If there’s one thing that you can state with assurance, its that the sun will come up…tomorrow….bet your…oh, wait, wrong blog post. That was the Tony Awards.  Let me start again. If there’s one thing that you can state with assurance, its that software vendors have realized that social customers and “social employees” – usually the same people – are here to stay and that they have to respond to them.

The response of a software vendor, however, is unlike the response of any other category of seller in the world. They make the tools and they make them often in anticipation of a market that isn’t necessary either there or theirs.  Meaning that they are making hammers and nails based on the types of houses that they think customers will be building and they try to sell those tools to either the people who are going to build the houses or those that are going to live in them.  So it is often a calculated guess as to what the necessary tools are going to be and who the right audience is for them based on what they think the audience is going to do – maybe, possibly, hopefully. They take far greater risks than their potential customers do, in a lot of ways. But then, that’s the nature of their business.

I say this because there is a MASSIVE influx of software tools that are being called Social CRM into the marketplace and honestly, most of them aren’t that. I’m not saying they are bad software, they just don’t meet the criteria that I would say meets the standards for calling it Social CRM. Does that mean anything? Well, the concept does.  I can’t say that my criteria do.

That said, I want to take a fast look at what enterprise software providers are “doing” social CRM or at least doing the things that they are supposed to do to meet future market demand.  Honestly, the current market demand for Social CRM software per se is not much. Gartner sees it as a $1 billion component of the $16 billion CRM market by 2012.  Do I? Nah.  I think it will be smaller in 2012 but that’s more based on anecdotal observation, not scientific methodology. But then again, Gartner saw it in 2010 as a $1 billion subcomponent of CRM for 2011 too. Soooooo…..you decide. Or not.

Here’s a quick take at the market movers:

Salesforce.com – Two weeks ago in Washington D.C. salesforce.com (they still use the lower case version of their name which is why I use it. I think.), they announced a commitment to the Social Enterprise – probably the first vendor to announce a product-focused commitment to it as a whole. (see below for IBM to see what I mean). They’ve done a lot of it through acquisition – including the major acquisition of Radian6 and the “more-significant-than-I-thought-it-was-at-the-time” acquisition of Heroku, though, with some admitted prejudices, I think that Radian6′s acquisition was the most important one that salesforce ever made. What they now are attempting to put into place, though with the marketing component still weak, is a complete social enterprise suite that is built around flexible customization but with enough “out of the box”  that it would be a good fit for any company. They are also moving away from the “just large enterprise” strategy they’ve had for the past 2-3 years and toward a “we can fit all sizes” strategy and a highly flexible framework from their more rigid Apex-only proprietary framework.  Do I love that fact? Kinda, sorta.  I don’t think that companies care as much as the vendors think they do about open source vs. proprietary as long as the applications they need enable what they need to be done.  A.k.a. do the job.  That said, giving the customers the ability to customize and author in any language but still inside your platform (Force.com) is a wise move and one that will ultimately serve a company that is testing the “social enterprise” waters, well. Radian6′s acquisition gives salesforce what can be fully integrated in all their applications – a social listening and action platform that can also extend itself to incorporate other analytic programs for the back end. That alone solves a big chunk of salesforce’s prior limitations – Chatter’s internal focus – and weaknesses – strong analytics capabilities.

SAP – With the release of SAP Sales on Demand, SAP has finally shown that it can play in the SaaS/cloud world and provide social capabilities that are as powerful as any of those already out there. They have fully integrated activity streams and the ability to respond – though more from the standpoint of internal collaboration among individuals and groups, though you can monitor and act on Twitter streams from external sources too. The next iteration will incorporate InsideView, the leading sales intelligence service so that the sales people will have access to structured and unstructured G2 to support their specific needs when it comes to closing deals or competitive advantage. Within CRM 7.0, their latest release, they’ve incorporated Twitter analysis and integration with their customer service applications – the analytics (sentiment analysis) being driven by their Business Objects Insight product. The results of the sentiment analysis will trigger workflows and automatically route the appropriate messages to the appropriate resources for action.  These are solid first steps, but they are first steps. The irony here is that SAP is probably the most progressive when it comes to

