Technology is an Enabler

First of all, what is an enabler?  For good or ill, an enabler is something or someone that helps (enables) something to happen.   Technology by itself does nothing.  It sits there.  A very expensive piece of software or a cute looking smart phone that does absolutely NOTHING.

Until a human being picks up the tool -- from the invention of the wheel to the invention of the iPhone -- nothing happens.  A tool is only as good as the person using it.

The wheel is a prime example.  A wheel can be used to power a wheelbarrow, allowing heavy items to be transported with relative ease on one wheel being pushed by a human.  A wheel is the basis of many simple machines.  Take two wheels, a large wheel rigidly secured to a smaller wheel or shaft, (called an axle) and you have a modified lever.  It is the two wheels, the wheel and axle that allows a car to  travel many miles or kilometers an hour as the wheels turn and turn again, moving the car forward.

But without humans doing something the wheel is just a round do-nut that sits there looking pretty.

What is true of the wheel is true of every machine ever built, or which will ever be invented.  People have to use them, and use them wisely for them to do anything at all.

Somehow when it comes to technology people forget it is simply a tool.  Many people seem to expect technology to magically improve their lives.

Technology is not magic.   It is just another enabler which can help only if we first examine what we need, how we are fulfilling that need today -- and only then asking the question "can technology" make this job faster, more efficient, cost less to do -- or somehow make me more money by letting me do this job faster.

I am a huge fan of CRM (customer relationship management).  Yet 70% of all CRM implementations fail.  70% fail!  Can we blame all this failure on the tools?  Or are people expecting too much of the tool itself?

Everything starts and ends with people.  CRM can be a fantastic tool, but you have to think of what your business does, and how you make money today.  Then and only then can you even consider if technology can help you do the job better.

Smartphones and CRM

Have you ever noticed that the world just seems to be changing faster and faster all the time?

I'm a big fan of the British television show, "Doctor Who." The premise of the show is that a time lord travels throughout time and space -- from ancient times to tens of thousands of years into the future.  "The Doctor" is a mysterious time traveler whose life is often lived "backwards" as he appears in places where people may know him, but he hasn't met them in "his" life yet.  It must be very confusing.

Sometimes I can relate to the Doctor.

The way our world is moving so quickly it is hard to "keep up" with the technology and how it changes us.  Technology changes the way we work, how we interact with our own families and how we shop.

The idea behind CRM (customer relationship management) is that vendors, to be successful, must know who their customers are and why they buy what they buy.  In the "old days" a small town might have had one butcher, one baker and one candlestick maker.  A customer was known by name and the vendor (say the candlestick maker) knew what kind and color of candle Mr. Jones bought or Mrs. Smith acquired.  CRM was just a part of the small customer base and the small proprieter.

Today we live in a world of Wal-Mart and Best Buy, not to mention Amazon.com and Buy.com .   We customers are anonymous, and if we are anonymous we may only shop one time and never return.  To gain our loyalty these large retailers must understand "who we are" by our buying habits, our demographics and our past buying habits.

Have you ever noticed when you visit Amazon's website that (if you've shopped there before) the website recommends new purchases to you based on what you've bought before?   Smart marketing, and a good application of CRM.

The days of shopping online via our PC alone has already changed and CRM must change along with it.

Gartner Group, a research company specializing in high technology,  is predicting that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common way to access the Internet by 2013.  This has both a huge impact on what vendors will require from CRM, as well as a huge opportunity to sell us more, while also making us happier by meeting our needs in "real time."  Customer loyalty and customer retention benefits from CRM tied to smart phones is an enormous potential -- and the holy grail of CRM.

Smart phones use both push and pull technology.  Pull technology is when a phone user goes online via the phone and searches for an address or driving directions.  They have proactively "searched" (or pulled) data from the internet.  Perhaps they are looking for a nearby drug store.  Perhaps they are searching for a certain product (perhaps a Wii game for their child).  As the person runs the search CRM is at work.

Now "push" technology comes into play.  An add for a Wii game sale is sent to the phone via GameStop or Wal-Mart.  The user checks local prices and sees how close each vendor is to them (pull technology.  GameStop is say 1/2 a mile away and Wal-Mart is 3 miles away).   A 15% off coupon is sent to the phone by GameStop (push technology).

And so it goes.   The future is the past, and soon the mega-stores may know you as well as the local candlemaker ever did.

The potential value of combining CRM, smartphones, GPS and unified communications to empower the customer while ensuring even higher customer loyalty is staggering.   The opportunity is there, if CRM is properly utilized.  The winners will do it.  The losers will be gone.

The World is Upside Down

This blog spends a lot of pixels on the topic of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).  How can companies manage their customers.  How can we keep current customers loyal and retain them?  How can we find new customers who will be profitable and love us and stay with us?

Simple answer?

You can't.

You don't really manage customers anymore -- if you ever did.  Perhaps the idea was always unreasonable.

Customers are people.  Newsflash.

People are unpredictable.  People are not, by nature, loyal.  If they were the divorce rate wouldn't be at 50%.

