I have been reading a lot of Esteban Kolsky’s writing these days. And not just because he is going to be participating in the social media track at SugarCon this year.

Esteban makes a lot of great points about how concepts like Enterprise 2.0 bleed into a total Social CRM – or really any “customer-centric” company philosophy. I would like to think that all companies place the customer at the hearty of operations, but in a more complex, fast moving, technology ridden world, this becomes a much more convoluted process to manage.

Early CRM was about “customer data” and “customer-facing processes” in areas such as sales, marketing and support/call center. However, these older systems were silos of customer data (even if they centralize data and promote collaboration) that kept a lot of information out of the hands of other teams. Restrictive team access and other limitations of earlier software tools made it difficult for other parts of the organization to deliver on the service principles of “customer-facing” stakeholders.

For example, say a customer calls into a contact center with a problem. Usually, a service rep can provide a resolution and most of the time the situation is solved in a “self contained” manner inside that transaction (even if it takes a few calls). But in some industries or scenarios, the resolution of an issue (even if the solution is easily identified in the call center) has to take place outside the call center. Say, a mortgage payment dispute needs to be scrutinized and approved by a senior team member before a credit can be issued. Now, it is difficult to track (without some major process customizations and creative team/user management) the resolution of this task as it leaves the purview of traditional CRM.

In short – it is sometimes difficult to make “non-CRM” workers accountable for what are considered customer service practices. Making accountants and other personnel that never actually talk to customers start thinking of themselves as part of a customer-centric overarching process can sometimes be difficult.

And that is where Enterprise 2.0 and social CRM overlap. Just as social CRM is fluid, unstructured at times (or seems to be) and all about a collaborative engagement, the next generation enterprise needs to be as well. The walls between customer and company have fallen; so must the walls between departments. All are equally accountable for brand identity, and overall success. The mantra of “it’s not my job” is fading (well, at least I hope so).

Esteban makes a nice continuum graph to illustrate this point (thanks to Jacob at the CustomerThink blog for posting it):

Of course, I am simplifying and probably distorting Esteban’s points here. But the important thing to consider is, “how connected are your front and back office processes?” No longer can we consider some parts of the business to be locked away from customer view. This takes a greater openness, but also a lot of work insuring the right kind of collaborative attitude both internal and externally.

On the plus side here, a lot of traditional CRM systems have become more modern interaction platforms – so that users, data and processes are more easy to model and change. This is a big deal considering a lot of the barriers to this type of automated end-to-end process were technology based.

In my monthly Outsiders poll, I asked the question “What will be your largest sales and marketing project in 2010?” The choices for answers were: Building Out Sales Force; Traditional CRM Deployment; Social Media Strategy Development; Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy and “Other.”

I may preach the importance of leveraging social media and engaging with customers across new channels – but even I was surprised to see that “Social Media Strategy Development” received the most votes. About 37% of respondents said they would be creating or expanding a social media strategy as their primary sales and marketing project this year. Interesting, no?

The second most popular? I am happy to say it was “Building Out Sales Force.” I think we should all be happy to see that – perhaps yet another hint that the recession and the bummer of 2008-09 is really behind us for good.

“Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy” came in third, with 16% of voters saying they plan to take advantage of new marketing channels in 2010. I guess you could kind of link this one with social media, if of course these individuals are looking at social networks and other tools like Twitter and Facebook to get their marketing messages heard.

Oddly enough, “Traditional CRM Deployment” only drew 11% of the voters. Now, I think a lot of the audience has already deployed a CRM system, so it’s a bit of a moot question. But does it fly in the face of a recent poll results post where I posited a huge greenfield opportunity for CRM providers.

Marketing owned the “Other” category, with a majority positing that a marketing or demand generation system rollout would be their largest project this year. We are seeing more and more organizations deploy tools like SugarCRM in tandem with marketing automation tools like Pardot and Eloqua, so I am not surprised here.

Thanks as always to those that responded to the poll. And of course, this month’s poll (on the topic of CRM data quality) is already up and running.

SugarCON 2010 is officially upon us – insofar as nothing is official without a press release.

This year’s event is already proving to be bigger and better than ever. More tracks, more speakers, more fun, more…everything.

