PGreenblog

CRM 2.0, Take 2

Okay, a quick revision on the last post. Here's another take on the definition for CRM 2.0. Already up on the wiki from me. I changed it while writing on the wiki. A little different, a little tighter.

"CRM 2.0 is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It's the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

Technorati : CRM 2.0

CRM 2.0 - A Definition? First Take

In yesterday's blog entry on Sage, I ventured a first take on a definition of CRM 2.0 that wasn't a technology based definition, much like I did in 2003 when I came up with my definition of CRM 1.0. So if you didn't want to read the long entry about Sage (though you should. Interesting), but are intrigued by the idea of a definition, here are the two CRM definitions side by side, though I've already made a change from yesterday.

CRM 1.0 (2003):

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

CRM 2.0 (2008):

"CRM 2.0 is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules and processes, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation to improve human interactions and provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

Okay, its still a little awkward, but its a start and we need to do this. I'm going to take it to the CRM 2.0 wiki and keep the discussion running on these pages. Let's go, brothers and sisters. Time to engage! Do it here and join the wiki. But let's have that chat.

Technorati : CRM 2.0

Sage Gets Wise - 2008 The Year They "Got' It - Mostly

As Denis Pombriant and I were ruminating at the National Pastime Sports Bar at the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center, we concluded that for some reason, perhaps just ordinary corporate brain freeze, it took 'til this year - the glorious, blackcurranty with hints of pepper, spicy, long finishing, 2008, for most of the CRM companies to finally "get it." "It" being that the customer is in command of the conversation and the nature of the software world - and the world in general - will never be quite the same. (for another definition of "it' see my post on SAP) The only sad part of 2008 is that by CUSTOMER relationship management companies getting that the CUSTOMER is in control, the level of irony available (you know, the irony that CRM companies can't figure the customer out) is considerably reduced. But, while that's sad, since this particular irony was always good for something really funny if nothing else, it is really heartening to see that companies are beginning to actually understand what customers need and what they are demanding. Nice stuff, indeed.

Which leads me to this entry.....a horse to water......

The reason for my drink with DP at that bar at that convention center in that town (D.C.) was that Sage Software was holding its annual user conference - called, fittingly enough, Insights 2008. Before I get really into it, a little bit of history is necessary, since you haven't seen much of Sage in my often insane (but never inane) ramblings on CRM.

Me 'N Sage: A History

For those of you who don't know Sage (from a CRM perspective, that is) they are a multi-billion dollar European based enterprise that competes in the small and midsized business market with what is normally seen as enterprise applications - meaning front and back office apps. They call them business management applications - an apt, if not exciting, name for them. Their strengths lie in financial applications on the back end and CRM on the front end. They have two CRM products and one contact management product. That would be Saleslogix and the less robust, but now FINALLY interesting, SageCRM, and for the contact manager, the always popular constantly available, highly lucrative but from a CRM standpoint, albatross around the neck, ACT!. Don't get me wrong, ACT! is a very good product and always has been but it has been what stood in the way of small business going to CRM - even when they needed it. Now, its a bit subject to feature bloat frankly, though Sage seems to have some good plans for ACT! in their roadmap.

In any case, Sage, for a variety of reasons fell off my radar screen almost completely, and if not for the genuinely strong efforts of their marketing guy, Ryan Zuk, would have disappeared from my watch list entirely. He personally is a good guy and good at what he does, so he kept them on my list. This is actually ironic, because I have such a long history with the predecessor of the company. (Sage acquired Best Software who acquired Saleslogix), Saleslogix. Back in 1999, Saleslogix was the first CRM partnership I ever built and Pat Sullivan, the creator of ACT! AND Saleslogix wrote the foreword to the first edition of CRM at the Speed of Light (this is the Amazon mockup of the 4th Edition, now available for order, despite the horrible text associated with the sales link) and remains a valued business associate and friend.

But Sage always seemed to be a bit "off" to me. Don't get me wrong. They have had a solid product in Saleslogix for years - functionally. Until this conference, I never understand why anyone would bother with SageCRM. ACT! of course, is the industry standard contact manager with over 2.8 million users. But their architecture for the product was always at least a generation behind. Something on the order of when SaaS was gaining ground, they were announcing the client-server version. For the most part. Additionally, their partner channel, which had been the historically most important reason for my developing my early onset partnership to them, was, by 2005, competing with itself. I was involved, as a favor to a friend, in a CRM application selection process for a significant midsized business and the partner who was selling Saleslogix (competing with NetSuite and salesforce.com at the time), actually brought out SageCRM to compete with Saleslogix - so they competed with themselves - and stories abounded about that at that time.

So while I liked them and had them as my client in the past (my experience was just okay), I just declined to cover them. Declined to cover a $2.3 billion company with 15,000 employees and 25,000 partners AND 5.5 million customers.

My bad.

Because, even if I had these difficulties, as someone covering CRM and writing all the time about the technology, I OWED them coverage, either good or bad, but coverage. They are and have been a legitimate player in CRM for more than a decade and that predates Sage. They deserved better than I gave them.

Luckily, they didn't really need me much and they managed to do just fine without my coverage.

Sigh.

So much for being influential.

In any case, I decided to go to the Sage Insights 2008 conference this year because I wanted to turn "My Bad" into My Good" and I have to say that while I have a couple of concerns, they have taken a really interesting path. They are still "off" but this time it might be good "off" because they have a unique strategy - especially given their customer base - and it is one of those that is SO different than the rest of the industry that its hard to tell how well it will succeed. Though it could succeed. They have a couple of things that truly differentiate them from anyone else at this time and that is something that I can rarely say about any CRM company, big or small. Keep in mind, their unusual strategy and execution of that strategy (which is the subject of this post) is backed by a company that, while aimed at small and medium business, is the third largest software company in the world (according to them at least - I assume Oracle, SAP and Microsoft are the two that are bigger. Oh wait, that's three.) and has mucho dineros available to them and millions and millions of customers already. No SMB focused company or company that wants to be that has nearly the resources Sage does.

Formidable (the French word, not the English)

Okay, so first some general impressions and then a discussion of Sage CRM 2010 - their strategy for the next 2 years.

