"  you know what that means, don't you. Somehow, what actually is the description of the body area around the gall bladder is now Gartner's leadership category and that's Oscar-time if you're in it. (I wonder if you get a goodie bag with Dolce Gabbana shoes or Rado watches when Gartner says that you win?). That is almost a coronation.  Not because Gartner tries to make them that. They do what they do as analysts and as Jerry Seinfeld always said, there's nothing wrong with that. What is sad is that the vendors and integrators are always jumping through hoops to get that ranking. The reality is that analysts' rankings are their opinions plus numbers associated with the opinion. These thoughts are arrived at after extensive research with customers, other analysts, the vendors, business partners, etc. In other words, they work at it and come up with their opinion on the success level and the probability of future success in the domain they are researching. They are hardly a measure of objective evaluation. Nor are they meant to be. But potential vendor customers treat them as if they are objective though and that is THEIR mistake - not the analysts.

(Know what? In a future blog entry, I'm going to analyze the analysts. I was going to do that in the latest edition of CRM at the Speed of Light, but due to rapidly angst producing space considerations, McGraw-Hill and I decided to let that chapter go, as much fun as it would have been. Now I got this blog....hmmmm.)

Well, Forrester issued its leadership rankings and guess what? Siebel wins!! Siebel wins!! SIebel WINS!!!!  SAP and Oracle came in close behind and Amdocs came in as the sole "strong performer" challenger. Which means they are regaining their place in the CRM universe and all's right with the world again. Only PeopleSoft is missing from these kingdoms of yore and we know where that is. Castille + Aragon + Seville = the medieval Spanish kingdom. PeopleSoft + Retek + ProfitLogic + JD Edwards + Oracle = the kingdom of Oracle.

More germane than the rankings, though, was Forrester's projection that the CRM industry will gather up $13 billion in its bushel baskets this year - though very relatively little of that as licenses - only $3.2 billion (a neat 25%). The rest will be in services including integration and maintenance costs. Apparently, CRM is not in the midst of a demise nor is it suffering through its often skeptical press.. Let's face, despite all the bad press and all the acronyms that make it unintelligble to most people - CRM applications and services will be around as a business for awhile yet . As a strategy and program, though, it will continue to morph from its classic stance of improving customer relationships with better sales, marketing and customer service to improving customer relationships with better experiences between the company and the customer - experiences that engage the entire value chain.  $13 billion for the software and services to support that is nothing to sneeze at. But analysts' rankings? ACHOO!

