Brent's Social CRM Blog

Intuit's Customer Manager: Meat & Potatoes for Traditional Small Businesses

2009-12-14T14:55:02-05:00

A few weeks back I had an opportunity to speak with CRM Magazine's Lauren McKay for an article she wrote on Intuit's latest incarnation of Customer Manager. I wasn't the biggest fan of Intuit's original entry into CRM/contact management back around the 2003 timeframe, but I was still glad they recognized the need for small businesses to have a better handle on customer information.

In 2009 many small businesses still use Quickbooks, Excel, Outlook, mobile devices, filing cabinets (and in some cases all of the above) to keep up with customer information. And this makes it difficult to have a full picture of what's going on with a customer, to share information about customers with other employees serving them, and to quickly respond to - as well as proactively predict - changes in customer needs.

I really believe 2010 is the year "meat and potato" small businesses will really dig into CRM. The time is right. They are ready. And they are in need. Which is why I was really interested to talk with John Flora - Intuit Product Manager focused on Customer Manager. John discusses how the four million Quickbooks customers impacted what went into CM, how it will work with Quickbooks, and why it was important to make CM a SaaS application instead of an installed software app. He also talks about why they made CM accessible via mobile devices as part of the subscription price of $9.95/mo for up to 5 users.

To hear the conversation (roughly 15 minutes) use the player below, or click here to download the mp3:

FYI - Paul Greenberg (now known as the Leo Tolstoy of CRM) devoted a chapter of the latest edition of CRM at the Speed of Light to small business. And you can download a pdf of the chapter for FREE - no registration required - with this link. Paul was gracious enough to allow me to add my two cents in the chapter.

Technorati : customer manager, intuit, small business
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What is SAP to the SME?

2009-12-13T23:47:34-05:00

Last week I was in Boston where I attended this year's SAP Business Influencer Summit. I was really eager to check out what was going on with SAP, because quite frankly it had been years since I've taken a close look at what they've been up to. And the main reason for that is I just didn't view them as being in the realm of possibility for the S in SME (small and mid-size enterprise). That's because their definition of what a small business is doesn't match up with mine. I wrote about this 4 1/2 years ago based on an article in Red Herring about SAP's efforts to reach SMEs.

There have been some nice write-ups of the event, by folks like Paul, Denis Pombriant, Ray Wang, Michael Krigsman, Jesus Hoyos, Esteban Kolsky and others that you should check out if you are interested in what took place at the conference. Also check out this great pdf compilation of the tweets from the day of the conference to get the blow by blow as the day unfolded. And for a quick check at what the Twitterati thought about the conference, check out the tweetcloud below for the most used words associated with the conference - click on the image below to see a larger view of the cloud.

As you can see one of the largest words in the cloud is SME, which was definitely mentioned a great deal throughout the day. I'll get into that in a minute, but before I do here a few things that caught my (and others) attention during the day - with a few thoughts.

In-Memory Of...

I found the most interesting presentation of the day came from SAP's CTO Dr. Vishal Sikka. Dr. Sikka and his colleague Sam Yen demonstrated the ability to analyze a 275M record dataset in sub-second times using different user interfaces - including Business Objects explorer, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Surface. This was made possible by using a column-based, in-memory database that allows for fast, real-time access of information. Sikka says in-memory computing lowers complexity for application development while increasing extensibility. The Surface demo was an eye opener as it combines the ease of touch-screen user interfaces with real, real-time (as they call it) access to enormous amounts of data. And as more content is created by social customers, companies who can marry this information with transactional data will be able to make quicker, more informed decisions - and to execute activities more successfully.

Cloudy Future

Ok I know what you're thinking - that in-memory stuff sounds good and all that, but what does that have to do with SMEs? SAP is betting that they will be very interested in it in a few ways from a cloud perspective. With a great deal of emphasis right now on cloud services and platforms, SAP is positioning it's Business ByDesign product - aimed at the SME market - in the cloud. And the idea is that BBD (not Bell Biv Devoe) will take advantage of in-memory computing to deliver the advantages mentioned above to the SME crowd.

The cloud will also be available to host simple applications that will be able to access back-end SAP systems. This was demoed by a contract management application running off the Amazon cloud that was able to update an SAP system behind the corporate firewall. The other cool thing was the ability for a contract worker on a mobile device (an iPhone in the demo) out in the field sending in their timesheet to the contract managment app, which in turn updated the back office ERP app so that managment can have up to the minute information. And there also some demos showing integrations between SAP cloud apps with Google Wave.

