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Tuesday’s Tip: Three Quick Steps To Capture Social Customer Data

Published on May 17, 2011 by R "Ray" Wang

Organizations Must Overcome Four Fears To Master Social Customer Data

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been criss-crossing the country on a multi-city speaking tour talking about the strategic value of customer data. (In full discloure, the tour is sponsored by Informatica).  As we talk about the implications of social media and customer data, inevitably the audience raises four main concerns:

  1. Existing models outdated, but must be adjusted. How business is conducted does not reflect the shift to a social construct.  Existing systems rewarded management and control not engagement and influence. Organizations and business processes must support engagement and relationship applications.
  2. Organizations are no longer in control, and must build or reestablish relationships. Social opens up a can of worms.  Organizations who believe they are in control will quickly find out how little control they have.  Organizations must foster communities so that relationships can be nurtured.
  3. Volume of requests keep increasing, thus automation is the key to sanity. Those who experiment in social media often find out quickly they can not scale in a 1-to-1 fashion.  The empowerment of the individual means an increase in expectations in response and quality of service.  Automation tools must be put in place to manage, triage, and predict requests.
  4. Data deluge will kill the business, yet the data is the strategic asset. Huge amounts of information from unstructured sources such as comments, blogs, tweets, and video inundate existing systems.  Signal to noise ratios decrease with all the noise.  However, the relationships to the customer in orders, comments, products, services, interaction histories, and sentiment is more valuable than any other asset in the company.

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Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

Published on December 16, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Early Adopters And Pioneers Have Benefited From Social

Across executive board rooms and even in living rooms, social business is all the rage.  In 2010, social crm (SCRM) and Enterprise 2.0 (E20) rose into mainstream conversation.  Despite the mindshare and awareness, a majority of business leaders have yet to begin these initiatives.  The good news – those organizational leaders who have adopted disruptive technologies in social, have already realized the benefits.  Those benefits include:

  • Faster product time to market and customer adoption
  • Reduced marketing spend and increased marketing engagement
  • Reduced incident to resolution times that lead to greater customer retention
  • Greater market influence and brand awareness
  • Improved collaboration across departments and improved knowledge bases
  • Growth in the top line and savings in the bottom line

SCRM and E2.0 Evolve Into An Uber Category Of Social Business In 2011

Fast followers have noticed the business benefits and have begun planning for social business initiatives in 2011.  Innovative management teams can expect social businesses to bring together the many concepts of social media, social analytics, social media monitoring, social marketing, SCRM, E20, community platforms, and Vendor Relationship Management (VRM).  Leaders seeking to understand social business can succeed by following these five simple rules for social business (see Figure 1.):

Figure 1. Five Simple Rules For Social Business

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Tuesday’s Tip: 10 SaaS/Cloud Strategies For Legacy Apps Environments

Published on August 10, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Legacy Apps Customers Seek Practical Advice

Organizations determining when and how to make the move to SaaS and Cloud face realistic challenges in gaining buy-in and realizing the apparent and hidden benefits of SaaS/Cloud.  In a recent survey of over 300 companies, 73 respondents who were wary of SaaS/Cloud were asked to list the top 3 reasons they did not plan to deploy a SaaS/Cloud solution in the next 12 months (see Figure 1).  The top 3 reasons related to legacy environments, org structure, and governance include:

  • Legacy apps CIO’s. CIO’s vested in protecting the existing investments may often proceed with caution for SaaS and Cloud solutions.  In some cases, sunk cost mentality takes hold and the goal of being 100% pure with a single vendor clouds the vision to meet needed business requirements.
  • Burden of legacy apps. Legacy apps maintenance and upkeep represents a key barrier to SaaS and Cloud adoption.  Organizations often remain complacent about maintenance and upgrades, preferring to avoid substantial changes and risk.   Becuase the money and resources to support legacy apps consume most of the budget, organizations have little funds for innovation and experimentation.  Eventually, business decision makers procure SaaS/Cloud solutions to by-pass IT.
  • No IT team buy in.  Many constrained IT teams have not taken the time to understand the requirements to support SaaS and Cloud apps in a hybrid mode.  SaaS requires organizations to revisit SOA strategies, integration requirements, and master data management.  Business leaders and decision makers often overlook these dependencies at the organization’s long term expense.

