When I think of where CRM is going, or at least where I think it should be going, I really like that technologies like Riak are out there. The explosion of data, from social media, to email and more generic web activity – which can and should be tracked in a CRM context – causes headaches for most traditional, relational-database CRM models.

Let’s face it, CRM for the B2C set has always been a touchy subject. The data volume for large B2C organizations made for a lot of anonymity along the value chain, and a lot of sales and marketing decisions were made with guesswork or statistical data. Imagine, being able to base your market decisions on real data, analyzed more effectively and faster – oh, and with very little data loss along the chain.

NoSQL databases are an evolutionary step in building frictionless, agile web applications and total web platforms/experiences for large organizations. I am excited about where concepts like Ruby and Riak can take CRM.

Think about it – what would you do if you knew you could collect ANY data around your prospects, customers; emails, web activity, files, activities, web meetings, chats, Tweets etc. – and manage that with no data loss in an intuitive UI which helped you to identify your clear advocates, problem areas and untapped opportunities?

A more fluid approach to CRM could be coming – we are just now seeing the tools that we all might consider de facto standards in a few years. One thing I love is that SugarCRM is built with flexibility and agility in mind, so a Sugar on top of a NoSQL data approach might not be too far off.

Yes, Tibbr.

While Tibbr may do a lot of what people might expect from a status-update focused tool, in my opinion it fails to do anything actually benefitting a company’s attempt to be more social. Well, at least in ways that can’t be done better by other products or for free with cloud-based tools.

For one, Tibbr is all about filters and categorization – placing labels and objectifying relationships. While there is value in this – for analysis and alerts etc. – how does this really allow me to better see how my customers are aggregating and talking about my brand or services?

And really, like with Chatter and other internally-focused tools, this is more about empowering employees than connecting with customers. Again, this is an important step towards companies being more social and breaking down silos – but we have seen it all before. Tibco seems to be afraid of issues like security instead of trying to change the way companies think of internal/external information flows.

Ultimately, Tibbr is not a true social platform – it is just a nice to have tool. Like Chatter or Yammer – there is nothing really here that I would say a company can build upon to reach out, listen and improve a customer’s experience in the social realm.

Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Tibco thinks internal collaboration is enough. I am just waiting for more companies to understand that in order to be customer-centric, the customer needs to really be at the center of everything – not on the fringes and locked out by cultural and technological firewalls.

One of the curious things I have seen, however, is that Salesforce.com continually seems to be moving away from its core product message. While SaaS and “the cloud” have permeated the company’s message to date – at least in the early years when the company was ramping up we heard a lot about the actual business software it was developing.

Now, apart from Chatter, I have not heard much about actual CRM features from Salesforce.com in what seems like years. Now, I am sure they are developing the apps – don’t get me wrong. It just does not seem a focal point anymore.

Why? Well, there are a number of possibilities. I’d like to explore two potential options. (Both, one, or neither could be true as I am just postulating here.)

One explanation about the perceived lack of actual feature/CRM development is that the actual Platform capabilities of Force.com are a reality. (And not, as one observer called it – “Farce.com.”) What I mean is that if Force.com is even half as easy to use as say Sugar Module Builder and Sugar Studio – customers can build features they need so that Salesforce.com does not have to do so. This is a possibility – but the limitations of the multi-tenant model make truly deep code-level customizations hard to perform and manage in terms of upgrades etc.

Another option, and this one is far fetched I admit, is that Salesforce in time will shift its revenue model away from application subscription fees and into data services fees of various types.

Huh? You mean Salesforce.com would STOP charging for what has proven a potential multi-billion dollar business?

Well, yes and no. Salesforce.com has created a huge revenue stream for itself, granted. However, it’s prices are proving too high for the market in terms of value received. Even Microsoft is coming down to SugarCRM price levels. For Salesforce.com to compete effectively against better engineered CRM software and highly competitive pricing – it needs to innovate in new ways.

Salesforce.com’s multi-tenant model makes it difficult for the company to offer a lot of different vertical, geographic, etc. solutions, since there is technically “one version” of the system. But – Salesforce.com’s multi-tenant model makes it perfect for another concept – data collection, segmentation and other data-centric services. Having one HUGE database of customer, product, sales information, etc. about thousands and thousands of companies – coupled with data from it’s Jigsaw acquisition and the type of customer sentiment data from Chatter – and that becomes a valued asset.