The bottom line is that SAP wanted to let people know that they are serious about the cloud, and shared how they are currently involved in it. The most visible example of this was explained by their involvement with Apple's iTunes store being based on SAP in the cloud. But, as you can tell by Mike Fauscette's tweet that I re-tweeted, claiming future cloud leadership based off a product not readily available is something that will have to be judged...in the future.

Automation Without Communitization

One of the products SAP targets the SME community with is an on-premise product, Business One. There was a pretty cool demo of cloud-based apps being able to integrate with B1. There was also a demo showing how you can create an online store that fully integrates with your B1 instance with just a couple of clicks.

It was pretty impressive to see how they've automated and integrated ecommerce into the on-premise business app. The online store looked to be fully functional and able to move transactions taken on the site into the backoffice app. And as great as this is, the thing that stood out to me is that there was nothing on the generated site that allowed for product reviews from customers, ratings and discussion threads. While it's critically important to make it as easy as possible to process online transactions and move them into backoffice functions, what drives someone to actually purchase something in today's world is information and interaction from other customers. That's important for creating/facilitating the desire for a customer to buy.

Reaching the S in SME

OK.... it appears that the definition discussed back in 2005 may still be in play, as one of the customers on a panel of SMEs sharing their experiences using SAP software had 5000 employees. As you can imagine that sparked a number of tweets and re-tweets about what does SAP really consider to be an SME. I also think the smallest revenue number I heard from the SME panel was $30M, which is small in the big scheme of things, but 99.99% of the businesses I consider to be small would kill for that.

Definition aside, it looks to me like SAP is very serious about serving the SME community as they've defined it. The Biz ByDesign offering to me looks to be the lynch pin to growing their SME customer base. But, according to many more familiar with SAP than I am, BBD has been a long time in coming, so skepticism is running rampant as to whether they will roll this service out to the masses in 2010. But if they do meet expectations for rolling it out it will go a long way towards reaching a wider SME audience.

Another piece to the SME puzzle for SAP is the partner channel. The partner channel already accounts for 85% of SME deals, but according to Pat Hume (SVP of Global SME Partner Channel) the goal is to have partners account for 100% of SME sales. As Ray Wang's tweet above mentions, SAP's brand name drives SME sales (according to Altimeter's informal survey). This will mean SAP's partners are going to have to up their sales and marketing efforts, as well as their customer education efforts, in order to find and keep new customers.

SAP looks ready to work with the partner channel to make deeper inroads into the SME segment, which they'll have to do in order to make sure their brand appeal reaches further into the space. They'll also have to facilitate user communities which will help SMEs better understand what SAP has to offer them. This is really important as many companies may still feel SAP is really for the enterprise. Even one of the featured customers on the SME panel - Johnson Products CEO Eric Brown - mentioned several times how he's surprised his company is using SAP, mainly because of his initial perceptions he had of the company.

SAP has millions of members throughout their assortment of communities, but many of them skew towards the technical side of things. SME customers are more focused on the business challenges they face, best practices for using software (and the cloud) and to communicate with each other. This may call for different kinds of communities, like the MyVenturePad community sponsored by SAP and facilitated by Social Media Today. This community is all about the business challenges facing startups, entrepreneurs and SMEs. SAP has also teamed of with SMT on the new community site - TheSocialCustomer.com. As I'm directly involved with this community as a blogger-in-residence, I know this community is focused on the business challenges of engaging the social customer, which is of major concern to businesses of all sizes.

The Conclusion

All in all I think SAP is doing some impressive things with respect to creating products and services that can benefit SMEs, but it's a matter of when these products will be available. They've got the resources to do what they want, and it appears they are serious about getting more involved with the segment. The development of Biz ByDesign is key to their plans, but I'm still wondering just how serious they are about the S in SME. Right now I'm not sure where they fit in to their plans. But I'm looking forward to seeing what happens as their plans unfold and are executed.

The CRM Playaz Invade Hubspot TV...a #SCRM Reality TV Experiment

2009-12-04T10:04:26-05:00

Paul Greenberg and I will be up in Boston Monday and Tuesday (Dec 7-8) to check out the SAP Influencer Conference. So while we're up there we're going to storm the offices of Hubspot, takeover their studios and do a live video edition of The CRM Playaz.

Now I already know what you're thinking - Monday is December 7th, a day which already lives in infamy....are you sure this is a good idea? Well my simple answer to that is - probably not, but when has that ever stopped us before?

And we're not really invading Hubspot, they are good friends, sponsors of the show, and they have rolled out the red carpet for us. And we're really glad to have Hubspot co-founder Dharmesh Shah join us on the show to talk about what's going on at the company, the current state of inbound marketing, and to fill us in on the new book he co-authored with Hubspot co-founder Brian (The Hooligan) Halligan - Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs.

