Yesterday I discovered this really amazing site/wiki that claims that it will be focused on defining CRM 2.0 (http://crm20.pbwiki.com/). It has some interesting content and well known names from the CRM arena contributing and linking their blogs with. Conceptually it seems to be a think tank that is attempting to define CRM 2.0.
"The Way This Works
First, each invited member of this wiki is expected to contribute something to the discussion. The idea is to come out with a definition of CRM 2.0 that will be pretty much universally accepted by the CRM community ..."
However I'm very skeptical and highly disappointed with how they are going about this. It all seems very counter (2.0) intuitive. For me one of the biggest things of Web 2.0 and CRM 2.0 is to harness the power of social participation and collaboration.
But this website seems to be an invite only Wiki :-(
Imagine Wikipedia allowing only a limited set of invitees to define the encyclopedia. Again I love the idea behind the initiative though and would strongly urge the (http://crm20.pbwiki.com/)Wiki Admins to open it up for general participation.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Gartner says CRM is back with a Vengeance
We've seen a resurgence in CRM initiatives for a while now, but its always good to have an industry analyst like Gartner lay it out.
CRM Is Back With a Vengeance: Is Your Organization Ready for the Next Generation of CRM?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Salesforce
Recently Microsoft announced a hosted version of its Dynamics CRM product at around $44.
The Salesforce guys must be watching this move closely, eventhough they are publicly pooh-poohing the move as no impact. Unless Salesforce goes specialty and vertical and really starts leveraging ApEx as the core to its strategy, its facing the daunting task of protecting its commodity CRM offerring. Commodities battles are fought through price wars and that's what MSFT seems to be dragging them into. While this is not over by any means, its an interesting start from MSFT.
Maybe SFDC goes really cozy with Google and lets users access its commodity CRM offerring through Google Apps. That might not be a bad route considering the fact that Google is beefing up on that side. Would Google buy SFDC, cant rule it out.
I'm also keeping an eye out on the post-IPO NetSuite moves. If you get the potential of ApEx out of the way, NetSuite actually has a more valuable SMB offerring in the OnDemand space. However its strategy and impact on SFDC would be totally lost if it gets acquired by a large company like Oracle.
The Salesforce guys must be watching this move closely, eventhough they are publicly pooh-poohing the move as no impact. Unless Salesforce goes specialty and vertical and really starts leveraging ApEx as the core to its strategy, its facing the daunting task of protecting its commodity CRM offerring. Commodities battles are fought through price wars and that's what MSFT seems to be dragging them into. While this is not over by any means, its an interesting start from MSFT.
Maybe SFDC goes really cozy with Google and lets users access its commodity CRM offerring through Google Apps. That might not be a bad route considering the fact that Google is beefing up on that side. Would Google buy SFDC, cant rule it out.
I'm also keeping an eye out on the post-IPO NetSuite moves. If you get the potential of ApEx out of the way, NetSuite actually has a more valuable SMB offerring in the OnDemand space. However its strategy and impact on SFDC would be totally lost if it gets acquired by a large company like Oracle.
Friday, July 20, 2007
How to CRM with Twitter and Jott
I recently got introduced to two new and exciting web services Twitter and Jott, thanks to my techno discoverer wife. She is always exploring the bleeding edge of web technology (but I'll reserve that for another time).
Twitter to me is the latest version of social networking that is a marriage (or should I be politically correct and say mashup, nah mashup these days evokes a completely different category of web apps so I'll stick with marriage) of IM that's published to a BB that can be public or private with members subscribed to it. So one can have sporadic conversations or updates with other Twitterites. Coming from the enterprise SW space to me services like these are a glimpse of the bright horizon where something like this could be easily repurposed for lets say CRM. Like a service team Twittering its status updates for critical services to its customers, your customers Twittering each other in the community. With an array of plugins being developed all over to make it easy to Twit with IM, email, etc its picking up fast.
Jott is an interesting twist to something thats been done before, both in the consumer and enterprise space. In a nutshell its a web based service that allows you to leave/jot voice messages to yourself (or any mailbox) and then sends it to your email as a voice recording and written transcript. Very good for folks like us on the move. Imagine your salesperson leaving a critical sales call and Jotting himself some "Notes" or "Activities" by speaking into his phone on the way back in the cab. However I was amazed at the transcript engine, it picked up my accented voice and did pretty well with sometimes phonetically challenging asian names.
Well by the time I learnt about and used these services and finally got around to writting about them, I stumbled upon another interesting twist to Twitter called Pownce With a private beta for Pownce currently in progress it was a little diff to get an invite. So will write about it once I have used it. Also more on how these can be easily applied to your existing CRM initiatives.
Twitter to me is the latest version of social networking that is a marriage (or should I be politically correct and say mashup, nah mashup these days evokes a completely different category of web apps so I'll stick with marriage) of IM that's published to a BB that can be public or private with members subscribed to it. So one can have sporadic conversations or updates with other Twitterites. Coming from the enterprise SW space to me services like these are a glimpse of the bright horizon where something like this could be easily repurposed for lets say CRM. Like a service team Twittering its status updates for critical services to its customers, your customers Twittering each other in the community. With an array of plugins being developed all over to make it easy to Twit with IM, email, etc its picking up fast.
Jott is an interesting twist to something thats been done before, both in the consumer and enterprise space. In a nutshell its a web based service that allows you to leave/jot voice messages to yourself (or any mailbox) and then sends it to your email as a voice recording and written transcript. Very good for folks like us on the move. Imagine your salesperson leaving a critical sales call and Jotting himself some "Notes" or "Activities" by speaking into his phone on the way back in the cab. However I was amazed at the transcript engine, it picked up my accented voice and did pretty well with sometimes phonetically challenging asian names.