Oracle - The thing with Oracle is that they are a bit hard to peg. They have their Social CRM applications which seem to be undergoing a massive overhaul that are based, not so much on Social CRM, as internal collaboration. For example, Sales Library is a product that transcends a typical document management product by a long shot. It gives the sales person not only the ability to find the presentations/documents that can aid in the sale, but to access and provide comments, rankings, ratings and some analysis of which presentations, given the history of the deals that they are associated with are the likely best presentations to build on for whatever current opportunity is in question.  That’s slick, with the social capabilities provided a great way of accessing the shared knowledge of the employees and the algorithms running an impartial (somewhat) source of information so that better judgments can be made by the sales folks. But what is the most intriguing is that Oracle has fully integrated collaboration into Fusion so that it isn’t treated as a separate service or application. Its just there.  The only caveat to all of this is that Fusion applications were supposed to be out in January general release and they weren’t. That concerns me. But what I saw with Fusion integration and collaboration was pretty amazing. Now they just have to get it out there.

Microsoft – Microsoft has been somewhat behind the curve when it comes to social features in their enterprise applications including CRM. They have a good product, but the social side lacks somewhat. Very promising is the recent integration done by Exact Target’s CoTweet subsidiary…or is it division…which is a full integration of social profiles and transaction data made easily accessible and highly visually satisfying for each and every customer in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 database. Microsoft also promises that they are going to focus more on social in the next iterations of Dynamics CRM but we’ll see. That said, it could be that they are just changing their strategy somewhat. I have this theory, see, that with the purchase of Skype (which cleared the FTC’s regulatory hurdles easily earlier today) and with the vast improvement of Microsoft Phone 7  over prior mobile operating systems they have released and the quality of Microsoft Azure as a key cloud provider, that they are moving toward a serious, serious drive for Unified Communications – and owning that. CRM becomes less ambitious at that point but at the same time, remains an important product in their hybrid cloud/on premise strategy (which dovetails with SAP, Oracle etc. but not salesforce.com) and still is one of their newer enterprise cash cows – meaning social remains an important focus for them and one they have to move quickly on. CoTweet integration is an excellent start because of the quality of the application but it isn’t sufficient unto itself.

CDC Software Pivotal – I’m incorporating these guys because they’ve actually not only produced a real  Social CRM product that is “social crm definition approved” (kidding, okay? No such designation. Really. I swear.) but are moving to providing all their products in the cloud as well as on premise.  This was a ground-breaking (and surprising coming from Pivotal who had pretty much disappeared from the scene for about five years) product because it was the first to fully integrate external social feeds with CRM databases and allow for actions taken. That means for example, opening up a support ticket or opportunity from a specific twitter feed and triggering workflows to get the info to the appropriate person and incorporate it into the customer database.  They did it before anyone else did and they put themselves squarely back on the map. Deservedly so.These guys are serious contenders – at least for the upper end of the midmarket. If not greater.

IBM – The reason I mentioned them and salesforce.com in the sorta same breath was that they are taking different paths to the social enterprise. Salesforce is servicing the social enterprise; IBM is becoming the social enterprise. At Lotusphere in February of this year, IBM announced that they are going to spend what will amount over time to oodles of money (note my scientific precision here. I’ve done the math), on transforming everything about themselves, ranging from culture to operations to compensation structure to employee empowerment to become a social enterprise (doing this on their 100th birthday when they became a $100 billion company too).  They expect to involve all 400,000 of their employees, empowering 50,000 by the end of 2011. They have a long term vision with short term objectives that they are diligently working toward. That said, they are spending a lot of time improving their knowledge of Social CRM, not one their historic strong suits. They however have some excellent folks such as Carolyn Baird handling their CRM thought leadership (and more broadly, Research Director Eric Lesser) via the Institute for Business Value (I think they are an excellent research institution) , so, I would imagine, they will meet the challenge and start becoming a serious player in Social CRM. I’ll be watching.

I’m not covering a lot of the others who are involved, mostly because I don’t have the time and a couple of them – Marketo and InsideView (along with Oracle and SAP) are on the panel that I’m moderating on the state of social sales and marketing technology tomorrow at 2:30pm in room 309 of the Hynes Convention Center, so I don’t want to give it all away. Come out and hear them. Its a great crew. We have Anthony Lye who runs CRM for all of Oracle, Bill Hou, a VP who handles product development at SAP and is largely responsible for SAP Sales on Demand; Heidi Tucker, the VP who built the key partnerships that have driven a lot of InsideView’s success as a sales intelligence provider  - make that THE sales intelligence provider – social and traditional; and finally, Paul Albright, Chief Revenue Officer, long time industry veteran, driving Marketo, a marketing software provider to a leading position in the industry.  Come see them, talk to them, challenge them. If I’m doing my job as moderator, I’ll ask no question. You’ll ask them all.