Stay tuned for some awesome keynotes, and be sure to check out the session tracks on the agenda page. There are SEVEN tracks, yes seven, so far (maybe some super special tracks to come!) – covering a lot of ground, not just CRM, including:

• CRM Strategy – Best practices for formulating, implementing and measuring customer relationship management strategies.
• Open Source and Open Cloud(s) – Define, explore and recommend customer strategies for managing business applications in the cloud.
• Business Apps in the Cloud – Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Rackspace – this track will help developers decide where to spend their time and how to start innovating today.
• Extending Sugar – How to use SugarCRM’s open architecture to change, extend and maybe even revolutionize customer management.
• Beyond CRM – Explores new and innovative ways to use business principles and technologies to place the customer at the center of everything.
• Getting Social – Social CRM is crossing from a novelty to a core CRM process. Learn how your company should be thinking about Social CRM.
• SugarU – These in-depth tutorials will showcase the power of Sugar as a customer management platform, including user adoption, marketing, sales and support tutorials.

So,  join us April 12-14 for what is shaping up to be THE business applications event, the cloud computing event, the social media event – oh, and of course the CRM event of 2010!

Be sure to follow on twitter @SugarCON2010 to get lots of updates, discount opportunities and other news.

See you there!

I had an interesting Twitter exchange today with analyst turned social guru Esteban Kolsky. (If you’re not already following him – do so now)  I asked the twitterverse what they felt the possibility of “the browser as the desktop” -thinking about how cloud-based software makes desktop operating systems (at least anything heavy) nearly obsolete.

Think about it, we have our data, our applications and our infrastructures in the cloud – why would be need anything but a thin client laptop and a browser? (After all, isn’t this what the hype around Apple’s tablet/netbook is pointing towards?).

Esteban had an interesting response – essentially pointing out that with RESTful web services – the desktop can become the browser, and thus application development is all about total desktop mashups. Developers need not write to support IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc. – just keep the APIs simple and open. So, Esteban went in another, very profound direction here.

An interesting post I read today at Mashable posits four (really three if you split hairs) identifying trends of the web of the future: ubiquity (from both an access point and device front), a rich media focus, and social networks owning the web.

I think if we look at this more realistic near-term prediction (Esteban’s makes more sense from an interoperability standpoint – but in my opinion too many players on the apps, web and OS level stand to lose control and dollars, so I think roadblocks would be thrown up at Esteban’s vision at every turn.) and place it next to the evolution of CRM, some interesting things pop up.

First, both the Web and CRM are becoming more media-rich and more social. Greater mobile access, embedded Youtube videos in home screens, myPortal dashlets exposing external content, and social media integration – and I’m just talking about what SugarCRM alone has done in the last couple years – clearly mimics these trends.

But what is the next stage? Does the “ubiquity” concept merge with CRM data access (and social/media saturation) to involve a new look to CRM? One that is less about logging in to a browser screen and more about accessing data and automating processes in a more seamless, natural manner?

Perhaps both the Mashable article and Esteban are correct. While “the web” is evolving – that does not mean the way we think about accessing the web – the browser – has to follow along. The web-based interactivity of social features like iPhone games, has proven that the web has – and will – deliver a lot of data, applications and value in general without the involvement of a traditional browser.

There is no shortage of cool integrations and mashups tied in to SugarCRM. But I just saw that a great member of the Sugar community Josh Sweeney has created a nice integration between MailChimp and SugarCRM.

Why is this cool? Well, Josh has been one of those guys that understood the real value of social media as it pertains to CRM early on. MailChimp allows you to manage contact lists that may or may not be in a CRM system (In Twitter data, social networks, etc.)  – and then create and send email marketing campaigns to them in a simple fashion.

You’re probably saying, “So? SugarCRM has its own email marketing campaigns…” True. But in my opinion, being able to sync very exhaustive lists across contact databases is a huge thing. For many, the CRM system is where Customers live. Contacts, cold leads, partners etc. sometimes do not and should not make it into a CRM system until they are warm or hot leads at the very least. Keeping a CRM system free from noise can be a good idea.

That’s where MailChimp integration comes in. Think about it – you can manage lists from inside and outside SugarCRM, execute campgins inside or outside Sugar – and basically keep in touch with your entire network in a multi-faceted manner, without worrying about overlapping messages or placing the wrong contacts into a potential sales process that they are either not ready for, nor should they ever be in.

