Not so briefly, though, that I could just write, “They’re all totally on target. The end.” Smart they may be, but not so smart that I can’t have a variant opinion or two.

Context services and real-time customer intelligence are the first two topics in Lauren’s article, and that makes some sense; the two can go hand-in-hand in many cases. Think about it: If much of the context info is coming from mobile devices (as Ray Wang posits), and that information is processed immediately (as Esteban Kolsky hopes), it stands to reason that there’s an opportunity to use that intelligence to reach out to the customer at the point of engagement. Granted, a business that could take advantage of this would have a structure that I can’t picture, but it’s possible. What’s more likely is that these two technologies will give businesses a better sense of macro trends in the customer base over shorter stretches of time, and allow them to adjust campaigns on the fly for better immediacy (and better incremental sales).

Television as a customer engagement channel is next, with Brent Leary predicting a convergence of CRM tech and TV tech. I’m going to come down hard here, which shouldn’t be seen as a reflection on Brent’s wisdom; he’s very smart and a good friend, I just think he’s wrong here. I’ve been following HDTV since the late 1990s—before there was content for the expensive-as-a-new-car sets that existed then—and the same hope was expressed then as now. “Digital TV will free bandwidth for added content and two-way interactions,” they said. It has happened, in limited cases with limited success, but the idea has never really blossomed. The idea that TV can be a customer engagement channel is as old as TV itself—where do you think commercials came from? The fact is, nobody wants their TV time interrupted with sales pitches (Super Bowl ads notwithstanding). The “Is this ad relevant to you?” bar at the top of my Hulu window doesn’t seem to have any effect on what I’m shown, either. Now, if the engagement was something where the consumer could quickly and unobtrusively request information from an ad to be sent to a PC or mobile device, I could get behind that. It would answer the advertisers’ need to know if they’re having an effect, and give the consumer something of value without getting in the way of the show. Also, anything coming from a Nielsen report on usage trends is a bit suspect nowadays, if my February edition of Pint of View carries any weight. It should be up on CRM magazine’s site any moment now. EDIT: Here it is.

Virtual meetings, according to Denis Pombriant, will change the way people do business. I say they already have. We travel less, have more teleconferences and Webinars, and have tools that allow us to get more done in virtual meetings than in real ones. The technology will continue to advance—it will have to, especially if we run out of oil before the newer energy sources can take up the slack and nobody can travel—but all in all this is a safe prediction. I’d love to see what we have in five years’ time, but I hope I can still go to work in my PJs and slippers, as is my right as a self-employed kinda dude.

Unified communications (UC) also gets a mention, from Paul Greenberg no less. Like virtual meetings, I feel this is something that has already arrived, and will continue to grow. There is not only a place for it, but a real need—while I say UC has arrived, it isn’t nearly universal enough. If you don’t believe me, see how well an IVR hands you off to to a live agent sometime. A lot has been done here, and I am thankful for things like screen sharing in customer service, and the ability to engage in multiple channels, but more is better. (Paul is also found earlier in Lauren’s article discussing in-memory and distributed processing technologies like SAP-HANA and Hadoop, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about them to weigh in—yet.)

Gamification bats cleanup in the article, and Brian Solis gets the thankless task (except for where Lauren thanks him) of predicting what will happen with something that is still a buzzword fantasy for many people. I think gamification has the potential to fundamentally change the way businesses and customers interact, and can also have serious positive implications for the workplace itself. I have some thoughts on this that should be published soon, so I can’t expound on them here yet, but gamification is big. It’s not for every brand or every person, but it opens up possibilities that are as yet untapped. EDIT: Here’s a link to the article, by Ryan Zuk.

Of course, these are all just my opinions—and you know what they say about opinions. A difference of them makes a horse race. Wait, what did you think I meant?

I love InfusionSoft. There, I’ve said it.

I’ve known the company for several years, and every time I meet with a representative or take a briefing, I come away thinking, “These people have a really good product and a really good attitude; I wonder what they’ve got in store for us next.” It’s not that they have some secret alien technology on their side or anything like that—they just have a knack for cutting away all the crap and finding out what users need, and delivering it in a simple yet powerful format.