People only care about what they care about NOW.  Today.  If you are selling Christmas trees to Jews they won't care.  They don't use them (well, some do but not many).

Customers buy what they WANT to buy and the key today is not in trying to manage your customers but in understanding who they are, what they want (or need) and making it easy for them to be in the right place at the right time with the right story.    Story is key here -- because customers need to be able to find what they need when they need it.

And it needs to be simple.  Simple for customers to understand what your widget is.  Easy for them to understand why it matters to THEM (not you, they could care less about you) and then make it easy for them to get to the end result of what they want.   Intuitive (like a iPod, like a GUI (graphical user interface) versus a c: prompt).

The customer is now in charge of the world.  Realize it.  Embrace it.  So now more than ever is "know thy customer" and realize that while you need them, they don't need you.  Unless you give them a reason to need you.

CRM or BPM?

Last week I had the chance to travel to beautiful Cambridge, MA.  Years ago AT&T sent me to MIT for various business courses, but I hadn't been there in years.  Coming from Orlando with its 100 plus degree days it was a pleasure to walk by the Charles River along with many others.  The weather was perfect and I wasn't the only one enjoying the gorgeous day.

I was in Cambridge to visit with Pegasystems, the leading BPM (business process management) software leader.  Pega (as they are known) boasts major customers including Bank of America, three or four of the "Blues" (Blue Crosses) and many others.

BPM automates common work practices -- and since many companies are like silos -- marketing is independent of sales is independent of engineering is independent of shipping, most processes that cross departments (and don't they all?) get there via email, voice mail, forms, excel spreadsheets. . .  Even when the systems are the same the receiving department has to proactively pull the work into their world.

BPM not only automates processes across organizations, but using quality improvement methods and workflow automation work gets done faster and more efficiently -- thus saving time and money.  In the world of government regulation (such as Sarbanes-Oxley aka SOX) where companies had to keep a tighter track of financial information for auditing purpose) being able to not only automate processes, but to track them becomes a necessity.

Pega is #1 in the BPM software world with their  SmartBPM® product.  Their president, Alan Trefler was named “Computer Software Executive  of the Year” at the 2009 American Business Awards.  So in the world of BPM they are not only the market leader, but the thought leader.  Pega is the leader in the Gartner Group "Magic Quadrant" for BPM.

Recently Pega has dipped its toe into the CRM (customer relationship management) world with their solution CPM (Customer Process Manager).  They have build a contact center customer service support module on top of this BPM engine.   While certainly not a "threat" to the more complete CRM vendors who go beyond the customer service space, the Pega solution is the next logical step for CRM.

Today's CRM solutions are, for the most part, records based.  Whether we're talking of Siebel (Oracle), Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics CRM they all start by creating a record.

Remember those corporate silos I mentioned a few paragraphs ago?  All that great customer information winds up "usable" beyond the CRM application only if it is in a field in said record.  Otherwise that valuable customer "gold" becomes embedded in notes that a CSR or sales rep makes of the contact, and are only available to those who sit and read those notes.

What Pega's CRM does well is to integrate end-to-end customer-facing processes across not only departments but existing applications.  If you already have Siebel and an (enterprise resource planning) ERP solution and a (supply chain management) SCM solution you can bring in Pega underneath them to streamline the hand off of a sale or problem resolution across organizations.  Over time you can begin to implement some of their desktop apps that can be very easily modified on the fly.  The power of Pega's ability to pull this off is shown in their 50% plus growth in the last year.

The most amazing thing about Pega is that they are aimed at the big companies --  1,000 plus users.  Many CRM applications simply can't scale to large implementations, but Pega can -- and it does so based on an open architecture (java).

Pega does have competitors in this new CRM hybrid space.  Chordiant and Sword Ciboodle (a really excellent offer from a Scottish company who is making inroads into the States) to consider along with Pega if the process oriented CRM approach makes sense in your company.

The traditional CRM vendors have noted the interested a hybrid BPM / CRM approach and all have some iteration of it on their product roadmaps.    If you're interested in the CRM world, take a look at Pega, Chordiant ans Sword Ciboodle to get a feel for your future.

Is CRM Dying? Not Hardly!

With all the confusion around CRM -- is it sales force automation (SFA)?  Is it customer support (CSS)?  Is it the contact center?  The sales rep?  The service tech?  ALL of the above?

Do we define CRM as anything or anyone that touches a customer (I do), or just a call center application?

Well, for years people have been saying CRM fails.  CRM didn't live up to expectations.  We need something "new."

Shakespeare once wrote that "it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves."

When CRM has failed it is generally because the users of any CRM technology were not an integral part of what was needed.  The CRM solution didn't automate the things that were critical to the business needs, but an application was forklifted in and people were made to mold their business to it.

To further complicate things, many CRM applications are just that -- applications.   They are silos -- a customer service application that may pull information from other systems (or not), but the critical customer data winds up as "notes" that don't in turn become knowledge across the enterprise.   Can you say "bottleneck"?