Insights 2008

Denis Pombriant, yesterday, in his CRM Buyer column, makes note of the savvy and intelligence and willingness to learn of Sue Swenson, the new CEO of Sage. That's a great backdrop to what I'm going to say, so go, shoo, shoo now, go for a few minutes and read what Denis said.

You heard me. GO!! I'll wait.......................................................................................................................................................

Back already? You read the whole article, right? Okay, OKAY! I believe you.

There were 5000 folks or so at Insights 2008, a hearty if not spectacular number. But, given economic slowdown, that is a goodly number because the companies that do business with Sage are either small, medium, or divisions of enterprises, so 5000 is a great number for a group like that. It was surprisingly lively, though of course, why I would expect otherwise only comes because I do so many conferences as an analyst/influencer/journalist, that I get to be a jaded, Sam Spade-like cynic of the noir sort after too many. What was kind of peculiar and I'm not sure why this was the case, there were a few analysts at the conference - listed as press though - but I didn't see Forrester or Gartner there - which is beyond surprising. Rob Bois of AMR Research, Andrew Boyd of Aberdeen, Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research and Laurie McCabe of AMI-Partners was there, but that's who I saw and that was it. Weird. Gartner and Forrester need to be like me and proactively get on the stick. The Sage ride is going to be interesting.

The one thing I would suggest to Sage is that they concentrate more with one on one meetings for people like me (okay, I really mean ME not people like me). Greater insight is gained and given in meetings like that which have a lot of value. I got to meet with Larry Ritter, their SVP of CRM Product Management who is a great guy and a true product strategist to the nth degree. Larry and Sr. Product Manager Steve Oar gave me an excellent demo of Saleslogix 7.5. I don't know what I can and can't say about it (not sure of NDA status) since it isn't being released until August, so I won't say a lot yet (more below though) but it is very impressive and looks really good. There are a couple of basic things that need to be improved, but this seems to be (pre-production, not a live real customer environment for me to see it on) a really solid addition with a lot of interesting changes related to their strategy (see below). I also had a brief, very friendly, meeting with David Van Toor, their GM for North American CRM. He was friendly, a sharp intellect and a little bit tired but a true gamer. A lot of fun to talk to.

All in all, the conference was thorough, covered a HUGE range of topics in a good venue and well managed. But its not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about Sage CRM 2010 - their strategy.

Sage CRM 2010 Strategy & Products

Sage has an unusual strategy that I have to say follows nothing like any other strategy of any other CRM vendor that I know about. They also are the only CRM vendor that uses REST rather than SOA as their architecture - and that actually is one of the reasons that their strategy veers away (not "off") from the other CRM vendors. Given their target markets, the small and medium business world, their strategy could work but it has its risks. First, REST, for those of you (including me until a few days ago) who don't know it (as you will see, you DO know it, but you didn't know it was called REST).

REST - which stands for Representational State Transfer (which sounds mildly sinister) - is apparently the architecture the web is based on - a WOA (without the H) (a web oriented architecture). It uses web links to take you to dedicated web pages that contain content and XML-based instructions on what to do with that content - in other words a way of presentating instructions on what to do with the content on that particular page. The page itself is just that - a page that carries this information. So it might say, for example "get this PDF file." It is used in conjunction with standard web protocols like HTTP, SOAP (though interestingly, Sage folks derided SOAP as clumsy and made it seem as if REST doesn't use it - or need it. I personally don't know the answer to that and am too tired this morning to find out, but it seems like it does), RSS, Atom, and all the other "envelopes" that you've come to know and either love or regret depending on your inclinations and mood. What makes this interesting isn't that this has been around and its what the Web's architecture is based on. Its that Sage is using it in place of a service oriented architecture (SOA). For more on REST check these links. Easy explanation. Dissertation on REST by its creator or at least father figure Roy Thomas Fielding. Wiki on REST. More on RESTand RESTful Web applications than you ever would want to know.)

Now, here is one place (one of the few) I have a bit of a beef with Sage. They claim in their Sage CRM Solutions 2010 Strategy document that:

"To allow loosely-coupled systems to communicate using Web Services, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) appraoch was developed and recommended for enterprise applications. However, the SOA approach proved to be cumbersome and complex, requiring a range of additional standards such as directory services, security services, discovery and more. As a result, the Web community resisted the adoption of infrastructure heavy SOA standards, deciding to adopt a different pattern that is founded on representing the state of information in a URL and being able to freely extract information states and share the same. The WOA paradigm is rapidly gaining momentum and overtaking the SOA approach."

To that I can only say, WTF????? While I have no beef on using a RESTful approach to the client base that Sage is attempting to appeal to - which would be small and medium businesses - who could do with or without a SOA - this statement about WOA "overtaking SOA" is blatantly self-aggrandizing. There is no evidence that I can find ANYWHERE (and I did look this time) that says that beyond this document and that's just a self-promoting attack on something that has been very, very good for business - a SOA - and has been increasingly perfected and adopted as 2008 goes on. Unlike past years, I've seen multiple SOAs at the enterprise level being developed and used and quite interoperable, thank you very much. Its shaped how companies from SAP to Neighborhood America to Rearden Commerce have been able to be vendor agnostic. I have no doubt that REST and WOAs are useful architectures but this statement is far too blatant and offers no proof for itself.

Dump this from your strategy document, my friends at Sage.

Now on to the good things about the document and a couple of "REST-based" products that truly standout with Sage.

Sage's strategy is actually pretty smart and if they can pull it off successfully will provide salesforce.com and others with some serious competition and a true alternative in a number of places.

Their pillars are Interoperability and Migration, Anywhere Workforce Experience and Connected Front and Back Office. Let's look at each.

Broad Discussion

One thing I gotta say. They are getting CRM 2.0 very, very well and are clear on the idea of a rich user/customer experience down to the marrow. In fact, they staged several customer "experiences" at the conference. Dave Van Toor, the GM of NA for CRM (Acronymic heaven in that one!) in his CRM discussion, used a gourmet popcorn customer, Dale & Thomas to describe their use of Sage's CRM products and while that was going on, had people throwing Dale & Thomas gourmet popcorn to everyone in the crowd (several hundred). Actually, the popcorn throwing was a little distracting when it came to the message that Sage CRM was good and Dale & Thomas popcorn people liked it was not lost but a bit buried under the popcorn "experience." Awesome popcorn BTW. And a highly enjoyable well done experience that underscored the "we've bought into" customer experience and CRM 2.0-ness of Sage this period.

