I was having a bit of a bad day yesterday. My Comcast internet connectivity was spotty, and Webex had a blip and did not allow me to speak on a very well attended webcast I was hosting.

After getting frustrated with these events – I did what any social media geek does when annoyed – I tweeted. While I expected the usual “Comcast cares” Twitter users (as described in Paul Greenberg’s latest version of CRM at the Speed of Light) to reply – I was surprised that Webex very quickly replied to my snarky tweets with an offer to help.

But what followed – in my opinion – showed the importance of having strong core CRM and tight escalation rules to supplement a twitter-based support team.

It was nice to get a response from the Webex Twitter handle – asking about my issues – and I responded. While the actions did placate my anger, my issue fell into the common “Twitter vacuum:” I never heard back from that account again. However, “ComcastBonnie” friended me, asked for some account credentials and came back shortly with a direct message explaning that there was an area issue and it was being worked on. Swell.

The point? To bring Paul Greenberg back into it – the “blocking and tackling” of CRM is as important as ever even as we discover new channels and processes to both sell to and support customers. I am not saying Cisco/Webex has a bad CRM system in place – I just did not see strong CRM 101 in place during the Twitter exchange.

I am often asked how we see SugarCRM as a social CRM tool – what “makes us a social CRM product,” etc.  My answer is always that we specialize in the core CRM, but provide simple tools and the flexibility to add ANY channel to core CRM to make an intuitive and valuable approach to social CRM. I do believe that for most businesses – this is key. Brand monitoring, deep relationship analysis and inbox analysis – all cool stuff for sure. But when it comes to simply being able to reach prospects and customers – and either provide them relevant information or a delightful experience – core CRM can not be forgotten.

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Setting the Stage:

You are doing some research, getting ready to purchase a new life insurance policy. The research starts slowly, you go to a few websites, figure you will register, maybe even give up your email address. It could be there was some bit of value offered, access to the interesting looking calculator that will help you determine the amount you need. The calculations are based on a combination of your risk profile (entered), age, family situation and financial situation. It does not seem like a big deal, and you forget about for a few weeks, then your significant other reminds you (for the 5th time) to get it done. So, you go back to the website, it remembers you, but hey, that is convenient, and you fill-in the form, asking someone to call you. About an hour later, Bob calls, and asks if it is good time to talk.

Circa 1990 – This scenario barely existed, maybe one or two companies even considered this possibility, much less the user actually going to the website and inputting the data. If Bob calls, we are all impressed that the lead actually made it to his desk. It was probably put there via sticky note.

Circa 2000 – The scenario was in more common use. You might have received an email follow-up from the company. The details they know about you are specific and isolated to what information you have put on the web form. The majority of companies are using some form of CRM. The process is mostly there, but the data is lacking.

Circa 2010 and the Age of the Social Web

Bob makes the phone call, and he knows a whole about you, your family, your recent trip to Maui. The lead scoring system has a good idea how many times you have visited the website. Bob knows that you have played with the calculator, maybe even some of the data you dumped in there (that should be fodder for debate). By putting in your email address, Bob has access to whatever data you choose to share, or forget not to share (debate topic number 2).

• Linkedin –  Your job history is available, maybe what some others think of you (references) and other social links you like to share.
• Blog – The Linkedin profile points to your blog, where you mention your trip to Maui (even though it is business focused blog)
• Twitter – even with the disclaimer “these tweets are my own blah blah,” it is open and public.
• Flickr – The blog references a few photos, but upon further inspection, getting to the other photos is pretty easy.

Fun photo 1 – the cool shot of the bungy jumping!!
Fun photo 2 – sitting by the pool, drinking something, but you have a cigar in your mouth (oops)

What is Creepful?

The example here is clearly a B2C (Business to Consumer) example. I do not think however that it is too far from reality-  it is all completely possible, maybe it has happened to you. I would find it really creepy, yes creepy, if Bob talked to me and brought up the trip to Maui. The better part of discretion would say that Bob needs to be very cautious about  the way in which he uses this information. If he is a good salesperson, then simply having the knowledge might be enough (see Martin’s first post).

What if Bob starts talking to much about the trip to Maui, and begins to “know a bit too much” – that is creepy. Now, should Bob tell you what he knows? How should Bob use, or ignore the information he has available? We will get to that important discussion in a moment. The answer to the question is simple, but hard to execute.