Well by the time I learnt about and used these services and finally got around to writting about them, I stumbled upon another interesting twist to Twitter called Pownce With a private beta for Pownce currently in progress it was a little diff to get an invite. So will write about it once I have used it. Also more on how these can be easily applied to your existing CRM initiatives.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Should CRM just be CM?
Customer Relationship, Experience, Insight, Intelligence ... and the list goes on. For this next generation should be just elevate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Customer Management (CM)?
Or is the CRM acronym a very flashy ringer that cannot be done away with in 2.0? Maybe the CM acronym is already taken and gets confused with Content Management or something.
But if we go the generic CM route then we get out of the front office vs back office business which anyways was strong positioning put forth by the ERP and CRM vendors to differentiate their solutions rather than how customers really wanted it. I've been on umpteen customer business process integration initiatives where the processes were spanning multiple systems and folks would try to draw these artificial lines of demarcation saying this is what CRM will do and this is what ERP will do etc.
Ultimately CRM 2.0 or even Enterprise 2.0 for me is all about defining processes and loosely coupled components that enable these processes in an organization. So maybe Customer Management 2.0 is the space that is all about the customer and cuts across the traditional CRM, ERP and SCM domains of the past.
Or is the CRM acronym a very flashy ringer that cannot be done away with in 2.0? Maybe the CM acronym is already taken and gets confused with Content Management or something.
But if we go the generic CM route then we get out of the front office vs back office business which anyways was strong positioning put forth by the ERP and CRM vendors to differentiate their solutions rather than how customers really wanted it. I've been on umpteen customer business process integration initiatives where the processes were spanning multiple systems and folks would try to draw these artificial lines of demarcation saying this is what CRM will do and this is what ERP will do etc.
Ultimately CRM 2.0 or even Enterprise 2.0 for me is all about defining processes and loosely coupled components that enable these processes in an organization. So maybe Customer Management 2.0 is the space that is all about the customer and cuts across the traditional CRM, ERP and SCM domains of the past.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Ive been in CRM for 22 years
Recently I saw someone (quite visible in the CRM, IT, SW space) mention that they've been in the CRM space for over 22 years. CRM companies like Siebel and even before it Contact Management companies like Goldmine and others have not been around that long.
So what was this person talking about. What this person was saying was true and we've all known it, but it often gets overridden in todays CRM deployments for the technology bells and whistles. Also in the epiphany lies the revelation that has made some recent CRM SW deployments highly successful.
CRM is not Siebel, Salesforce, SAP, Goldmine or anything else. CRM is a business process .. a way for an enterprise to increase shareholder value by managing customer relationships well .. in all stages of the relationship. This is what the person was highlighting in their statement that he has been involved in the customer relationship business processes for 22years. Maybe they were not fully automated processes etc but it was still CRM .. maybe CRM by using paper and pencil .. or the good ol Rolodex .. but CRM none the less.
Now in all honesty most customers fully comprehend this. However they get so caught up in the automation part during the CRM deployment that they end up with a highly automated version of their existing business process (in most cases degraded versions) and provides no new business value add.
So in effect their CRM initiative turns into a bitter pill that's hard to swallow (read as, another notch on the failed CRM list).
So what was this person talking about. What this person was saying was true and we've all known it, but it often gets overridden in todays CRM deployments for the technology bells and whistles. Also in the epiphany lies the revelation that has made some recent CRM SW deployments highly successful.
CRM is not Siebel, Salesforce, SAP, Goldmine or anything else. CRM is a business process .. a way for an enterprise to increase shareholder value by managing customer relationships well .. in all stages of the relationship. This is what the person was highlighting in their statement that he has been involved in the customer relationship business processes for 22years. Maybe they were not fully automated processes etc but it was still CRM .. maybe CRM by using paper and pencil .. or the good ol Rolodex .. but CRM none the less.
Now in all honesty most customers fully comprehend this. However they get so caught up in the automation part during the CRM deployment that they end up with a highly automated version of their existing business process (in most cases degraded versions) and provides no new business value add.
So in effect their CRM initiative turns into a bitter pill that's hard to swallow (read as, another notch on the failed CRM list).
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS) .... Really!!
Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS) 3C = Content, Commerce, Community 4th C = Context P = Personalization VS = Vertical Search
Tim Berners-Lee, O'Reilly and Sramana Mitra -> WWW, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
Not sure if Sramana would really qualify for that. Also the Web 3.0 formula proposed above while intersting and slickly packaged does not add anything new. Adding the Context, Personalization and vertical slant to it all does not qualify for 3.0. My contention is that we need to have this in 2.0 anyways.
I guess people are looking for their marketing fix by trying to be the first out there to define 3.0 when we're still trying to get going with 2.0.
So in a similar though lighter vein I propose that
Web 3.0 = Web 2.0 + ∆
where ∆ = increases in service quality, access, continuity and context;
∆ tends to ∞.
Tim Berners-Lee, O'Reilly and Sramana Mitra -> WWW, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
Not sure if Sramana would really qualify for that. Also the Web 3.0 formula proposed above while intersting and slickly packaged does not add anything new. Adding the Context, Personalization and vertical slant to it all does not qualify for 3.0. My contention is that we need to have this in 2.0 anyways.
I guess people are looking for their marketing fix by trying to be the first out there to define 3.0 when we're still trying to get going with 2.0.
So in a similar though lighter vein I propose that
Web 3.0 = Web 2.0 + ∆
where ∆ = increases in service quality, access, continuity and context;
∆ tends to ∞.
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