The End of Management

You have to read this very nice article about management and how it doesn’t fit into the 21st century:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439723695579664.html

Very good research collection on how the model of large managed corporations will be obsolete in the future and Enterprise 2.0 will get successful.

We can see many examples in the corporate landscape that follow the path of Enterprise 2.0 like

• SAS (listed in the article)
• Dell and Starbucks (collecting ideas from outside the company)
• Nike (design your own products)
• Zappos (flat management structure and motivated employees)

I am sure the list goes on and on (feel free to add examples in the comments section) and shows that there is a need for change in our thinking in regards to management and the way we (want to) work. That is why I wrote about the “Customer Relationship Model 2.0” and not referring to it as “Management” anymore…

What do you think about this? Another hype that will be forgotten in 5 years? Traditional Management is about to die? Or something in the middle?

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0,CRM 2.0,Management

Salesforce.com the big winner in 2009 ?!

The CRM Magazine has published the winners of their CRM Market Awards for 2009. Looks like SFDC is the dominant player, winning the top four categories (not really playing in the other categories).

Marc Benioff (SFDC CEO) is listed as one of the eight most influential leaders (next to Anthony Lye from Oracle and Tony Hsieh from Zappos). I am missing Paul Greenberg in this list…
It is noteworthy that Tony is in this list as someone that is actually doing CRM 2.0, not just talking about it or selling software that is supposed to implement successful CRM. This is a good example of how CRM 2.0 can look alike without spending too much thoughts on the technological or theoretical side of it, but just DOING it.
Tim O’Rielly (Enterprise 2.0) is also listed, because of his vision of the modern enterprise. Again, Tony has shown how this vision can be executed… Let’s hope Amazon can keep up this momentum and learn from Zappos rather than applying the Amazon culture.

Besides the extreme dominance of SDFC there is not a lot of surprises in the list of winners. Microsoft is massively gaining ground and I am unsure how Deloitte won the consultancies category – looks like they have done some successful projects to pass Accenture, IBM and Capgemini…

Amdocs (ex Clarify) does not show up anymore – looks like they killed the CRM business and put focus (back) on billing and their QPass and Cramer acquisitions. Although Rogers finally decided to upgrade to CES 7.5 and SmartClient, I am not seeing any new logos for Amdocs CRM in the past year).

Technorati Tags: CRM,Market Awards 2009

CRM 2.0 at Progress Software

Interesting to see that the company I work for (although not selling CRM) is rapidly adopting the CRM 2.0 theme.

Gary Conway, our new hired CMO, is talking about a real dialogue with customers and sees the employees as the best evangelists of the company and its products. This is actually a very good start into a cultural change within the company and is accompanied by a marketing campaign to promote the Progress brand, which is pretty unknown in the marketplace of SOA. This is particular surprising as  Progress Software has some of the best in class products there…

The new website is already life and features a life chat possibility which allows customers to ask questions w/o taking the receiver and dialing a number. It is really good to see that we’re going into the right direction here and it shows that CRM 2.0 or Social CRM is gaining momentum.

BTW: you might have noticed that the post frequency has dramatically reduced. This is due to me now actively writing on my Masters’ Thesis and therefore not allowed to publish some of the stuff that I am writing. But be sure to find a lot more when I am finished writing on August 13th (latest).

Stay tuned,
Guido

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Social CRM,Progress Software

Crisis Management in Web 2.0 times

After the post about the “Amazon Fail” incident, I stumbled upon a nice slideset about crisis management at Domino’s Pizaa from Taly at Trendspotting:

Crises Management: Trendsspotting Insights On Dominos Case Study

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Taly did some good research about crisis management and the presentations shows how this has changed in terms of reaction time (still to be improved) and used media type.

CRM 2.0 can help reacting to incidents like this one and avoid the Streisand effect that can cause major brand damage.

Here is some media coverage and Domino’s official response:

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Domino's Pizza,Crisis Management

I hate SIEBEL ?!