Salesforce.com seems to be on some sort of track around this, with plans to offer  a free, stripped down version of Chatter to any interested party in the coming weeks. This would allow non-Salesforce.com users to enter data into their huge environment and allow Salesforce to leverage that data in any number of ways. I think of Salesforce taking the cue from Google – understanding thew value of data and information, not plain out of the box apps.

I do not think Salesforce.com would abandon what is a highly valuable revenue-stream any time soon.  But it does seem to have an innovation gap happening in CRM. And if it were to couple seriously interesting (to marketers especially) data services with its core CRM tools, it might be able to at least sustain its bloated pricing rates for the time being.

I have railed against the company’s multi-tenant architecture as limiting for some time. But here I think its huge database might be how it remains a relevant company in the future.

Anyway, the analyst and I were talking and an interesting point was made. The analyst noted that with all these social silos being built up, and the potential for users and companies to see little value out of this disengaged approach – a lot of negative backlash could occur.

I agree – and I quickly made the analogy that the whole social spectrum of startups might suffer the same fate as the e-commerce pure plays of 1999.

Huh?

Let me explain. While we did see some really well done pure play e-commerce companies come out of the dot-com boom n’ bust, like Amazon, there were a lot of stinkers: Pets.com, Webvan, DiapersDelivered, etc. (ok I made that last name up but I think there was a diaper e-commerce play that went nowhere – but you get the point.)

These pure plays lacked a lot of things: solid revenue models, business savvy and, well, customers. They were gambles made on hype and speculation. And so many of them faded before the ink was dry on their VC checks.

But a lot of brick and mortar firms made strong headway into the e-commerce world early on: Barnes and Noble, Walgreens, Gap.com are all examples of strong brands expanding into the early world of web commerce. I think social will play out in a similar vein.

We will have some big social standouts – maybe we already do in Twitter and Facebook. But I think when it comes to companies that thrive around social media – existing technology plays with sound business models, flexible products and strong core customer user communities are set up to win.

In the “social CRM” world – traditional CRM players already “get” CRM, and are simply adding new channels to support the way customers want to interact. They are not re-inventing the wheel, just adding new features to an already well-functioning vehicle.

Ultimately, when it comes to a concept like CRM, there is way too many traditional (or should I say eternal) features to consider for any pure social media play to unseat the leaders here. We may see a lot of CRM providers acquire these small guys, or see some fizzle out, but CRM as we know it is not going away, just evolving.

In getting ready for this event, going over slides and ideas, an interesting topic came up. In describing the transition from traditional CRM into modern CRM that enables social channels – we made remarks about how older CRM systems were all about agents putting information into the system. This is an important facet of CRM, but most sales reps for example are left with a “what’s in it for me?” feeling if they see the CRM as a burden and data entry point.

However, modern CRM tools that leverage social channels and a fluid flow of data from external sources can be a tool that GIVES sales reps information. Instead of a productivity drain – the CRM system is a hub, and central area where sales reps learn about prospects, collaborate with partners and customers, and simply gather information supplied by other networks or sources.

(Look, I know a lot of traditional CRM use cases give a lot of information – i.e. reports. However this is stil based on static data entered by users for the most part.)

I like to think of modern CRM as a bank. You make deposits (entering opportunity data, logging calls, etc.) but you can also make withdrawals (leveraging embedded LinkedIn connector to find untapped relationships, monitoring Twitter streams right from Contact records or dashboards, aggregating data in one touch using Cloud Connectors, etc.).

In short, a modern, social enabled CRM system makes it a two-way street. Yes, the traditional tasks need to be performed – which helps management and executives gain visibility over top-level operations. But, the cool resources inside socially enabled CRM systems give the end users a lot of data, insight etc. to do their jobs better, make quota faster and actually enjoy using the system.