The true power of customer relationship management (CRM) is its ability to not only solve an immediate customer problem or make a quick, non-complex sale -- it is the value of the knowing the customer buying pattern or recognizing recurring problems before they become damaging to the corporation.

This is a great value of the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) which they dub the "active data warehouse" where individual customer information is analyzed in near real time and becomes actionable -- "pervasive business intelligence."  Decisions are no longer guesses, they are logical outcomes based on hard facts.

Microsoft Dynamics, who just announced its 1 millionth customer and free accelerators grew sales by 75% last year.  See my last blog:  Microsoft is Dynamic!

Far from dying, CRM is evolving.  Gartner Group just announced that in this Recession CRM was actually $9.15 billion in 2008, up 12.5% from 2007.  See "Dataquest Insight: CRM Software Market Share Analysis, Worldwide 2008." "Despite financial market volatility, the worldwide CRM market enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth as businesses continued to invest in solutions across all sub-segments,"  Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.

The report places SAP as #1 in sales (same as last year), with Oracle second (Oracle had their own CRM and they aquired both Siebel -- the former leader -- and Peoplesoft's CRM), Salesforce.com (a pure Software as a Service aka SaaS play), Microsoft is third but growing fast and Amdocs (formerly Clarify) in fourth place, primarily focusing on the Telecom industry.   There are some strong contendors focusing on a workflow / business process approach versus the traditional records based approach.  Pegasystems CPM (the leader in business process management aka BPM software) has built CRM as a framework that integrates into business operations and the powerful solution is resulting in some very high profile Fortune 500 customers, including SunTrust.

The next generation CRM products are all incorporating some level of workflow and BP -- because the silo problem of all that information flowing into, but not out of CRM software is becoming a bottleneck to customer satisfaction and the business bottom line.

Microsoft is DYNAMIC

A little play on words there.  Microsoft bought a number of ERP software vendors a few years ago -- Navision, Axapta, Great Plains and Solomon Brothers.  They renamed them under the heading of "Microsoft Dynamics" -- replacing the names with initials.  Navision begame "Microsoft Dynamics NAV", Axapta became "Microsoft Dynamics AX" and so forth.   Each had a particular niche in ERP (mid-range companies) so there wasn't much conflict, and one day (promised Microsoft) there would be a common code base.

Along with the plethora of ERP offerings Microsoft came out with "Microsoft Dynamics CRM."     This has become the "little product who could."  This week Microsoft announced its 1 millionth CRM customer.

The Microsoft CRM product is pretty cool and really is a "contender."   If considering sales force automation (SFA) then Microsoft Dynamics CRM should be on your short list.  The contact center and customer service is not yet a strong suit -- but give them time!

Microsoft's CRM product grew over 50% last year -- in a market where most software companies are simply trying to survive.  The customer base is global -- with plenty of systems integrations, value added resellers and even a SaaS (software as a service) model.

Aside from the familiar Microsoft Outlook desktop (so very intuitive "look and feel") the product has workflow automation and analytics at a very reasonable cost.  Today at Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Microsoft announced new sales and marketing programs for xRM.

xRM is the name Microsoft has given its new development platform.  With xRM sophisticated relationship-tracking applications can be built (says Microsoft).  Microsoft has come out with some pretty sweet licensing options if you also align with Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint and other MS technologies.

One of the coolest announcements is "CRM accelerators."   This allows Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to pull data from social networks (didn't I write a blog about CRM and social networking?  Yes, yes I did!).  The first accelerator is for Twitter, with others to follow soon.  The best part?  They are FREE.

Along with he social network accelerator is the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator for distributing sales leads to channel partners, as well as the ability to centrally manage sales opportunities and a Portal Integration Accelerator connecting Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web site.

Cool stuff.

Congrats, Microsoft.

CRM the Contact Center and Unified Communications Get Real

A few blogs ago I wrote about the natural link between the contact center and unified communications.

Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center.  Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith’s office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to “ring” on his cell phone).   In the lives of busy executives (or even busy sales people) there are people whose calls don't merit being directly to you "live."

Traditionally UC would route such a call to a secondary point such as voice mail or email.  If you put a contact center into the mix the call can be routed to a live person who can try to resolve the need (whether a sale or customer service) thus improving customer service at a lower price point (executives and sales types tending to be expensive).

SearchCRM has an article about Eastman Chemical doing exactly what I suggested.  Eastman Chemical uses the SAP CRM contact center solution and claims to be deploying unified communications in the contact center.  The article doesn't give details as to HOW they are using UC or even whose UC they might be using.      The SAP Duet product has some presence capability "built in" partnering with Microsoft OCS, so this could be what is in use, but the article doesn't say. Possibly it is SAP NetWeaver.  Unfortunately the article is short on details and a search of SAP didn't turn up anything either.

Maybe someone from SAP can enlighten us?

