Feb 17 2012

A new kind of relationship management: IRM

By Kathy Barton, Senior VP of Social CRM

For a while we’ve been talking about the intersection between CRM and social media as Social CRM: harnessing the information posted on social media sites to increase your knowledge and ability to serve your customers. Now there’s a new juxtaposition between CRM and social media: IRM, or Influencer Relationship Management. Influencers are customers who, through their social media activities, are able to motivate others to take action based on their opinions. Their recommendation of a product encourages others to try it: conversely, their condemnation may cause others to avoid it. Klout, a new product found at Klout.com, delivers a klout score to individuals based on three things:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Klout says they have analyzed over 85 million people on major social networks, and helps companies identify their influencers. Another new entrant, Social Chorus (socialchorus.com) offers organizations its IRM software and services that “give you the simplicity, speed, and efficiency you need to build enduring social relationships at global scale.”

The trick, of course, is linking social media identities to customer identities. Products like Klout and Social Chorus can help with this. Then you have to decide if you treat influencers differently than other customers, and if so, how? But that’s a topic for another day.

Tags: , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:28 am

Feb 03 2012

Social CRM: The Next Sales/Customer Service Differentiator

by Barton Goldenberg, President, ISM Inc.

I continue to be amazed at the confusion regarding the value and importance of Social CRM. I entered the CRM industry in 1985, as founder and president of ISM Inc, when it was still called Sales Force Automation (SFA). SFA functionality soon was complemented with valuable ‘customer service and support’ functionality (late 1980s), then with market campaign management functionality (early 1990s), then eBusiness functionality (late 1990s) and more recently business intelligence functionality (early 2000s).

Around 2005, social media took the market by storm as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and several others public communities took hold. Companies like Mzinga, Lithium, Jive and others joined the fray by offering private social communities that has similar capabilities to the public communities (i.e., forums, blogs, polls, contests, rankings, etc.). Most recently, CRM vendors like salesforce.com and RightNow Technology have also moved the ‘community’ capability into their own CRM software and have begun to offer internal as well as external private communities. Simply said, ‘Social’ and ‘CRM’ have now merged and in 2012, Social CRM is here to stay.

In my latest book, Social CRM, to be published later this year, I define Social CRM as the process of leveraging ‘social insights’ and integrating them into your overall customer relationship efforts. More specifically Social CRM gathers social insights from both public and private social communities, filters this ‘free-form’ information to ensure you have captured meaningful social insights (by no means an easy task), and then integrates this filtered insight into your CRM customer profiles so that you have a deeper understanding of how your customers and prospects. In other words, with Social CRM, you now have both transactional as well as non-transactional information currently residing within your CRM system, such as:

• sales forecasts,
• customer service incident management,
• market campaigns, as well as,
• sentiment-based insight such as how your customers feel about doing business with you.

Many companies, including several of our global, best-in-class customers, are well on their way to mastering Social CRM to deliver increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, customer advocacy and a meaningful ROI. I’ll talk about some of these companies in my presentation at the upcoming the Sales Management 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia on March 5 at 9:15 a.m. (check out the full agenda)

Social CRM is not going away as the payback is overwhelmingly positive, which is why I strongly believe that Social CRM is the way of the future; it takes CRM to an entirely new level in terms of understanding your customers and deepening your relationship with them.

Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:42 am

Jan 25 2012

2012 CRM Market Overview

By John Chan, ISM Software Lab Director

After an extensive analysis of the current CRM marketplace, here are the main points concerning the CRM market today which ISM has recently discovered:

The CRM industry continues be a robust, with a total 2010 worldwide revenue of $16.5 billion and a forecast of the global CRM market growing at a 6.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for a total revenue of $23 billion in 2015. For North America, there was $9.3 billion in revenue for the CRM market in 2010 and IDC foresees the CRM market growing at a 6.9% CAGR until 2015 for a total market revenue of $12.9 billion. Out of all CRM application segments, the marketing automation applications segment is forecast to have the highest growth from 2010 -2015, with an 8.2% CAGR over this five-year period.