One other weakness I would seriously suggest they fix - their definition of CRM 2.0. They clearly understand it, because I saw it in practice and I see it in their strategy and in the execution of some of their applications, especially mobile (more on that later) but their definition in the CRM 2010 document misses the mark by quite a long ways -

"CRM 2.0 generally refers to a rich set of CRM functionality enabled by highly interactive connections to Internet-based content. Rich user experiences and the ability to blend information from within a CRM system and other rich data sources are envisioned to enable extreme productivity."

Guys, CRM 2.0 is not a Technology 2.0!! This is just too much the old school impinging on the new world and is a justification for their architectural choice. Let me provide an alternate definition of CRM 2.0 that's more strategic and also is gleaned from the CRM 2.0 wiki which is where the CRM community is creating the definition that even the analysts (see Forrester's Bill Band and his report "The CRM 2.0 Imperative" should you doubt me) are adopting.

CRM 2.0 is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a platform, that is designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation to improve human interactions and provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation."

I like that a whole lot better, though it's my actual first take on a definition to adopt (would love to have some feedback) and I have no personal stake in the definition at all, not being a vendor. This, by the way, is not the same as Vendor Relationship Management.

But there really is a lot to like in the Sage strategy as a whole. They understand the idea of conversation with customers and listening to customers and, as a result are providing products that are more than competitive, they are genuinely good. They see the need for interoperability and integration so that the customer experience/user experience is simple and seamless. They understand that the need to integrate the back and front office is mission critical because that customer interaction affects the entire enterprise. They know that customers want a highly personalized and entirely portable experience with their favorite companies, so they take context into account in their applications especially their outstanding mobile applications. In other words, while this certainly meets their business model's requirements since they provide multiple CRM products (interoperabililty) and want to be part of environments where they aren't the only products (integration) or where their other products reign supreme (front and back office connectivity), they are absolutely doing it in tune with the customer's increased expectations and demands - and even using an architecture, which while different, is not a full generation behind as in the past but is something short of a SOA though probably more than sufficient for their target customers.

In other words, with a few glitches, they are being very smart. Very smart and while in another direction, they aren't "off" anymore. Now to the pieces.

Interoperability & Migration

Think about this. Sage has 2 CRM and one contact management product. ACT!, the contact management product has 2.8 million users and many of them are in the 43,000 companies that use it. But companies grow and user adoption is always a bitch and a half. So, what if, ACT! being used by many in an environment that is beginning to use SageCRM or Saleslogix So, for example, what if ACT! was interoperable with the other Sage CRM products? User adoption is likely to go up as the user can take his/her sweet time to move from ACT! to whichever and still work successfully with the rest of the faster adopters of the other Sage CRM product in the company. No data migration is necessary. It uses the same data store.

If need be entire departments or sole operators can remain on ACT! should the company so desire to allow that. Yet the business can continue uninterrupted. Migration is at least apparently seamless as is the use of whatever you're using in the Sage CRM or CRMish family (not Amish, CRMish). None of this is ever as seamless as expected but this is a smart piece of a technology strategy and well within the boundaries of CRM 2.0 thinking. The user rules.

Anywhere Workforce Experience

This is easily the coolest and sexiest part of their strategy and its best execution and probably their biggest differentiator. Their declared strategy here is that the customer gets a choice of on premise or on demand (their SageCRM product has a hosted version SageCRM.com) and they have additional functionality that can be plugged into the customer's feature/function portfolio. The experience can be hybrid (on premise mixed with on demand) and can be connected, disconnected or mobile. What distinguishes this particular part of the strategy is their idea of Context Aware Services - which lead to their anytime, anywhere workforce awareness which when you break it down is device awareness, user awareness, network awareness.

This plays well into my New Desktop thinking which will be out shortly in a whitepaper I wrote for salesforce.com - and it dovetails with the Yankee Group's Anywhere Enterprise thinking, which I heartily endorse.

The products that result from this are particularly good. Saleslogix 7.5 of course. The parts of the product showed by DVT on stage (and what I saw which I will keep quiet about) were really excellent for the most part. For example, the UI for their web client is very, very good. Second best one I've seen in current gen CRM products - which makes it the best in the SMB world. Additionally, they, like many other vendors - notably SAP, Oracle and salesforce.com - have integrated enterprise mashups and useful ones at that. They showed a scrolling Google News Feed that was created through specific search criteria and RESTful calls. The unstructured data from the newsfeed (RSS enabled) can be downloaded to somewhere.

Probably the coolest though still a bit primitive feature of Saleslogix 7.5 (I'll just say that the functionality is as complete as you will get for sales, good for customer support and the usual for marketing) is what they call Timeline Visualization. This is a timeline of all account specific or (I think) opportunity specific activity. It is a comprehensive timeline that mashes up the data from multiple sources and presents it as a timeline for you too see what account activities occurred when. You can drill all the way into the single activity or event if you care to. You can also provide the data from the newsfeeds so that, say you can see what happened to the company/account on the day that you lost or won the deal and if there had been any reason for the result that was external to your actions. The one thing they didn't have yet that I think they need to is the ability to use the workflow to provide a color coded result of good or bad so that for example, if there was a setback you'd see the part of the timeline being red at the point of the setback while the good stuff is blue and the okay stuff is brown - or - green, fuschia, teal, whatever. Right now you can color code each line separately but not line segments. They took notes on my suggestion. Hope that it shows up in the 7.6 release (hint, hint). But even without that, this is a very interesting and differentiating feature that takes into account the visual proclivities of contemporary employees and the ease of navigation/use that users demand. Rich is the right word.

But also Saleslogix for the Blackberry and ACT! for the iPhone.

First the latter.

That's in a beta stage (barely. Version 0.5) and it is cool and simple and seems to carry all the ACT! functionality on the iPhone,. Which is an achievement. As you know, I tested all the CRM for the iPhone apps out there and found that you were better off using the Blackberry because, if you weren't in a wifi environment, EDGE just slowed it to a crawl. The demo of the device was pretty fast but I have to assume it was wifin' away, not EDGE connected. If it was EDGE working then this will be the fastest CRMish app (though not really CRM as we know, now, don't we, mi compadres?) I ever saw for that device. What it does do well is get data straight from ACT!. Updates to the ACT! data are also grabbed during bidirectional sync.

