CRM - June 2008 - (Page 31)

2.0 Best Practices Sage Software, for example, is one of many vendors building Web 2.0 technologies into its CRM strategy and solutions, most notably in its Act! product line. In addition to a series of blogs by executives (including David van Toor, general manager for Sage CRM solutions for North America; Larry Ritter, the senior vice president of global product management; and Pierre Semaan, senior vice president of technology for global CRM) covering everything from strategy to fixing problems with Web 2.0 itself, Sage has outlined its overall approach to emerging social technology through 2010. The Sage CRM Solutions 2010 Strategy integrates internally focused Web 2.0 tools and those facing the customer, as well as an “Anywhere Workforce Experience” that employs context awareness across devices, users, and networks. An excerpt from the March 2008 overview document states that “all of the Sage CRM Solutions products will include adoption of new Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA)…to ensure that the integration capability of the products evolve[s] to provide services-based integration from all product lines.” Other CRM vendors, including Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce.com, to name a few, have also built or incorporated community features and other Web 2.0 technologies into their offerings. The sidebar to this article (right) offers some highly relevant advice on how best to embed Web 2.0 technology into CRM efforts. But the most critical advice overrides and informs all the rest: Do what makes sense for your business. Web 2.0 (and CRM 2.0, for that matter) isn’t entirely new, but it’s new enough that businesses can afford to be circumspect in their approach to it. Research the techniques and tools that work best in your industry, for your audience, and with your available resources. Go into any initiative with a clear idea of the desired result. And always put the customer audience first when designing a community and the experiences within it. After all, you’re doing it for them. Contact Senior Editor Marshall Lager at mlager@destinationCRM.com. www.destinationCRM.com CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JUNE 2008 ■ CUSTOMERS, CUSTOMERS, CUSTOMERS Forrester Research offers numerous recommendations for businesses to improve their use of Web 2.0 technologies. The following are excerpts from Forrester’s best practices for CRM practitioners: • Support customer-to-customer interaction. Sharing resources via file exchanges (such as Voice over Internet Protocol and content networks) allows nodes in the network—in other words, individuals—to sustain one another and to rely less on institutional support. (See “Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred,” page 43, for a successful example of customer-to-customer interaction.) • Embrace customers as cocreators. Soliciting user input is cheaper, better, and faster than more-structured, top-down methods of product development. This means complete strangers can codevelop open-source software and collaborative information banks such as Wikipedia. As more people tote cameraphones with Internet access and install webcams and microphones at home, user-generated content will provide companies with great insight. (See “Power to the People,” December 2007, page 28, for more on user-generated content.) • Understand new consumer-behavior patterns. Although social computing is having a profound effect on buyers, it affects different types of consumers in different ways. Effective next-generation CRM strategies will be grounded in a deep understanding of “social consumer” behavior, as well as more-traditional demographic and psychographic attributes. ■ 3+3 Mark Drosos, chief operating officer and creative executive at Powered, offers a plan of attack when it comes to tackling what he calls “social marketing.” To craft an effective social-marketing presence, you need vehicles to get you there, and objectives to keep you on track. For the fullest impact, three possible vehicles for your social-marketing strategy need to work in conjunction with each other: 1. Advertise: Pay for placement on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. 2. Embed: Install your brand in the social network with brand pages, widgets, video, and promotions. 3. Build: Create your own branded social network. And within these three areas, you’ll need to keep three key objectives in mind: 1. Design your brand’s persona so it drives value. 2. Give community members a reason to meet, communicate, and share. 3. Provide relevant content that has value within the community. ■ BE THE COMMUNITY YOU’RE WAITING FOR Best practices from Scott Tilton, chief executive officer of Loop’d Network: “If you’re building a niche network from scratch, identify who else is out there doing the thing you want to build the community around. Get the key opinionmakers and other important players involved from Day One. “Make sure it works, and that users are getting the experience they’re expecting to get. Be prepared for scaling problems early on; if the site is overloaded with visitors, it will lag and be unavailable—and that will kill it before it even really starts. And always involve an experience, something useful and important to users outside of commerce; otherwise it’s an obvious marketing ploy. “Keep it focused, keep it relevant. As soon as you lose that, users aren’t using the community as well as they could. They become distracted and the community loses momentum.” 31 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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