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.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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 ∞.
Friday, May 11, 2007
What is CRM 2.0?
When I started posting on this blog some folks whom I shared this with started asking me .. "so what is your take on CRM 2.0?" Are you just going the "i" and "e" way of early 2000 and appending "2.0" to your blog name as the latest fad to get more visibility and ultimately more visitors.
So today I've decided to write this post on what CRM 2.0 means to me.
CRM to me is a set of business process that organizations can apply to ultimately increase shareholder value. I use the term shareholder in the broadest possible way because CRM is applicable to all organizations like one person proprietorship's to non-Profits to SMB's to large mega-corporations. Now its 2.0 time in the CRM world because there is a sustained resurgence of CRM initiatives over the last 2-3 years and its semi-woven into Web 2.0 technologies and concepts like social media, networking through the web, community participation, experience management, captive attention, Wiki's and YouTubes of the world. In CRM 2.0 the most critical concept that changed atleast from my perspective is not the technology, but the realization that there is a "C" in CRM and it stands for the customer, who should be the center of the CRM universe.
Somehow that simple message got lost and it was so CRM 1.0 for organizations to equip themselves with all the CRM technologies and solutions horizontal, vertical, on-premise, hosted, hybrid what not and then try to engage the customer as a drive by target.
So today I've decided to write this post on what CRM 2.0 means to me.
CRM to me is a set of business process that organizations can apply to ultimately increase shareholder value. I use the term shareholder in the broadest possible way because CRM is applicable to all organizations like one person proprietorship's to non-Profits to SMB's to large mega-corporations. Now its 2.0 time in the CRM world because there is a sustained resurgence of CRM initiatives over the last 2-3 years and its semi-woven into Web 2.0 technologies and concepts like social media, networking through the web, community participation, experience management, captive attention, Wiki's and YouTubes of the world. In CRM 2.0 the most critical concept that changed atleast from my perspective is not the technology, but the realization that there is a "C" in CRM and it stands for the customer, who should be the center of the CRM universe.
Somehow that simple message got lost and it was so CRM 1.0 for organizations to equip themselves with all the CRM technologies and solutions horizontal, vertical, on-premise, hosted, hybrid what not and then try to engage the customer as a drive by target.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Hello World!!
Hello World!!
This is Darayush Mistry and I'm finally "officially" joining the amazing world of blogs. After ghost writing for a couple of years now and posting every now and then on my other website (http://www.parsiworld.com/) I've decided to start blogging regularly on things that interest me in general. Hopefully some of it will be of interest to you as well. Things that interest me are software products, applied technology, machines, architecture, WWW, AI, human brain, humour, enterprise software applications, digital identity, extreme transactions, digital media, film making, space, stars, social networks and constructs, religion, Zoroastrianism.
A little bit about myself, I'm currently located in the SF Bay Area, CA USA working as a Director of Product Management at Oracle. Over the last decade I've worked mainly in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space and related technology, however my current team focuses on Oracle Server Technology (aka Fusion Middleware) working on some exciting products in the desktop productivity, disconnected mobile, search, audit and application Life Cycle Management space.
When I'm not being paid for work, I'm spending time with my family, two wonderful kids and our darling dog Tito, that is if I'm not tinkering with some personal projects on social networking, digital media or film making. Got hooked on films as a little kid and it got really heightended while working as a Management Trainee at Leo Burnett in India right after my MBA. Was recruited at LB as a Mgmt Trainee for Client Services and went through their remarkable "Polishing the Apple" program. As part of the program we had to learn and work through all the areas of the agency from services to creative. That's where I ended up making my first full length advertising film (for a 30sec spot). Anyways the professional work I do today is very far from films and media in general.
So lets get the blog juices flowing.
This is Darayush Mistry and I'm finally "officially" joining the amazing world of blogs. After ghost writing for a couple of years now and posting every now and then on my other website (http://www.parsiworld.com/) I've decided to start blogging regularly on things that interest me in general. Hopefully some of it will be of interest to you as well. Things that interest me are software products, applied technology, machines, architecture, WWW, AI, human brain, humour, enterprise software applications, digital identity, extreme transactions, digital media, film making, space, stars, social networks and constructs, religion, Zoroastrianism.
A little bit about myself, I'm currently located in the SF Bay Area, CA USA working as a Director of Product Management at Oracle. Over the last decade I've worked mainly in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space and related technology, however my current team focuses on Oracle Server Technology (aka Fusion Middleware) working on some exciting products in the desktop productivity, disconnected mobile, search, audit and application Life Cycle Management space.
When I'm not being paid for work, I'm spending time with my family, two wonderful kids and our darling dog Tito, that is if I'm not tinkering with some personal projects on social networking, digital media or film making. Got hooked on films as a little kid and it got really heightended while working as a Management Trainee at Leo Burnett in India right after my MBA. Was recruited at LB as a Mgmt Trainee for Client Services and went through their remarkable "Polishing the Apple" program. As part of the program we had to learn and work through all the areas of the agency from services to creative. That's where I ended up making my first full length advertising film (for a 30sec spot). Anyways the professional work I do today is very far from films and media in general.
So lets get the blog juices flowing.
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