David Van Toor got so excited about this stuff that he said "we believe that discussions for on premise, off premise, on demand will become irrelevant." Not for a long while but it might someday be the case.

Saleslogix Mobile has one of the smartest features I've heard when it come mobile CRM. Context-awareness built in through the use of location awareness via GPS access. Aside from access to Saleslogix data from a very simple interface, they also have the ability to find "Accounts Near Me" and that's tied into the GPS system built into the Blackberry and the voice recognition systems - so that if you hit the "Accounts Near Me" button, the following occurs.

1. The system locates you.
2. It then goes and finds (based on your preferences) by accessing your customer list, the customers nearest you.
3. It then speaks to you with a message like this "you have 8 customers within 5 miles. 3 (note: of the 5) have alerts."
4. You can then view the alerts or call a customer.
5. You then can use Telnav and get directions to the customer's site.

That is cool, useful, context-aware, location-aware and 2.0 to the max.

All in all they have executed exceptionally well on this particular area, are distinguishing themselves from their competition and have an excellent and intelligent vision when it comes to how the customers are thinking. AND they are actually listening to their customers.

Good show, old chap (they ARE UK based).

Connected Front & Back Office

The final pillar in their CRM 2010 strategy is the connected front and back office. While a technologically complex thing, it is very simple because it makes sense for them and for their customers. For them, its a no-brainer. They have products for both the front and back office. For both upselling and cross-selling, customer retention, better user experience which keeps their customers happy and cost simplification and reduction, it pays to have common components, common and open standards, suite integration and common interfaces. Helps them because their customers become tied to their enterprise suite. Helps the customer because the interface and data for both ERP and CRM are both accessed and used the same way. Plus the user impact on the front and back offices along with the customer impact on the two "offices" are now pre-eminent features of the overall business experience in the new environment.

End of story.

One last criticism though. Even though they claim that SaaS is a significant part of their strategy (see the doc) and their product portfolio (SageCRM.com), they barely mentioned it during the conference. Given the interest in and the predominance of SaaS in customer discussions (especially for the customers Sage is interested in) they might want to reshape their messaging to focus some of it on SaaS and engage in that chat because their customers are looking at it, whether their research seems to show it or not. Spend the time and the dime and result will be worth it.

All in all, I'm very intrigued for the first time in a long time with what Sage is doing. They are being rebels by their WOA not SOA architectural approach. I don't know that it'll work, but its one that has some real upside for them if it does. Despite the power of SOA. They are off again - but this time not "off "as in "a little nuts" but "off" as in "unique in their outlook." They've developed some serious strategies for capturing exactly those customers that have been both demanding in their conversational requirements and in their business needs and that's a thing of importance unto itself. Sage goes back on the watch list. The closely watched list. They are well worth it.

Will they succeed? I really don't know. Their strategic approach to the 2.0 world is right but their technology execution so different that I can't tell. But I'm going to keep watching and I WILL keep you posted.

Technorati : ACT, Denis Pombriant, Sage Software, SageCRM, SalesLogix

A Company Like Me, Part 1

CRM 1.0 has been a series of processes, technologies, and methodologies organized around the operational tasks that were designed to institutionalize a way of managing customer-company interaction.

CRM 2.0, while incorporating what CRM 1.0 does, also incorporates the personalization of those customer-company interactions and the integration of the customer into the planning, strategies and direction of the company through use of tools, products, services, and experiences so that the customer feels that they are participating in the companies that they choose to do business with.

CRM 1.0 concerned itself with the customer as the object of a satisfactory sale. CRM 2.0 concerns itself with the customer as the subject of a satisfactory experience.

In their own ways, they both attempt to institutionalize practices that allow better customer-company interaction. Their respective visions are driven by the expectations of the social forces in command of the contemporary business ecosystem of its era (we are narrowing this conversation to just business here regardless of the broader social implications). In the CRM 1.0 days that would be the company and the enterprise value chain associated with it. In the CRM 2.0 days a.k.a. right-this-2008-second that would be the very empowered customer and the peer-to-peer social networks associated with it.

But there is one other facet that can't be ignored for CRM 2.0 - and that is that we're not just talking about personalization, but we're talking about humanization.

Humanization? Huh?

What that means is that because the contemporary empowered customer is enmeshed in some way with a network of peers, their expectations are dramatically changed. They are straightforward changes, though. They expect that they can interact with a company the same way that they interact with a friend or a peer who they can trust. That means that they expect a personal relationship to the company, not just to a person in the company, though that may be how the relationship manifests itself a larger number of times. That also means that they expect that the attributes, the characteristics of that deeply personal connection they have to a peer is part of the way that the company interacts with them. That means that trust and transparency have to permeate the company's DNA. That means that the company has to have something distinct about them. That means that the customer is expecting the company to converse with them, not push corporate hype at them. It's why you see contemporary marketing so geared toward buzz and word of mouth and engaging customers in conversation through use of social media like blogs, or engaging internal customers in a valued conversation through a wiki.

Its also why coolness and style are now factors in that conversation between customer and company - because they are intimate parts of the conversation between friends.

This level of humanization is fundamental, but not necessary defining for all companies. While customers have a much more demanding level of expectation, they still simply purchase things in a utilitarian fashion from a plurality of companies they deal with, and they don't have that level of expectation from any particular company that they interact with like that. They treat the company as the (the shoe is on the other foot) object of a purchase. But the state devoutly to be desired by the company is not just the repeat purchaser, though that's certainly good, but the advocate who is going to say, "this company loves me the way I love it." So they have to gear their strategies toward getting that kind of customer (whether B2C or B2B, dammit) and settle for the customer who merely returns to buy.

Why I'm Even Writing This

This is my usual long winded highly conceptual way of talking about something that is important to me. But first a little longer, higher speed wind (take that any way you want). As y'all know, I'm not exactly unopinionated. I tend to be pretty passionate about what I write and I make it REAL clear whether I like what a company is doing or dislike what a company is doing. If I sense injustice, I go after it. If I think a company has done something good, despite my prior dislike of their actions, I say it and I make the necessary turn. I have no gripe against individuals unless they act in a mean spirited way and then I'll go after them. But all in all, I have no particular love or hatred of a company per se - just their actions get me hot - either in a good way or a bad way.