An interesting development going on that relates in two ways to the CRM 2.0 topic – Firstly it is about a CRM Software Vendor and secondly it happens in the Web 2.0…

Recently I noticed a new group on Facebook called “I hate SIEBEL” which turns out to be a gathering of people that are frustrated with the Siebel CRM Platform. My understanding is that the group was created as a platform to shout out the frustration at Telstra when they moved to the new CRM Front-(and Back-)End but has now evolved to a group of 1,556 (Jan 19th, 4:40pm) members posting 320 comments on the wall and seriously affecting the brand image of Siebel Systems and Oracle.

As I was involved in the efforts at Telstra to re-vamp their complete IT, I have a rough understanding how things work there – or supposed to work I must say. And although I was competing against Siebel and Oracle in my previous job at Amdocs and do not know what exactly is causing the trouble at Telstra, I doubt that Siebel and the CRM Frontend is the only root-cause for this.

Interesting enough how thing have evolved, though. Siebel gets hammered (being the visible part to the agents) for all the issues with Telstras NextGen BSS/OSS System. This seems to be a very good example of the dynamics in the Web 2.0 and the possible harm that users can do to a brand. It shows the importance of a CRM 2.0 strategy and the (currently) missing awareness in some companies.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Web 2.0,Strategy,Siebel,Oracle,Telstra,Facebook,BSS,OSS

Company Model of the future?

Zappos is not very much known over here in Europe, but the consistent empowerment of the own employees could be the future model for a successful CRM and corporate culture. Happy employees serve happy (and loyal) customers...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,corporate culture

Economic downturn to increase the need for CRM 2.0?

With the crisis on the financial markets and the possible economic downturn in the Mid and Long-Term, I was wondering is this will also slow down the rise of CMR 2.0 or if this will even increase the need for next gen. Customer Relation Management?

Analysts still see Software as a Service (SaaS) as the next big thing on the market - which would support the fusion of traditional CRM and Web 2.0. But will companies be able to re-think their Customer Relationship Model strategy or will they prioritize this down until times get better?

I believe that the majority will see CRM 2.0 as a chance to survive the 'hard times' and come stronger out of them as aver before. Or, to see it from the other side, the economic downturn could be a chance for a business to focus on the most important parts - their customers - and get rid of some of the bad behavior that we could see in the past years of globalization, rise of technology and new markets.

Interesting times ahead of us... Will be interesting to see what the outcome will be.

Technorati Tags: CRm 2.0,Markets,Economic Crisis,CRM strategy

Analogy to the TV revolution

Brian Halligan raised a good point - isn't the current (r)evolution of Customer Relationship Management (or Customer Relationship Model) very similar to the dramatic changes in Marketing with the introduction of the television 50 years ago?

The TV completely changed the way of marketing and advertising! Some companies were able to leverage the new tool and grow dramatically (Coca Cola, P&G, etc.) while others got stuck with their traditional way of marketing and did not grow or even went out of business.

Very similar to what the Web 2.0 does with CRM! Customers discovered how to avoid the traditional advertising - i.e. one way or push communication - overload and more and more using new ways to do their purchase decision. The social networking is playing an important role in this decision.

With a good CRM 2.0 strategy, companies can leverage this development and grow with it. Staying in the old fashioned structures might not be a good idea...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0,Revolution,Web 2.0,Marketing,Advertising

Oracle pushes Social CRM Applications

Oracle introduced the new Sales Prospector on sales.com. Although this is focused on SFA (and there is so much more to social CRM and CRM 2.0...) this is a good first step and shows that Oracle is listening to its customers (or at least to the analysts :)

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM Platforms, SFA, Oracle

CRM market growing at 23% in 2007

Gartner released their CRM report, stating that the CRM market was growing with 23% in 2007.
SAP leads the pack followed by Oracle (Siebel, PeopleSoft) and SalesForce.com.

