SocialmeetsCRM
Summary
With the rise of mobile technologies, communities, social networks and general
social media Customer Relationship Management as we know it is undergoing
drastic changes. These technologies dramatically changed the playground as we
know it, and we still need to fully understand the new rules of the game in order
to be able to successfully compete in the marketplace.
Figure 1: The rules of CRM have changed (with kind permission of Mark Tamis, under creative
commons 3)
Although only depicting a part of CRM the above Figure , which got crafted by
Mark Tamis portrays a very important aspect of this change.
It covers business processes and with that also implicitly the need of change
management and corporate culture.
Of course, we should not forget about the customer.
The
situation
Let us start to discuss the easiest one: The technology. Technology is the
simplest because it merely is a toolkit and then I have some roots in
technology
What I consider state-of-the-art right now is the availability of integrated
software suites that cover marketing, sales, service, and analytics this across a
variety of channels, including mobile, web, interaction center. Surely, some
software packages are stronger in one area or the other but essentially we have
seen a tendency towards suites. The other thing that we have seen is a shift
from on premise to on demand. In parallel we have seen the change from a
horizontal CRM to industry specific solutions and the start of a change of mind on
the vendors side, away from product to solution. This implies the advent of
outside-in thinking. SaaS as a method of delivery is well established now and will
likely become even stronger, albeit with the occasional backslash.
Then we have a raft of buzzwords: Social media, communities, and related to
this social analytics (socialytics) and social CRM, customer experience
management, mobility, location based services, unified communication,
gamification, to name but a few.
On the strategy level we see more and more companies applying holistic and
business driven CRM strategies as opposed to the originally very technology
driven CRM implementations. We see that the companies are starting to
integrate different business functions and processes. This is accompanied by
the thought of establishing a 360-degree view on the customer. Further,
companies started to not only ask for more internal efficiency but also to see
increased top- and bottom lines coming out of their CRM initiatives. To support
this companies implement loyalty programs and reach out into different
channels, including social media. Companies also increasingly look into building
their brands by providing consistent customer experiences across the various
touch points that they offer.
On the service side we observe a number of support communities leveraging
crowd sourcing; product development partly gets input via idea marketplaces,
which is another crowd sourcing example, and so on.
All this has the three goals of increasing customer retention, increasing the
number of customers overall, and increasing the operational efficiency.
SocialmeetsCRM, July 2011
Figure 2: Traditional CRM landscape; businesses have relationships with their customers
1
http://www.customerthink.com/interview/social_crm_whats_right_whats_wrong_whats_next_inside_scoop_with_graham
2 http://thesocialcustomer.com/index.php?q=coriecrm/30585/future-crm-software
3 http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2046203/computing-research-future-crm-social-mobile
SocialmeetsCRM, July 2011
4 http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Building-Community-the-Platform/The-Future-of-Enterprise-Software-will-be-Fun-and-
Productive/ba-p/25486
SocialmeetsCRM, July 2011
5 http://marktamis.com/2011/02/28/social-crm-in-retail/
6 http://blog.ciber.com/article.cfm?articleid=2011030714918&ptopic=crm
7 http://www.customerthink.com/blog/the_future_of_social_shopping
SocialmeetsCRM, July 2011
Conclusion
The value chain as we know it converges towards a value network, that partly
gets built dynamically to fulfill a customers need or, in other words, to get the
customers job done.
Companies will organize themselves and network with other companies, transfer
customers between them in a dynamic flow. This will happen based upon the
explicitly or implicitly stated need of a customer, the job she wants to get done.
As a consequence we will see dynamic value networks of companies, customers,
and their connections that are purpose-built and rebuilt to fit the need.
All this will be supported by a strong platform built from currently disparate but
converging technologies.
In few words CRM will change from being a company strategy to an ecosystem
strategy. The ecosystem consists of different companies, customers, and their
networks, collaborating with the goal of putting together a value proposition that
leads to customers choosing your company's over ones proposed by others.
SocialmeetsCRM, July 2011