I took a briefing today with Laura Collins and Rebecca Sprynczynatyk to discuss the company’s Winter 2012 release, and I was reminded again of just how good InfusionSoft is. The updates they showed me weren’t flashy, but they were well thought out and their value to the business user was immediately obvious. Some highlights:

The social media tools let you quickly publish campaigns to your Twitter and Facebook lists. Lead capture goes beyond the list, though: If those readers like, +1, or share your content, you know about it and can follow up with a thank-you or special offer to the sharers. The campaigns can include hosted email and Web forms, so people who click through can get what they’re looking for without wading through a ton of stuff that isn’t relevant to them—but you still have them as a qualified lead.

Usually, I advise against broadcast marketing via social channels, but InfusionSoft permits users to do it in a way that isn’t intrusive or heavy-handed. Yes, a business could still screw up a campaign, but it’s not through any fault of the InfusionSoft tools—they are geared toward the gentle touch.

The CRM and lead nurturing section of the Winter 2012 release is nice and simple. Lead tracking is all handled on one page, and you can add notes and tags, or create tasks, appointments, and entire follow-up sequences without navigating away from your hot leads. The automation can be stopped at any point, so you aren’t blindly continuing with your email reminders two weeks after the prospect has already bought your stuff.

We breezed through the e-commerce portion of the briefing, so I only got an overview of most of it. The shopping cart has been streamlined and the order processing code has been tightened up, which is always a good thing. The special offers and promo codes are more visible and easier to work with, and creating product descriptions is quicker and easier than in previous versions. The part that really sparked my interest—and it should, because it’s geared toward businesses like mine—is a set of shopping cart options for information brokers. InfusionSoft’s cart provides good support for selling documents, and for subscriptions and memberships. Whether it’s paid content or just an annual signup, InfusionSoft makes it easy.

One more thing, but it’s really important: The shopping cart and the marketing automation systems are fully integrated. The handoff from prospect to new customer is automatic. Action sets that apply to people who haven’t bought yet come to an end when they become customers. The days of manually transferring from lead to lifecycle are over. Huzzah!

Okay, maybe it doesn’t merit a Huzzah, but it is a big deal, especially for companies who presently use different systems for lead nurturing and e-commerce. InfusionSoft has once again topped my list of marketing automation/CRM vendors to recommend, and I’m eager to find out what they have on offer at this year’s InfusionCon in April.

We’ll be adding some additional functionality over the next few weeks, and kicking it off with a new ebook for you very soon. The content creation engine—that is, me—will be back to work presently.

Here’s hoping 2012 will be a happy, healthy, and prosperous year for us all. I look forward to experiencing it with you.

Thanks,

Marshall

Salesforce, as Carlson says, has maintained a steady focus on being a platform company for several years. But it has done so through relatively few acquisitions of “platform” entities—Sendia and Heroku are the only ones on her list, versus more than a dozen in the apps column. We need to ask what more Salesforce requires to build out its platform capability, and that’s where things get muddy for me.

As a cloud apps provider, Salesforce doesn’t need to have a clear line between what is an application and what is part of its underlying platform. Sitemasher and Jigsaw are both considered applications acquisitions, but they add to the whole package, and can be leveraged by any Salesforce user to some extent—clever developers and homebrewers can use these apps (among many others) in Salesforce’s development environment to create something unique. All it takes is imagination and some computer savvy.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff knows this, and is himself a creative visionary. Building the platform means adding apps, and building the apps means growing the platform. It’s hard to make a mistake when every move you make is a net positive. The way to answer the question Carlson poses in her article is not with one bucket term or the other, but by imagining what would add the most to what’s already under the Salesforce umbrella.

Congratulations to all the contestants, but especially to the two winners: Get Satisfaction (Americas) and BPMonline (EMEA). If you tend to think of my blog as tl;dr (and you should tell me if that’s the case), here’s a link to the CRM Idol page, including the winning videos and the reviews each company earned. No muss, no fuss.