Datamonitor’s “Market Share Insight: The Contact Center Universe,” writes that Aspect (a UC vendor) has 29% of the  outbound contact center marketshare.  If you go to Aspect's home page you'll see them heralding UC.    Aspect leverages Microsoft's UC including Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 (Microsoft's UC platform), Microsoft® Active Directory™ for single sign-on and authentication and  Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 for unified messaging (UM).

What is the difference between UC and UM?  UC = unified communications, the ability to unify live and passive forms of communications (office phone, cell phone, email, voice mail, etc.) to direct important people to the live person wherever he or she may be.  For example, an executive needs to speak to a key employee, but that employ is away from his (her) desk.  In earlier times the executive would either leave a voice mail or try to "zero out" to an admin who could search various cell phones, home phones, etc. trying to find the employee.

Unified communications allows its users to direct their various points of contact (office phone, email, etc.) to where they currently are (home, cell phone, client office. . .).  The end user can selectively allow only key people to access them "live" re-directing others to a secondary resource such as voice mail or a contact center.

Unified messaging (UM)  is an older technology that may be a subset of UC.   UM brings together  different electronic messaging technologies such as email, SMS, voice mail, video messaging and even faxes.  Using UM a "road warrior" can dial into voice mail and have email read to them electronically.  Likewise, voice mail can be left as an MP3 file on email or in some cases converted to text.    It is not as "live" and immediate as UC and is more advantagious to the receiver of the message than the sender.

UC brings sender and receiver together without "phone tag" or enless messages -- giving it the power of much faster response to sales opportunities and problem resolution.

At any rate, it is interesting that the value of combining the contact center with UC is getting more and more attention.  Thought you might want to know.

Unified Communications: Part 2

And the shake out in Unified Communications (UC) continues!

In the early days of UC Siemens worked closely with Microsoft. This was in the days of LCS (live communications server), not the current Microsoft OCS.   As time went by Microsoft cozied up to Nortel (for those who don't know, Nortel used to be Northern Telecom which was the Canadian AT&T in ancient times).  In the days before Cisco began to eat traditional telephony vendors' lunch (Avaya, Nortel, Siemens aka Rolm) Nortel was one of the big two competitors to the AT&T equipment spin-off, Avaya.

So when the honeymoon between Siemens and Microsoft ended with the release of Microsoft OCS which was targeted as a competitor to Siemens' highly acclaimed UC product, OpenScape, Microsoft tapped Nortel as its technology and channel partner in UC.

Musical chairs!  Fun to watch from the outside, but not only confusing to outsiders but job threatening to IT folks who hitched their career star to the wrong vendor!  There is a reason IBM has ruled in the IT space for about fifty years and it is FUD.

FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

FUD means no one got fired for buying IBM even if they didn't have the best solution out there.  Sometimes if one is on the IT hot spot it makes more sense to buy the safe choice rather than the best and right choice for your company.

Well, the Nortel / Microsoft alliance didn't turn out to be a life saver for Nortel.  Read the news lately?  Nortel is on the block -- the sales block!  Just as Avaya went private and Siemens was (mostly) bought out now it is Nortel's turn.  Nortel went into bankruptcy in January, 2009 and now Nortel Networks Limited is looking for a buyer.   Nortel's Enterprise Solutions is its second largest revenue source  -- and has a whopping 59% of the American market share (per Dell'Oro Group).

With Nortel on the block many of its partners are moving to Avaya.  Carol Giles Neslund, Avaya's North American channels VP, claims that 19 of  Nortel partners (including 10 of their biggest partners)  have signed up to Avaya (17 in the U.S and 2 in Canada).

Also on the chopping block is Nortel's wireless assets for $650 million to Nokia Siemens.

To add to Nortel's woes (as if they needed more headaches) Microsoft just inked a four-year agreement with Hewlett-Packard (HP) worth $180 million in enhancements to their joint unified communications solutions. What does that mean for that much ballyhooed Nortel/Microsoft UC partnership?  You might ask Siemens who was Microsoft's ballyhooed UC partner prior to Nortel.

Nortel isn't going down without a fight.  No sooner did Nortel sell its wireless group to Siemens it turns around and announces Release 3.0 of its SCS unified communications solution!   Right on the heels of this Nortel announced that Telecom Liechtenstein (obviously in Liechtenstein!) had invested in Nortel's UC offer - in its partnership with Microsoft -- integrating Microsoft's OCS with Nortel's voice communication ifrastructure.

So what is my advice to potential unified communications buyers?   First, look at the ROI and value to your company.  Even if you choose a UC product whose vendor goes bankrupt or is acquired if the product meets your needs and has a fast enough "payback" I'd still consider it.  Technology is always changing and the good news is that these days most if not all are standards based.

Unlike the good folk in Liechtenstein I don't know if I'd short list Nortel until it gets acquired or things get clearer, but Microsoft is in UC for the long haul.  OpenScape by Siemens has a user face interface which integrates with third-party unified messaging as well as instant messaging applications, such as Jabber.  OpenScape works with Microsoft's OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime. Openscape partnered with IBM when Microsoft chose to embed part of Nortel's UC offering into OCS.  Siemens OpenScape is embedded as part of IBM’s Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony UC solution.