Do me a favor, help me do my job.

Several years ago, I presented at an SIIA conference on the future of mobility. At the time, I said the future of mobile would evolve in three phases: get connected, connect seamlessly and connect broadly. Connect seamlessly was about devices being able to sense which networks are available and automatically switch to the proper network for the task without any user intervention. For example, if a user is at an airport and needs to download a presentation, the connection would automatically authenticate the user to the Wi-FI network. This vision assumes that carriers would offer plans that deliver multiple connections such as WiFI and 3G under one umbrella and have the software to allow this seamlessness to occur. Connecting broadly speaks to the vast number of devices beyond phones and tablets that are being connected including cars, sensors, medical devices etc. Now I would say we are well underway with get connected and the future evolution is about connecting seamlessly, connecting broadly and connecting contextually. This will change the world of collaboration because:

• Services will become people-centric, but device and network agnostic. We’re moving from a world of one device per person to multiple devices per person. We are moving from a world of one wired connection per home to numerous wireless connections – and possibly some wired as well. The old world of telecom was based on one service per device (e.g. cellphone, laptop data card, TV) and services were based on what access network was required to deliver the service (e.g. DSL, 3G, PSTN voice). Additionally, services were classified as either business or consumer contracts and the rates varied. The future of telecom turns this model on its ear. It simplifies the morass of products by charging for the individual instead of the number of devices or types of networks they use. In the future, a person will subscribe to connectivity, content, and value-added services, such as security.
• Services, not just devices, will be mobile. Mobility will take on a new meaning as not only will devices be portable but content and services will also be portable. Individuals will use a combination of cloud storage, SaaS, cloud media and remote desktop access to store, retrieve and consume content while on the go. Two-factor authentication services will be used to verify that the person attempting to access the content and services is authorized to do so. Many of today’s services are locked to the device or to the residence. For example, if you visit a client’s office you will only have access to guest Internet access. In the future, you’ll be able to authenticate on a device anywhere and ask it to deliver your services such a unified communications, collaboration services and SaaS to you. This doesn’t mean that devices will be dumb. It just means that certain services will also become portable. You’ve seen it happen in the consumer space with devices like the Slingbox that lets a consumer send their TV programming to other devices. The next iteration of these services will require less hardware and more software.
• Services will be contextual and relevant. Part of the nature of services going forward is that they will be semantic. This semantic notion doesn’t just apply to physical products and software. It also applies to cross-channel commerce and customer service. Context aware engagement delivers relevant communications and commerce opportunities by analyzing data such as: a physical location, who’s nearby, what device you are using? What your calendar says you should be doing and whom you are doing it with. As just one example, imagine that your car could check your GPS data and calendar; figure out you are running late for a meeting and dial the person you are meeting with to try to reschedule the time.
I’m not the only one thinking this is the next wave of services. AT&T’s CTO John Donavan predicted that by 2021, we can expect three things: 1) everything will be contextual and relevant; 2) Apps will become natural companions and 3) Hardware will disintegrate and software and services will integrate. While I believe there is much work to be done, AT&T’s vision makes sense. I personally believe customers will allow businesses to use their data, if and only if, we can provide relevant services. Come visit our session on Tuesday at 1:15 Mobile: Delivering New Context and Capabilities to Applications and Collaboration (Location: Room 313) to hear more. I look forward to seeing you there.

A blog post by Tod Pedler, Founder & CEO of MobileNationHQ

We’re all accessing the Internet using our mobile devices at an unprecedented rate. Consider the following for a moment. There are 1.5 billion televisions worldwide, 1.4 billion people access the Internet using their PC, and 480 million newspapers are still printed daily around the world. But there are 4 billion mobile phones on the planet. That’s half the world’s population.