John Dvorak, Idealism, Cynicism and the Wikification of Knowledge

Sorry for the lack of an entry yesterday. This thing took me a long time to write and I'm still struggling with it. But its in good enough shape to throw out to y'all, though still pretty raw. Help me here. Comment, send me emails. Somethin'. This is a rough one. John Dvorak & The Wikification of Knowledge John Dvorak, a longstanding PC Magazine columnist and IT industry analyst, can be irritating - sometimes because in his more recent writings, he seems to have been injected with a chicken fat loaded dose of cynicism, when just plain lean skepticism would do. That is why I say, "irritating.' I have no problem living with a world of skeptics, but cynics...? Oi. But at his best he can be edgy whether or not I agree with him or he "argues" with me (though I've never met him). He does his edgy best in a recent (July 11) in a column he calls "The Wikification of Knowledge. In it he defines wikis as online collaboration efforts that let users edit, on an ongoing basis, volumes of information that could not otherwise be organized. "It's kind of a public process." The wikipedia which he ironically and deliberately quotes for other things in the article defines a wiki as: " ... a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. The term Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website" Dvorak's precept is that wikis, like all public processes will deteriorate over time because of the creed of self-centered individualism that governs societies. According to Dvorak, this leads to a subsuming of the public mind to the individual pecadillo and that means (to him) that the quality of the knowledge will deteriorate. Also, because all public reviews need to be monitored and edited, they can lose their value as public reviews and become entropic. Spam or other bad practices start entering the knowledge-wiki mainstream and that is that. The value of the wiki goes the way of the carrier pigeon and dodo. Even here I can't agree with him. I know I routinely troll things like Epinions.com, Bizrate.com, Amazon.com (for product and book reviews) etc. to find out what those consumers who are using or reading "things" think of those things. If I see that 20 of 22 trash it, while I might worry that someone has a problem with that thing and are deliberately flooding the site with evil commentary, I still read the details of their complaints and map it to my possible future experiences with that product or service. I then try to determine how meaningful those areas being complained about are to my potential usage of that product or service. If they weigh heavily, then I add that to my "reasons to not buy" list. If not that critical (e.g. delivery was very slow, but I can pick it up at a store), then I don't concern myself with it. I am making a judgment based on the descriptions and judgments of these "self centered" individuals who give me a mass look at the product or service. While these consumers aren't experts - they are consumers who use the products and services and they have experiences that are of value. So knowledge that is "self-centered" isn't necessarily of low caliber or useless or even deteriorates. His premise is also that because the public doesn't have expertise, there is a lot of information that is useless. He thinks that wikis are valuable now because they are worked on by idealists and not "vandals." His final comment is "None of these mechanisms could actually work without someone breaking the rules and moderating the processes. This is called editing, and you just cannot avoid it." What Dvorak misses is that public processes "corrected" by other public processes are not a bad thing. In fact, the value of the wiki is that it is collection of ideas, opinions, and thoughts with a structure that organizes what it contains. So for example, if you wanted to have a Yankees wiki, then most likely those contributing to it would people who have some interest - good or bad in the Yankees. They would add to a Yankees body of knowledge that would provide value for fans and detractors alike. If, because there are emotional conditions that are part of a sports team "relationship" there were nasty language or disparaging or overly ebullient content, that can be edited or deleted by either the "Wikimaster" or other contributors. The mechanisms exist for self-checking and being checked. Nothing wrong with that. But what about the Wikimaster's control over content? Well as Dvorak says, right now, wikis are controlled by idealists. In the future, if the wikis get under control of as he calls it the "vandals" then the wiki will die of its own mediocrity or obvious "not-contributing-to-the-body-of-knowledge" agenda. The participants are not universally vandals, but tend toward idealists willing to give up time and make an effort to contribute to the body of knowledge that wikis produce. Dvorak seems to think that in time the Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals will overrun wiki civiilzation, when it truth things like Open Source's success seem to point to otherwise. Contrast Dvorak's rather depressed view of things with James Surowiecki in his book, "The Wisdom of Crowds" who says rightfully, but perhaps a little too benignly, "Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise." The clash of ideas and the battle of the vandals vs. the idealists too are all potentially good things if the "group" iacting as an intelligent entity, uses mechanisms such as market prices or voting systems to produce an aggregate collective judgment that represents what all of the group thinks, in a manner of speaking. collectively individually. Consensus Theory of Truth Dvorak vaguely suggests that the consensus theory of truth, which states that "a statement is true if it would be agreed to by all those who investigate it, " seems to be the governing principle of wikis. Dvorak calls the consensus theory of truth an "odd idea" (I agree with him there on multiple counts). I also think that his idea that wiki-thought is driven by it, is an odd idea. (A more current and better known variation on this theme is that "perception is truth." Which, of course, is not true, though it seems to be.) My thinking here is that there is value in crowd wisdom - when the value comes in particular situations with mechanisms and some leadership in place. The value of the wikis is that it has the leadership of those idealists. The best leadership is a "natural" leadership, one that is established by respect and relationships, not position and appointment. Those are exactly the idealists that Dvorak refers to. They are leaders who are accepted as such out of respect and because there is a culture moving into place to support that form of leadership. Leaders aren't supported if the culture doesn't understand the nature of the leadership. That nature can be warped - Nazi Germany is the obvious example - but the culture that exists now is such that leaders of wikis can be idealists because the idealists are being supported by the culture. I'm not just saying this as a sunny optimist - it is the case as even Dvorak can see. In the 1940's, Kurt Lewin, someone considered a pioneer of social psychology and group dynamics, did studies in controlled environments that used initially leaderless groups in a socially isolated situation. Over time what always happened is that someone or several of the leaderless group's individuals naturally evolved as leaders for one reason or another. These leaders weren't designated by someone else - they were anointed by the group because of proactive actions they took on behalf of the group. They were respected far more than someone who might have been crowned by an external body. I don't know how many of you watch the TV show "Lost" but if you do, Jack is an great example of a "natural leader." If you don't, you're missing a great show and I'm not tellling you anything more about Jack other than watch the show. Ultimately, it is the combination of the crowd's wisdom in organized situations with mechanisms that enhance choice working in conjunction with their natural leaders that may provide the most productive approach to the successful "wikification of knowledge." Dvorak would be right about the deterioration of public processes if in fact you assume that self-serving individualism is the kind of individualism that governs societies. Personally, I don't. I think that while individuals are certainly self-interested, that doesn't make them selfish. That also means that it is likely that there will always be a self-interested core of idealists around to overcome the entropy that can bring those public processes to their knees. So the wikification of knowledge - meaning the participation of the commonwealth in the creation of that body of knowledge - and its availability to all who want to access it - is a good thing, not a bad one. Take that, Dvorak. Stop being so cynical. You know how to write so well. Be more idealistic. Okay?