Creepful is the perception by the customer (past, present or future) that the company (you) either have access to too much information, or are using the information available in a way that goes against the spirit of social sharing.

It is just not that simple

Unfortunately, this problem is going to get worse, before it gets better; if it ever does get better. Oh, and for the definition above, I am not really going to get religious about it; it is a starting point. If someone wants to change the name, have at it. If you want to change the definition, please feel free, the concept is all that matters. What about this scenario, or the way the information is used (the cigar pictures or bungy jumping to deny you a policy)? is ‘Creepful’?Or, is this just good business practices by Bob for his firm?

As both Martin, and Clint noted in the earlier post, the key may not be the technology, rather how the technology is used. The good relationship builders will continue to understand how to create and maintain solid relationships based on mutual respect and mutual trust. Technology might make certain things easier, but it will make an equal number of things more complicated, as noted above. In a business to business setting, the additional components required will include value creation and co-creation. Again, technology is a facilitator, not a replacement. It is like waxing your skis,  yes you can go down the hill faster, whether you ski in control is completely up to you (a ski metaphor seemed important, as I sit in Miami, Florida in 95 degrees and 90% humidity!!)

What do you think? Are you willing to share a story? too much too little…

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I have been swamped with Sugar 6 release stuff – and haven’t had a ton of time to blog or even get on Twitter to see what’s up. Thanks to both Mitch for always keeping the blog fresh with ideas and to Larry for a great guest post on SugarCRM and the nature of open source…

During my demos with analysts and press, as well as an interesting on/offline recurring convo I’ve been having with Sugar co-founder Clint Oram – and interesting thing appeared to me.  Several analysts asked me to demonstrate the social aspects of Sugar 6 and how it could consume data from Facebook. I showed them some basic mashup capabilities – but there was no real “reason” behind what I was building for them on the fly and it all seemed superficial.

Just linking to sites, or data feeds, will not make your sales people social sellers.

There seems to be two sides to social media and how it powers sales and marketing initiatives. On the one side, we can glean a ton of interesting demographic and other targeting and segmenting data from the vast amount of social data people freely give up about themselves. This can “point us in the right direction” in terms of finding leads, feet in the door, etc. Of course, how this information is leveraged in terms of the conversation involves a whole ‘nother series of arguments – as per the “insightful vs. creepy” debate Clint, Mitch and myself have been having.

On the other side, sales and marketing professionals can leverage social media and networking tools to connect with potential, new and existing customers and build stronger relationships with less effort than could previously be achieved. As Clint noted in a tweet to me – “Really leveraging the social profile well for [social CRM] purposes is the key to putting the R back into CRM.”

Social selling is a skill, and I think some will “get it” and leverage social in many different ways to their benefit. Some won’t. Just as call center agents talk about “soft skills” that great service reps have; skills that in some ways can not be easily taught – great social sellers will have a similar skill set.

Many of the great social sellers are already doing a lot of what it takes to leverage social in a powerful manner. They have been “social” without the easy tools for years – now they are more empowered.

Where do you fit in this model?  Are you a social profile aggregator, or do you leverage social data to enhance real engagements, or both?

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Outsiders Note: This is the first  Outsiders post by SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin. As Larry explains below – the immense buzz around SugarCRM’s landmark release of Sugar 6 revived some questions around SugarCRM’s role and influence as an open source company. With such a long and storied history in the open source movement, I thought it fitting to have Larry share his thoughts directly on what open means to us at SugarCRM…

For an in-depth and insightful podcast with Larry explaining his points further, check out Larry’s NetworkWorld podcast from last week.

Some Thoughts on Open

By Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM

The announcement of General Availability of Sugar 6 this week has prompted some questions about SugarCRM’s business model and the role of Open Source at SugarCRM. (Read about it all here: [1][2][3][4])

Open Source is at the heart of SugarCRM’s business.  Well over half of our engineering effort produces code that is released under an OSI approved license.  We have three versions of our Sugar CRM product: Community Edition, Professional Edition, and Enterprise Edition. The Community Edition is licensed under version 3 of the AGPL, and has been licensed under some version of the GPL or AGPL since early 2007. Prior to that it was available under several variants of the MPL.

SugarCRM does not release 100% of the code we develop under an Open Source license; Sugar Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition are distributed under a commercial license.  This mix of Open Source and commercially licensed software offerings has allowed us to build a successful business while creating an innovative, award winning, affordable, and open CRM solution. From the beginning SugarCRM has always had this mixed model. We benefit from this model, and, as Marten Mickos says, believe that the world of Free and Open Source Software benefits as well.