And if that wasn't enough, our good friend Robin Carey of Social Media Today will be our guest co-host to talk about their new site TheSocialCustomer.com and to talk about the new free ebook SMT recently released - The Art of the Social Sale. But mainly Robin's really joining us to try and make us look good. I'm quite sure she has no idea of the challenge that lay ahead of her with that....

So please join us Monday December 7th 1:30-2pm ET at http://hubspot.tv. That's Monday....December 7th.... 1:30-2pm ET..... at http://hubspot.tv. And we want to hear from you during the show as we'll need your take on what the recent Gartner acquisition of AMR means to the industry, whether men of a certain age should wear a backpack, and how much gloating a Yankee fan should do in the face of his Boston hosts. So give us a look. We can't be as bad as the Terrell Owens reality show, can we??? Tune in to find out....

Technorati : , crm playaz, hubspot, social media today
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Improving the Customer Experience One Community at a Time

2009-11-30T11:24:00-05:00

My latest column for Inc.com is up - It Takes A Community to Raise a Customer...and a Small Business. Community relationship management is the key to customer relationship management in the Social Age, which I guess is why so much focus is directed at Social CRM right now.

I wrote about community relationship management over five years ago for CRM magazine's site at DestinationCRM.com - here and here. As you will see the context of me calling community relationship management "The New CRM" was completely unrelated to today's definition. But the concepts are the same - show respect to the customer by showing respect to the community in which they reside. Improve their experience with you by improving their experience with everything close to them. That's how you win hearts in minds, isn't it?

Back in 2004 "showing respect to the community they resided in" meant participating in chambers of commerce, sponsoring meet-and-greets, and frequenting other businesses in the local community. These and other kinds of traditional efforts were key to connecting with customers and prospects. Because that's where the people were. But now the people are also on Facebook, and Twitter, and many other places online. There are more of them to connect with, and more opportunities to do so. Mobile devices have enabled people to easily share experiences and stay connected to their communities from wherever they are. And because of all this, customers wield more power than ever before. Because they can come together... on Facebook, and Twitter, and many other places online.

So community relationship management, in whatever context we choose to focus on, is critical to the development of any customer relationship we're involved with. Which also makes it critical to the survival of our businesses. But then again, it's always been this way. It's just more pronounced and immediate nowadays... because of Facebook, and Twitter, and many other places online.

Technorati : cheers, customer experience, seinfeld, social crm
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Wharton Interactive - Telling the Story of the Social Customer From the Boardroom to the Classroom

2009-11-16T11:37:03-05:00

The social customer is everywhere - leaving their footprints as a roadmap to what they think, how they feel, who they trust and what the like...and love...and hate.... and detest. And they're leaving these social footprints at an exponentially accelerating rate as new sites and services are making it easy for them to do so. And as friction is being removed from connecting and content creation, the amount of sentiment/behavioral information social customers will create for us about themselves will make it easier for us to understand what drives them. But we will only be able to reach that level of understanding (that mythical 360 degree view...) if we are able to collect it in ways that make it easy for us to analyze it.

The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania has taken up the challenge to help companies take this challenge on as part of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI). According to the Steve Ennen, the managing director of the initiative, it is the world's first research center, focusing specifically on individual level data, generated off all emerging technology platforms, and analog platforms. The initiative's goal is to influence decision-making across several industries, and to help companies understand how to monetize interactive data that they and others have collected.

Started in August 2008, WIMI was launched with the support of a $1 million gift from alumnus Arthur Bilger, and brings together a global network of researchers to work with their corporate partners to uncover the real insights about individual customers - and customer segments.

I recently had Steve on my show to talk about WIMI and the need for companies to take a hard look at social footprints being left behind by their customers. We also discuss the importance of exposing Wharton students to this process, and the impact it will have on the future of businesses to embrace the social customer.

In fact WIMI was brought to the attention of my colleague and Barack 2.0 co-author David Bullock. David was contacted (via Twitter) by Wharton MBA students who were working on a research paper on how the Obama campaign leveraged technology and social media to win the presidency. The interaction between David and the students led to our book being a trusted, referenced source for their research paper. It also led to us including that research paper in an updated edition of our Barack 2.0 book.

Use the player below to hear my conversation with Steve, or download the mp3 by clicking here. If you'd like to check out a transcript of our conversation you can do so by clicking here.