Edelman Trust Index

Some of you may have heard of the Edelman Trust Index - a measure of what kind of characteristics govern whom and how you trust. The most common trusted source for the contemporary soul is "someone like me." I trust those who are most similar to me. That would ideally suit a company that does it right too. Not only has the company provided me with what I need to sculpt my version of a relationship with it, but I actually see that the company's culture is "like me" and that they are able to institutionally reproduce that state - meaning if someone at the company who I've been dealing with who I feel a kinship to, leaves, though I would miss that person and perhaps continue my relationship to them outside the company, I would still not have a diminished relationship with or feeling about that company.

The True Subject: Neighborhood America

All right. All that said, I'm now going to get on with it, because, even with my vendor-agnosticism a constant suit of emotional armor for me and my willingness to judge vendor companies, not by only their culture, but their actions - and to do that both universally and discretely, I have to admit there is one company that has reached that exalted state of piercing my armor - that I actually have that peer-to-peer institutional relationship as well as a number of personal friendships and warm acquaintances. That would be Neighborhood America. But I'm going to make you wait until later this week for the why that company fits this concept, because I REALLY want to post this blog entry and that's gonna take me some time. Consider this part 1.

Random Gems from SAPPHIRE (Get it?)

Found out that SAP has a deeper commitment to communities than I thought. They have a community called BPx that has 350,000 members consisting of business analysts and application consultants, IT project managers, and process developers on the techie side and BPM guys, UI experts, change management gurus on the functional side. Run by a really forward thinking dude named Marco ten Vaanholt. A "social-smart" guy. Title is Global Head, Business Process Expert (BPX) Community (see Marco's comment below that led to this correction). They also have a 1.2 million member developers community called SDN....

Mike de la Cruz, SVP of Mobility & Analytics (CRM related stuff) seems to be the guy who drove the execution of the SAP CRM Blackberry app and he did a GREAT job. What's funny here is that when I mentioned his name on Twitter, I heard from several of the Tweet-producers that they knew him or had gone to school with him. Amazing. He is REALLY known around the industry....

Eric Clapton did what turned out to be a great show because the second half of it was cranked up by Clapton considerably from the first half. He did all his old stuff in the second half and more acoustic, quieter blues in combination with some serious electric blues discharges the first half. But he left the crowd at the end roaring. He is a god. No doubt. I saw him in his last (until the 2007 revival) Cream concert in 1969 or 1970 whenever it was in Chicago with my brother. Their final U.S. tour....

One curious thing about SAP's thinking...they made a major effort to de-emphasize not just Business by Design but what they called the "By Design platform" at one point. In reference to Business by Design they kept saying they had "Business All in One" which, of course, is their on premise small business applications. Not a notable success either. Which is me saying its not a very good product in another way. That's upsetting. They may be having some development problems, which, Hennings Kagermann alluded to in one brief comment during one presentation (I forget which one) - delayed delivery. But the almost vehement shoving of Business By Design under the table (not the bus) was disconcerting, because to play, they are going to have to have it. This is not an option. I've heard too many different release dates from too many sources to speculate on which one is accurate. But SAP HAS TO RELEASE A SOLID ON DEMAND PRODUCT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CRM AND ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS WORLD. Their time is pretty short too. I hope they do. Because all the rest seems to be so on target.

Pictures At An Exhibition: Michael Maoz Kicks Some Intent-Driven Butt Into Gear

Got to see Michael Maoz (Gartner's superstar analyst) both hanging out and presenting at the SAP CRM Theater. Aside from just the sheer pleasure of seeing someone I count among my special friends, he did a GREAT job at the presentation, unveiling some new material on CRM and the social actions of the new customer. Some of his stuff was validating to me because it overlapped (with different verbal assignments) what I've been saying. Some of it was outright fascinating & I think he personally is onto something here. I'm going to summarize in about 200 words what he said for an hour so needless to say this will be the spare version. Gartner Research apparently found that CRM is THE top priority for businesses in 2008 - in part due to the economic difficulties - because people need to retain customers when the going is bad. but what was interesting is the different spins different segments have - for examples the biggest business issue is enhancing and retaining relationships with customers (8.1 on scale of 10) while #2 is tracking new customers (pay attention Business Objects!!) (8.0/10). When CEOs only were queried they thought that sales productivity (36%) and customer care (35%) were the #1 & #2 issues respectively - which for those of who think in a classically siloed way - are two of the three pillars of CRM. When IT was queried about their business expectations the number 1 for 2008 (and '07 & '06) was improving business processes and #2? Attracting & retaining customers. Innovation went from #10 in 2007 to #3 in 2008. He then went thorough a significant amount of other Gartner numbers of which, I'll let you in on a few more. The availability of channels for the customer has increased in both scope and complexity and what was fascinating is that as self-service via the web increased to 50% of channel activity in customer service in 2007, the parts of customer service that still relied on humans (e.g. contact center CSRs) found that it got far worse for them and even with all the new technologies and the reduction in the amount of human to human contact (though, for example, T-Mobile has 300 million incoming so I can't see that calls have been reduced THAT much), the attrition rate among CSRs is worse than ever. The reason? If someone goes to the extent of calling, given they can take care of many of their problems or queries via the web, they are REALLY REALLY mad. REALLY mad. Really....mad. The lesser problems have been solved online. See the theme here? Customers, customers, and, oh crap, yeah, all things related to customers. Which means that CRM is the #1 priority for us'n in 2008. But, and this was the kicker, as Michael said, his daughters don't know that. They do their purchasing due to what they are told to on Facebook. They ask their friends via Facebook, or MySpace or perhaps use the aggregators like FriendFeed to find out where to go tonight or the best place to get a bargain handbag or how to figure out a more complex purchase. All that "stuff" that companies are doing doesn't mean squat to them. He also pointed out in a very interesting way that he's had three varieties of Toyota SUV, or car or lux car (Lexus), and has been a committed Toyota customer for 10 years, but Toyota didn't grow with him so it couldn't make a suggestion about what might interest him. Why not? THEY DIDN'T KNOW. All they know is that he bought some cars for some reasons other than what they can fathom. In fact, I find this to be a HUGE problem with companies and a complex one to solve. How do you grow with the customers? Each of them grows differently and yet, if you knew, the likelihood of repurchase or of a new purchase or cross sell or whatever salesy terms you are comforted by, goes up exponentially because the emotional state attached to that knowledge and indication of that knowledge to the customer is that "hey, they CARE," or in a Sally Fieldsian way, "They like me. They REALLY like me." Procter & Gamble is the only company I'm aware of doing that "growing up with the customer" to some degree. They have a product called "Sparkle Body Spray" that in 2005 (long story with this that you should attend my classes to hear) was aimed at the 14-15 year old girl market and had a social site that was associated with the themes that you'd find with that age group. Contests, blogs with colors associated with the body spray (anti-perspirant) scents, putting together dream date and then emailing info or text messaging info to friends, etc. This was wildly successful, all word of mouth built with 12,000 unique visitors a week who averaged 25 minutes per visit on the site. But if you look at it now, when the girls are now around 17-18, the site is tied to another site "Because You're Hot" which has video dance contests that win you a JLo music video slot and surveys about the sexiest scent, etc. In other words, the site is growing up with its audience. (BTW, this is me, not Michael in that red paragraph. I don't want to put words in his mouth) He made the point that his kids and many others are moving to control their own experiences outside the channels provided by the company and this is an inevitable march. This peer to peer relationship, the external communities not in the control of the business, are all creating a new set of expectations which he identified as:

