Spent yesterday and today at the BPT Partners‘ CRM At The Speed Of Light training session, as a guest of the inimitable Paul Greenberg. Paul and his partners have put together a very interesting program … vendor-neutral from the technology side (good), and it covers all the bases (not just technology, but organizational change and customer strategy). It’s not just “should we buy from Siebel, SAP, or Salesforce? Rather, it’s a cohesive view of how one thinks about, and then implements, customer-oriented business.
The first day of the session was a broad lead-in to the concepts (“What is CRM strategy?” and a solid overview by Bruce Culbert) and a great dive into some of the metrics that can be used from the business side, with plenty of quantifiable rigor added by Dr. Jeff Tanner of Baylor University. (N.B. This rigor extends out of the classroom and boardroom as well; ask Jeff about his laser-straight, six-hundred-foot-long pasture fence if you ever run into him.)
The highlight, however, was Paul’s session this morning, a straight-on, straight-ahead, and utterly clued-in conversation around how we all, as customers, have changed. We all have our own printing presses now, and the companies that haven’t realized that are going to be in trouble. More importantly, the idea of co-creation is fundamental moving forward…early examples such as id Software, and current ones such as CounterStrike and Rome:Total War (click the co-creation link above more more context) are tangible leading indicators of what’s next.