SugarCRM always makes available full source code to all of our customers.  In all cases (Community, Professional, or Enterprise), our customers receive full source code to our products. In all cases our customers have the right to run our products anywhere: in their own datacenters, in our datacenters, or at any of a variety of cloud service providers. In all cases our customers own their data and have full access to their complete database. We care deeply about those rights.  They are at the heart of our differentiation as a company.

Open Source code is just part of that.  “Open” to us means more than source code.  It’s an entire philosophy about how we do business and how we empower our customers.

To riff on an analogy I originally heard from Red Hat founder Bob Young, would you buy a car with the hood locked shut and where only the dealer who sold you that car had the key?  Imagine for a minute what that would mean.  Only the dealer could perform regularly scheduled maintenance.  You couldn’t modify the engine in any way, such as tuning for higher performance or modifying it to run on alternative fuels. Imagine you were on a trip and the car broke down.  While you might have the skills to fix it, or might find a local mechanic who could fix it, you wouldn’t have those options.  Only the dealer has the key, and only the dealer has the right to touch that engine.  Imagine how frustrating that lack of control would be.

Why then would you run your business on software where you have no control?  Where you are entirely at the mercy of the vendor?  Where you did not control your own destiny?

At SugarCRM we are passionate about giving our customers that control. With full access to Sugar’s source code, customers can take control of their own destiny.  If they so choose, they can make enhancements specific to their business needs.  If something breaks, they can open the hood themselves, or have a “mechanic” of their own choosing open the hood for them.

But empowering customers means not just sharing with them our source code (under either an Open Source or commercial license), but also making sure that they have the keys to the hood so they can control their own destiny.  How is this different?  Consider a ‘traditional’ hosted (Software as a Service, or SaaS) CRM provider. Your data resides on their servers, under their control.  If their systems go down, you go down.  If it doesn’t operate the way you want it to, you’re out of luck.  Even if they were to give you access to their source code, you are still not in control of your own destiny, because you wouldn’t be allowed to modify it, or even run it, if you wanted to.  You might have the blueprints, but you still can’t get under the hood.  Tim O’Reilly has been preaching this challenge to Free and Open Source Software for many years. Marten Mickos makes the same observation about closed web services in his recent Computer World UK article.

At SugarCRM our customers have not only full access to their data, but they have that access in the original database form so that they can truly control their own destiny.  They can move that database to another cloud service provider or to servers on their own private cloud or in their own data center.  As a SugarCRM customer that choice is in your control.

Further, our open model has created a vibrant partner network that allows our customers to select the level of service they want, while at the same time giving them full control and options for the future.  For example, you may be the hands-on person who likes to open the hood and change your own oil.  Or you may prefer to buy a complete service agreement with your car, where everything is included and the dealer takes care of everything.  Our open model has enabled a network of partners that offer whatever level of service you need, from do-it-yourself to full service.  As a SugarCRM customer that choice is in your control.

Our open, ”run anywhere”, model enables similar choice and control in where your data resides and your applications runs.  That may mean you choose to let us run Sugar for you out of our datacenters.  Or you may choose to run it on cloud services such as Amazon, Rackspace, or Windows Azure.  Or you may choose to run it on your own servers on your own private cloud.  As a SugarCRM customer that choice is in your control.

Bottom line: Open is a core value for us a SugarCRM.  That manifests itself in part through our commitment to our Open Source Community Edition, but is pervasive in our entire company philosophy in which our customers receive full source code to our products, have the right to run our products anywhere, and own their own data. Open is at the heart of our business.

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In Part I of this series (it was not a series before, but now that there is a Part II…) I started to dissect a research paper, highlighted by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, where he tackles the topic of “IT in the age of the Cloud”. Mr. Wladawsky-Berger references a study on The Future of Corporate IT by The Corporate Executive Board. I will continue to use the following definition of Socialization: ‘the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained’ – which is grabbed from wikipedia.

IT are not the only ones changing, we are too

As many have written about during the past couple of years, there are many reasons for the increased use of Cloud and/or SaaS based services. Topics such as the economy: “do more with less” or “My IT department just says ‘No’ so I stopped asking and just did it’, as well as many many other points of fodder give the bloggers plenty to discuss.  What ever the core reason, or the core set of reasons, everyone is more tech savvy than they were just a few years ago.

