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06.24.10 How Vendors And Strategists Differ In The Social CRM Space  By Jacob Morgan After spending a lot of time speaking and interacting with vendors and strategists in the Social CRM space it became very clear to me that vendors and strategists (or consultants or analysts or whatever else you want to call them) are on a very different page when it comes to understanding and explaining what Social CRM is and/or does. I think what we are seeing now (also in the E2.0 space) is a space which is being "pulled" by vendors so to speak. I realize it's not this cut and dry and that not all vendors fall into the "vendor" mindset and that not all strategists fall into the "strategist" mindset. Having said that let's a take a look at where the disconnect might be between vendors and strategists. The Vendors I won't mention any specific names but there are many vendors (and people who represent those vendors) who are touting Social CRM as a product or a technology solution while neglecting the strategic, change management, and cultural aspects that are also critical components. We also have very different vendors with very different product offerings that are all calling themselves Social CRM solutions. There are monitoring tools, community platforms, CRM tools, and others. They all do something very different yet all call themselves Social CRM platforms; this can get a bit confusing from the client side when they are looking to implement a social CRM solution yet are trying to differentiate amongst the lot. We are seeing many traditional CRM vendors who bolt-on social features into their existing legacy CRM platforms and offer that up as a "social CRM" solution. Again, to capitalize and make money on a growing and hot space. Now before coming down or saying anything bad about vendors we have to understand that they are in this space to make money and boy are many of them making a killing. Many of these vendors also offer professional services but this usually comes in the form of community management which I equate to giving an adrenaline shot to a community when it slows down. Sure it picks up the conversations for a while but it's not a scalable solution. There are only so many conversations, incentives, and promotions that your company can offer. I prefer to take a long term view, is what you're organization doing now going to work in the next 1, 3, or 5 years time? I can't really blame vendors because they are all businesses that are in the space to make money, plain and simple. Many of them are getting away with selling temporary short terms solutions but this won't last. So is social CRM really a technology solution? In my opinion absolutely not. I heard a quote from a presentation once which said, "if you focus on tools then you are one," and I couldn't agree more. There are countless examples of failed communities and CRM implementations (I'm sure folks like Mike Boysen can list many of these) that focused on the technology instead of the people. I just came back from the Enterprise 2.0 conference and the greatest underlying theme from every session was that it's not about the tools or the technologies, it's about the people and strategy. Focusing on anything else is in my opinion very short sited and quite frankly stupid. Now having said that, I can sort of understand where some of the vendors are coming from. The argument is that many strategists are focusing too much on hypothetical scenarios, concepts, ideas, and unproven or perhaps not tested methodologies. I get the frustration here from the vendor standpoint but to be honest the space is still a bit new and strategists don't have all the answers yet. There is no blue print or template but folks like Jeremiah Owyang, Esteban Kolsky, Mitch Lieberman, and others are working very hard to try to push the conversations forward and they are doing a kick ass job. But again, I see the issue and agree we need move past "conversations" and we will when the "market" is ready to really move forward (which we are starting to see). We saw the same thing with the E2.0 space a few years ago where vendors were also focusing on technology as the ultimate solution and now at every E2.0 conference we see that technology is not the focus or any organization, strategy, culture, and change management is. Technology is an enabler and a supporter. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Brian Solis is principal at FutureWorks PR, an award-winning PR and Social Media agency founded in 1999. FW PR bridges the communications gap between companies and their customers, and between products and their specific benefits for their target markets. Solis blogs at PR2.0, http://www.briansolis.com, and regularly contributes to many industry trades. He is also frequently quoted in articles relating to technology trends and Marketing/PR strategies. |
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