If you have a Genesys(of Alcatel-Lucent) contact center, the good news is that Genesys has UCConnect connects their contact center software with UC offerings from their parent (Alcatel-Lucent) company's MyInstant Communicator, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS and Siemens OpenScape.   So even if you choose a UC that goes away due to a merger or bankruptcy if you have a UC connect ability you can disconnect from one UC offer to another without disaster to the contact center.

Odds are that Nortel and its UC offer won't disappear any time soon.  Most likely this part of Nortel will be bought by someone -- maybe Avaya.  The latest rumor is that MatlinPatterson Global Advisors may buy them out compleely.

For now, if I were looking at UC offers, I would look at Nortel, but I'd do so with knowledge aforethought.

CRM and Unified Communications

My last blog focused on how Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center.  Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith's office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to "ring" on his cell phone).  This is the common way UC is explained, and it can be very valuable -- but it can also result in TMI (too much information).

Everyone may be created equal, but we can't give all of our customers, peers, bosses, and the world at large equal access to us or we'd never get any work done.  We need to prioritize who can contact us and how.  Thus with UC we can identify specific people (our boss, our spouse, our key customer) to reach us at our #1 end point (maybe that cell phone) while other important people get directed to voice mail -- or as I pointed out in my last blog -- this is a perfect opportunity to now direct those folks to a contact center where an inside sales rep or pool admin can hopefully handle their needs in one call (OCR = one call resolution).

So there is a natural marriage between UC and CC (contact center).

Where does CRM come into play?

CRM (customer relationship management) has become such a muddied term.  It has become far too generic.  To some it does mean contact center software (and it can be that), to some it means the software or software as a service (SaaS) that outside sales reps use to keep track of their accounts, where they are in the sales cycle, etc. -- and that is a good definition. . .but CRM is much bigger than that.

CRM is really broken into two broad categories:  "front office CRM" and "Back office CRM."

Front office CRM are the applications that actually touch the customer directly -- the voice on the phone in the contact center, an internet interface where they can place an order, customer service (again online or over the phone) or the live customer service rep (CSR).  Any part where the customer is directly interfacing with your company is a form of "front office CRM."

And a logical touchpoint for UC and CRM to link.

The holy grail of the contact center for years has been OCR - one call resolution.    Any problem that isn't resolved in one call, or any sale that can't be closed in one call ("we have an internet special where for the same price you are paying today you can add XYZ. . .") costs lots of money.  Any customer service call that takes too long or requires "follow up" also begins to alienate your customers making them more inclined to leave you for another firm.

UC can dramatically improve the goal of OCR -- whether that "one call" is a phone call, an internet access or even your face to face outside sales rep.

It all has to do with the "hand off."  Inside a contact center this can be done with intelligent routing (which is really what UC is in a larger scheme of things).  We route the call to the most logical, not the first available, agent.   With UC we are now moving beyond the barrier of the contact center and able to route the call to best person no matter what department they work in, or even WHERE THEY ARE physically.

Setting up skills routing takes time, but the rewards are immense both in customer satisfaction and in cost reduction.

All of this so far focuses on the connectivity between front office CRM and UC, but back office CRM can increase this cost reduction by quantum factors.  Using a data warehouse (or perhaps data mart) to identify your most profitable customers you may choose to always route them to a specific department or person -- not blindly treating all customers the same but giving platinum treatment to platinum customers.

By contrast your lower value customers (in margins) can always be routed through an IVR (interactive voice response) unit and routed to newer agents. . .  The dirty little reality in sales is that there are some customers that are not worth having because the amount of work they require (and work = expense to your company) may mean you actually lose money by having them as a customer.  Back end CRM identifies who is profitable and thus worth retaining.

One to one marketing is a myth.  We do not market to all of our prospects and customers in the same way and we shouldn't.   Back end CRM's information on customer profitability can help determine who we route to whom in our dynamic, unified communications world.

This blog is speaking in generalities -- as if we had all the money and time in the world to link all of these disparate systems together.    The good news is that many of these systems are already begining to be linked -- Cisco with Salesforce.com, Aspect with Microsoft,  Avaya and SAP, Nortel offers integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and implemented Dynamics internally.   The idea is to take advantage of the technologies you may already have in place such as a legacy  Siebel implementation maybe using AT&T's Siebel Solutions offer) to improve relations with your customers and business partners through a streamlined "one call resolution" that goes far beyond the silos of "outside sales," "engineering," "customer service" across your business.

The Irony of it All

My last blog posed the question:  "Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?"  My point was that most companies have a lifecycle, just like products do and people do.

Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline -- it is really up to Microsoft.  The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the "early days" (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid.  He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer.  Microsoft tried to win the search engine war -- and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.

But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked: 

Is Microsoft Following GM's Road Map?

Analysis: GM's bankruptcy marks the end of an era. Is Microsoft repeating the automaker's mistakes?