• 24/7 availability of services
• want to be needed, recognized
• Dialogue, experience control
• Give them, show them you have domain expertise

The optimal enterprise here would not be the current one which he called the function driven enterprise, but instead the "Intent-driven Enterprise." That is a company that knows not just what I want, but knows my intent - what are the reasons I want what I want, and what WILL I be interested in down the road - the knowledge of which they got from me, senor, senorita, senora customer. He then identified the top "functionality" requirements for the Intent-driven Enterprise:

1. It is in sync with evolving needs (key here is evolving)
2. It engages community opinions
3. It is reliable & trustworthy
4. It allows independent ratings
and
5. It uses "like type" comparisons (similar here to the Edelman Trust Index findings - the most trusted person I know is someone like me).

Because this is so complex, success can't be defined as good "suboptimal" results (good marketing, good sales, good service, etc.) but has to be defined as the engagement of an integrated ecosystem made available to the customer.

He (almost) closed with what I would call a perceptual model for the future customer. He said the customer had to have the illusion of free will, of the availability of multiple paths for exploration and of the means to achieve several goals with the business. While the business is needed to provide it, the business reality is that the paths are probably pre-determined, that there is one process that is truly available and that one goal is there for the customer. Michael wasn't advocating this, he was saying that's what the business reality is and probably will be. This is very much the same concept in a somewhat different framework that Joe Pine 2 advocates in "Authenticity" which is fake real in a manner of speaking. My take on this has been more benign since I don't think that fake ANYTHING is what needs to happen but I do think that you don't need to own luxury, you need to "feel luxurious." You know the old saying, "whatever floats your boat?" That is what I mean, but the business has to see it from what it costs them to make the boat that the customer wants to float, and no one in their right mind can argue this is wrong. I do think there is an optimal state possible, though. I think that the engagement of the entire ecosystem of the company for the customer opens up options for the customer that give them increased degrees of freedom while at the same time allowing the enterprise to execute its business plan successfully. Meaning a "real real" collaboration. Primarily because there are a lot of forces involved in an ecosystem - not just one company and one customer but multiple value chains associated with either the customer or the enterprise. What Michael (though not in this presentation, more in discussions) and I make abundantly clear in our own inimitable styles is that business value and customer value while sharing the word "value" are two very different ideas that have to work in conjunction for both the customer to get what he/she wants & the business to get what it wants.

Pay attention to this "intent-driven enterprise" thing - its important and this is the first I've seen it. I hope that Gartner gets on board with Michael's thinking here. It would do them well to be more than cursory about it. This is really good stuff.

Its 2008. SAP FINALLY Gets It. They Really, Really Do.....

I'm more than pleasantly surprised. Much more actually. As you know from my past "tough love" posts on SAP and their often dusty messaging, while I liked the company, I thought that they just didn't get "it." The "it" being the contemporary customer's approach to the world and the social changes going on that were affecting business in a rather dramatic way. In fact, one year ago at this time, I'd have to have said (and did) that most of large software - actually all large high tech - companies - were ignoring the changes and still trying to please the enterprise customer in ways that no longer made sense nor has an iota of reasonable excuse for continuing. But, I'm sitting here at Sapphire 2008 heading into day 2 after a very productive day 1, and not only hearing messaging at this conference that I think is on the money, but getting the anecdotal evidence I need to make me believe that this is more than messaging - that SAP seems committed to transforming itself down to its core culture - and has been proceeding to do so. Two things before I outline some of what I'm seeing here:

1. For those of you who don't know it. SAPPHIRE is SAP's annual conference, which for the last 3 (I think) years has been a joint effort of SAP and ASUG, their user group umbrella organization. This is a MASSIVE conference - with over 15,000 attendees - apparently stuck down here in Orlando FL for a few more years (too bad on that one) at the Orlando Convention Center. Which can handle the traffic. I just don't love Orlando.
2. My approach to figuring this all out is straightforward, I listen to the stuff said on the stage, then I go and talk to people and, ahem, eavesdrop on the more casual conversations that go on and watch and listen for the smaller things that indicate cultural and intellectual transformation. So, for example, if someone says, as Henning Kagermann, the CEO of SAP, did, that SAP is committed to a culture of co-development and co-innovation, then I go out and find the signs that they are by seeing what they are actually doing and hearing how people are talking