Figure 1.  Legacy Issues Hamper SaaS/Cloud Adoption


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Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects

Published on July 5, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Social CRM Faces Initial Adoption Hurdles From Management

In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the “Five Stages of Grief” in her book, On Death and Dying. These five stages can be summed up as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  When applied to disruptive technology adoption by organizations, the “Five Stages” framework provides clear insight in anticipating how likely an organization is ready to embrace change.  Recent conversations with line of business operations managers about Social CRM identify both lack of awareness and high levels of internal resistance towards adoption.  In a recent phone and in-person survey of 31 front office operations owners (i.e. sales executives, support executives, and COO’s) about their attitudes on Social CRM, 67.7% (i.e. 21/31) expressed denial, 16.1% (i.e. 5/31) felt anger, and 9.6% (i.e. 3/31) experienced bargaining, 3.2% (i.e. 1/31)  encountered depression, and 3.2% (i.e. 1/31) achieved acceptance (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Most Front Office Executives Live In Denial About SCRM


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Tuesday’s Tip: How To Evaluate Tech Projects For Business Value

Published on May 25, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Today’s Evaluation Frameworks Miss The Point

Business leaders seek clarity in understanding which technology solutions drive the most business value.  Today’s frameworks often focus on a combination of:

  • Features – ability to execute, current offering, product depth, etc
  • Direction – vision, strategy, corporate leadership, etc.

Unfortunately, the intersection of features and direction only addresses potential.  Clients continue to express how potential alone no longer provides enough justification in vendor selection or understanding the overall adoption strategy.

Next Gen Evaluation Frameworks Must Start With Business Value

Business leaders seek returns on investment.  IT leaders strive to reduce cost of delivery.  ROI alone may not answer the question as business value needs to be expressed and compared.  Business impact remains the goal in building out new frameworks.  In addition, the cost of technologies must be factored.   As a result, key questions in vendor selection often include:

  • Will this product provide an ROI?
  • Where will the organization realize a business impact?
  • How do various solutions compare in delivering business value?

Organizations Must Balance Business Impact And Cost Of Technology Delivery

Based on conversations with 113 end user clients and vendors, there appears to be a market demand in building out a new framework that compares how (see Figure 1):

  • Business impact extends across the value chain. Business impact extends into 3 levels of maturity from internal to external (i.e. department, cross enterprise, and business value chain).  The greater the penetration of the solution, the greater the business value.
  • Cost of technology delivery measures against percentage of revenue. Both scaling and return on investment reduce the cost of delivery.  Reference data provided via customer references and case studies will provide key data points by industry, size, and geo.

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Tuesday’s Tip: How To Compare Total Ownership Costs

Published on May 11, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Apps Strategy Options Abound And Organizations Need Accurate Comparison Methodologies

Recent inquiries from blog readers and client engagements highlight a growing need to compare the cost of apps strategies.  Common comparison scenarios often include:

  • SaaS versus on-premise
  • Upgrade versus customization
  • Single instance versus two-tier
  • Vendor maintenance versus third party options
  • Custom apps versus packaged apps

Cost Comparisons Should Encompass The Software Ownership Lifecycle

An inventory of costs should comprise the phases of application ownership (see Figure 1).  License fees, implementation, and maintenance often define the most common costs.  However, additional factors by phase should include:

  • Phase 1 – Selection. Costs include services such as requirements gathering, vendor selection services, contract negotiation fees, and program management.
  • Phase 2 – Implementation. Costs include projects such as change management, business process reengineering, integration, customization, and testing.
  • Phase 3 – Adoption. Costs include, training, testing, configuration, report creation, and customizations.
  • Phase 4 – Optimization. Costs include upgrade, testing, custom development, and other integration fees.
  • Phase 5 – Renewal. Costs include third party maintenance, management, and vendor selection.

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