Mobile phone technology for the masses has been with us for more than 15 years, but smart phone technology has only been with us for the last 5 years. And now the tablet device is a new mobile form factor that is quickly transforming the way we consume media, both print and video. Like the desktop publishing revolution of the early 1980’s (I still love the bulky beige casing of the Macintosh 512KB, and how I gawked over MacPaint as if it was insanely great), mobile itself requires a publishing revolution of its own. But where are the productivity tools for mobile? What are the go-to applications for self-publishing for smart phones and tablets? For those of us who’ve shoe horned existing web content and functionality to fit onto an iPhone screen or an Android tablet, you know that it feels wrong for all the right reasons.

The content management and productivity legacy of the last 10 years isn’t a logical fit when it comes to publishing content to a mobile device. It’s no longer a one way publishing paradigm either. The device itself has the power to augment reality, changing the presentation of content based on the preferences of the user. Attributes now include geolocation, social status and perhaps even a predisposition for discovering a new restaurant to try every Saturday night. Content is now in a constant state of flux. Voted up, shared, posted, streamed and retweeted.

The PC will continue to have a home for a number of years to come, but for most of us the mobile device will become our interface to the real-time web. For marketers, educators and businesses, the need for productivity tools to access this new engagement landscape is now more apparent than ever before. The next billion dollar company could be the mobile productivity company that none of us have heard of.

Sara Roberts is President and CEO of Roberts Golden Consulting, Inc. a Management consulting firm specializing in change management consulting, internal branding and strategic transformation. She’s speaking at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Conference on organizational change and had this to say about “QWERTY Organizations” in her guest post on the Cisco Blog:

The QWERTY Complex: Un-jamming our organizations to thrive through change

Navigating in today’s workplace can be disorienting.  It seems that the minute we reorganize, restructure, merge, shift… we need to do it yet again to keep up with new demands.  We lament, when are things ever going to be normal again? Things are changing so fast.  We can’t possibly keep up! In our organizations, we often point to ‘agility’ as critical to our success – yet the ironic part is that our organizations are still trying to command and control our way into being more nimble.

read more…

Sara will take the stage at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference to make her case on “The Ex-CXO: Why Your Employees Will be Running Your Enterprise in 5 Years, and Why You Should Let Them” and she’s one of the facilitators of  Organization Next a new program we’re featuring this year.

Tags: e2.0, e2conf, socbiz

If you’re interested in community management be sure to check out this track update from Ted Hopton. Ted is a community manager at UBM and chairs the track on “Community Management Inside the Enterprise”.

If you’re an online community manager, the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston is the place to be this month. Whether you’re managing an external community or an internal community for employees, you’ll find an entire track of conference sessions tailored to your needs.

I’m an internal community manager and the chair for the Community Management: Inside the Enterprise track. I’m excited about the practitioners we have on the program for Boston, and I know they are eager to share their experience with you. In fact, I think you’ll find all of our speakers to be approachable and interested in connecting with fellow practitioners, so I recommend introducing yourself after a session you’ve enjoyed. I’ve met some terrific people at the Enterprise 2.0 Conferences and formed lasting professional relationships.

If you’re new to community management, you shouldn’t miss Trisha Liu’s Crash Course for New Community Managers. You’ll not only learn from her considerable accomplishments, but you’ll have the chance to ask whatever questions are on your mind and connect with a roomful of peers in situations similar to yours.

I’m intrigued by Kevin Jones’ session on Enterprise 2.0 Failures – And What We Learn From Them. I guess I’m a bit of a cynic, so when I spend days hearing from people about all of their successes, it makes me wonder about the problems they have and aren’t talking about. Kevin’s session should provide a healthy contrast by tackling the subject of failures head on.

As a numbers geek and metrics guy, I’m especially looking forward to Rawn Shah and Hardik Dave’s perspective in Match Your Measurement Methodology to Your Situation. And I’m curious to see what Eric Ziegler and Abha Kumar envision for the future in A Day in the Life – Enterprise 2.0 in 2016.

I know I am going to have to make some tough choices, too. For example, Rawn and Hardik’s measurement session is at the same time as Who Leads Social Business and What Does Leadership Look Like?, presented by Keri Pearlson and my good friend and fellow founder of the Community BackChannel, Jamie Pappas. Maybe I can get a colleague to attend one and I’ll go to the other, and then we can compare notes.

So, whether you come alone or with your colleagues, I hope to see you in Boston!