J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld

// Jun 3, 2009 6:00 pm

"Microsoft has faced a few serious bumps over the last 10 years but came out fine. . .Knowing the work Microsoft developers put into their products, I believe they are the saving grace of the company -- as long as they are allowed to hear the voice of the people. This is an area where I've seen a problem."

I worked for AT&T at the hey day of Bell Labs.  We had the brightest, most awesome minds around -- just like Microsoft does today.   Microsoft ca be its own best friend or its own worst enemy.  Only time will tell.

An Epiphany

Reading is a favorite past time, and along the way I've learned a lot from books.  "SPIN Selling" taught me to look at the world from the customer's perspective and try to solve problems.  "Crossing the Chasm" taught me that many products die not because they aren't good, but because they don't "cross the chasm" from early adopters who have a different fear threshold than the mainstream market.

This week I found a new book that is amazing, and just as earth shaking as those books were.  The title is "What Would Google Do?", by Jeff Jarvis.  You can read a snippet of the book at Jeff's site, link.

Jeff's ideas definitely turn the traditional world of selling and getting paid on its ear.  He writes of the model of the product being free, andt he payment ancillary.  Google, he opines, doesn't make money from its search engine but from embedded Google ads and applications.  It is a fascinating read, and it makes all the sense in the world.

If you haven't read "What Would Google Do" run out now and grab a copy.  Just as the personal computer turned the world on its head, just as Microsoft and software over turned the hardware model of leadership, so too is the internet changing the entire world.   If you don't want to wind up being a buggy whip manufacturer you'd better understand the new paradigm.

What would Google do?

Surviving and Thriving: Marketing in a Recession

Every day there seems to be more bad news:  Circuit City is out of business, closing nearly 400 brick and mortar stores.  Home Depot is shutting down its high end Expo chain.  Even Microsoft and Apple are seeing tough times.

But every cloud has a silver lining.  There are ways to market your business successfully in a recession.   The key is "knowing your customer" aka customer business intelligence.  Who is buying?  Why?  What are they buying, and what are the cross-sell and up-sell opportunities there?

Which prospects fit a similar profile (demographics) of your high margin customers?

So identifying the market is (as always) the first step, but in these economic times it is even more critical that usual.  "Know thy customer!"

The next step is knowing what appeals to them and then selling to them in a cost efficient manner that meets their profile and your product line.  This may mean more targeted email campaigns with coupons, or eZines --  lower cost ways to reach your audience than traditional print advertising, or even "Google ads" and other online paid advertising.

You must know your "value proposition" as you go back to your base and target strategic new prospects.  In one sentence (elevator pitch) why do they need you NOW?  Can you save them money?  Can you make them money?  Can you help them sell more to their own customers?

This is a time of opportunity.  Yes, it is scary "out there" -- but as competitors fall away or draw back they leave a vacuum which a saavy firm can fill.    Realize that marketing is an investment, not a luxury.   Like any investment you need to have a plan to invest wisely.

Just like the Dot.Bomb bubble burst we'll survive, and we can thrive.  This too shall pass.

TPS aka Lean Quality Improvement in Healthcare

Buzz words about quality, accountability, pay-for-performance, evidence-based medicine, modernization/automation, workflow optimization, waste reduction, core measures and transparency are heard daily on the campaign trail and in the media. The recent economic crisis has fueled concerns and elevated the urgency of change from a preference to a priority in the minds of Americans.

Everyone wants change for the better, but how we achieve a positive and lasting change is a daunting challenge. Since February I've been working with with RWD Technologies, a firm who advocates of the Toyota Production System (a.k.a. TPS) as the solution of choice to improve quality in health care -- increasing patient safety while reducing costs.

It is no secret that we at RWD Technologies embraced the Toyota Production System (a.k.a. TPS) as the solution of choice a few years ago, sending consultants to Toyota on behalf of Ford Motor company to learn the methodology directly from the source. For more than 15 years, the RWD Lean approach to business process performance has inspired innovation and independence within the culture of organizations at all levels, resulting in long-term, continuous improvement. RWD believes that their approach is one of if not the only systemic solutions proven to enable and empower organizations through a unique, lean approach based on TPS.

As hospitals and healthcare organizations have adopted the RWD TPS solution, they have seen dramatic and profound transformations which have minimized the kinds of “preventable errors” outlined in the new CMS Final Rule while optimizing hospital performance and patient outcomes.

Not only do I see how the collaborative processes has worked for hospitals like St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Baylor Mediccal and others with each visit, individual hospital workers share their own individual contributions and enhancements.

The process is so continuous, that often, the worker supervisor is hearing about the new enhancement for the first time.

On a recent visit to St. Luke's one worker commented about how she applied the inventory management process to her own surgical team, building on what she’d learned from other surgical teams. TPS truly is a marvel, a human-centric process where every step counts and the process is a continuous journey, not merely a destination. It's been an honor to work with RWD to spread the word of how, in these difficult times, the methods Bell Labs brought to Japan that evolved into the Toyota quality process can make an enormous differences to the lives, health and pocket books of American healthcare.