I Really Do Not Want to Search

I use FireFox (and Chrome, Safari,….) and the little box at the top right, yes, the one with the Google logo has an icon of a magnifying glass, and when you place your mouse over it, the word “search” pops up. Great, we are all set, I can now search. I am not sure about you, but when I type something into that little box, I really want to find something. The only time I really want to search is when I open up the refrigerator at 10pm and I really have no idea what I am looking for, but standing there with the door open is a requirement of all males, whatever it is I am ‘searching’ for will certainly find me!

Bing seems to get it, just a little anyway. “Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”. Google on the other hand is just search: “Google – Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages.” What about Wikipedia? “Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.” oh, and they have a search box. So, who gets it? Ah, found one, it is movie about a fish. If the title were done by Internet techie folks, it would have been ‘Searching for Nemo’, lucky for us, it was not, thus the title stands “Finding Nemo”. (By the way, I am not even going to touch Twitter here, just sayin’)

What is the Relevance?

When you, or your users get ready for work in the morning, or planning your day, you want information to find you. The last thing you want to do is search for things. There is an abundance of information, too much information actually, you need it to find you – when you need it. I am not sure about you, but I open up my calendar and there it is, my schedule for the day (most of it anyway), I did not search for it. When I have an appointment, deadline, phone call, I get an alert, one of my choosing. When you open up your CRM application, whether that is email, SugarCRM, or some other application, how does it help you organize your day? Do you need to search for people to call? Do you need to search for trouble tickets, service requests or support cases? Here is my preference, in order, vendors listen up please:

1. Help the information get to me, the way I want to see it
2. Help me find the information efficiently, quickly and easily
3. If 1 and 2 fail, ok, give me a way to search for what I need, but please focus on finding it!

I am done searching, I want to find what I need, when I need – even better if it finds me!

And this seemingly insignificant change can potentially enable many of our existing customers to enhance their social CRM initiatives, and make Sugar 6 a very attractive tool for B2C and other sales organizations that might not fit the target of traditional B2B CRM. The change to which I am referring is that in Sugar 6 it is now possible to disable the required linking of Opportunities in the system to Accounts.

“So what?” You’re probably saying…

Well, for one, this decoupling is a breakaway from the “account-centric” approach to CRM upon which everyone has built CRM systems for the past couple decades or so. The fact that it was easy to do this in Sugar is a high testament to the value of an open, flexible platform.

Secondly, being able to associate opportunities to say Contacts, instead of Accounts, enables what I’d call social selling. You can sell, in a CRM system, to people.  This sounds redundant – but technically when we sell in B2B it is just that: a “business” selling to another “business.”

The implications here are vast. B2C firms can leverage CRM in interesting ways – using social media and contact management capabilities in CRM to identify, engage and convert individuals where they used to rely on retail and mass advertising to handle the last mile of conversion.  We can take a lot of the anonymity out of the B2C sales model.Think of it – call center agents could field incoming calls that get identified as Contacts in the system and then upsell or cross sell that Contact – not the Account. It is simply a faster and easier mode of closing deals – flexible to meet the needs of different business.

Also, by associating opportunities to a contact or group of contact can enable a social sales scenario for B2B: where we can identify the actual decision makers faster, and segment buyers inside an organization more easily – and use social media and networking tools to figure out which sales person should go after the contact – based on the level of authentic connection to that person.

I am thinking out loud here – but this simple change in one CRM system already has me thinking of multiple possibilities. It’ll be interesting to see where others take this – user organizations, partners etc. Social selling is here – for both B2B and B2C organizations; don’t miss the boat.

It was an interesting talk – and brought up some interesting points. I think the most interesting one was not necessarily around SaaS, cloud or open source technology but rather about what the culture of “open” means in the age of the cloud and the age of social.

Really, I think more and more people are feeling less “locked-in” by companies like Salesforce.com or other older proprietary vendors. People are seeing the myriad alternatives and the emergence and growth of all of these companies in the cloud proves that there is opportunity and a clear migration path from proprietary and closed SaaS apps.

End user organizations of all types are starting to reject the notion of traditional SaaS – finding point products on a single server farm an untenable scenario. Of course, there are a ton of organizations out there that do not care about the limitations of traditional SaaS – but there are sooo many companies that need access, ownership, control, etc. – all the things that “open” offers. This is not a zero-sum game here: Salesforce.com can continue to grow even as open cloud companies like SugarCRM become huge as well.