OK. Enough of the preliminaries. Now on to the meat (though there is a vegetarian alternative phrase if requested). I sat in on the morning Executive Session for Business Influencers (I have this nice ego-boosting black tag on my badge that says I'm one. Thank god someone believes that. I'll save the badge for when I need to remember) and one brief observations. Analysts wear far too much wool. Its hot here but about 80% of the audience were wearing suits. Yuck. The message that was presented yesterday morning at the Exec. session was claro. SAP is successful, growing and SAP is changing and meeting the requirements of that change. On the successful side, SAP's global market share was 32.6% with organic growth up 0.9% over the last year and growth of market share through acquisition 3.3%. They had some significant revenue growth too with total revenue for example in EMEA at 1,306,000,000 euros which is 21% year over year growth in that sector. I didn't manage to get the totals, but so what? You get the idea which is the idea of this number. The themes that were presented for their "as is" (as opposed to forward thinking) state were that they could handle complex systems by innovating quickly; they were people centric with the ability to develop ad hoc processes (I presume they meant here processes that were appropriate to the audiences and not pre-cut); and (KEY THEME) collaborative networks were their love and their neo-raison d'etre - which meant having relationships that provided and were provided insight and connecting people to share info so that those insights could be realized (though, admittedly, I find this a little abstract as a message though a great idea). Hennings Kagermann also made the point in his opening segment that they were making SAP enterprise apps along the line of CRM-SRM-SCM-PLM-ERP-and what is still unknown to me EhP/EhP (??????) easy to "consume" and available for continuous innovation without upgrade. Again not explained much but borne out later in conversations I had about it - though I intend to find out more later today on this if possible. They are going to have an announcement today about a new product, but I don't know if I should say anything since the announcement is today, not yesterday. Its interesting to me though and not CRM but something that I think needs to be talked about when it is released. John Schwartz, CEO of Business Objects, talked about what they are doing in merging with SAP and painted a rather rosy picture. He said BO had 45,000 customers and 6500 employees - pretty massive and made it seem that the merger and unification of the cultures was going just great, thank you very much. I'll choose to remain a skeptic since nothing of that magnitude has ever gone that smoothly but its not an area I care that much about really so warts, glitches, wind and fire will not be the subject of this. There was only a brief discussion of cloud computing which I would suggest to SAP they pay more than brief attention to with the Google-IBM and Google-salesforce.com alliances that have been announced in the last two weeks or so. Hennings K. mentioned that SAP is agnostic when it comes to cloud computing because they realize that not everyone is going to want the same thing and so SAP needs to be above the clouds (that's mine, not his. I take full responsibility for the bad pun). So that's the "as is" state of the company's cortex - what about the "to be" and "going forward" states?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

There were three things they mentioned, much to my delighted surprise as their path going forward. They were:

• Co-innovation - That was specifically discussed with the recent RIM/SAP alliance to provide all of SAP's applications, starting with what might be a brilliant execution from what I saw of SAP CRM for the Blackberry. Driven by SVP of Mobility and Analytics Michael De La Cruz on the SAP side and a variety of folks on the RIM side including my good bud, Paul Briggs as the marketing guy for RIM in this effort, the application I saw was easily the most comprehensive and user friendly CRM application for the Blackberry bar none. I saw it in pre-production so I don't know how its going to play but even in that state it was fully integrated with the RIM alarm and calendar and contacts and accounts. In other words, the native Blackberry apps - which makes sense given that in the spirit of co-innovation, RIM actually developed the app for SAP - which is a marked departure, by the way, for BOTH companies in how they do things. That alone for those of us into the arcane machinations of company politics and culture - is important. But the idea of SAP doing it alone is seemingly not entirely a thing of the past but has become simply one of the approaches. While coopetition is not new, as old as 1990 or 1994 or something (a Novell guy wrote a book by that name), the idea of collaboration and co-development was never something that was culturally comfortable - apparently until now.
• Web 2.0 - what made this particularly interesting was not just the new use interface of SAP CRM 2007 which was I think the best looking interface and perhaps the most functionally useful and simple one I've ever seen in a large enterprise CRM application, but also the fact that SAP claimed that they were "living the Web 2.0" - which is the harbinger of their cultural change. Now, I treated that as a marketing claim until I had the ability to speak with some of the senior management at the conference (from CEO Hennings Kagermann - a really nice guy - to SVPS of varying title to VPs to some of the less senior) and I had the ability to listen in on some "ordinary" organic conversations - and I think they are being authentic. Or as we say on the street (yeah, Paulie, you're quite the street guy aren't you? Right.), they're real. Keep in mind, I'm a skeptic not by nature but by profession to some degree. But the level of interest and activity among a decidedly younger management and staff than I expected (given that I'd talked with several of them in the past) around Web 2.0 tools and the freedom to innovate which seems to have seized control over the last year or so or some more recent time period is amazing. They don't seem to always move as glacially as they did in the past though they still (as I can personally attest) have their icebergian moments. (yes, I made that word up. But you know what it means don't you?). They seem able to take an idea and incorporate it quickly into their thinking. For example, I had a meeting with one SVP who was pointing out to me (proving it, really) what they were going to do in future generations of their products around the social applications - which was on a more significant scale then I expected. I mentioned something that I thought they needed to consider, a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head and he then made serious note of it and I do think he'll follow up. None of that "traditional" SAP "we'll do it and you'll like it" approach that characterized the past. In multiple discussions with analysts from Gartner, Forrester, AMR and IDC, there was a universal agreement amongst them that there is something different about SAP as a company and all really like the new SAP CRM 2007 and the Blackberry implementation of SAP CRM out there besides. I'd like to think that while I certainly am naive enough to be made a fool of on occasion, these folks (about 6-8 of them) are far more seasoned and "foolproof" than me and they saw what I saw. SAP is living the Web 2.0 "philosophy" or whatever you call it and they are different than they were even a year ago. What's amazing is that I'm not sure what triggered it at all. But it's good.
• Analytics and Insight - Insight in particular was a word that was thrown out there a hundred times. Now, this is maybe the one glitch in the soft message. This is now a pillar of the trio of pillars because they acquired Business Objects and they have to do SOMETHING with it. Actually it seems to be a good acquisition but this is the one part that smacked a bit of self-aggrandizement. Its forgivable. Its their conference, for godssakes. What they emphasized here, though, was still a plus - the idea of providing real time analytics embedded across applications so that dynamic insights could be provided in real time.