Technorati : social crm, social customer, wharton interactive
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Social Media Today Launches TheSocialCustomer.com - I'm Tagging Along for the Ride

2009-11-13T13:57:57-05:00

It's been a busy but fun 30 hours. I had an opportunity to speak at two Summits - The Sage Summit right here in Atlanta, and the Lithium Virtual Social CRM Summit. Big thanks goes to both Sage and Lithium for inviting me to participate in these great events. When links are available to the event recordings I'll post them here, because you won't want to miss hearing from the likes of Paul Greenberg, Mike Fauscette, Jeremiah Owyang, Ray Wang and Bill Johnson. Virtual or not, it was truly an honor to be in company with them. And I especially enjoyed presenting with Kevin Ryan of Barnes and Noble on Amplifying Your Marketing with Social Channels. As VP of Social Media for B&N, Kevin shares how they are using social tools to build and engage their community.

It was an even bigger honor to have so many people get up early and attend my Social CRM session at Sage Summit - in person as well as over the web. I couldn't have asked for a better reception from the folks who came out. And I need to send out another BIG thanks to Kim Josephs, Jenna Hannahs, Ryan Zuck and the rest of the Sage team for taking care of everything, as my session was the only one streamed live and it went off without a hitch.

The third of the back-to-back-to-back events I participated in was just as exciting as the other two. Right after finishing up The Summits, I hopped on a plane and headed to NYC for the Business Development Institute's Social Consumer Case Study event. This was really interesting as it was non-stop, 20-minute presentations from the likes of McDonald's, JetBlue, KickApps and others discussing the role social media is playing (and will play) when it comes to serving their customers and prospects. I was there with Social Media Today CEO Robin Carey, and SAP's Jim Goldfinger - Sr. Director of the Customer Value Network. Jim and I had a short conversation about Social CRM, where I got a chance to pick Jim's brain in front of a couple hundred of folks - I felt like James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio... But before doing that, Robin announced the the latest addition to the SMT family of sites - TheSocialCustomer.com.

If you've ever visited SocialMediaToday.com, TheCustomerCollective.com, MyVenturePad.com or any of the other communities under the SMT umbrella, you'll understand why I'm excited about TheSocialCustomer.com. Each of these communities are great resources for information and conversation with industry experts, thought leaders and knowledgeable practitioners from across the globe. And I know there is great passion, knowledge and expertise waiting to be showcased, centralized and "communitized" with respect to social media, customer service and today's empowered customer.

All you have to do is check the hashtags conversations out on Twitter (#scrm, #crm, #customerservice, etc.) to see how much interest there is in this area. And with SMT's track record formalizing and facilitating great content and conversation, I was honored they invited me to come on board as the first blogger-in-residence for TheSocialCustomer.com. I'm excited to help get things moving, and my conversation with Jim at the BDI event was great way to jump in. I've already begun reaching out to folks like Paul Greenberg, Marshall Lager and other experts in the space to lend their voice to the community to help get the conversation started. SAP deserves a round of applause for signing on to be the title sponsor of TheSocialCustomer.com and making this community possible.

The idea of the social customer has been around for years. I first heard the term from Cerado CEO Chris Carfi, who helped to popularize it with his outstanding blog SocialCustomer.com. While the SocialCustomer.com and TheSocialCustomer.com are separate properties, they'll both be great resources for years to come for those interested in this fascinating area. One already is, one will be with your participation.

Technorati : customer service, lithium, sage, social crm, social customer, social media
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Talking Social CRM In My Backyard: Sage Summit Comes to Atlanta - A #SCRM Joint

2009-11-06T11:08:35-05:00

Over the past year or so I've had the great opportunity to participate in a number of events on the topic of Social CRM. I've been to New York (five times..and going back two more times), Boston (twice - including the Rockstars of Social CRM deal with Radian6), San Francisco, Orlando and Detroit. I've even gone to Buenos Aires to talk Social CRM.

I've been so many places talking about this stuff its unreal. But the one place I haven't really talked much about Social CRM is Atlanta - where I live. Well, thanks to the folks at Sage Software I will be able to add the ATL to the list of places I've talked Social CRM. That's because the Sage Summit - their annual user conference - is coming to town next week, taking place at the Georgia World Congress Center!!!

While I do enjoy participating in conferences taking place in other parts of the country (and the world), there's something really cool about having a company like Sage hold its conference in my backyard. And Atlanta is a great place for these kinds of events, so let's hope other vendors follow Sage's lead and come down here for some real southern hospitality.

Sage Summit takes place November 9-12 and has a host of general sessions and breakouts that will cover a number of application areas. One of those areas is customer relationship management. That's where I come in, as I've been invited to talk about Social CRM and some of the trends I see taking place.