Ted Hopton, Community Manager, UBM

Tags: e2.0, e2conf, socbiz

For a full list of contest rules, see here.

Tags: 2011, boston, e2conf, enterprise 2.0, launch pad

Enterprise 2.0 Boston  is only a few weeks away and our agenda is looking great.  As a preview into the many compelling tracks and sessions at the conference, you’ll be hearing from a few of our advisory board members and track chairs on the E2 blog in the days and weeks to come.  

The first is Rachel Happe, the track chair of the Community Management: Engaging External Audiences track, who just wrote a great post on what she’s looking forward to, and what attendees can expect from her track. 

See everyone soon!

The Launch Pad semifinalists have put together videos showcasing their solutions; take a moment to view them and vote for your favorite. The 4 companies with the most votes will demo live at Enterprise 2.0 Boston and compete for the title of People’s Choice Winner.

Contestants put a lot of time and effort into their videos, and the production and soundtrack on some are truly impressive. Click here to view the videos and cast your vote before May 20. We’ll announce the Final 4 on May 24.

Good luck to all the entrants!

Tags: boston, demo, e2conf, enterprise 2.0, launch pad, vote

Seems like just yesterday we finished the agenda for E2 Boston in June, and now it’s time to start planning for Santa Clara, coming up November 14-17, 2011.  Last year’s Santa Clara conference exceeded expectations with over 1400 attendees, and I’m confident this year’s agenda will attract many more.

We’ve partnered with Spigit again for the Call for Papers but changed a few elements.  For starters, there is no longer a community vote component to the process or a separate group of “Crowd Favorites” submissions which are reviewed by the Advisory Board. As many of you are aware, there were mixed feelings about the community vote within the E2 community. Many felt that it was the equivalent of a popularity contest, while others were disappointed when their submissions were not selected even though they received the top number of votes.  These issues came up no matter how clear we were votes did not guarantee selection. What we hoped the community vote would do was become another way for the E2 community to provide feedback about submissions, and give us and our advisory board a clearer picture of what should be included in the conference.  What we didn’t totally anticipate was people who weren’t invested members of the community, trying to cheat the system in a variety of ways, and the confusion and suspicion it would produce around the whole process.  So we’re simplifying things.

The point of partnering with Spigit for the Call for Papers was for the process to become about idea management and innovation and include anyone and everyone interested in the Enterprise 2.0 Conference; not just a boring online form where no one else saw great content submitted except our advisory board, where no one could actively participate in refining and improving submissions. We want potential attendees and thought leaders to have a voice in this process.  As submissions come in in, we’d like everyone to provide feedback via comments on individual submissions or categories, about the content of the submission or the speaker.  If you see a way to improve a submission or know of a relevant speaker, speak out!  Network with fellow members of the fellow community and create unique content to submit for the conference! If a certain submission really resonates for you, “Like” it.  And no, “likes” are not the same as votes, and have no bearing on whether a submission is selected.  What they do is engage the E2 community, provoke conversation and hopefully stimulate the kind of idea generation we need to make this year’s Santa Clara conference better than ever.

So all submissions made will be reviewed by the Advisory Board, not just ”Crowd Favorites”. The Board will look at the amount of collaboration via feeback/comments, edits made to submissions because of comments, and general activity around a session when making their selections.  And as always, they’re looking for high quality,  unique and compelling stories of innovation, case studies, and speakers/thought leaders with the kind of expertise and experience our audience has come to expect.

We hope these changes will encourage more of you to submit and participate in the process, and that we’re eliminating any confusion, anger or disappointment surrounding the voting element. 

Looking forward to checking out everyone’s submissions so keep them coming!

Drum roll please…

The jury has deliberated and the 7 companies below will advance to the next round for Launch Pad – here they are in alpha order:

1. Acquia
2. Groupideo
3. Next Principles
4. Personall Software
5. Podio
6. Saba Software
7. Splarchive

If you have been selected, congratulations! There’s one more step separating you from becoming a finalist: the video round.

Take a look here under Round 2: Video Submissions for next steps and instructions on how to submit a video. Semi-finalists have until April 29, 2011 to create and submit their videos – we will open public voting in the afternoon of April 29. The 4 videos with the most votes will demo live at Enterprise 2.0 Boston.

A big thank you to all the companies that submitted – we appreciate your interest in the conference.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask: paige at techweb dot com.