The SaaS model continues to penetrate the CRM market, accounting for 26% of the total enterprise CRM market revenue in 2010 and is expected to account for 50% of the total enterprise CRM market revenue in 2020. SaaS-based CRM will grow twice as fast as on-premise CRM solutions. The CAGR for all CRM software is forecast to be 6.9% for 2010 through 2015, and 12.9% for SaaS-delivered CRM during the same period. During this 2010 – 2020, on-premises applications will be predominate in large companies for their analytics, strategic planning, marketing and campaign management functionality. Small and mid-size companies will continue to lean towards the SaaS model due to their resource and budget constraints.

At present, a lot of the traditionally smaller CRM market players are now entering the enterprise market. For the CRM mid-market, there is also increasing movement among large CRM vendors who want to play in the mid-market space.

Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:58 am

Jan 16 2012

Generation Y’s Tell All On Facebook & Bosses Pay Attention

By Jean Young, Vice President, ISM, Inc.

It isn’t new news. Gen Y’ers – aged 18 to 29 – talk too much on social networking sites. According to a new study by Millennial Branding, based on mining the data of four million Gen Y Facebook profiles, the “youngsters” befriended an average of six coworkers, some including the boss. Eve Tahmincloglu, who writes the “Your Career” column for MSNBC.com, says the problem is the younger crowd reveals too much personal behavior and uses profanity, facts that do not appeal to many bosses. In addition, Human Resources and recruiting folks rely upon social networking sites to see how someone acts when there guard is down.

This study may not be news but the size of the study is staggering. What also interests me is of the 170 + postings to the “Your Career” column, not one referred to a Social Media Policy, company guidelines that cover online behavior at or about work. A policy that outlines what a company considers appropriate online conduct will help employees make decisions. For potential employees, guidelines (which can be requested) will let you know in advance what to expect.

Certainly, users of social networking sites, no matter the age, need to apply some common sense about online behavior. But, companies of all sizes also need to give guidance to employees as to what they consider acceptable online. That way, potential and present employees can make choices about where they want to work or, at least, know when keeping your mouth shut online may help you keep your job. Check out a recent Cisco worldwide study of how many Gen Y’ers are saying no to online restrictions.

Let me know your experiences with social networking behavior by clicking on my email address to send me your experiences.

Tags: , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:07 am

Jan 05 2012

Many Execs Have Little or No Input
on Social Media Policies They Implement

By Jean Young, Vice President, ISM, Inc.

I recently followed up with a number of attendees of a successful ISM Social Media Policy Webinar held in November. The big surprise was the intense frustration I heard from the folks who were most directly impacted: marketing, IT, HR, and a slew of other people who have titles with “digital,” “social media” and “online” in them.

A large number of key managers had been completely overlooked during the formation of employee guidelines. This seems particularly true for large global corporations, which are wrestling with policies that will apply in multinational settings. One North American IT executive, for example, was “upset” with an “open policy” that gave little or no direction regarding online behavior at or about work. Meanwhile, a marketing executive faces the opposite challenge—trying to figure out how a subsidiary can offset a highly restrictive policy imposed by the 200,000-employee American-based parent.

Issues crop up early in the process. Many mid-management executives are being told to “come up with a social media policy” with little or no guidance, staffing support, or management involvement. The executive suite may know guidelines are needed, but not how to formulate them, handing it off to mid-management with “don’t bother us—just do it.”

The C-suite needs to be realistic about—and budget for—time, talent and investments needed to create and promote a thoughtful, evolving social media program. Ultimately, the goal is not only to control, but to encourage appropriate employee participation in social media—generating positive messaging and constructive social media engagement.

Please share your Social Media Policy experiences with me by clicking on my email address.