I am extremely excited to be a part of Sage Summit (just check the short video below...). I'm excited anytime I get a chance to talk about Social CRM, but I admit that it's even more fun having an opportunity to do it right here at home.

If you happen to be in Atlanta next week attending the conference, and interested in the subject of Social CRM, please come join me on Wednesday, November 11th at 8:30am et. And if you can't make it to Atlanta, no problem! Sage will be streaming it live over the web. Just click on the "Register today" badge and you can check it out for free from wherever you are. And if you do register and attend the webcast, Sage will also send you a complimentary eBook I put together with some more thoughts I have on how companies can increase their chances to succeed with Social CRM.

Hope to see y'all down here - or online!

Technorati : sage summit, social crm
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Chris Garrett and Wordtracker Team Up to Help Your Business Blogging Efforts

2009-11-05T20:35:20-05:00

Chris Garrett is a professional blogger who wrote the book on the subject - literally. Along with Darren Rowse, Chris co-authored the extremely influential Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

Ken McGaffin is the chief marketing officer of Wordtracker - the makers of some of the leading keyword research tools on the market for search engine optimization.

Recently Chris and Wordtracker put together an information packed ebook - Blogging for Business: 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales. I had Chris and Ken on to talk about some of the key points covered in the 160+ page book. They touch on strategies, tools, tactics and techniques for getting off the ground if you're a newbie, or upping your game if you're trying to take your blogging to the next level.

It was impossible to get to everything covered in the book, but we did talk about how Chris uses Google Analytics to track blog traffic, and Feedburner for tracking engagement and conversions. He shares a few tricks he uses to get convert site visitors to subscribers. And Chris also explains why he tracks complaints - and shares why he actually encourages people to complain. And Ken shares how he finds great ideas for getting past writer's block, and a great story of how you can use keyword research to help improve social media monitoring efforts. I hadn't thought of this before but these kinds of research tools are not just good for finding words to feature in your content, but they're also great for finding words you should be monitoring on Twitter to enable you to join realtime conversations important to your business. Also check out Chris talking about the case study he did on using Twitter to launch a new website.

Check out the conversation below, or download the mp3 by clicking here. I got a great deal out of talking to them, and found the ebook to be a wealth of valuable information. And if you're interested in the ebook, you can use this link to get it for $29 - $10 off of the $39 regular price. Big thanks to the folks at Wordtracker for giving my blog readers this special discount.

Technorati : business blogging, chris garrett, wordtracker
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I've Been VanFossened... by Lorelle

2009-11-03T22:55:54-05:00

I've been doing weekly conversations for three years now. That's a lot talking with a lot of great people. But I have never been on the defensive like I was with Wordpress guru Lorelle VanFossen - author of Blogging Tips (What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging), and Community Lead over at Woopra.

It wasn't because I'm a faithful TypePad customer. It wasn't even because she's used to bossing guys named Brent around (her husband's name is Brent). It's because she is passionate about blogging and does not let anything get in the way of expressing her passion for it - and for doing it right!

Do yourself a favor and check out Lorelle as she shares some great advice on listening to yourself to come up with blogging ideas, why the world is waiting to hear from you, and how you can use WordPress with BuddyPress to create a community around your blog. And especially check out how she keeps putting me in my place!

Use the player below to or download the mp3 file. And a big thanks goes out to Liz Strauss for hooking me up to talk with her buddy! You can check out their act on the Liz and Lorelle Show podcast.

Technorati : lorelle vanfossen, wordpress
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Helpstream's Bob Warfield on CRM and Social Business Processes - #scrm

2009-10-30T12:40:28-04:00

I recently had a briefing from the folks at Helpstream. And while I didn't get hands-on with it, what I saw of it I liked. The integration of community functionality, social marketing and traditional CRM looks to be on target. But I'll reserve final thoughts on the service until I've had a chance to really check it out.

I don't have to reserve my opinion of Helpstream CEO Bob Warfield. I recently had a chance to speak with Bob and enjoyed getting his take on where social CRM is going. Bob shared his vision of what social CRM is, and the importance for companies to develop and implement social business processes. He also talks about the social CRM manifesto Helpstream put out on the company blog.

I totally agree with Bob on the social business process front. It's what differentiates social CRM from just hanging out on social sites and seeing how many followers you can accumulate. I like what Bob had to say, and the direction Helpstream seems to be headed in. So check out my conversation with Bob below, or download the mp3 here.

Technorati : helpstream, social business processes, social crm
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