Michael MaozObserve consumers buying, searching, looking for opinions. Then watch sales personnel, marketing folks, and customer service agents, delivery and logistics workers. They are highly social. They are looking for advice from others who have ‘been there and done/tried that.’ Now look at the productivity software that they use. iPhones, iPads, Google, Bing (hey – it is happening), Kayak, Yelp!, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter are big. Videos are big, whether HowCast or YouTube or just linked to Carrefour or METRO or The Home Depot or Lowe’s or H&M.
Now go inside of the enterprise and check out the state of the art business applications from the largest software companies. How social are these apps? How much real-time decision support is there? I mean without integrations with other stuff like OpenText or Jive or Bazaarvoice or Teradata or a bevy of other bolt-ons. Most clients would say that the native business applications from the big software houses that consume most of their discretionary budget are not innovating quickly enough.
That is why I mentioned the Struldbrugs. For those of you who have forgotten Ninth Grade English Literature (or World Lit is you are from Asia, Africa, maybe), the Struldbrugs were the immortals of Glubbdubdrib island in Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. But not immortals eternally innovating, but immortals eternally consigned to aging and infirmity. Not Cullens’ by any stretch. (forgive me if I got some of the story line jumbled here – it was a…… a long time ago!)
There are many positive signs of change a-comin’ in the pace of change from the likes of Microsoft with the Outlook Social Connector and many other advances in Redmond. It is not for a lack of playing catch-up. But what clients are frustrated with is the eternal position of looking outside of their biggest partners for innovative ideas. Right now, “All Things Social” is the undertaking of the moment for most organizations. That might be tapping the collective, or fostering collaboration, or sparking customer engagement.
It’s time for the large enterprise software houses to step up aquisitions in the social software space, and to invest more in developing innovative products and broadcasting their thought leadership. This final point is important. Once inside of the right department at these companies, should you succeed, you will hear and see terrific ideas bubbling away and products being readied for market. It is just taking too long for them to reach the user audience.
Give your favorite large enterprise application vendor a poke and let them know you are waiting, impatiently. In the meantime, don’t be afraid of entanglements with the smaller and more nimble innovators in collaboration and Social CRM.
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Social Business Top News for August 3rd from 15:06 to 19:56 – Social CRM ( SCRM ) Consulting Services | Social CRM World ( SCRM ) August 4, 2010 at 1:03 am
[...] Are the enterprise software vendors Social CRM Struldbrugs? [...]
2 Are the enterprise software vendors Social CRM Struldbrugs? : : crm August 4, 2010 at 1:59 am
[...] Przeczytaj artykuł: Are the enterprise software vendors Social CRM Struldbrugs? [...]
3 Rich Reader August 4, 2010 at 3:36 am
Let’s never be surprised at finding some part of the right team for solving a big problem outside of our biggest partners. This is the power of pull.
4 Doug Hadden August 4, 2010 at 11:52 am
There seems to be a general notion that Social CRM represents add-on functionality to CRM. And that CRM represents the key or dominant Enterprise 2.0/ social software opportunity in the TLA spaces of ERP/SCM/CPM/PPM etc. My view is that the notion of bolting on social software is the wrong approach, so acquiring Social CRM vendors might not be the best approach for the large vendors. In fact, this could be another Struldbrug method.
The enterprise software vendors, in general, have joined the BPM cult. BPM attempts to articulate all enterprise activities into a series of steps. The problem is diminishing returns as enterprises try to define more granular processes within software. That’s where social software can help – but not in a BPM way, like “now we will collaborate” and call out to the social software. No, enterprise functions are as social as consumer functions. Social needs to be built in, right in software architectures.
The non Struldbrug method? Revise the “web-enabled” software architectures with the old client/server code and use social software as the compelling event to do so.
5 mitchell August 4, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I have to agree with and add on to what Doug is saying. I think it’s important that collaboration solutions go past just “being social” and calling it good. PROCESS is really what drives business and organizational results. At Kavi, our solution (Kavi Workspace) is built with the intent of helping organizations ahdere to and enhance processes.
Check out some of our collaboration case studies and resources at http://www.kavi.com/resources
6 Jack crm August 8, 2010 at 7:34 am
This is where integrating a mouse heatmap into your CRM system when they make a purchase. If they don’t, then you simply disregard all the date you gathered from the session.
7 Matt Morris August 12, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Doug Hadden–spot on about the hazards of trying to “bolt-on” social to old software, and trying to put every procedure into a defined workflow. (Death by Vizio).
The fact is that in day-to-day workdays, we often are confronted with choices for which there is no “if/then” logic path. The more informed we are, the better choice we will make.
Embedded social means we can tap the best resources to make the best decisions in real time. It can’t be a bolt-on, it has to be part of the enterprise fabric.