A common theme

These blogs traverse from alliances to product life cycle management (PLM) to unified communications and customer relationship management. At first glance it would seem that the blog is all over the map!

In reality all of these subjects have a very common theme running through them. Every single one has to do with how people work together and relate together effectively. Technology can (and should) be an enabler in this effort, but in the end all of them come back to the human element.

I'm a mother and as a "mom" I spend time teaching and arbitrating. The skills it takes to be a successful mom are the same to succeed in business: listen to the needs of others. Decide how both sides can "win" and get what they want. Compromise. Learn. Admit when you don't know or are wrong. . .

A while back there was a book entitled "Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Not me. I learn something new every day! We learn more by watching and listening to others and the day we stop learning is the day we begin to die.

So the key to success, Sandra says, is knowing what you want, continual learning and then listening (respect) for those around you. This ties into all the themes of this blog. Which take me back to alliances and why so many fail.

I've worked on all sides of alliances -- I've acquired companies (M&A), I've run OEM alliances, I've created alliances (ISV, systems integrators and VARs) and I've killed a few relationships, too. Why do some succeed and some fail?

For the very reasons I just stated: companies don't know what they want from the partnership, or they don't communicate what they want to the partner, or the partner doesn't communicate it to them. . . At one Fortune 100 company I stepped into a $20 million alliance that had been struck (prior to my arrival) between the leader in its field and my firm (the leader in our field). The deal had been struck by the CEO of each firm and $10 million annually funded by both sides.

Yet there was not one stipulation to the deal. There was no "goal." There was no criteria for one firm giving the other beta or alpha releases of software for testing pre-release. There was no sales plan in place for joint "go to market" offers. Here we had the thought by executives that these two behemoths should be linked (and they should have been) but absolutely no thought was given to:

1. What did either firm want from the relationship? Sales? Prestige? Linking of products? WHAT?


2. Tactically how were the companies to work together? At an engineering level? Sales? Marketing? HOW?

So many alliances fail because someone, somewhere thinks that it is a "good idea" but none of the structure that would be put in place in any due diligence is done. Are the two companies values complimentary? Are their goals similar? Do they compete in some areas? If so how can they ally well and avoid the areas where they conflict?

Alliances can be hugely successful -- but the only way they are is when your company first realizes what it wants from alliances and then puts a plan in place (a tactical plan) that it can follow in each potential alliance. Years ago I created a template I call my "PEF" (partner evaluation form). Before we even proceed to the first face to face meeting we must complete this document which asks these questions from BOTH company's perspectives. The end goal here is success for both firms -- and if you fail to plan you, plan to fail.

Mid Market is the fastest growing CRM Segment

Forrester Research (echoed by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc.) issued reports showing that nearly 40% of CRM sales are happening in the mid-market.  This is an amazing shift since historically it is the big boys who implemented very complex CRM solutions (e.g. Siebel aka Oracle, Peoplesoft, and SAP).  That all changed with Salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM 3.0 (which rocks).

 One way that Salesforce.com "happened" was by turning CRM into a service rather than software.  These days users can choose to buy and implement their own CRM (ala the big boys and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0) or they can pay as you go with SaaS (software as a service).  Gartner Group (another one of those thinktanks) says that software as a service which is today a $6.3 billion business (WOW) will grow to $19.3 billion by 2011 (super wow).  CRM is a big part of this move to SaaS.

If you are a mid market or even small player the guys to be considering are RightNow Technologies, Oracle Corp.'s Siebel CRM Professional edition, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand.

 Microsoft has annoucned a version of their Dynamics CRM to run on the Office Live! platform which will give them a SaaS offering here, too.  Check out the details here.

 My current favorites in this space are Salesforce.com and Microsoft -- and I actually give the nod to Microsoft here.  They've done a great job of integrating the CRM offer with Outlook (their email product) and Office.  Since Microsoft Office is everywhere this gives them a big "look and feel" advantage.  The learning curve for sales people (always busy with little interest in learning a new system) an easy way to start using it.

Have fun, guys.  If you have any questions about the mid market CRM, partnering or any other topics of this blog drop me a cmoment.

Analyzing your customers is key to profits

It seems as if business is always undergoing  transformation.  We've gone from TQM (Total Quality Management) and BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) to Six Sigma and ISO.

We're always trying to improve because quality = profits.  (This is a little like that old chestnut that time is money.  Time IS money and so is the channel and sales method you use in the time that you have).

In these times of a tight economy  -- caused partly by our global economy where things are made more cheaply in China, India and other countries,  this increased globalization means your competition is also global and can produce products more cheaply than you can.  They are targeting our top customers.  Think of Toyota compared to General Motors and now translate that to ALL industries.  It is happening and to stay competitive you need to become more efficient.

Add to globalization the leveling of the playing field thanks to the internet.  Now small companies can compete with large and reach the same customers.  Mom and pops are as much your competition as the global firms.  Add to the internet and globalization the ideas of cost management / reduction, restructurings, mergers, etc.  Change, nothing but change!   This dynamic world has changed the competitive landscape by:

• More competition for profitable customers,


• More demanding customers less likely to remain loyal,


• Customer sophistication requiring quick access to service via multiple channels.