Report says that (CRM) customers are more and more looking for social networking and related technologies. This will help players that actively develop into this direction (like SalesForce.com and Oracle). Amdocs - No. 4 in the market - might suffer from this trend with a missing CRM 2.0 strategy.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM Market, CRM Vendors

Apple's customer experience

I just read an article about Apple that was confusing me because they for sure create a fantastic product experience, but they are probably the most un-collaborative (does this word exist?!) company in this arena. Apple is actually doing everything possible to not communicate with its customers. Their policy is to keep everything product related as secret as possible. Even different departments within the company do not know what the others are doing. That avoids that somebody gets the full picture of a new product and accompanied with strict prohibitions in the employees contracts about what they are allowed to talk and to whom, it allows Apple to gain a competitive advantage that is massive (expected three years for the iPhone). When products leave the labs at apple, they are extremely stable and have only few bugs (although they are found quickly and the example of the iPod battery shows that consumers are able to strike back...).
The buzz that is created by new apple products allows Steve Jobs to leave customers in the dark during the development process without harvesting the negative feedback that everybody would expect. While Google motto is "Don't be evil", it looks like Apple's is the opposite. The leadership methods of Apple are antipodal to the open and collaborative ones that are common in most of the Hi-Tec and Software companies these days.
Interesting enough - Apple is tremendously successful with this strategy, gaining more and more market space from companies like Microsoft that recently started to open up to it's customers. Is this just an exception or will this market - which seems to be a precursor for CRM 2.0 strategies - fall back into traditional ways of leadership and marketing?

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Strategy, Collaboration, Apple
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

CRM market still growing fast

AMR says the market for CRM software will grow with double digit rates.
This is pretty interesting given the fact that so many CRM projects still fail... Do companies realize that buying a CRM software is not sufficient to be successful?

What about the required changes to company strategy and employee behavior? According to AMR the Web 2.0 technology is mostly demanded in the SFA arena - but what about service and support? What about marketing and innovation?

Let's hope the software vendors get the basics right so that users of their platforms will finally be able to focus on the required strategic and behavioral changes towards CRM 2.0...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM market, CRM platforms

The Customer changes... so do companies?

I know this youtube video is pretty old, but it still perfectly visualizes what happens if companies do not change and adopt the new Web 2.0 world...

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, CRM 2.0 Strategy, Customer, Change

Innovation centric

A. G. Lafley suggests in his book "The Game Changer" that companies should be centered on innovation. But he admits himself, that innovation that does not bring value to customers is nonsense...

So shouldn't the business be customer centric then?

I think there are many ways for customers to influence innovation and the products that come out of it. This graphic should visualize on a high level how that could look like:


The Web 2.0 will increase the influence of customers on innovation massively. Companies that actively support this development will profit from it and gain competitive advantage while companies ignoring it and staying with the old fashioned 'isolated' innovation process might not be able to create a customer experience that makes customers loyal.

Technorati Tags: CRM 2.0, Innovation, Customer Centric

Nike: first small steps into CRM 2.0?

Nike seems to be one of the first adopters of the CRM 2.0 concept with Nike+:



It looks like Nike does not only engage their buyers to build
communities and share their (positive) experience with the products,
they also listen to the users on the Web 2.0.

I will try to compile a list of companies adopting CRM 2.0 like concepts or at least having a similar vision in some kind to proof that CRM 2.0 really can make a difference.

The Outside-In View

One of the Amdocs Marketing messages is around the 'Outside-In Perspective', i.e. the customer view on CRM rather than the 'Inside-Out Perspective' that only considers company features and processes.

This is true on one side, but does not really cover both sides. It is not enough to listen to the customer, it is very crucial that a business can offer value and an experience to buyers that is unique on the market. This will require some leadership and customer education in a specific area.

Companies like Apple do a very good job listening to their customers, but this is not the only reason for their success. Steve Jobs is also a visionary and is able to show new ideas and uncommon products bringing two worlds together.

To make buyers to loyal customers (i.e. Apple fans) requires a real Two-Way CRM that is also able to provide an outstanding and personalized customer experience with the products and the company or brand!

So it is a nice feature of CRM suites to adapt to existing business processes, but it is also necessary to re-think these processes and make sure they allow Two-Way CRM.