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I read and appreciated an article in the WSJ this morning - “Facebook: Can it be Tamed?“. Combined this with a many of the great discussions taking place on Twitter via #scrm and Blogs and it got me to thinking. How can CRM learn from a personal approach to Social Media, are they really that different?

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for personal use represent a microcosm of the evolution of CRM within an enterprise. Too much information, not enough filters. In the case of Facebook, the article speaks to the redesign causing angst and too much data. I have posted before, each of us need to consider our own Social Media strategy. For me, LinkedIn is strickly business, Facebook is strictly friends (some busines associates do fall into that category, and it is where we have fun). Twitter, for me is business, with color commentary.  From the article:

“In essence, the News Feed was my own personal Google search. Like Google, Facebook calculated the relevancy and authority of information before deciding to display it to me. The News Feed was shockingly complex – calculating and ranking more than a trillion items per day – and the results were very satisfying.”

It is interesting, as we are all treating social media platforms like our own personal CRM systems. Not trying to be cras, but we are making determinations of the ‘value’ of our time and what is important for us to hear, and whom to listen to - sound a bit familiar? In case you were wondering, Mom is a Platimum partner!

Enterprises have this exact same problem, as they try to jump into the next generation of CRM (SocialCRM or CRM 2.0, naming battle at 11) As @TriSynergyLL posted yesterday, while at a conference (I will use full words) “A point was made that Customers do not ask nor will they ask you (company) to join a social media (platform), they start without you”. This begs the question, which platform(s) should an Enterprise monitor? That is the hard part, International companies will not have only one, two or three answers.

What to do?

Another playa from the #scrm space is A Prem Kumar - I like his approach and he has put forth a logical foundation for all of this, you can find his musings on his blog, or follow on Twitter @scorpfromhell. Each business needs to develop their strategy. A tactical approach will fail, for sure. Once you jump in, you are in. You have just reset the expectation with your customers, backing out would be a bad idea.

To jump in without a monitoring strategy (where are my customers?) and filtering strategy (how do I pull information from data or make sense of noise), would be a mistake. While there seem to be a whole lot of tools on the market that help the analysis from a marketing perspective, putting the right tools in place from a true CRM perspective are not yet there.

David Baker says it quite well in his article, The Last Quarter Mile of CRM:

The skeptics and measurement-minded professionals scoff at the vagueness of measuring influence through social media interactions in a traditional CRM view. While the principles of CRM don’t change with social media strategies, the control of the content, message and interaction can leave strategists grasping at straws when they try to measure results — or, better yet, consider how and what to optimize.

It seems that I offered more questions than answers, but that is what keeps it interesting I suppose.

I am not a political blogger, by any stretch. We have the usual conversations at home with the kids, and try to get them involved. An 8 yo, 14 and 17, sometimes the conversation goes over the little one’s head - and I guess sometimes I make an incorrect assumption… I found the following on my keyboard after arriving home from a business trip, hand written by my 8 year old daughter:

Big, Bold Letters at the top - “War”

Dear President Obama,

My name is Emma Lieberman. I live in a small town in  Vermont. I am getting really sick of the wars going on. can you please help stop it. If you can put a stop to the end of the wars than thank you so much.

From Emma Lieberman

Thank you

In the words of the Dick Vitale of the CRM space, Paul Greenberg “No ‘baby!’”- From the definition of CRM 2.0 “CRM 2.0 (Which I like to call SocialCRM) is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform…” There is more, but I want to keep the focus. What ever CRM 2.0 is, really, is defined by the needs of  your business, it simply needs to be supported by technology and the platform is Cloud. What that means is that your optimal solution is almost definitely more than one product. The products and the services surrounding the solution does not define technology, they use it.

Information travels through unexpected channels, at speeds which make your head spin at times – you need to be prepared to act on it. You need a way to stay ahead, and in touch with your customers and prospects. This later point is simply that the combination of speed of information combined with Marketing hype makes things look bigger than they are.  Just like March madness, if I take all of those regional games and create a buzz, and put them on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU….suddenly you feel like you are missing out, if you do not watch the game!

As part of putting together this series, I used Twitter and TwitterDeck to search and watch (think stock ticker) through various categories (#cloud and  #SaaS for example). Twitter is more personal than Blogs, and people let  you know what they feel –there are lot of people with opinions. Twitter itself is going to be an incredibly important part of CRM, Social CRM and Social buying. No question! Facebook will certainly play in this space as well. The key here is to be able to stay on top of these fast moving channel – without having to stare at them like a ticker!

BTW – I know that I will catch a lot of grief for mentioning Vermont twice in this series – poetic license. I was also trying to think of a creative Dick Vitale type quote, though that may not end up being politically correct L!