Greater Business Partner Responsibility

A generation of business leaders and end users is emerging with greater technology knowledge and confidence. They see advanced, user- friendly technology as an everyday occurrence, and can recite stories of companies gaining industry leadership through technology. At the same time that business leaders’ expectations, and their ability to articulate those expectations, are quickly rising, the cloud gives them access to unprecedented technology scale and expertise. The fact that cloud services cannot be extensively customized levels the playing field; business units cannot customize cloud applications but neither can the IT function.

I did not include the entire quote, as I believe it is a bit confusing and I still am not clear what the purpose  of the following is, maybe you do “…a greater role for business partners in areas where the value of differentiation outweighs the need integration.” In my mind, this goes against a point of yesterday’s topic (from the same research report) which is that information plus process is differentiation, but I am wandering, apologies. But, it does not make sense to me.

Of course I need to go after the part of this which states that ‘cloud services cannot be customized’. I am not going after it just because I am writing this on a SugarCRM sponsored blog either. No matter what you think, if people could not get what they need to get done, done then neither Cloud nor SaaS would be as big and important as we all know they are today.

It needs to go beyond Business Partners, as described

All companies need to consider technological, and information architectural concepts beyond just departments. While this sounds like a quote from Captain Obvious, maybe it is not as clear as I would like to think. Many others, smarter than I, talk about concepts like co-creation, value creation, buyer creation, community, just to name a few. None of these, whether in concept or practice (for the forward thinking organizations among us) can possibly operate in a silo. Walled gardens do not help anyone – yes, security of both data and information needs to be addressed.

Who are you working with? Are you a department focused, company focused, organization, partner…what? Please share, we would like to hear your story. If you are not comfortable post on a blog, send me a note (mitch.lieberman at gmail). More importantly, what role should IT play in your world? While we are all more tech savvy, do we all really understand the technical parts of running a business? I know a lot of really social IT folks, they get it and are simply waiting to help!

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I know the subject line sounds kind of creepy. But, Co-conspirator Martin Schneider wrote a few weeks ago “What is ITs role in the Social CRM Revolution” and I could not help myself. Then, on this bright and sunny Monday morning, I see a post by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, where he tackles the topic of “IT in the age of the Cloud” The article was forwarded to me by friend Prem Kumar (who we should all welcome to the US for a few weeks). Just to be thorough, I am using the following definition of Socialization: ‘the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained’ – which is grabbed from wikipedia.Where Martin raised some great points in his post, but claimed not to have the answers, I will tell you know that I have all the answers! Uh, what was the question again?

IT is definitely changing – changing to what is the real question

Mr. Wladawsky-Berger references a study on The Future of Corporate IT by The Corporate Executive Board.While the study identified did a have a few scary facts about numbers (like “IT function will diminish and its headcount fall by 75% or more”), I am not going there today, I am going to focus elsewhere. The post and the source are both worth taking a look at but I would like to highlight just one or two (as I am writing, I have not decided yet it is going to be one or two) of the core shifts identified.

Information Over Process:

The rise of technology delivered as a service, or the cloud, will significantly reduce sources of competitive advantage from information technology. In theory, a start-up could use the cloud to obtain the same functionality, scale, and quality as an industry leader. Differentiation will lie in how an organization manages change, integrates its service portfolio, and critically, exploits the information the services generate.
The nature of demand for information technology also is changing. Most employees are now knowledge workers. Social media is becoming vital for customer and internal communication, and data volumes continue to rise. As a result, in the business areas that drive growth—innovation, marketing, sales, customer service—up to 80% of IT enablement opportunities relate to business intelligence, collaboration, or the customer interface. At the heart of each of these opportunities is the need to capture, integrate, and interpret information, both structured and unstructured.

I like this one, almost agree with it, and think that is going to be crucial to CRM, Social CRM and Social Business moving forward. I do believe that information is crucial, critical and also really important. More important than the information however, is what you do with it. I would like to think that I am a smart person, I would also like to think that the readers of this post are also smart. The question then is, what would happen if we came upon the same information at the same time? So, I do not see this as really a shift from information to process, just, well, a whole lot more information available to everyone, thus process is even more crucial. This may not really change the point about who has the job, role, function of dealing with this stuff, as I have always said, technologists and business strategists need to work closely together. IT will shift from managing technology in the form of machines to managing technology in the form of processes (remember the good ole days of data processing).

