5 Basic Addons to 2.0 Enable your CRM Product Deployment

Everyday we read tons of content on how there are new and improved CRM products out there that leverage Web2.0 and Social Networking. Now while that sounds great and more power to that movement, in reality there are enterprises out there that have deployed or signed contracts (in the case of SaaS) for existing CRM systems and moving overnight or in a short period to a new social CRM application might not be an option.

The other day someone asked me if they were to Web 2.0 enable their existing CRM deployment or try to make it more social where would they start. So here's my Top 5 list of Web 2.0 capabilities and social applications that can be leveraged to make it happen. Before I jump into the list wanted to do a quick definition level check.

Web 2.0 to me is a set of capabilities or application building paradigms that enable products to be more interactive, intuitive, collaborative and social. Which leads me to what are social apps.

Social applications to me are applications that leverage atleast one if not all of the following 3 areas.
- Leverage social networks either public or private as the basis of the application.
- Leverage the power existing networks like Facebook, Hi5, LinkedIn etc
- Provide social interaction and collaboration capabilities like Wikis, Blogs, forums (I know they sound outdated, but are very prevalent to the social aspect), micro-messaging etc

Another point I'd like to highlight here is that a lot of the CRM 2.0 related capabilities we've seen or worked with operate on the edge of existing CRM products so adding them on for value add is very non-intrusive from an integration perspective.

Top 5 Basic Addons to 2.0 Enable your CRM Product Deployment

1. Widgets, Gadgets
Widgets or Gadgets are very engaging but lightweight slices of existing applications that reside on your desktop or aggregator page (like iGoogle) and usually serve a single but critical purpose of providing you updates about a certain information domain or quick access to certain application

2. RSS/Atom
3. Mashups
4. Wikis, Blogs
5. Mobile