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.

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.

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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?

Today marked the launch of tibbr 3.0, which Tibco is calling “the 21st century universal inbox for social computing in the enterprise.” Tibbr 3.0 will be generally available in August 2011; you can read the launch press release here, but I’m inclined to give my own thoughts about what’s on offer.

Videoconferencing. One of the components is tibcast, a video conference app with desktop video and voice. You might think this is no big deal, since there are several companies who have conference modules, and at least one or two who only do video conferencing. the difference is that tibcast is built right into your desktop work environment, and is completely ad-hoc. Nothing needs to be set up or agreed upon in advance; you can decide to have a conference on the fly with anybody you can reach, and just start the thing up. Anybody on the team who wasn’t available has full access to the recorded meeting, as well as any files that were shared.

Related to this is Tibbr Voice. When you dial into 1-800-TIBBR, the system recognizes your phone number (and thus your permissions) and allows you to post voice memos directly to your wall, or somebody else’s.

Document Management. Ram Menon, Tibco’s EVP of marketing, has been mentioning lately that next year, businesses will generate an estimated 1,500 exabytes (1 EB = 1 billion GB) of files—some 33 trillion documents—in addition to all the other data they will produce. Each year, what Menon calls “Where’s the File Syndrome” grows worse, and is exacerbated by cases where static copies must be distributed.

Tibbr 3.0 integrates with any folder file system (the example given is Microsoft SharePoint), granting discovery and write-back capabilities while preserving all corporate permissions and security. You can’t accidentally share a forbidden document by dragging it to the wrong area of your desktop, but you can make it available to the right people as if they had their own copy while still preserving a single version of the truth.

Easing Social Sprawl. Anybody who deals with more than a few social networking tools knows what social sprawl is—our attentions are split between so many communities and different kinds of interaction that managing the feeds becomes its own full time job. Tibbr Communities provides a single work space for them all, with multiple walls and varying access rights—again, you can’t accidentally put sensitive data on the wrong wall. All the pieces of your social media pile are consolidated into one installation. Tibco is calling this an industry first.

Actionability in the Social Context. Seeing the activity of coworkers, partners, and customers, and being able to communicate about it quickly and easily, is a huge plus. But business operations need more than a news feed and some chat. Tibco draws on its SOA expertise to let users act on what they see in the feed without going to another applications. Tibbr 3.0 lets you do things like approve purchase orders, OK budget requests, or order more inventory without ever leaving your wall—the place where you found out about the needed actions.

Further drawing on SOA, Tibbr 3.0 introduces tibSmartwidgets (I don’t choose the names, I just report on ‘em), a way to embed tibbr 3.0 into any existing enterprise apps through context-sensitive widgets.

What it all means to me. From what I can see, tibbr 3.0 is bloody beautiful in concept and execution. I might never again work in a large corporation where all of these new and awesome technologies will be used, but I can imagine using something like tibbr if I did, and feeling like it was how things should always have been. Feeling faceless, powerless, out of the loop, disconnected—these are major concerns for modern workers, and the younger generations coming into the work force won’t stand for it.

A number of good point solutions and adaptations of consumer-level social technology already exist, and there is a growing movement to integrate them into a single social business environment. Tibco is doing a fantastic job of it with tibbr. This is full-bore SCRM here.

Tibco is a name well known to industry insiders, but it seems the company doesn’t get much attention beyond those circles. I think this is a mistake. Tibco is doing game-changing work, and I urge you to take a closer look. Even if you’re happy with what you’ve got, or are a competitor, make Tibco part of the conversation. A rising tide floats all boats.

Okay. We’re locked and loaded. Reference checks done. Programs being put into place. Website in progress. A new prize. Final contestant list in place with times and dates complete.

Here’s what’s happened since we last talked.

Prizes

We have new prizes.

First, Donal Daly CEO of The TAS Group, has generously provided his sales deal software, Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation, to a winner. Not one, but ten licenses for a full year with setup thrown in for free and no strings attached. This is a $12,000 value. Not too shabby.

