Day 7 - Two Way CRM

Currently most of the CRM activities are initiated and driven by business rather than the customer. With CRM 2.0, this can change as the customer will play a much more active role in this relationship.
By providing data and deciding whom to provide the data, the customer actively steers the purchase decision and will speak to companies on the same level. Ideally, the relationship will be much deeper and the company is rewarded by true loyalty from the customer.
While most of the current marketing activities are based on analyst recommendations which derive their data from anonymous surveys the might - or might not - represent the consumers' demand, CRM 2.0 can help to let the customer take part in the creation and development of new products.
This will not only lead to new ideas and inventions, but also save cost and deepen customer retention.

Day 5+6 : Sharing vs. Information hiding

On my way back from Zurich yesterday, I had some thoughts about sharing and the importance of sharing knowledge and information in the Web 2.0 and therefore also with CRM 2.0.
First thing that I recognized is that I still wasn't able to get a copy of a finished masters' thesis from somebody else and was unsuccessful to find one in the internet (will probably try again later today...). This shows the current mindset in our society and the fact that nobody is keen on sharing anything - especially not knowledge - with others if there is no good reason for it.
I added this under the "Problems" branch in the mind map as I see this as a crucial factor to be successful with CRM 2.0 and reach the critical mass necessary to keep it running:
"How can we change this mindset and get users to contribute in social networks by sharing their knowledge? What incentives are there for them?"

Thinking about this, I started looking for an easy way to start sharing stuff for this thesis and came across Google's "Shared Stuff" page. Basically this is an easy way to share Links to websites that you are surfing on. You just have to add a link to the Links-toolbar and click this to share the website your are currently visiting.
Find my shared links at http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=108398601856201089428

I will also add this on the Blog's links (on the right).

As soon as I find an easy way to make the mind map and other documents available, I will upload them and post the link here as well. The thesis document could be shared as a Google Docs file, but I think this requires a Google account to read and edit and I am not sure if Google Docs offer all necessary formatting options for a thesis document... need to check on that.

Day 4 - Data Security

As I am a member of social networks and a customer to various companies as well, I tried to think of any reservations that I would have about this. And the first thing that came to my mind is obviously data security?
How can I as a user or customer control who is using my data for what? We all know how many spam we get every day, but this is sent more or less blindly to a large number of recipients.
When companies have more data about me, will this lead to even more unwanted email or will this filter the advertising and reduce the amount of communications while increasing the quality?

I think this could be a tightrope walk for companies that think about implementing CRM 2.0. A strict governance needs to be put into place that ensures that the customer data is not abused in any way. Any affairs in this area could seriously harm a company or its affected brand.

Day 3 - Googles OpenSocial

A very interesting project is Googles OpenSocial API. This API is intended to allow the integration of existing social networks (like LinkedIn or Xing) into new applications or mashups without having to learn or re-engineer the various APIs of the social network application.
Quote from the OpenSocial website: "The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING."

This could be easily used as a basis to retrieve data from various sources and not only get enhanced information about the single customer, but also about their relationship amongst each other and how groups are created or influenced.
A big topic will be data security and the aceptance level within the users of social networks. Will customers be willing to share personal information if they know that they will be used by companies they don't know?

Day 2 - Customer Experience

While reading through many articles about CRM 2.0 or the development of CRM in general, I am coming along the "Experience" notion more and more often.
It looks like many companies that sell CRM software or services have finally understood that CRM is more than a software for contact management and that outstanding customer service can be a differentiator for companies when their products become a commodity.
This awareness changes the way CRM solutions and services are marketed and also their functionality. Many companies include Web 2.0 elements into their products to follow this trend and fulfill customer requirements.
So it looks like there is some demand on the market for CRM 2.0 and the software vendors are picking up that trend already. But still I have the feeling that there is no common definition of what CRM 2.0 really is and how it can add business value to customers (and the customer's customers).

Mind-Map

I started capturing links in my browser's bookmark list and put new ideas into a mind map as I go ahead with my research.
I will find a way to share the bookmarks and documents that I create so that the latest version is always accessible.


I am using FreeMind to create and update the mind map.

Day 1 - The Beginning

So I am finally starting to document the progress of my masters' thesis in a weblog...

Today (Monday April 14th 2008) is the beginning of my two weeks holiday that I have dedicated to work on my masters' thesis about CRM 2.0.
This paper will be crown of my two year executive MBA studies at FOM in Munich.

I decided to use Blogger.com as a host for this blog because I already have my personal blog here and got used to the functionality that Google offers with Blogger.com.
It turns out there are hundreds of hosting services available for weblogs, but as always, you use what you are used to, so I am back here :) During the blog creation, I found that there is already a blog from Michael W. Thomas that talks about CRM that uses the "crm2" sub-domain, so I choose "crm2-0" which leads to "crm2-0.blogspot.com" for the complete url.

I plan to a post daily status and additional milestones that I pass along my way towards the final paper. In the previous days and weeks I already had some ideas about the topic and did some research and initial reading. Looks like there is already some material available in the internet that talks about the web 2.0 in combination with CRM. I hope that my professional background, selling CRM software for the past eight years, and my personal experience with social networking and web 2.0 will bring some new aspects and findings in this area.

Next Steps:

• Do more research around CRM 2.0
• Create a mind map so I don't forget anything
• Create an outline or high level description what the thesis will be about
• Talk to some professors at FOM to find out if the topic is OK for a masters' thesis