Tags: , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:12 am

Dec 22 2011

Negotiating With Your CRM Vendor

By Barton Goldenberg, President, ISM, Inc.

As we close the 2011 year, in addition to wishing you a happy and prosperous 2012, I also wanted to mention that typically the best time to negotiate with your CRM vendor is during December (assuming they follow a calendar year for accounting purposes). When negotiating with your vendor, remember first to negotiate user license to their lowest level based on industry examples. Next negotiate “other fees” (e.g., sandboxes, maintenance fees, etc.) based on this lowered user license amount. If you are unable to secure the license fee price that you are looking for, rather than try to negotiate a lower price consider having the vendor throw in additional licenses or training courses, etc.

Also remember to carefully negotiate professional services fees, as margins on and off-shore are typically very high for the vendor so you have considerable negotiating room. A couple of words of advice: do not attempt to negotiate the beginning-to-end professional services price at the outset of your negotiations since vendors must build in a margin for the ‘unknown’ and your total price will come in high. Rather, negotiate a reasonable price for the business requirements work, then a separate price for the design work, the build, the UAT phase, etc.

At the end of the day, you want to keep a good working relationship with your vendor and not everyone has the skill to comfortably negotiation with that vendor at the outset of that relationship. If it all seems to complex, call us and we’ll do our best to give you a hand!

Tags: , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:27 am

Dec 08 2011

Gartner Takes Aim: Social CRM Vendor “Cowboys” Are Out as Enterprises Seek Measurable Outcomes

- By Jean Young, Vice President, ISM, Inc.

Gartner’s VP and Distinguished Analyst, Michael Maoz, notes in his December 7th blog that the hype around Social CRM vendors is over.  This is good news.  As a leading Social CRM consulting and implementation firm working with successful social software companies and best-in class clients, it has been a rough ride for the industry.

And, Gartner is right, the cowboys, as I call them, are on their way out and we can get back to business.

Maoz reports in his incisive blog, that respondents to Gartner’s CEO Survey 7 stress the importance of: “Becoming more open and collaborative with customers,” and that can be seen as a vote in favor of “social.”’

The CEOs’ Gartner surveyed point to Social Media and Social CRM as part of the Customer Service, Support and Marketing dialogue. That dialogue is now directed to revenue growth and lower costs with measurable outcomes.

Barton Goldenberg, who founded ISM in 1985 to move Sales Force Automation to Customer Relationship Management, has taken the same role to move Social CRM from a rodeo atmosphere with vendors fighting for trophies to the business environment in which it belongs.  Gartner is right: it is time to define the business of Social CRM in terms of data, facts and measurable outcomes.

Barton will be a speaker at the Gartner Customer 360 Summit,  March 14 – 16, 2012 in Orlando, FL. (http://bit.ly/rw6WON). Let me know if you would like to meet with him.

Tags: , Posted by - jennifermq @ 5:37 pm

Nov 18 2011

Social CRM Technologies for 2012

2012 will be a turning point in helping to clearly define Social CRM, during which time we will see three technology enhancements:

  • Leading CRM vendors (e.g., Salesforce.com, Oracle, Pivotal) will offer new technology that more tightly integrates social media community insights from both public (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and private company communities with customer profile functionality held within their CRM application.
  • Leading Social Media platform vendors (e.g., Mzinga, Jive, Lithium) will provide CRM vendors with enhanced integration points into their platforms.  This will allow the CRM vendors to more easily harvest social insights from private communities directly into customer profiles held within the CRM system.
  • One or more third-party vendors offer ‘filtering” tools that helps organizations make sense of all the free-form data that currently is found on social media communities and that needs to find its way into CRM customer profiles so that this data can be made actionable in sales, marketing and/or customer service efforts.

