It is amazing what I am learning lately! Seem that I was so dip in strategy, planning and implementation “trenches” that I largely missed all these developments around Enterprise 2.0. Proverbial drinking from a fire hose! There is a lot of writing on this subject in a blogosphere, but most of it focused on tools rather than business processes which can or should be supported by these tools. Calls for yet another revolution are giving me indigestion. I know about demographics and aging population, but rumors about our deafness are greatly exaggerated (my apologies to estate of Mark Twain), there is hardly a need for such a shouting. However some good conceptual ideas for practical utilization of these tools to improve flow of information within an enterprise and between enterprise and its market participants start to bubble up.

Brent Leary reports in his blog on Microsoft Convergence conference:

.. without exception the main themes coming out of all three of these events is the growing importance of social CRM - how social media and web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into traditional crm strategies to reach their customers and prospects in a more meaningful way. In fact social CRM has very little to do with software, and everything to do with acknowledging that customers have the power to engage with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want and how dramatically they wish to do so. So the masses can more easily amass without the boundaries of the past, and drive how they’ll consume information as well as how they will do business. Which means that old maxim of business not being personal is no longer the case, if it ever was. Business IS very personal, so CRM has to be way more than great software, productivity gains and integration. These things are important, but so is understanding why people blog, leave comments, digg or stumble, create videos, etc.

It seem that the tools start to tip the scales of asymmetric marketing warfare to the benefit of buying public, but personally I am yet to see any meaningful results as a consumer. I still have to call my “friendly” bank at least two times to remove some silly charges and my requests to stop mailing flyers and other garbage to me are being ignored at a great expense to the bank (Thank you Bank of America!) and to environment. I do acknowledge the power of outrage as illustrated by the slaughterhouse debacle, but such a fury cannot and should not be expected in every experience of customer mistreatment. Only future will tell how much fury current banking practices will manage to gather in their pathetic attempts to manage mortgage disaster as illustrated in this Citi gem.

“Social” CRM will become social when enterprise executives stop hiding behind the lines of powerless or uninterested “troops” and engage directly into dialog with their customers.

Well,  if you really want to know read this excellent post by DonPaul Olshove. The best analysis of the situation I have seen.

How Ivory Tower Economists Created the Housing Bubble

Michael Krigsman continues this very interesting discussion on a role and value of internal IT organizations. It is very difficult to dispute his arguments and I am not the one to even try. I just want to comment on the last of the five tips listed - Lose the arrogance:

Lose the arrogance. Condescending attitudes toward the business destroy IT’s credibility in the enterprise, making IT weak and vulnerable.

A blog called It Ought to be Simple says it well:

If IT’s condescending attitude resulted in nothing more than a few hurt feelings, it wouldn’t be such an issue. But the attitude causes much bigger problems: It gives IT a free pass, the right to blame mistakes on users…who are, after all, too stupid to know what they’re doing.

Here’s what a CNET blog commenter said:

Users are stupid and that needs to be the starting point…for software developers

Such nonsense undermines IT and only hastens its path toward extinction.

My comment has to do specifically with the type of IT arrogance which is connected to implementation of business applications and often expressed with a phrases - “users don’t know what they want” or “if only users explained to us what they want”. Perhaps these sentiments are more expression of frustration than arrogance which is rooted in a gap of business process improvement knowledge in many organizations.

A common chain of events is started by a business organization which requests introduction of a new application into IT portfolio, where IT role is seen primarily as a deliver of technology. Scanning employment ads in DICE, Monster, etc placed by IT organizations reveals that they are looking for specialists with experience of the specific application technology rather than the specific business processes. Requirement gathering process degenerates into cafeteria list compellation of available functions and features, because a technologist cannot engage business community into value added review of their processes and practices, or introduce thought leadership for adoption and change management which are learn through the past experiences in similar business situations.

Perhaps I would add the 6th tip to prevent IT extinction - Add value by assuming ownership of Organizational Transformation and Change Management.

I was reading this article What created this Monster? which attempts to find the root of current collapse in financial markets, and it occurred to me that perhaps there are some similarities between the results of deregulation of financial markets and “democratization” of information.

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  CRM, if it’s working right, is a tool for destroying the 80-20 business equation.

The best examples of CRM wrecking 80-20 rule are experienced when methodology is formalized, integrated into business processes and encoded within software. Few examples to illustrate the point are dramatic improvements in

• margin via elimination of excessive discounting caused by inadequate forecasting methods and practices;
• new sales hires retention and rump up enabled by clearly stated process guidance, terminology, and definitions; 
• lead conversion ratio since streamlining of pipeline management eliminates “stale” leads;
• customer satisfaction, i.e. retention enabled by flowing customer (contact/person) information across departments/sales teams/customer support/marketing, etc. within a proper context.

That makes CRM initiatives such a high risk/but much higher return proposition - if done right the ROI is much higher and faster than most of other options.