OK, I guess I am going to limit myself to one today, seems like there is a lot to come back to at a later time.  To my starting point about the Socialization bit, I do not think it is all that complex, really. IT, like everyone else simply needs to alter the focus over time to information and information processing. Getting the business users the right information at the right time, which for a while I believe is going to still require some technology. What do you think? I am looking forward to dissecting this further, could be fun

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I have been witnessing some strange things lately, not sure if you have noticed it too. For one, it is nearly 95 degrees outside, and I live in northern Vermont. I am not used to the heat; however the heat wave might be having a impact, making people do strange things. The strangeness I am witnessing is that people are nitpicking on every single word used or being contrarian, just to be contrarian (some blog reference guide suggests this is a good way to get page views). People suggest that if a word is used too much it is a buzzword. If it is used way too much it is hype. If you really go overboard (by buzzing the hype),  you have jumped the shark; “a moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise” (a Happy Days reference, so it has to be cool).

The subject line of this post is something I tweeted earlier today. Actually, the whole Tweet was “Reputation is a goal, building Trust is a goal; Transparency is not goal, it is a path to each“. This was in response to a typical contrarian post, someone picking on the word, but this one bothered me. For starters, transparency is not a goal, it is a characteristic of a person or if you have a strong leader, an organization. I believe it is a very important characteristic, one that often leads to building trust and then a supporting element of a positive reputation. I take issue with selectively being transparent, you are or you are not. That does not mean that for security, competitive or privacy reasons, certain information does not need to be held close. Stating that certain things cannot be shared is transparent, as long as everyone is treated equally and it is stated.

When doing just the slightest bit of research today, I came upon a good post, which quoted The 2010 Edelman Global Trust Barometer:

For the first time trust and transparency rank as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services.  In fact, in the U.S. and in much of Western Europe, those two attributes rank higher than product quality and far outrank financial returns.

In other words, I am not making this up, this is real and you should probably pay attention. I could pick on the wording a little, as I did with my Tweet, and suggest the modest differentiation between trust and transparency. Trust is something earned. There are many things which go into earning it, and it trust is one of (maybe the core) the components which make up reputation. Many believe that transparency, the ability to witness with an unobstructed view, what is going on, helps organizations to build trust – maybe even more quickly. If I can witness how an organization treat others, for example, I may be willing to take a risk and ‘trust them’ sooner than if knew very little about them. Just for completeness, ‘open’ is not the same as transparency, open is one level deeper. Open suggests that I can not only see through the window, but I can walk through the front door and participate.

What led me to this post this week, in addition to what I mentioned above? The FastCompany influencer project, which I talked about in a previous post here. In addition to everything I talked about above. Is it possible to be influenced (positively) by someone who I do not trust? Is trust a binary thing – I do or I do not? For example, I can trust that you want to do the right thing, but that does not mean I trust you to do the right thing (just try getting in a car with a new driver). The topic of influence and trust are aligned, this is an area I hope to explore further, but it is not simple. I do know that Trust can be fragile, and gaining it takes work, but it can be gone in an instant.

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As most of you know, I left SugarCRM at the beginning of May, but I continue to work with the great people here (there?). I have good friends at Sugar, many were friends before and I am enjoying the continued engagement. While I was at Sugar, the senior leadership supported my endeavors into the Social space, a bit before Sugar (the product or company) was quite ready – 18 months ago. I worked hard to remain objective through my tenure at Sugar, to the point that friends and co-workers were sometimes wondering what exactly I was doing. I rarely said “SugarCRM is better” or “We are the best” (Much to the chagrin of friends Jeff Campbell or Chris Harrick). Now that I am no longer with SugarCRM, from an objective vantage point, I can say some things that might have had less meaning than if I were sitting on the ‘other side of the Firewall’.

My focus and passion over the past 18 months is something that goes by many names. You might call it CRM 2.0, Social CRM, Sales 2.0 or CRM in the Age of the Social Web, it does not matter. Whatever it is called, it is and always has been about the people and connecting the dots. That is the unique (and fun) part about working in a technology space, where the main topic is talking with and about people and relationships. CRM technology is the essential foundation upon which your customer engagement strategy should be built and evolved to meet your goals and objectives as an organization. That said, CRM comes from your people, processes and culture, not the functionality of a product. Successful CRM implementations have and always will include a ‘Social’ element, whether you add the word or not. What this means is that Customer Engagement, the manifestation of CRM, is about people being people and acting at a human level.