Cool stuff, keep up the great work Josh…

I am sure there are a lot of vendors, practitioners and users that will disagree with me – but I am not a fan of the state of B2C CRM. To explain, I think that there is a HUGE difference between effectively managing the well documented B2B sales relationships in a CRM system versus the usually anonymous, high volume transaction levels in the B2C world.

I was reminded of my feelings on B2C CRM when I read this E-Commerce Time article that noted how hotel chains are lagging in CRM adoption. I’ll get back to this in a bit.

The reason I feel so seemingly negative about B2C CRM is because up until a few years ago – it was nearly impossible to make use of the consumer data passing through B2C operations. The amount of register data, phone calls around product issues, warranty data, program registration etc. alone was too great for older systems.

And all of this isn’t even anonymous data. I started my analytic career in retail journalism, and would often cover customer loyalty programs. When I actually was able to get people to talk off the record about what kind of customer insight analysis was being performed on all the data these chains were generating – the response was usually something like “Oh, that sounds like a great idea!” There was simply too much data – enough to bottleneck any system 15 years ago.

Now, lets compound that issue with data from web traffic, email campaigns, social media, blogs etc. – and it is enough to make anyone’s head spin.

So, I am not down on B2B CRM in theory – just feel it was hard to do well in practice. And this is a completely different issue than having to give me account data 15 times to Citi when I call them.

But, is there an answer?  I think there is…maybe.

Social media does a lot of cool things. But one thing it does is allow B2C providers to finally have the ability to herd cats, as it were. A lot of B2B folks are still looking at Facebook communities with a slanted eye – and I understand that. These B2B guys already know who they’re dealing with – they only care about more leads.

Now, B2C companies have the issue of finding their user communities, and in them ferreting out advocates and other valuable customers. By finding out a) what sites your target market naturally attracts towards and b) how to create destinations they love, you have made two major strides in doing what B2C CRM could not do well a decade ago.

What social media and networks allow us to do in the B2C world is create a fluid, yet valuable database (akin to the neatly structured relational databases powering B2B CRM) of our customers. Their likes and dislikes are valuable to B2C CRM – just as past purchase history and SLAs are to B2B.

A nice example of even hotel chains “getting it” in terms of social building out their CRM initiative  Gaylord resorts (see, i told you I’d bring this all full circle). I recall CRM magazine editor Lauren McKay having tweeted about wanting cornbread while at a conference at the resort. The resort was following the hashtags and made sure to make its mark on Lauren…a great example of making the most of social to engage, and create advocates out there in your consumer base.

And again, the great thing is that if you’re in the B2C world, chances are your customers are already “out there” in the social realm, just waiting to be invited into an engagement with your brand…

It is already shaping up to be a crazy week here at Sugar HQ. All employees are in town for a week of meetings – as we prepare to continue our record growth into 2010.

So, needless to say – this week will be a quiet one for Outsiders. Speaking of Outsiders, the blog was named one of the top 20 CRM blogs of 2009 by Forecasting Clouds, a new media outlet managed by a very bright CRM observer Chris Bucholtz.

Interestingly enough, Outsiders was not the only SugarCRM-related blog named to the list. Mitch Lieberman, who leads Sugar’s professional services team, has a blog called A Title Would Limit my Thoughts that came in at number 20 on the list. The blog is worth adding to your blog reader, as Mitch has been in the CRM and app software game a long time, and has a lot of insight in terms of learning from the past as we move into areas like social and cloud computing.

To keep the plug rolling – Mitch is also up for a speaking slot at the Enterprise 2.0 conference coming up in Boston this June. To get Mitch on the confirmed list – vote for his session here. Mitch’s session topic is all about how large businesses can learn from smaller firms about what it really means to be “social.” Too many large firms are looking to leverage technology as a social proxy – but can they really emulate the kind of strong personal service smaller B2B firms can provide? You need to vote for Mitch’s session to find out…

OK, enough with the shameless plugs…time to get rolling on kicking off 2010 Sugar-style…

In my latest Outsiders monthly poll I asked the blog readership and the Twitterverse at large what NON-CRM system they are most using in their organizations.  Here was the breakout:

43% – Email/Spreadsheets

22% – Online data Service (Hoover’s, InsideView, Jigsaw etc.)

