Social Media is Corporate Media
I incurred what I still regard as an uneducated but accepted opinion of social networks among mature C-level executives during a customer visit yesterday. Couched with a tongue in cheek posture, a colleague who I respect greatly commented that "those social networks are a clausal waste of time, productivity and money to corporate America ... I can only imagine how much company time and money is burned by our younger staff browsing 20-something personal profiles in networks that add no value to anything the company does."
Ouch. It's been my experience that these types of opinions often come from experienced professionals who themselves who have not engaged in social media, have not recognized the transition from consumer networks to enterprise knowledge sharing and who often don't recognize the corporate benefits available from these tools.
While social networks became popular due to sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, many forward thinking pioneers in corporate America have transitioned these ideas to their own networks (inside the firewall) for their own benefits - such as knowledge sharing and collaboration within the enterprise. IBM's Blue Pages, Deloitte's D Street, Microsoft's Town Square and Best Buy's BlueShirt Nation are corporate America's versions of consumer networks applied for enterprise purposes. And don't make the mistake of discounting these sites as vehicles for photo sharing or electronic water cooler chat - these sites are proven to accelerate and extend more meaningful connections among co-workers, thereby, dramatically influencing collaboration and cooperation across otherwise silo'd departments, divisions and geographical boundaries. The benefits are magnified when applied to virtual teams and remote staff who oftentimes otherwise lack a feeling of participation or belonging. Stronger relationships create the foundation for a more effective enterprise. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on August 16, 2008 in Web 2.0 & Social Media
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Corporate Social Responsibility Programs
This morning a long time Aplicor customer asked me for the net costs incurred when implementing the Aplicor GREEN initiative or if I was aware of other similar information so that he could evaluate the costs involved for implementing his own corporate social responsibility program. The good news for my well intentioned customer and others who may be considering similar initiatives, is that the impetus behind corporate social responsibility programs (CSRs) has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and no longer needs to be thought of as only a cost-based model.
Many CSRs originated in the prior decades as a means to mitigate legal risk and exposure. However, today's CSRs can be redirected away from risk avoidance and toward customer alignment and business development efforts. By directing social actions toward causes which employees, customers, partners, industry practitioners and/or other constituents find meaningful, CSRs can play a part in brand building, customer communications and even new customer acquisitions.
A challenge to many is determining what types of social programs your customers or other stakeholders find meaningful. A 2008 study on this topic by IBM's Institute for Business Value discovered that while two-thirds of business leaders focus CSR programs to create revenue streams, less than a quarter of the business leaders actually understood the types of social programs their customers found relevant or worthwhile. The study also noted that despite this gap, companies which integrate CSR programs with customer empathy gain long term results and clear business benefits. The study's results illustrated that over half of the 250 business leaders stated that their CSR programs provided them an advantage over their top competitors. As well stated by the Economist, "the simple solution is that business should concentrate on the sweet spot where corporate initiatives are good for profits and welfare." More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on July 29, 2008 in Organizational Framework
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CRM Evolves With CRM 2.0
One of the most frequent questions I get on the blog is "what's next for CRM?". My response generally includes comments supporting the evolution of customer facing business processes, the delivery of more effective and actionable CRM analytics to greater numbers of knowledge workers, new technology tools which will provide more immediate and direct customer learning, transparent integration of CRM into the larger context of enterprise-wide ERP systems, and CRM 2.0. Inevitably, the comment on CRM 2.0 is the topic which then garners far more follow-on questioning. I'm not a CRM 2.0 expert, but I read the blogs, study the research, talk to the folks that are the experts and try to assimilate this next CRM wave into Aplicor's product evolution. I'll use this blog post to both explain what I think CRM 2.0 is and how it can be leveraged for sustained competitive advantage.
CRM 2.0 requires new thinking and recognition that the customer relationship balance with social customers has shifted from the company believing it controls the relationship with its product and service directed activities to one where the customer has injected himself into a more shared relationship, is part of a much larger virtual community and is more intent on being heard and recognized as part of the solution. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on June 1, 2008 in Web 2.0
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Top 5 CRM Mistakes You Can Avoid
Reading about failed CRM implementations can be disheartening, to say the least. However, it can be very beneficial to look closer at failed attempts, as we can all learn from these errors. Though any number of problems can occur in CRM, the following five mistakes are common and avoidable:
- Pushing the Customer Aside –
The "C" in CRM stands for customer and far too many professionals lose sight of that once they become too involved with numbers, products and new technology. No matter how grand your strategy or how dependent you become on cutting-edge tools, the customer must always remains your number one priority.