All of the above makes it critical that companies understand their current and prospective customers from both an economic and behavioral perspective. Many medium and large companies think they have embraced customer relationship management (CRM) as an important element of their corporate strategy.  But have they?  CRM is not just a call center automation application or giving your sales reps a laptop with funnel tracking software.  If a company doesn't know which products are selling and which aren't they are losing money.  If a company is spending millions on automating the sales reps but don't know what the cost is to keep that rep in the field compared to the margins and revenue that rep is generating it is about as useful as throwing money out of a window.

To take advantage of CRM programs (Siebel, SAP, Microsoft CRM, ePiphany, Salesforce.com, Oracle (now owner of Siebel), etc.), companies have to do more than invest in customer-facing solutions such as sales force automation, customer service centers, marketing automation, business to consumer (B2C) Web sites and others.

While these applications help facilitate better service and more efficient interaction with customers through each respective channel they don't add much to the bottom line if they have been implemented as independent, non integrated solutions. As a result, they have yet to make several important CRM objectives, including:

• One view of the customer in a vacuüm (if that),


• No consistent and thus accurate customer information across the enterprise,


• Duplication of service and sales efforts (costly and possibly irritating to the customer),


• Islands and silos of information that is untapped.

If companies don't have integrated customer information that they analyze to interpret which customers are profitable and then leverage that information they cannot apply the customer analytics (e.g., propensity to buy, channel preference, churn analyses, segmentation, target marketing, etc.) required to deliver real value from CRM.

Duplicate Customer information or one view of the customer?

Whereas CRM was the great hope of the late 1990s now the bloom is off the rose.  There have been many articles published about the high failure rate of CRM projects.   Many companies bought front office CRM applications (like sales force automation) but it is like buying a horse without a saddle -- or a car and then neglecting to fill the tank with gasoline -- they didn't have an end to end CRM plan in place.

Far too many companies have implemented new CRM technologies without changing the basic processes for serving and interacting with their customers.   If you throw technology at a problem without doing basic TQM / BPR (or Six Sigma) to determine what is working and what is not you are doomed to failure.

If you throw technology at sales and customer service but your customer still can't get one answer about his or her account you are losing the battle for their loyalty.

If you don't know who is profitable and who is not you are losing money.

The companies who have failed with CRM have not truly understood what CRM is and can be.  They were sold point solutions rather than a continuous loop solution that manages the front end of sales and service and the back-end of analyzing how well it was done, how profitably and what can be replicated for others.

As a result nothing changes.

Well, something might change.  Your company may be less profitable.

Using business analysis to track your sales results  will tell you what your sales force is doing right and wrong) turns into revenue- and cost-drivers of the business, thus a user will quickly see if the sales force is spending too much effort on low-value deals, or if the revenue stream has high exposure by being composed of just a few very high-value deals. In other examples, a user could see what percentage of target his district has reached compared with the same time last year, or determine the impact lapsed customers will have on this quarter's revenues.

By the same token analyzing what your customers are buying (and aren't buying) enables companies to understand and optimize the value of their customers throughout the customer life-cycle. Using business intelligence companies can track and analyze key customer segments and loyalty metrics and use this analysis to create an optimal customer acquisition, development, and retention process. Once you know who your customers are, who is profitable and who is not business managers can  see critical changes within the customer base and quickly take action to improve the status of those customers. For example, a user might identify high-value customers who are spending less over several months, and feed that group of customers into a campaign management system to run a retention program.

CRM business analytics measure customer value at both the individual and segment level, at the current customer and potential customer based on demographics, too.  In the end it enables users to understand the changing behavior of groups of customers over time. Users can even drill down to the profile of individual customers to discover their signature, that is, the pattern of their individual behavior, segment membership, and value.

Analyzing your customers is the key to CRM and it is the key to profits.

CRM doesn't mean all customers are created equal!

In recent years many jobs in the United States have been outsourced and off-shored with the thought that reducing costs results in higher profits.  You’d think that would make sense.  But it doesn’t.  Not all customers are created equal and the highest profits come from a handful of customers.  In the “old days” this was known as the 80/20 rule.  80% of sales come from 20% of customers is the old chestnut — and it had more than a kernel of truth in it. Businesses today can’t take a “one size fits all” approach to their customers had hope to be profitable.   Funneling everyone through a touchtone interface (press “1″ for sales, “2″ for service) and a contact center agent who doesn’t speak English very well is illogical and will result in a loss of sales.  With all the data at hand today we have the ability like never before to analyze who are profitable customers are and to target them.   CRM and “1 to 1 Marketing” are often mistaken as Communism — treating all people alike.    The opposite is true — you should spend more money on your profitable customers — and less on those who don’t add to the bottom line.  The secret is in using the data that you have and turning it into powerful, actionable revenue producing information.