When my boys were young (OK, I am not that old) we would enjoy the championship basketball games on Saturday’s in March (The regional tournaments and the NCAA I mentioned earlier). My boys would ask about the teams, the college, was it a good school? – usual kid stuff. They now know a WHOLE lot more about sports, players, rankings than I do, but that is a topic for another day. The fans did go all out, face painting, screaming dancing getting all excited at the buzzer beater shot. They did it then, we just see and hear about it a lot more now. “March Madness”, “Selection Sunday”

It brings up a few interesting points.

1. Who are the folks actually making decisions about Cloud Strategy? CTO or CFO
2. How much does experience have any impact on the decision making process? (hint: not enough)

So, why is this relevant?

1- We have all been using elements of what is now called “The Cloud” for years (On-demand, ASP, SaaS are all ‘prequels’) IT is not all that different, it just happen a lot faster  - A LOT FASTER

The Cloud and Cloud Computing are terms that can be useful to the informed, and confusing to the less informed. “Cloud” is a bit of a catch-all term  that references;  Grid, Off-site storage, Demand, SaaS, IaaS (Infrastructure), PaaS (Platform) and DaaS  (DataWarehousing). Most of us, have had a Yahoo account and/or LinkedIn account for many years. Then some of use moved to Gmail and now some of us are on Twitter – All would be considered Cloud applications now.

Did someone throw a switch, and suddenly they went from, whatever they were – to Cloud? (Except Twitter, which I would suggest was Cloud from the get go). I doubt it, that does not make sense.

Like any technology, a  good basketball team has a solid foundation and a grounding in the fundamentals of the game. It is also about balance and role players – You can’t put five 7 footers on the court, nor can you put five guards either – it is about balance. A balanced strategy, a balanced product suite and a balanced technology base, no single point of failure.  It goes without saying that during March madness everyone on the court needs to step up their game (Like UVM did in 2005) but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If you begin your search for the one perfect product that will solve all your Customer Interaction needs, including such information like SocialCRM and Financial Data, you will not find what you are looking for – period. What you need are the products that ‘play’ nicely with the external systems who have the additional data your business needs.

Next up:

Do we have to reinvent products to keep up with Cloud and CRM 2.0?

I live in Northern Vermont – the closest thing to a professional sports team is the local mid-major school, UVM (University of Vermont), known more for Hockey and Skiing than Basketball. The winner of America East (UVM’s division), more often than not, loses in the first round. However,  in 2005, UVM won the America East and  drew the mighty Syracuse as their opponent in the first round, who some picked to make it to the final four (more on that later).

UVM went on to win in overtime, and became the Cinderella of 2005. It was short lived, but fun while it lasted. For all of those who filled out their brackets, I would bet 98% had Syracuse picked.  Yup, I was one of the 98%. Shame on me – not really, I still cheered for UVM, the bracket choice was due to my aversion to risk.  As a quick aside, as I put the finishing touches to this post, Syracuse defeated UConn in a near record 6 overtimes to shock a higher ranked UConn team - go figure.

Back to Clouds and technology

The key is to carefully consider your providers and ask lots of questions. Analyze the SLAs and compliance offered by the provider (for development needs, this may not be required). The Cloud is a great place to try, before you spend too much money. Set up a program to try a few different providers, and the risk is minimal - a little time and a real litte $. Do not ‘go with your heart’ trust your business and professional instincts.  The little guy here can be a dangerous this - Even in my smal little state a local ISP just disappeared one day, taking a whole lot of data with them.

It is a easy as having a credit card

It is not too hard to try, just takes a credit card and it really is inexpensive, and has a high value quotient. Two examples – The RackSpace Slicehost folks will set-up a ‘slice’ (256MB - ram, 10GB-storage and 100GB – bandwidth)’ for $20 a month. It is raw, yes, but it works, and if/when you like it, it can grow! Amazon is also really nice as well. My first experience was almost scary, in that when I went to sign-up they had my credit card on file from the recent holiday shopping I did – odd overlap. AWS is a little more raw, even more so than Slicehost, but there are some good providers (that ecosystem I mentioned) that can help you get going – like CohesiveFT, JumpBox or rpath. I am not going to list the pricing scheme for AWS, as that part takes a little analysis. AWS is a pure utility model, pay for EXACTLY what you use – read the fine print.

Hope is NOT a strategy

Do not simply trust each providers own marketing materials. Take what I say, or anyone else with proper context trust what they are able to back the materials up with – references, experience and a sound strategy. With respect to infrastructure type services, think carefully about how to spread the risk across more than one provider. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hosting on one provider and doing your backups on another. For open source applications, the choices are numerous, and you are certainly not locked in, if you architect your solution correctly.

Coming up next - Is it really any different than it was 5 or 10 years ago, How new is the Cloud?

With all that is happening in the IT world, I needed a venue to share my thoughts. My objective is to distill complexity down to understandable chunks of information that people can actually act upon. It seems that the only way to really explain modern technology is through Hyperbole and Metaphor. My goal is to see how far I can push it.

The focus of my musings will likely stay within the confines of Cloud and SocialCRM. SInce each of these has a half-dozen sub categories, there should be a lot to share.