- Taking on Too Much at Once –
Must I use that tired cliché again? Here it goes: Rome wasn't built in a day. You need to plan a CRM schedule that takes on projects logically and sequentially. You won't see instant results and you aren't supposed to, so be sure to break each project into measurable steps in order to change the big picture.
- No Strategic Vision –
Sure, Aplicor provides great CRM software, but do you know what you really want to do with it? You need to tackle the business side of things before you begin using the technology. Determine exactly what needs to be changed so you won't get sidetracked or lost along the way.
- Too Few People on the Team –
If you want to implement positive change on an enterprise level, you need a CRM team with executive sponsorship and broad representation. Unfortunately, many executives aren't familiar with CRM, so they either wash their hands of dealing with it or just go through the motions. This is a big mistake, as everyone needs to be privy to what is going on with the company's CRM strategy.
- Reports Are Not Shared –
Are you effectively sharing project reports with everyone in real time? When team members can't freely collaborate, they will throw a monkey wrench into things by stepping on each other's toes or taking their own projects in the wrong direction.
Many of the problems start small and snowball rather quickly if they aren't resolved timely. Communication is obviously a huge key in moving things in the right direction. It is also easy to get too involved with technology and departmentalized projects. Remember, CRM implementations are about the customer and changes should be executed across the company and incorporated into the culture.
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Posted by Heather Johnson on May 1, 2008 in CRM Strategy
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Microsoft Embraces GREEN (Hooray)
I continue to be encouraged when I see green talk turn to action. I'm also encouraged when I see the biggest of companies lend an ear to the smallest of companies. Just over a year ago, I had the opportunity to discuss my views and ideas about green technology evolution with some Microsofties. They seemed legitimately interested, and in fact, quite hungry for ideas that would lead to innovation on this topic. The scheduled one hour meeting went for two hours and forty-five minutes, I was continually challenged and pressed to support my ideas and we scheduled a meeting follow-up to review consensus points and clarify open issues. In the follow-up meeting I pressed the executives to use, share and leverage the information for more than an internal report.
Fast forward thirteen months. At the March Cebit trade show none other than CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft is about to release research and best practices for data center administrators. I was provided an advanced preview and can attest the content is thoughtful, fact based and actionable. Microsoft has also been engineering its own products to consume less power. In the published research, Windows Vista now consumes 3 watts per hour while in idle mode; down from a whopping 100 watts per hour by Windows XP. Windows Server 2008 uses 40 percent less power than its predecessor Windows Server 2003. I intend to measure our own energy savings with these two products next month. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on April 4, 2008 in Organizational Framework
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SaaS & Channel Make Strides
Indirect delivery channels and SaaS business applications continue a slow, cautious and somewhat awkward relationship. For more than two decades, indirect channels, primarily in the form of value added resellers (VARs), have been the most utilized resources for the local delivery and support of CRM and ERP business software systems to SMB and middle market organizations worldwide. VARs posses a powerful combination of local presence, strong domain knowledge and trusted business advisor relationship with their clients. Their blend of business process knowledge, software application expertise and technical skills provide the type of expert guidance to reduce implementation risk and maximize business systems ROI.
But something changed between software publishers and VARs when SaaS came along at the turn of the century. VAR programs which had previously matured and were quite comparable whether from Microsoft, Sage or SAP, were suddenly scaled back by the new SaaS providers. Common implementation (and billable) activities such as server platform setup and software installation were no longer necessary with SaaS solutions. And it seemed to some that local presence took on a lesser value with business systems delivered over the Internet. As stated in the article, What's a VAR To Do With SaaS, many VAR's weren't sure if SaaS solutions represented a competitive threat or a new business building opportunity.
The reality is that clients continue to benefit with onsite and local resources who can map their objectives within the constructs of the software and provide expert guidance. I can't speak for other SaaS publishers but I can firmly say that Aplicor greatly values relationships with any client advisor or business partner who adds value to our mutual clients business information system. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on March 20, 2008 in SaaS
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Aplicor Web 2.0 Progress & Update
As is typical when I'm approaching a quarterly executive team retreat, I'm reviewing MBO (management by objectives) progress - or lack thereof - and trying to understand the more influential factors along with their relationships to our progress. As I'm not yet achieving our initial Web 2.0 objectives, this exercise escalates to also look at some root cause analysis.