But the muss and fuss are warranted, and I’ll tell you why. If you’ve ever wondered why so much of the news in CRM is about the same handful of companies, it’s because they’re generally the established players with enough market presence and marketing acumen to get the word out. Smaller companies, especially startups, have a tough time getting the ear of influencers and reporters—no matter how good their product, there isn’t enough time to meet with them if somebody we’re familiar with has an announcement or event.

CRM Idol, launched and led by Paul Greenberg, is an attempt to fix that. Just as the (usually) talented singers on American Idol get a shot at the national exposure they’d normally never hope to receive, CRM Idol provides a spotlight for some great up-and-coming CRM providers whose messages would be drowned out by Oracle, Salesforce, or even comparatively modest companies like Zoho. The contestants get a chance at spreading their message the way the big kids do, and receive advice and mentoring along the way so that they have better odds of making it on their own.

It works both ways, too. Over here on the influencer side, it can be hard to spot a new trend or a potential superstar because of all the competing messages. The exposure the contestants got is just as important to us, because I can promise you I’d never have encountered half of these companies if it weren’t for the contest. My knowledge is enriched, and I can improve my practice.

Work has already begun on CRM Idol 2012, apparently because the main judges and coordinators aren’t interested in having regular sleep patterns. I was thrilled and honored to be part of the 2011 process, and I’m really looking forward to playing a role in the next one.

Vendor conferences usually are a good source for industry news, but this year’s RightNow Summit was host to a bombshell before it even started. Oracle announced its intent to acquire RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion. The deal is far from final, and most of the RightNow employees were themselves still reacting to the news when guests were arriving. The press release is here; you can read news coverage here, and some sharp analysis here.

A lot has already been said on this topic, but I can’t let the opportunity pass me by–I’m at the conference, after all. The phrase on every observer’s lips is “culture clash,” and I must agree. But more than that, there’s a positioning clash as well. RightNow serves CRM from the contact center, putting it in an ideal position to help its users deliver solid customer experience. Oracle’s CRM products cover a wide range of possibilities, but (with some exceptions) its apps cater to the user before the customer. RightNow is a sensible investment for businesses all over the spectrum, from SMBs to massive enterprises; there are not many industry watchers who would recommend an Oracle deployment for anything smaller than a midsized enterprise that’s on a growth path. I’m not saying one is better; I’m saying they serve very different markets.

Oracle is a company that is very good at acquiring what it needs to build out its own solutions. I don’t doubt there’s a good reason for the acquisition, but I am not yet certain what it is. Clearly, Oracle wants the RightNow brand, not just the tech. I’ll be watching to see how this all plays out.

Whether the buyout goes through or not, RightNow is still moving forward. The Tuesday morning keynote, I’m told, will be a vision statement of how customer interaction will look 10 years from now. I’m not going to get any information about the Oracle deal, because any further statements by either company would be illegal, but I can tell the RightNow team is excited–guardedly optimistic, but excited. Greg Gianforte’s presentation will show why RightNow is a strong brand worth the trouble to acquire, and I think it can’t help but come out ahead.

I should point out first, however, that Oracle paid for my flight and hotel accommodations, and treated me to a couple of meals to boot. The Oracle analyst relations people are top notch, and the company is smart enough to allow them to do their job without undue interference.

1. Oracle Is Too Big. This should not surprise anybody. I don’t even think it’s necessarily a problem—economies of scale are important for industries valued in the billions of dollars and touching every facet of life in the developed world. It becomes a problem when you have a diverse array of products to display, but only one opportunity to do so.

OOW11 was two conferences, one for hardware and one for software. Unfortunately, the two conferences were co-located and ran consecutively, so all the hardware people got their content first, and then all the software people got theirs. This was especially evident at Larry Ellison’s two keynotes. The first, on Sunday evening, was a drool session for server wonks, with nary a bone thrown to the applications crowd. The result? A number of walkouts, and scads of Twitter heckling. The second, on Wednesday afternoon, introduced enterprise social networking tools and the Oracle Public Cloud—a big deal for apps people, useless for server people. More walkouts, and probably some heckling as well.

This approach isn’t likely to change, either. Throwing two events would be more expensive than throwing one big one, and Oracle’s new Engineered Systems initiative will bind hardware and software even tighter. Should it succeed, there will be even less reason to separate the shows.