In 2012, in addition to these enhanced technologies, we will see:

  • Many more, pragmatic Social CRM examples that help drive home the value-add of Social CRM in its ability to introduce social medial insights into CRM customer profile information.
  • Additional case study write-ups of organizations that have opted to “try out” social media first within their organizations by using tools like Chatter from Salesforce.com prior to opening up their communities to external audiences.
  • Clarity regarding what is Social CRM and where it is heading that respond to skepticism noted in several recent research papers (e.g., Gartner’s November 11, 2011 research paper titled “Predicts 2012: Social CRM Remains an Immature Area”).

As noted, 2012 will bring increased clarity and visibility into the world of Social CRM.

Tags: , , Posted by - Barton Goldenberg @ 11:05 am

Nov 03 2011

Social Media Policy as a Recruiting Tool

Cisco released the first part of their three-part Connected World Report for 2011 on September 21st, 2011.  The focus of this year’s report is college students and the recently employed (ages 18-29). The 1412 young employees were from 14 countries, not working for the IT department, and not working for non-profits or market research firms.  (I mention this because often companies think that social media access matters only to employees in the engineering department.)  The results confirmed what I’ve been hearing anecdotally:

  • More than half of the respondents cite the internet as an “integral part” of their lives, calling it more essential than owning a car or dating;
  • 45% percent of employees would accept a lower-paying job if it had more flexibility on device choice, social media access, and mobility;
  • 64% percent of college students would ask about social media usage policies during job interviews;
  • 41% percent said their companies marketed a flexible device and social media policy to recruit and attract them;
  • 7 out of 10 say they have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook; and
  • 56% percent replied that if they encountered a company that banned access to social media, they would not accept the job offer.

We’ve been saying for a while that a Social Media Policy is critical for providing guidance to employees regarding what you’d like them to do, as well as what you’d like them not to do.  This information underlines the importance of a carefully-crafted, collaboratively-prepared Social Media Policy that reflects your organization’s culture and values.  Despite this, research shows that only about 25% of organizations have a Social Media Policy, with another 20% working on it. A study of 1,400 CIO’s by Robert Half Technology reports 54% of U.S. companies ban workers from using social networking sites on the job (how’s that for a disconnect?).  Recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board make an up-to-date policy even more critical.

Jean Young, ISM’s expert on Social Media Policy, and I will be giving a free webinar on Developing a Social Media Policy on November 15th at 1:00 EST.  Please take our Social Media Survey prior to the webinar (Go to www.ismguide.com and to the link at the upper right hand corner) and then join us to discuss how to create and leverage your Social Media Policy.

Posted by - Kathy Barton @ 1:52 pm

Oct 14 2011

Employees Online: Lost in the Future

Corporate America spends a lot of time trying to figure out whom to reach with what message and in what medium. But, in all the talk about how to reach the consumer, the influencer and the decision maker, the lowly employee barely gets a nod. Unless, of course, an employee drops a bombshell about a boss or project on Facebook, Twitter or a personal blog. Then there is a big meeting with the legal, communications and HR folks, along with whoever else feels threatened. The results vary, but in most cases, the opportunity for a company’s employees to be your best internal and external communicators is long gone.

The few studies currently available on how companies handle employee conduct in the social networking environment are revealing. Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing company, interviewed 1,400 CIOs of U.S. companies and found 54 percent banned social networking while on the job. A Deloitte Ethics & Workplace Survey reports that sixty percent of 500 U.S. business executives surveyed said how their employees portrayed the company online was “their business” while 53 percent of the employees said “it was none of their business”. With recent rulings by the National Labor Relations Board in favor of a fired employee, the online landscape is getting even muddier.

The companies spending time and money on harnessing the power of its employees online are still in the minority. GE and IBM are two of the largest and most focused, continually bringing employees and management together to fine tune employee guidelines on everything from a personal blog to social media platforms. Devising communications behavior guidelines may sound draconian but employees want a company to do well so they can do well. When management engages employees in the process, there is a level of trust because there is trust.

Tags: , , Posted by - Jean Young @ 11:18 am

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