One the positive side, we've received, categorized and tabulated quite a bit of client generated content - primarily in the form of product ideas and suggestions. Although to be fair, I've had to grease the skids and reach out to several clients in order to request (maybe beg) that they consider more proactively engaging any Aplicor resource or using the Aplicor forums (this blog, the Client Portal, the Partner Portal or the Aplicor Forum) to share their ideas, recommendations, frustrations or any other commentary that would facilitate dialogue and our mutual path to a superior hosted business partnership. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on January 5, 2008 in Web 2.0
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CXO Magazine Interview
I just had the privilege of being interviewed by CXO Magazine, the leading business magazine in Europe. While the discussion will be printed as an Executive Interview feature in the magazine, I'm posting some of the questions and answers that I believe Aplicor users will find most relevant. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on December 10, 2007 in CRM Strategy
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SaaS CRM, Web 2.0 and Hammer Time
I attended a sales call last week that transitioned from discussing CRM and ERP software during a number of meetings to integrating SaaS CRM with social media technologies over a late night dinner and drinks discussion. The late night conversations were particularly insightful in part because of the forward thinking ideas presented and in part because the discussions were with an entrepreneurial founder of a hyper growth company and his colleague, Hammer (formerly known as M.C. Hammer).
I admit I was a bit surprised to hear a dance musician casually and quite comfortably use words like 'SaaS', 'CRM' and 'web 2.0' and apply these terms with his own creative ideas. Shame on me for assuming that these new technology waves are limited for conversation among industry insiders and self proclaimed pundits. In reality, Hammer has lived most of his life near silicon valley, has a highly syndicated blog, is a director for several tech companies and is near launching his own social media company.
The point of my post is that this experience is indicative of the merging of business applications and social media. Two originally mutually exclusive concepts that must come together for the benefit of consumers and those companies who strive to satisfy them. CRM strategies and supporting information systems have a never ending quest to better understand, anticipate and respond to customer needs and requirements. Social media provides an ideal opportunity to engage customers and transition from a one way company to customer pitch to a two way mutual dialogue. Social media also lessens the importance of historically sophisticated business systems technology in favor of easy to comprehend social networking concepts and applications, thereby, opening up participation to a much larger community of customers and interested parties. Deeper dialogue and greater participation result in a continuous process of improved learning and improved customer relationships for those organizations who take advantage.
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on November 5, 2007 in CRM Strategy, Web 2.0
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Aplicor Product Evolution
I had some great client calls this week and one of the recurring questions posed by three very active users centered around product advancement. They were seeking to understand the most significant and highest impact product advancements coming down the pike. I'll use this post to satisfy this inquiry for them and for any interested client.
The highest impact product advancements clearly come from the underlying software architecture as it is the architecture that provides cross-module capabilities that are generally pervasive throughout the entire product and often facilitate new capabilities, new flexibility and support for third party tools and products. As most users know, our CRM and ERP product architecture leverages the .NET (C#) development environment, the Microsoft platform stack (e.g. SQL 2K5, Windows Server 2003, etc.), XML and a SOA (service oriented architecture). The architectural planning and development now occurring and expected for delivery in 2008 continues our planned technology evolution by taking advantage of new capabilities inherent in upcoming platform releases and increased industry SOA adoption. For example, SQL 2008 (aka Longhorn) is scheduled for delivery next year. We've been analyzing this new product in the lab for several months and are now piloting development projects expected to realize two significant Aplicor flagship product advancements.
The first will achieve advancements in performance, scalability, systems management and system fault tolerance. The visible results to the end user will include faster performance, an improved user experience and assured uptime (continued assurance for achievement of our SLA). For our multi-national users, we are also prototyping some new mirroring and high availability (HA) capabilities which will be implemented in each of our global data centers and we expect will result in decreased latency and increased system performance for clients with users on multiple continents. Its pretty simple to transcend these architectural advancements to an Aplicor modular level. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 15, 2007 in CRM Software, ERP Software
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SaaS is GREEN
I’ve been conducting data center tours for sales prospects and customers for about five years, however, only in about the last year have I been posed repeated questions regarding environmental friendliness and going green. I am personally skeptical – and even a bit cynical - when I hear corporations’ claims of green. Nonetheless, as Aplicor practices environmental friendliness and also shares its practices with customers, I’m going to use this post to show how going green in the data center can save you some money and mother earth at the same time. Due to the specific content, this post is probably only relevant to Aplicor customers or partners who manage their own data centers and may find our experience on this topic helpful.
The Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model offers a two punch combination to carbon dioxide emission reductions. The first punch is purely from the economies of scale realized from centralized processing and a shared services model. Instead of thousands of customers individually operating thousands of servers and the power hungry facilities to support those servers, the SaaS multi-tenant model centralizes data center operations to use less equipment and a small fraction of the supporting facility costs. When you recognize that supporting facility costs outweigh the cost and emissions production of the servers and related computer equipment you get a handle on how material this savings really is. The second punch to carbon dioxide emissions is born by the data center operator via thoughtful decision making and a desire for improved power consumption, cooling efficiency and equipment density.
A green data center is one which maximizes energy efficiency and minimizes environmental impact. Anybody can make a difference as operational reforms and rethinking the ways you use equipment may have as big an impact as purchasing newer more energy-efficient computing products. Here are some tasks you can do to achieve lower costs, increased power availability and cleaner air. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on October 1, 2007 in Hosted Delivery
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myCRMcareer.com
The CRM community is taking a step closer with a new industry-focused online career center. Tomorrow morning from the annual Gartner CRM Summit in Hollywood, Florida, myCRMcareer.com will make its inaugural launch and showcase its new community driven career portal.
This social media inspired web site debut is founded and backed by CRM heavyweights Paul Greenberg, Bruce Culbert and Ted Hartley - all part of the BPT Partners executive team and each making a relevant contribution. Ted will take the reigns as CEO, Bruce will govern as Chairman and Paul will provide much of the sites valuable content.
While I haven't yet seen a preview or the actual site, I fully expect this career minded web site to be more than an industry-focused monster.com. The founders are authority figures with web 2.0 and social media tools, technologies and methods and I suspect that myCRMcareer.com will evolve in large part as a social network that thrives from user forums, user generated content and member interactivity. I'm optimistic on the vision, purpose and value of this site. More to come on this ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on August 16, 2007 in Web 2.0
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Hosted Software Delivery Assurance
Seldom do we incur a sales prospect who doesn’t inquire on our ability to assure continuous and uninterrupted hosted software delivery. In the wake of the recent San Francisco area power outage and subsequent downtime incurred by several popular SaaS solutions (fortunately not us), I’ve received several inbound emails from existing customers generally querying about our data center resiliency and whether we’re vulnerable to a similar outage. I’ll use this blog post to respond to these types of requests.
At a high and non-technical level, Aplicor hosted software delivery can be initially summed to disciplined governance, veteran staffing and multiple layers of redundancy. Our governance model has evolved over many years and incorporates both the ISO 27001 and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) frameworks. These frameworks are specific to hosted software delivery, data center operations, information security, disaster recovery and business continuity. Aplicor is audited and certified annually by both ISO and NIST. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on August 13, 2007 in Hosted Delivery
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SaaS CRM Implementations Are Different
From time to time I meet with large and small systems integrators and related professional services firms. Whether we are jointly working on a client project or discussing business partner programs, it generally doesn’t take long for me to understand their experience in implementing SaaS ISV solutions. I’m going to use this blog post to clearly state that implementing SaaS business systems is different than implementing on-premise software systems and point out some of the differences.
First, let me start with what’s not so different between SaaS and on premise systems. SaaS business system implementations may be complex and require deep subject matter knowledge. “Plug and play” SaaS CRM or ERP implementations are generally a myth, at best limited to very small engagements and at worst set very inaccurate expectations. With that said, let me highlight a few fundamental changes associated with SaaS business system implementations: More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on August 1, 2007 in CRM Strategy
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How To Maximize Your CRM Investment
I received a great email from a UK user in which he asked “What else can I do to maximize my Aplicor CRM investment?” Fortunately, the answer for his organization can be applied to many organizations so I’m posting my response as a blog entry. My response to this good question is five-fold - Remember that CRM is a business strategy, tailor your system to meet your highest impact objectives, implement business process automation, seek to achieve enterprise-wide integrated information systems and provide recurring user training.
First, it’s important to remember that CRM is a business strategy and CRM software is a tool to enable and facilitate CRM. While the definition of CRM varies (according to your analyst firm, consultant or guru of choice), our own definition which acts as a pretty good starting point is that CRM is a business strategy aimed at understanding, anticipating and responding to the needs of an enterprise's current and potential customers. While CRM definitions vary, they seldom include the word ‘software’. In my opinion, nobody achieves CRM by simply implementing CRM software. To really achieve the promise and benefits of CRM, a CRM software project should start with and be continually steered toward a defined and recognized CRM business strategy. More ...
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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on July 16, 2007 in CRM Strategy
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