2. Larry Ellison Doesn’t Get People. He’s an extremely sharp fellow, this Larry Ellison. He’s passionate about Oracle technology, and he’s an absolute shark for business. But he hasn’t figured out these flesh creatures around him. Sunday’s widely-ridiculed talk about nuts and bolts—Oracle Exadata, Exalogic, and new Exalytics servers, and the new SPARC SuperCluster general purpose megaserver—was passionate enough to hold my interest for a while, despite being irrelevant to my immediate needs. It made a strong business case for the devices, and was really a love letter to the technology. No doubt about it: Oracle has some very sexy tech, and it runs the world.

But the whole thing was numbers. “Ten times faster than X! One-fifth the power consumption of Y!” Complete failure to engage people, to tell a story that sold these behemoths on anything but raw capability. Attendees of OOW10 said it was like he picked up right where he left off the previous year, with as little regard for the audience as he exhibited then.

By comparison, the Wednesday keynote showed us a different Ellison. His presentation, likely due in part to the poor reception from Sunday and the gaffe of cancelling Marc Benioff’s scheduled Tuesday address, was lively, pojnted, and full of humor and fire. I don’t know Larry Ellison personally, but I’ve observed him over the years and seen him speak on several occasions. This was the first time I felt he was human, and I liked it. He rose to the occasion, introducing a family of Cloud apps whose relevance to individual users as well as the enterprises that employ them was clear.

This second address wasn’t perfect. It was largely devoid of specifics and, coming on the last full day of the conference, left little opportunity to get more information, or even build up much buzz. Introducing the Oracle Social Network and Oracle Public Cloud earlier on would have given us industry analysts and reporters a chance to talk amongst ourselves, dig for details, and basically do Oracle’s PR work for it. Instead, we spent three days begging for scraps, and Oracle leaders like Anthony Lye and Steve Miranda were reduced to telling us “there’s an announcement coming on Wednesday, and we can’t talk about it.”

3. If You’re Going to Give Free Press to the Competition, Do It on Your Terms. If you heard a loud bang on Tuesday night, it was Oracle shooting itself in the foot. Marc Benioff, chairman of Salesforce.com, was scheduled to give an address at OOW11 on Wednesday, as he’d done for at least the previous two years. At the last moment, Oracle (Larry Ellison) cancelled the address—changed the time, actually, to Thursday 8 a.m., after many attendees would have already left. This, combined with Marc having a prior commitment in that time slot, effectively killed the session.

Perhaps inviting Benioff in the first place was a bad move. He’d been critical of Oracle’s strategy and products in years past, and there’s no reason to think this year would have been different. The social tech Oracle was introducing would put the two companies into more direct competition, so providing a podium could be a risk.

As bad as it might have been, blocking the address was a HORRIBLE move. Marc Benioff is a master of the public address. Every word out of his mouth sells Salesforce.com and the vision of Cloud computing. Ellison’s actions removed any constraint Benioff might have had to be a gracious guest; they cast Benioff in the role of injured party and Ellison in the role of jerk; and they cost him money by making him have to get a different venue at the last minute. In other words, shit just got real.

Marc was able to use his time to attack Oracle much more fully than he could as part of the Open World calendar, pitting Salesforce’s fully-formed and successful Cloud model against Oracle’s still-unannounced one. Larry’s rebuttal in his own Wednesday address was intriguing and pointed, but it didn’t have enough meat on its bones. For the first time in history, Oracle was fighting outside its weight class. It’s believed Larry set this debacle in motion on his own initiative, which means there’s nobody else to blame. Stupid move from a very smart man.

4. Follow Your Announcements With Facts. I am really looking forward to seeing OPC and OSN in action. Their introduction alone was worth my attendance, and 2012 is going to be all the more exciting for the social technology crowd because of it.

The old show biz mantra is to always leave the audience wanting more. OOW11 took it to an unreasonable extreme, but it left us wanting anything. I can tell you little more about Oracle’s social and Cloud initiatives than that they exist, and there are some early adopters. I can’t name the early adopters because of NDA. I can’t tell you what the apps do, because the demo was sparse and the people who could tell us more were gagged. I can’t even tell you when to expect to see them in the real world, because the company’s official line is that no release schedule has been set beyond “over the next several weeks.” This is not how a company generates buzz. It’s a great way to make us industry watchers very suspicious of what we’re being shown.