I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous documents from competitors trying to bash Sugar as a product based on it being open source. They liken the application to a pile of car parts – claiming you have to assemble parts to make Sugar work. That is obviously a bogus analogy: in reality as Larry notes SugarCRM is more like any car you’d buy off the lot that enables you to open the hood, make changes to the cosmetics and/or drivetrain, etc. You OWN the car! Traditional SaaS in a lot of ways is like leasing a car, where the hood is welded shut and there is a gas cap that only the dealer can open to fill – at their rates. (I hope Larry doesn’t mind my extending his analogy.)

But ultimately – as Marten and Larry point out – by empowering customers and giving them control of their data – you enter an engagement lifecycle that provides value and a relationship built on real benefits – and that is more powerful than any artificial lock-in strategy out there today.

Both Intuit and Sage Software saw serious outages and down times for their SaaS versions of their CRM and ERP product lines. That is some scary stuff, as these were not the small blips of a few minutes here and there that we have seen from some SaaS providers in the past – but rather major down times where users were locked out of their systems.

Some journalists and analysts are using these outages to point to a potential for users to revert back to more traditional on-premise application solutions.

I think, really, the answer is somewhere in between. The current (and for the foreseeable future) state of mobile applications and how they interact with the cloud proves, in my mind, that we are in the midst of an evolution – and there is no set answer in sight.

The open cloud can drive a lot of things. The least of which, is the fact that universal outages can become a thing of the past. By having multiple instances of applications manages in public, private and vendor clouds – a lot of the outage issues become moot. Nice.

But, the open cloud enables us to also leverage more open standards and web services to power some really cool stuff: social CRM that actually includes customer data and involvement and not simple collaboration tools stuck inside the firewall; mobile apps that take the best of rich internet applications and the best of resident applications to deliver robust data and awesome user experiences; and finally for the more complex applications deployments – control and flexibility that we have yet to see in any of the old SaaS models.

Many small business will benefit from the simple fact that open cloud applications are more secure and offer greater availability. But the control factor – from both a data, customization and sheer ownership of the project perspective – is resonating with every developer and developer-minded IT decision maker in businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Again, the open cloud is an evolution is cloud computing. It is not fundamentally different than SaaS – just better in a lot of ways thanks to years of watching, learning and bridging the gaps.

The conversations, all great and with very bright guys, got me to thinking. In so many ways, SugarCRM and Salesforce.com are alike. We both offer great CRM solutions and a strong platform on which to extend them. We both have some form of Cloud strategy. We both play more to smaller companies than many would like to admit (at least on Salesforce’s side).

But in a lot of ways the similarities end there. This is mainly due to two inherent factors in the SugarCRM model: open source and the channel-friendly nature of the company strategy.

What does this mean?

Ok, when I look at Salesforce.com, I can (in my opinion) safely say that Salesforce.com is a player in the CRM business.

…and in the Hosting business.

And in the middleware business.

And in the datacenter business.

And in the integration business.

And in the platform business.

And so on…

When you are “in the business” of something, it means you have competitors. And when I think about middleware, platforms, cloud infrastructure, data centers, integration, etc. – I think of HUGE companies like Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Rackspace, Informatica, to name just a few.

I DO NOT want to be competing with these guys.

I want to be partnering with them. And, guess what, SugarCRM does. In all the above areas, SugarCRM has awesome partners (Amazon, Rackspace, IBM, Microsoft, SnapLogic, Talend, Oracle) that has enabled us to give our customers choice, best of breed technology, and lower TCO. And on the flip-side, it has enabled SugarCRM to do what it does best – provide great CRM software at a great price, without a ton of infrastructure costs and other overhead that would divert attention away from that goal.

Whats more, these partners help create great options for our expansive VAR network – aiding our distribution model and putting more solutions out there to sell versus any type of competition. Cool.

Denis Pombriant makes a great point when he says “Don’t Forget About B2B CRM.“  We certainly have not…and I think it is why we have been so successful.

I am sure a lot of readers have an opinion one way or another here. I’d love to hear your thoughts…as this is a bit of thinking out loud to get a conversation started…