After being a reader of Customer Think (earlier called CRM Guru) for close to eight long years (on & off), I now start writing there!
I will initially repost some of the posts on Social CRM I have published in this blog and gauge the feedback & reception. Post which I will continue writing out there on topics related to Social CRM, etc. Hope to receive your feedbacks so that I can write better stuff, now that I am, as Paul Greenberg says, going "pro". ;)
In this blog I will continue writing my non professional interests I indulge in from time to time. So you can still expect posts on FLOSS, Rice Writing & other personal stuff I would like to share with the world. :)
I must thank Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary for promoting me, Bob Thompson for inviting me to CT & all the other wonderful folks at #scrm on Twitter for the current shift. :)
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Please don't build "social" features into CRM systems ...
... but do build a unified dashboard! Let me use my visualization of the Social CRM IT landscape again to explain my said stand.
If you have gone through my explanation of the above architecture diagram, you will get to know that I have visualized a landscape where the social apps are separate from the CRM apps yet integrated.
The reason for the separation is simple: social apps is a highly voalite area technically, keeps evolving very fast & people always seem to latch onto newer stuff leaving the older apps to stagnate or dwindle (almost like fads). It helps that even Gartner concurs regarding this. [Sorry, this report costs $495 and I can't quote them verbatim without getting permissions.]
It would not only be highly risky for an enterprise to keep implementing all the new stuff but also very difficult to keep changing the "Social CRM" system that has al the social elements into the CRM system itself!
Social apps should be considered as additional customer channels in the overall CRM strategy. Thus Social CRM is part of the bigger whole - CRM.
Yet, having a unified dashboard will be most helpful for the four guys in the above diagram. Well, the four guys are not the only ones going to profit from the unified dashboard, bu they are only there as examples of newer roles in the organization.
Widgets, gadgets, portlets, et al. make it easy to integrate data from different systems into one single dashboard. The recent announcement of Oracle CRM gadgets for Google Sites via Google Secure Data Connectors (GSDC) is a step forward (or rather outside) in this very direction. As Oliver Marks states in his post:
As usual, waiting for your inputs. :) Catch me on twitter @scorpfromhell or if you are interested only in my views on Social CRM then catch me in the #scrm stream out there. :)
The reason for the separation is simple: social apps is a highly voalite area technically, keeps evolving very fast & people always seem to latch onto newer stuff leaving the older apps to stagnate or dwindle (almost like fads). It helps that even Gartner concurs regarding this. [Sorry, this report costs $495 and I can't quote them verbatim without getting permissions.]
It would not only be highly risky for an enterprise to keep implementing all the new stuff but also very difficult to keep changing the "Social CRM" system that has al the social elements into the CRM system itself!
Social apps should be considered as additional customer channels in the overall CRM strategy. Thus Social CRM is part of the bigger whole - CRM.
Yet, having a unified dashboard will be most helpful for the four guys in the above diagram. Well, the four guys are not the only ones going to profit from the unified dashboard, bu they are only there as examples of newer roles in the organization.
Widgets, gadgets, portlets, et al. make it easy to integrate data from different systems into one single dashboard. The recent announcement of Oracle CRM gadgets for Google Sites via Google Secure Data Connectors (GSDC) is a step forward (or rather outside) in this very direction. As Oliver Marks states in his post:
"Mobile sales people who know all about trying to vpn into complicated enterprise systems in their rental cars outside prospect offices and drilling down through several screens of CRM to find what they want, should be delighted with this development."
As usual, waiting for your inputs. :) Catch me on twitter @scorpfromhell or if you are interested only in my views on Social CRM then catch me in the #scrm stream out there. :)
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Social CRM Architecture explained
Building upon the architecture diagram I shared in my previous post, here I present my view of the Social CRM landscape in CRM 2.0. I haven't been able to fit in Cloud Computing, Mobile Apps & Unified Communications into it. Request your help in updating this. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)