  There is one piece of advice that I hope they take. I noticed that there was almost far too much consistency to the conversations about SAP product releases. So for example, in every discussion I heard or had, without exception, when it came to the discussion about the Blackberry CRM product, whether in a speech or on in a conversation, they all began the discussion with how people use the alarm on the Blackberry to wake up. EVERY-LAST-ONE-OF-THEM. Obviously everyone is well schooled in what the messages need to be around product, but it comes across as plastic which isn't good. A little messaging freedom might be nice.

  That's a niggling thing though by comparison to the sea change that SAP seems to have undergone. Look, maybe over the next several months, they'll break my heart and turn out to be what they used to but I don't think so. This one is here to stay.

  If I had to venture a guess as 2008 keeps moving inexorably to its end - I'd say that salesforce.com is going to be challenged by SAP and Oracle for CRM 2.0 leadership. Not expected at all, but welcomed. I'm not sure I'm right because my big caveat is that I haven't seen either Oracle or SAP new products in live customer environments over time and THAT is the final arbiter of success, culture change or not.

  As far as SAP goes, they've revitalized themselves and it seems unanimous among those I spoke with here - analysts, some customers, SAP staff members - that the change is deep and real.This is a far cry from what Microsoft did at Convergence at month ago to itself at this location and a far cry from what SAP did to itself a year ago in Orlando. But this time, SAP did good. Real good.

  Good for them.

Bits O' Honey Partido Uno

Quotes To Think About (& Use) In 2.0 Land

"A 2006 study by the Verde Group showed that people who hear about a bad shopping experience are less likely than the people who actually had the bad experience to ever set foot in the store." -- from "Word of Mouth Marketing", Andy Sernovitz

"That's the deal companies make when relying on the help of customers to grow: customers will volunteeer their time and attention, but they will fight for their status and power." -- from "Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message" - by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba

"In this world of constant feedback, one element of some corporate cultures is definitely going away. Strategies based on deception are doomed to failure." --from "Groundswell" by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

"...the human mind has no limit of developing, of realizing ever deeply and more adequately universal orders of life" --from "The Philosophy of Literature" by Gustav Mueller (when speaking about Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy")

"Community offers the promise of belonging....To beloong is to act as an investor, owner and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for the choice."--from "Community: The Structure of Belonging" by Peter Block

Okay, everyone, I'm off to Sapphire 2008, SAP's shindig. They expect about 15,000 there. I'll be one of the herd. There as a "business influencer." Great title. One of the herd. I'll be doing Experience on the Edge (my podcast, if you haven't heard from there using my new Apogee Duet so I can get great rather than mediocre road sound quality. This will be episode #16 of the weekly verbal assault. Go listen to it), though it won't be about Sapphire. The Sapphire commentary will be #17 - and it will be impressions and maybe an interview or two. I'll keep you posted. Watch this blog for Sapphire coverage though.....

Technorati : Community, SAP, Web 2.0, social media, word of mouth marketing

To Twitter Is Not To Fritter (Though It Can Be.....)

When it comes to Twitter, of ALL the social tools out there, I always here the following from corporate executives who are battling with their customers (sad state of affairs, eh wot?) every day:

I get blogs, and I get podcasts and wikis and we're trying to figure out this social networking 'thing' but I just don't get Twitter. I don't get it. I DON'T get it. I don't GET it. It seems like such a waste of time"

Well, as the following will show. It ain't a waste of time. Been saying that it was only a matter of time until the business uses would be uncovered and they are.

Take a look at this way.

• As I'm writing this, the guy who is probably the coolest managing editor on the planet, Josh Weinberger of CRM Magazine, is live tweeting (for those of you techno-Neanderthals, that means using Twitter to cover something live and then broadcast it to the, in this case, Weinberger network of followed and followers) a conference call with RIM and SAP announcing SAP CRM (and more enterprise applications) for the Blackberry. (Try here too) Not only are the updates nearly instant but JW's commentary is great besides.
• What about this customer service story blogged this week by the IT Toolbox SaaS Director Dennis Stevenson on Twitter and his Slideshare problems and how Slideshare employees answered him via Twitter due to a general Twitter post he made. One thing I didn't know is that "there is an ability to listen across the entire Twitterverse for particular text strings," according to Dennis S. Gotta find out how to do that.
• Salesforce.com and their social media maven Kingsley Joseph are ultra busy on Twitter with successforce announcements and salesforce announcements and Kingsley's cogent but pungent commentary on things social add up to a visible and noticeable and intelligent business presence via Twitter to networks that are interested e.g. followers and following so to speak.
• Tomas Kohl, an always astute and sometimes contentious CRM 2.0 observer/analyst/futurist/consultant writes about how Zappos uses Twitter to network among (not with per se) their employees and how they even rank them for the number of Twitter followers they have and allow their customers to correspond in 140 characters or less with those employees (about 270 use them) (Zappos_alfred seems to be the jefe with 601 followers). Zappos, if you haven't ordered from them, is an online shoe store with thousands of brands in all sizes and colors that TRULY gets it. Just ordered some serious walking shoes from them yesterday. Thank you, TK.

These are brief and few but there are many examples out on the web. Here's an aggregator post on Twitter for business. You'll note, that right now, its small time and its primarily the kind of business done over a drink in a manner of speaking. But the potential is there for a lot more.

Marketing is obviously a key application of Twitter but there are some dangers inherent in it. Too much pushing (as is going on with one unnamed person I'm following) and its like having your conversations constantly interrupted with "OMG! I'm amazing. I'm ON TV BIG TIME! HELP SELL ME! I'M TOO MUCH FOR WORDS - AT LEAST FOR OVER 140 CHARACTERS!!!" ad nauseum. That can be irritating because this is a highly personalized albeit short message communications platform. No one wants the ego of another in the way. Rather than corporate marketing hype, the hype gets personal and interferes.

But if used effectively, as salesforce.com is doing, they become participants in the conversation among friends at the bazaar. Information about events or positive articles are looked upon with curiosity and interest and traffic goes to them through the hyperlink (in the form most of the time of a "tinyurl." Twitter's potential for that is limitless. As a marketing, microblogging tool, customer service tool, networking tool and community participation tool.

Not too shabby for the one that few seem to get.

Technorati : Twitter

The Best Powerpoint Ever?

A MAJOR high five to Paul Sweeney for his Tweet calling this the best Powerpoint ever. He may be right.

Chicken.

Technorati : Chicken