Even when building a Platform, it is about the People

As Sugar gets ready to launch a new version (Sugar 6) of the application (It has been in Beta for a while, so it must be happening soon), I wanted to give kudos to the team. Like I said above, it is all about the people. But recognition for doing some good things on the technical side is important. The SugarCRM approach to building a solid CRM application is similar in philosophy to how an organization needs to leverage their ecosystem. An ecosystem is social, simply by what it is – people working with people and companies working with companies. As a business, you make decisions on a daily basis regarding the boundaries of what you are going to provide (products and services) to your customers and what is ‘out of bounds’. Now, saying something is ‘out of bounds’ is very different from not helping your customers. What is means is that you will work within your ecosystem to help the customer get their job done.

The Social Web is growing at a blistering pace. There are products and technologies popping up daily to help us all ‘navigate’ this explosion in communication channels, formats and types. For any one vendor to add all the required elements necessary for your industry, geography, culture and the customer socialgraph (where customers hang out on the social web) is a very tall order. I believe that for the 3-5 year window, the best approach for any medium size business, or department within larger organizations will be to utilize a platform that can be extended easily and has the right partnerships (technological and implementation) to create the optimal solution. In the Social Web, your customers are constantly evolving, companies change, products change and that means that CRM is becoming less about initial implementation and more about ongoing incremental improvement. The job of the technologist is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This is what CRM is about.

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By now, many of you have probably noticed (or ignored) the Fast Company Influencer Project, an attempt to measure and analyze influence via Twitter. It is an experiment gone awry. According to the Fast Company Editor, Bob Safian, this is what it is about:

The big-picture goal of this project, editorially, is not a popularity contest. It is part of a real-time experiment in how influence spreads and who spreads it. It isn’t perfect, but we believe drilling into the data will yield useful information and spark insights–including the kinds of discussions going on here about whether more clicks really equates to more influence.

The text above was posted as a comment on Esteban Kolsky’s post “Breaking Rant: Fast Company is Incredibly Stupid“. In addition to his core post, which takes a rather direct – typical Esteban – approach to the whole thing, there are some great contributors in the comment section. First, this is my favorite part of what Esteban had to say:

It does not measure influence, by any stretch of the imagination,it simply measures reach (as well as how popular people are).  I could mount a campaign across networks to get people to click on my link, my reach across all networks is close to 120,000 people (I think I got this from some web-based tool or another).

I would add to Esteban’s point, as did Maria Ogneva (Attensity) and many others who are actually influencers. This is simply a veiled popularity contest, but it has likely had the side effect of decreasing the influence of the magazine itself. At least it has for me.  The fun part, in watching this is that some actually believe that this a real measure of influence. But, I will let you be the judge – no pressure, do not click the following link if you do not want, Martin, nor anyone else will be upset if you do not click the–>> Please Vote <<–button, right there. There is actually a quick Twitter poll behind the link, and the results might be interesting, but I will be the very first to admit that the data behind the poll is skewed, has little meaning and does not measure either reach or influence, but please take the vote, just for fun.

Applying an Unbalanced Force

From the description of of the project, I take particular issue with the following:

What the Influence Project aims to do is remove some of the mystery behind the inherent passivity of social network numbers. This experiment will show what happens when an individual takes an audience at rest and applies an unbalanced force–through suggestion, advice or direction–that converts it into an army of action.

Really?!  By asking people to ‘Tweet’ about influence in order to measure influence is not pushing things to simply an unbalanced state, but an unnatural state. What will be found is how people can game the system, not actually have influence when or to whom it matters. The simple fact that so many high profile bloggers (not me, others) are talking about it has already skewed any meaningful results. The only way to truly understand some of these concepts, call it influence or really the science behind Complex Adaptive Systems is to measure it when no one is looking. Otherwise, you come up against another long standing principle, which basically says that the simple act of measuring something alters the outcome (see here for more details).

The Social Web is a strange, dynamic and constantly evolving beast. The rules are unwritten, thus building a strategy around it is not easy. What does this have to do with CRM? Absolutely nothing, except that the Social Web is where your customers hang-out.

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Sometimes, the simplest technology change can enable the most profound change in business processes. I just had a talk with our new CMO Nick Halsey about something that we have not really talked much about leading up to the Sugar 6 launch.

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.

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