Then, Brent Leary, one of the most influential folks in CRM and small business and a CRM Idol primary judge is offering for the Americas only

1. inclusion in his 2011 coming in September 2011 CRM-Ish List of companies to watch that can provide products/services to the small business community.
2. an invitation to be a featured participant (speaker and/or panelist) at the inaugural Social Business Atlanta conference in September 2011 (details coming soon)
3. a featured spot on SmallBizTrends.com One-on-One conversation series

And finally, for seven finalists, Brent Leary and I are offering an interview on CRM Playaz, our widely watched and of course wildly popular lets-just-say “funny” show. Though they may not consider that much of a prize since we get the chance to not just give them exposure, but mock them if we care to.  But the offer is there to all seven finalists.

More large prizes are in the works. We’ll be working on those until the date of the competition so stay tuned. Now that Scottie won American Idol, what else do you have to do with your time anyway? We’re way more interesting than “So You Think You Can Dance?”.

Website

We knocked it out of the park on this one. Soon, though I can’t give you an exact date, we’re going to be the proud recipients of a Drupal-enabled social site for CRM Idol which will allow you to do a lot including:1.

1. Learn something about all 60 companies participating in the contest.
2. Be able to rank and rate and comment on the videos and other uploaded content that might be provided by the participant companies
3. Get the latest updates.
4. Get all links you need for the participants, the vendors, the influencers, the media and even communicate with them – publicly
5. Communicate with the judges.
6. Plus lots of other stuff.

What makes this a home run is that the company doing this for us is Dri, a premier web design company who specializes in open source. The owner, Diogo Rebelo, is making sure that we get a Drupal social site, so that we can communicate with each other throughout the CRM Idol process. A first iteration focused around content management will be up in about 2 weeks. Watch for it at http://www.crmidol.com.

Mentor-60

One thing that we want to provide throughout the CRM Idol process is mentorship. For example, as simple as it might sound, it isn’t that easy to impress an influencer/analyst with your product or company, given that its likely the influencer/analyst has seen it all already – being asked to take demos between 10-50 times a week. So, in the spirit of preparation for the demos the 60 candidates are going to have to do for the primary judges, we are announcing the Mentor-60 program. This will consist of two pieces:

1. A 45 minute webinar by primary judge and top CRM analyst Esteban Kolsky on “How to Demo”. This will be given once at a time that will be convenient to both the Americas and EMEA and all 60 of the contestants will be invited to join. However its strictly optional when it comes to signing up and not signing up will have no impact on how the voting/judging on the 60 goes later on in August.

2. Many of the extended judges panels have volunteered their time to be mentors who during the month of July will make time available for communicating with the 60 participants to answer questions on how to handle the demos. This won’t include a full review of the demo but more in the “should we do something like this” or “does it make sense to include this” mode. What channels and dates and whether we are going to assign judges to specific companies or have them be generally available on a specific day remains to be determined. As of now, 32 of the judges have already volunteered and many others are in the process of responding.

Final Calendar

The reference checks are done. That was the final step in the process. We have only one change. We are adding Crowd Factory to the list of contestants. Congrats to them! (Whoo! Hoo!) They were able to be first in line for the waiting list. If others drop out for reasons that are driven by them, the next in line on the waiting list will be chosen. And so on and so forth. See the final (and this is the final final final) calendar below for the dates and times of your favorite CRM Idol participant.

The Americas Calendar – FINAL

The Americas (all times are Eastern Time)

EMEA – FINAL

EMEA (all times are GMT)

All the Rules, We are not Fools

We are now working on the finalizing the processes and rules for the actual judging of the competition. As you know there are five judges for the Americas and four for EMEA as of this update. (No changes are expected but one never knows). We recognize that all the judges might not be able to do all the demos due to client conflicts etc. and we are working from that premise to make sure that there is fair and adequate representation and a set of minimum standards. We are also working on defining the scoring system that works in this environment. Some of the criteria will be made public; the weight placed on the criteria will not be made public. We are discussing what to do with the results also.

Additionally, in an entirely optimistic vein, we are discussing how to handle the awards of the prizes. The winners won’t get all of the prizes, they will choose from a selection of prizes (the number is TBD). There will be prizes that all 7 finalists (the video makers) get because it won’t be an easy thing to get there. There are other models under discussion on the award. Watch here for the results soon.

In the next update we’ll (if the spirit moves us) reveal the judging criteria and the prize awards model. Stay tuned. The ride starts here. We’re ALL going to Vegas -except me. I don’t like Vegas. I’m going to Barcelona. Or New York. Anyone wanna come?

I tell ya, this stuff is easy when somebody else writes it.