ISM Announces Winners of First Annual Social CRM Software Awards

Social CRM Functionality Becoming More Prevalent in CRM Applications

Contact: ISM
301.656-8448
BETHESDA, August 2, 2010 – As the maturing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) industry is making a major shift into Social CRM functionality, ISM announces the first annual Social CRM Awards recipients. Social CRM can be defined as “the tools and processes that encourage better, more effective customer interaction and leverage the collective intelligence of the broader customer community with the intended result of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers.”

Award winners were chosen after intensive testing by the ISM Software Lab at its Bethesda, MD-based headquarters.  Each software package was rated according to ten Social CRM solutions criteria including: Links/Integration to Social Networking Websites, Social Media Dashboard, Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Analytics and Access to Video, Mashups, Widget Technologies, Wiki Databases, Podcasts and Tagging Capabilities.

“The Social CRM Awards, in its inaugural year, will serve as the industry benchmark for the future of Social CRM,” said Barton Goldenberg, founder and president of ISM. “The award winners are to be praised for obtaining a Social CRM award as they represent the leaders of the future of CRM.”

And the winners in alphabetical order are:

• CDC Pivotal CRM v. 6.6 – CDC Software
• Salesforce.com – Salesforce.com
• SAP CRM 7.0 – SAP AG
• update seven – update software AG

The adoption of Social CRM functionality led ISM to add new Social CRM criteria to its 2010 CRM software reviews that we have been publishing since 1989. CRM vendors with the most comprehensive Social CRM functionality were selected from the ten criteria and as recipients of the 2010 ISM Social CRM Awards.

“Social CRM takes a static customer profile and moves it towards an emotional customer profile taking into account Social Media communities like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. The impact of Social Media on CRM has already begun to change the way customers and customer-facing personnel interact.” said Goldenberg.

Based on the software testing process, Goldenberg points out several key Social CRM business application trends in CRM software:

• Links/Integration to Social Networking Websites, Blogs & Online Communities – CRM software applications offer the ability to capture a social networking Website profile of customer/prospect (e.g., Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, etc.) within the CRM system and/or set up a hyperlink to their profile on the external social networking Website. The CRM software application can also provide access to external blogs and online communities.
• Access to Social Media Dashboards – CRM software applications provide the ability to access social media-related statistics and charts in a dashboard-like setting.
• Access to Video Spots – CRM software applications provide the ability to offer video spots in contact, account or opportunity profiles either via storing them in the CRM application or via the Internet.
• Access to Wiki Databases – CRM software applications provide the ability to access wiki databases, which is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.

The Social CRM selections will be featured in ISM’s 18th edition of The Guide to

CRM Automation and in CD format available online at (www.ismguide.com). For more information, call 1-877-ISMGUIDE or 301-656-8448.