We Blog CRM

Social CRM has been a contentious topic for almost three years now, with one side claiming that integrating social media into enterprise practices is not a means of success, and the other side arguing that companies neglecting social network outreach are doomed. In its fledgling stage, Social CRM’s benefits are not always simply discerned, and while many more are starting to agree about its value, Social CRM still has some kinks that need resolving.

Yesterday, Michael Krigsman, the CEO of Asuret, Inc., took to his ZDNet blog to discuss some of the information he learned at Paul Greenberg’s Social CRM seminar (a two-day event that occurred the week prior). In the post, Krigsman’s take-home point is that anti-Social CRM advocates are wrong to deny that current technologies are useful in the enterprise. Krigsman, in turn, is correct in saying this, however, his reasoning on the matter—that Social CRM dissenters are chest-thumpers taking an extreme, contrary position as a means of getting personal attention—is incorrect, and Krigsman would do better to dismantle his opponents’ actual arguments.

Krigsman does bring up a good point, however, in noting one of the reasons Social CRM is often under fire: because the technology is still in the early stages, the results (and benefits) are not patently obvious and Social CRM is therefore very easy to attack as having little merit. Furthermore, it can be tricky to implement Social CRM effectively—an influx of unsorted data is often a bad thing, and difficult and time-consuming to organize.

The best way to implement Social CRM is to have a plan. This advice may seem obvious, but there are some important things to consider. For one, companies leveraging Social CRM should have a solid method or application for structuring both the sorted and unsorted data. It’s important to have a means of tracking the incoming data from social media without wasting time with the noise, and arranging the data in such a way that it is actionable.

A recent CRM Magazine article mentioned another helpful tip: social algorithms. Each company will likely have their own goals, and Accenture is working to develop a basic algorithm to help enterprises move forward socially. Accenture’s objective is to systematize when and how companies respond to certain data. The magazine also recommends seeking consultants for social media organization, but this is sort of a no-brainer.

The advantages Social CRM offers are many—this is an irrevocable fact, even considering the existing troubles with organizing all the data in a meaningful, actionable way.

Perhaps SAP is so tired of hearing criticism for their ERP product that they’ve decided to beef up their CRM platform for a while. That’s right, this week SAP announced that SAP CRM 7.0 would live in the future, and features a Twitter integration.

Twitter is where many enterprise software companies have begun their foray into social network integrations—despite producing lots of noise, it is a very simple way to gain insight into customers’ conversations and tastes. And SAP is being smart about the integration—the Business Objects Text Analyzer will provide sentiment analysis of user’s Twitter streams. The goal, as usual, is to create targeted connections with customers using social media.

But as there were difficulties before, some obstacle still remain, and not just for SAP, but for any company trying to effectively leverage social tools typically used for leisure. And SAP CRM VP of Marketing, Vinay Iyer, expressed security concerns to SearchCRM’s Barney Beal (though what those specific apprehensions are were not detailed in Beal’s article), as agreed that easily drawing significant data from Twitter will take some time.

Iyer did make an interesting note, however: he said he’s observed many customers that are simply happy to looking at aggregated data, find relevant tweets, do sentiment analysis, and create a response based on that. This is a good thing, because we might be waiting a while before CRM platforms can analyze and respond to individual tweets, which would be ideal for an all-encompassing “social CRM” platform, which is doutbless what many vendors have been working toward since the explosion of social networking.

Today, CRM Magazine’s Jessica Tsai noted an expected increase in social media spending in marketing departments. The news isn’t surprising—we heard for the better part of 2009 that social networking was the new big thing in CRM for lead outreach and relationship development—but this time the information is backed up by a report from the Chief Marketing Officers Club.

The CMO Club was founded four years ago and currently has about 1,200 members, and they surveyed 133 CMOs before the end of 2009 to get a feel for what they’d be doing differently in 2010. Sixty-four percent said they planned to increase social media spending, and 72% of those CMOs not currently overseeing social media initiatives planned to create some. Pete Krainik, found of the CMO Club, even suggested this will be the year that CMOs failing to grasp social media will be fired for their inability to do so.

Still, findings regarding conversion rates driven by social media were not convincing. Those surveyed said they were “unsure” about the effects of channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs, even though those channels receive heavy traffic. Krainik claims the benefits social media provide for lead development, and general knowledge of the customer, will be enough to encourage any CMO to implement these plans. Indeed, that last bit was best use for social media in 2009, allowing CMOs to learn their customers through user reviews and ratings.

The report deemed last year as social media’s “trial run,” and Krainik stated confidence in social media being an enterprise-wide mainstay by 2011, but it seems like most marketers are still trying to wrap their heads around it all. It’s true that social media platforms have thrown something of a wrench in marketers’ plans, upsetting their prior means of getting information about their users and customers. Social media has been a great supplement to CRM processes for many companies, but it isn’t a fit for all—not every business is going to find an audience interested in their Twitter stream, even if there are plenty of people interested in their product.

Nonetheless, I agree with Krainik that social media will cement itself in enterprise processes. And it will be extremely interesting to see if social media can be tailored enough to give CMOs a measurable ROI.

The GURL creator

Information regarding Salesforce Chatter flooded this year’s Dreamforce 2009, but there were some interesting partnership products, among them Genius.com’s new social marketing automation tool.

Simply named, Social Marketing Automation leverages Salesforce.com’s Collaboration Cloud to nurture and score converted leads from social networking platforms. Genius prides itself on being one of the first to push “Sales 2.0,” or SaaS marketing automation tools, and for a while now their demand generation services have been popular on the Salesforce AppExchange. The new tool allows joint users of Genius.com and Salesforce.com to embed trackable links in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and other social media to monitor leads and engage in live sales dialog.

The trackable links used for monitoring are the Genius URL shorteners (GURLS), which the company released earlier this past July as a tool for measuring the ROI of conversations happening in social media. Upon the official launch of the GURLs, Genius.com CEO and co-founder David Thompson took to the company’s blog, and state that they are a step toward structural overhaul within marketing automation, and an instrument for measuring the “cloudy” conversations, and then turning those conversations into deals. Furthermore, the GURLs allow for tracking conversations as they would any other campaign, but without inhibiting the stream in any way.

It’s a great concept, and a use of social media that goes beyond “interesting” and actually seems useful.

Today Jive Software, a producer of what it terms “Social Business Software,” launched an integration with Microsoft SharePoint—the first in a series, called Jive Connects, that it hopes will liberate content in server suites.

After integration, Jive and SharePoint users will have a unified stream of content within both systems, and can also create content in one system and have access to it in the other. Jive users will also be able to search and link to SharePoint repositories and content from wherever it is they are working in Jive, from discussion threads to blogs.

Jive isn’t the first social enterprise provider to integrate with SharePoint, and it is certainly a smart move to join with the Microsoft product to enrich the Jive experience. Still, Jive’s SharePoint Connector is part of a bigger scheme, Jive Connects: a series of modules that’ll enable organizations to surface content activities from almost any CMS inside Jive, and is intended to bridge several gaps.

First, Jive wants to allow for a CMS solution that provides forums for content within the platform—normally conversation regarding content slips to “off-the-grid” emails, and having the feedback easily accessible will preclude the need for switching between applications. Adding a social aspect to enterprise is a wise move in general, but Jive wants to incorporate social networking features for searches, pointing out that social media is quickly changing the way people look for and expect to find information. Jive also recently launched a social media tracker to its platform, so it will be interesting to see what they’ll be doing in the coming year.