18% – Social Network (Facebook, LinkedIn)

12% – Twitter

4% – Other

OK, this tells me a few things. First, and not surprisingly, Outlook and Excel still rule the office world. This can mean one of two things. On one hand, many CRM tools are built to work alongside these office staples. But, if email and spreadsheets are where most people spend their time, there is a chance they may not be getting the most out of their CRM system. I see this as an adoption issue, one that can be cured internally as well as through easier to use technology (something I know we at SugarCRM are always striving towards).

This can also mean that there is simply a ton of potential business still out there. Look, the fact that Salesforce.com was able to drum up over a billion dollars in annual business, and it only sells one product in one deployment mode – means there is a green field still out there. Business, especially the smallest ones, need CRM and are looking for simple, low cost and easy to use tools.

Other insights from the poll tell me that more and more, sales organizations are seeing the value of third party data sources like InsideView. As the social media hype bubble only gets bigger, it is great that companies do realize there are companies encapsulating this explosion of data into useful, compact tools for sales reps and other roles to leverage in their daily business activities. Also, these excellent data aggregators can help append the data in a CRM system (and clean it up) to drive more powerful reporting, segmenting and decision-making initiatives.

Finally, Twitter is not a fad. Or, I should say the medium that Twitter has created (short bursts of communication) is being considered valuable by businesses. For many, this is a “no duh” statement. But there are still millions of small businesses yet to invade the Twitterverse.  These last two points, social data aggregation and social CRM, will be the most interesting to watch in 2010.

As the NFL playoffs begin, another sports weekend phenomenon is about to begin: the steady ramping up of new commercial spots for beer, snacks, cars, etc. This of course leads up to the ultimate festival of 30 second bliss: the Super Bowl commercial.

In this economy, companies have to think long and hard on the value these spots bring. And one major brand, Pepsi, is saying “no.” Instead of pumping millions into a few broadcast advertisements – the beverage giant is instead opting for a social CRM initiative.

What Pepsi is doing here is important on two levels. One, it shows that even the largest brands are starting to “get it” when it comes to the value that bi-directional engagement strategies bring to a company. It would be easy for Pepsi to look at its giant size as a detriment to getting close with its customer base – instead it is embracing its size and looking for feedback and input, great to see.

Second, Pepsi is not “cheaping out” and using social CRM as a low-cost marketing tool. It is spending as much as it would have on Super Bowl ads (maybe more) on its wide-range social CRM strategy. Yes, social CRM can leverage “free” media and platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but investment is needed to really create a “wow factor” in the campaign. Pepsi is setting a strong example here.

I think we will see more and more examples like this. Of course, the ability to do both – linking major broadcast media spots to interactive social campaigns can be equally if not more effective. But it is great to see social CRM getting its fair shake alongside traditional media spends like sports television advertising.

I think most of us are more happy than sad that 2009 is drawing to a close. In the global sense, 2009 sucked. Plain and simple. But if you’re a silver-lining type of guy (which I am not) you can say that at least we all learned about the value of hard work, the importance of delivering value in a rough economy blah blah blahhh…let’s just get it over with and all look forward to a fresh start in 2010, right?

I will be taking a short break from Outsiders, but before I go I wanted to throw my two cents into the already overcrowded “predictions” market that observers and analysts so love to do in this industry. Truth be told, I always hated doing these as an analyst. They seemed so canned and vague. In retrospect I think I was too far from the buying market to understand the difference between high-level tech trends and how the IT decision makers would behave in the coming 12 months.

So, let’s see if nearly three years on the front lines has changed anything. I am limiting myself to four major items. I figure this gives me either enough smart predictions to look like a genius, or just enough rope to hang myself this time next year.

Here we go…

SFA Will Take on a Whole New Meaning, and Redefine CRM Once Again.

OK, this sounds very vague, I know. But bear with me; I swear this might make sense. What I mean is that the convergence of the consumer web with business apps, the ever-expanding web-savvy sales workforce, and the growing trend towards simple data integration into apps (social media, sites like Jigsaw and tools like InsideView, etc.) is redefining SFA.