Time spent by top executives deflecting questions could have been spent arming us with the facts we need to get the message out, all by tweaking the announcement date a few days. Now we have to beg for follow-on briefings and demos when available, hoping that satisfying our curiosity will wash this bad taste from out mouths.

5. Please Invite Me Back Next Year. Oracle is an incredibly important company. Even when Open World is a misfire, it provides valuable information, access, and networking. My criticisms are honest, and I offer them in the hopes you’ll make OOW12 much better for us, and thus for yourselves. Prove me wrong about what I perceive as your mistakes. I look forward to it.

This one is with Lauren Carlson, CRM analyst with Software Advice. While the interview itself is mostly me talking, we actually had quite a good discussion about social CRM and its various aspects. I encourage you to keep an eye on her and her colleagues.

David Sparks got me on camera for Zoho, talking about—what else?—small and medium business, Zoho’s wheelhouse. The link to my interview is here, but take a look at the right sidebar too—there are a ton of interviews from the conference there as well, with some of the best minds in business.

I have come to realize that my face and voice make me ideally suited to a writing-heavy career. Far be it from me to turn down a chance to go multimedia, though. I actually like giving interviews, even when (like these) I’ve had no prep time.

Lastly, for the five people reading this who don’t get the reference, here’s a final video (the first ever broadcast on MTV, back when they did music videos) explaining this post’s title.

Rather than make you read the update on this page (because I hate cropping docs to work with my page formatting) I’ve provided a link here. I will tell you that, because of the response, the judging has been extended from two rounds to three. There are more prizes for the participants as well.

Track the #CRMIdol hashtag, stop by the contest site, and read the blogs of the competitors and judges to catch the latest news.

=====

Speaking of news, I haven’t given you much lately. Mostly, I’ve been focused on long-term stuff that didn’t fit well with regular updates, or on keeping my head down and hitting deadlines. I think I’m getting back to semi-regular posts now, because we’re now in Fall Conference Season. Except it’s not fall yet. Just go with me here.

Last week marked what I have come to consider the kickoff event for the autumnal phase of industry get-togethers: CRM Evolution. Three days of some of the top minds in the CRM business crammed into a hotel together, with no single vendor pushing the agenda. I happen to really like vendor conferences, but there should be more opportunities to meet on neutral ground like this.

Once again, CRM magazine (led by intrepid editor David Myron) put together a great lineup. This is where one goes to find out how the influencers are thinking, and set the tone of discussion for the next several months. Many connections were made and plans discussed. Things are looking up for me personally, and for the industry generally.

I hosted the Tuesday morning keynote panel, Innovations in Social Strategy. My panel was an absolute dream, consisting of Paul Greenberg, Ray Wang of Constellation, and Brian Solis of Altimeter. It went great, and I’m waiting for a link to the recording. I also got to join in on the closing session, a CRM Playaz segment where the guest was David Alston of Radian6 (now a Salesforce company). There were also no fewer than three video interviews of yours truly; as soon as I have links, so will you.

There was a lot of focus on SCRM, but it seemed that many people were shying away from the more traditional side. CRM is becoming a dirty word once more, and some vendors and thinkers are starting to shy away from it by applying alternate names and acronyms.  I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: There is no SCRM without CRM. Connecting businesses and customers in dynamic ways for more natural conversations is huge—but the tools must be there for businesses to track those customers throughout the life of the relationship, respond to changes in the market, and retain consistent business practices. Businesses are in it to make money; customers are in it to get the best value—whether in terms of goods and services, or the quality of care and the feeling that they are more than just a wallet. Social CRM builds from traditional CRM, but doesn’t replace it. End of rant.

You should be able to find no shortage of coverage for CRM Evolution 2011—you can start by checking #crme11—but I’m linking you to Blake Landau’s wrap-up article because she’s smart, and also kinda cool. She also says nice things about me when I mention her, and that’s how this social thing is supposed to work, right?

Hey, Technorati: R2BFDU52RASB.