Are you the next Zoho? #CRMIdol, now open for APAC too

CRM Idol 2012

Yes, you read that right.

After a resounding success (in the contestants own words) CRM Idol, the contest that aims at bringing the spot light on small startups building CRM software (by extension means social too), now includes new geographies as it opens itself for registration for the 2012 season.

You can get more details from the contest's website: http://www.crmidol.com.

And if you were not aware, in addition to the visibility that it got the startups and small vendors, the contest's judges mentor the contestants too. And the judges (who don't get paid) are all industry veterans, and they have meaty dollops to offer (as a gratitude and a way of giving back to the industry that sustained them so long). And its not just the visibility or prizes to be won either, three of the last year's finalist got bought and their CRM Idol ranking mattered a lot in that decision making process!

India, and everybody else in APAC, here is your chance to shine and make your presence felt. We are searching for the next Zoho. Prove the pundits wrong and let them know that we don't just code, that we build great products too. Go forth and register yourself.

Here is a request for those who are not a startup / small company (less than 7 year old) and yet reading this. Please pass on this message to any such company if you know them. APAC is replete with vernacular and I would not be able to reach everybody with my English based channels. I would request for any and all the help you could extend to help these startups.

Social Media is CIO's least priority in 2012

From Gartner's blogs

There is a great blog post around some interesting findings from a survey of CIOs by Gartner over on their site. And the most shocking (to some) finding is that Social Media/Web 2.0 comes in as the 11th priority this year (not shown in the above URLs owing to the fact that it did not make it to the Top 5th or even the Top 10th). In 2010 it had the 3rd highest priority amongst CIOs.

Well, my insightful friends in the Accidental Community and some of my colleagues at the business end were quick to reason out why and ready to point out that this is after all the CIOs priorities, not a CMO or a CEO; however this was a difficult fact for technologists. And hence there was this looming question:

Systems of Awareness

Last September, around the time when the brand marketers of the world renewed the discussions around the definition of Social CRM, I came up with a post titled "Social CRM: Hiring the right definition" in which I tried to look at Social CRM from many perspectives : Systems, Organization structure, Economics and Jobs views.

That was an important post for me, and seems it was useful to many more too, since it has fast become the top 5th post in my blog since blogger started tracking the views. It was very important to me because I finally brought together many of the concepts I had been reading & thinking about. It was also very important because I was building upon a new concept that I called the "Systems of Awareness". This concept builds upon another concept of mine called the "4π Steradian view" of the business ecosystem which combines how businesses look at their ecosystem as well as being aware of how their ecosystem looks at them.