We have moved on from the old model of SFA as a container of static information. The original beauty of SFA was that managers and sales people could share some parts of what were once proprietary (at the user level) contact lists. Soon, activity management, workflow etc. was slapped on top. But now, new ideas about data aggregation and usage, as well as merging online and offline sales activities – has forced the hand of CRM providers.

What will result: far more agile applications that are easier to use and own by sales reps; leveraging all sorts of unstructured data and networks – but yet managed inside the confines of what will look somewhat like traditional CRM. This will allow for better data stewardship and insure compliance inside organizations.

In a larger sense – I see this breaking CRM fully away from the suite approach that was in vogue for a while. As “enterprise CRM” and “SMB CRM” become nonsense words, and tools are built around actual business needs and not how much money the company makes or how many users it has in a system (ridiculous, arbitrary holdovers from the last generation of software development) , we will see more “sales” focused tools gaining market share, as well as “marketing” and “support” tools. Social CRM will play a big part in driving a lot of this, which brings me to my next point…

Social CRM is (Pretty Much) Ready for Prime Time.

What 2010 prediction piece would be complete without something about “social” anything? This has been beaten to death, but I find I have a more middle of the road feeling about social in 2010. Others seem to say “it’s here, man, deal with it or eat dust” or the more impractical “it’s just a fad at this point” (which reminds me of the SaaS naysayers in 2003).

I think in regards to social CRM that 2010 will be an important year – but that we will not see the “killer” social CRM app emerge until later in the year.  Salesforce did a paste up job with Chatter.  And I think the more data-focused applications like InsideView are still figuring out social. They have the unstructured media stuff I mentioned above down pat, and are growing their businesses, but there’s still a little left to do in terms of nailing social.  Another company to watch is Gist, they are doing some cool stuff.

When it comes to traditional CRM players making the move to social, I don’t think the older enterprise players have agile enough architectures to handle the metamorphosis. This is beyond simply slapping a Twitter window into the UI.  I think a simple, focused UI with easy to leverage social media connectors will be the winner here. The tool has to have the ultimate user-configurability, as well as a simple method for importing and leveraging unstructured and social data for traditional CRM workflows and reporting. It will be interesting to see who gets there first.

Open Source is Still Important in 2010, and Still Not a Business Model.

Some have argued that open source is becoming a moot point in terms of CRM. I agree and disagree. Paul Greenberg says that SugarCRM has dominated the open source side of CRM so much that it has left the model off the table for anyone else.

But what I think Paul does not do a great job of explaining is that in order for a CRM product to be successful these days (and a CRM company to do so) there has to be elements of open source in the mix. The software from all providers is looking more and more open (a good thing). And the move towards social and all of the agile and open development needed on top of those platforms will undoubtedly come from open source. So, open source is alive and well in the CRM and apps sector in general.

However, I do agree that just being an open source company will lead to the kind of meteoric growth vendors like SugarCRM experienced. That ship has sailed, sorry guys. What will win the CRM game – and frankly it is sad that this hasn’t always been the case – is smart, agile product supported by a company that understands and engages well with its customer base.

Older SaaS Players Will Begin to See Pressure from True Cloud Applications

Look, I am not claiming Salesforce.com will be seeing huge drops in revenue. However, I do predict that some of the haze will clear around cloud computing, and companies will wise up to the marketing BS that older SaaS guys are spouting.

As more and more true cloud platforms come to the fore, from Microsoft with Azure and of course Amazon and even VM Ware with V Cloud Express, end-user organizations are going to have much more choice in how they deploy applications. Before, it was “SaaS or in your own datacenter.” This is so not the case anymore. Companies can gain the kind of control they need to create differentiated applications, without having to run infrastructure. And companies like webappVM are making this easier than ever to do. What’s more, companies can use these tools to port their apps to and from any environment. Try doing that with a traditional SaaS product.

…Ok, those are just a few of the things I think we’ll see happen in and around the CRM world in 2010. I will of course check back a year from now and see how I did. But feel free to comment now and tell me how insane I am for thinking up these predictions.

I wish all the Outsiders readers, and the greater CRM and Sugar universe, a happy and healthy holiday season, and a prosperous 2010!