A weblog by Christopher Carfi, since 2004.
"I’m now connecting with people I haven’t talked to in 20 years. Well, I’m still not talking to them, but at least now I know what they had for breakfast." – Overheard, regarding Twitter
(N.B. I saw this flash by on one of the screens at OpenWorld, but unfortunately didn’t catch the name of who said it. If it was you or someone you know, please drop me a note so I can cite it appropriately. Thanks!)
A few other folks sharing their thoughts on Oracle Openworld (#oow08):
Related: Early oow08 posts
As noted in my earlier post, spent the last two days up at Oracle OpenWorld, mainly focusing on how they were presenting their offerings that are being hung under the "Social CRM" banner.
First, the pragmatic bits. Oracle still has a long way to go to truly embrace the notion that the customer can be in control, or at least be a mutually beneficial party, in the business relationship. Exhibit A, the cringeworthy tag line and subhead on the page shown above. What does it say?
"Oracle Social CRM Applications leverage Web 2.0 technologies to help sales people identify qualified leads, develop effective sales campaigns and presentations, and collaborate with colleagues to close more deals quickly."
I don’t even know where to start with that messaging and the general wrong-way-rubbing that it induces. Perhaps the easiest thing to point out is that it’s still 100% focused on the sales team, and implicitly views the customer as the enemy, or at least simply the next transaction. One of the demos that was shown at the event last night illustrated how one of their new tools could make it easier to identify that sales opportunity that was looking like it was slipping into the next quarter’s business, and how it aided the sales manager in identifying it and enabled him to encourage the rep to do anything possible to bring the business in before the quarter ended. (N.B. Recall item #7 from the customer’s point of view: "I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don’t care if it’s the end of your quarter.")
There were two bright spots, however. Number one was the communication that Oracle SVP Anthony Lye shared this morning. A few quotes and comments from this morning’s presentation, from the Twitter stream (listed newer-to-older):
kitson: #oow08 #Lye "I don’t like ‘CRM 2.0’ because someone’s going to come up with ‘3.0’ and ‘4.0’ Versioning a strategy is flawed."
So, it’s appears clear that Anthony Gets It with respect to what the right things to say are. Now, just to turn the Sayonara around to embrace the customer as relationship partner is the task at hand and exhibit that understanding via product, positioning and action.
The other bright spot was a proof-of-concept demo that was shown for customer The Body Shop. This was an iPhone application that started to inch down the path to giving more power to the customer, or at least include her in the relationship at some level. Here are a few quick shots from the keynote.
Here’s an entry-screen to the application, which a customer could bring up on her iPhone when she walked into the store. Behind the scenes, profile information on preferences and purchase history would be available.
Oooh! Product! The sort of nifty thing here was access to ratings of this particular product both from the "at large" community, as well as the specific ratings from your "friends" and/or "people like you."
A hop over to a "loyalty card points" page, where points could be redeemed for discounts, etc.
Choose from one of a bunch of options for the "loyalty" bonus: Redeem Now, Email/SMS to get Rebate, Share with a Friend, or Donate to Charity.
Ok, we chose "Redeem Now." Discount code is available, take the "coupon" to the register to save a few bucks at checkout.
What I was NOT able to get were any details on how "real" the application is. The demonstration that was shown was very, very scripted, and quite a bit of the demo required the suspension of disbelief once you started to delve into the details. For example, the details around the explicit sharing of a lot of (really) personal data among "trusted" friends was assumed to "just work," with neither the social nor the technical nor the identity underpinnings given any level of discussion.
Another big thing to note: the access to purchase history and preferences and the like is wonderful, but the information still is 100% in the hands of the vendor. So, although some of the ideas feel a bit like VRM, the implementation still needs to take the big leap – let the customer control, edit, change, and manage her own data. That part is still most definitely not there. We still have the silo problem – if you had one of these apps for The Body Shop, and one for the movie theater, and one for the restaurant down the street, we’d still have the Tower of Babel problem we have today. Of course, it would just be a shinier Tower of Babel, since it’s on the iPhone.
But…it’s a start. Where we are now with the enterprise and how it will connect with customers feels a lot like where Big Media (and in particular the newspaper industry) was in about 2004-2005. Technically, the tools are in place, or soon will be. The real challenge is NOT a technical one. It’s a social challenge. It’s a humbling, or perhaps a realization, of the marketers and sales people in large companies that, no, they really are *not* in control of the "message," whatever that is. Thoughts around this were written in 2004, and before that in 2000. Those things still hold true, and it boils down to this:
The customer really is in going to be in control. Deal with it.
Was up at Oracle OpenWorld (#oow08) for the last couple of days. They had HUGE video walls that were pulling comments from one of the social networking systems they had in place for the event. Very reminiscent of what we saw at SXSW with Twitter a couple or three years ago.
(N.B. This post originally appeared on March 12, 2007. But it completely recaptures where things are today, with all sorts of thoughts from Mobilize, BlogWorldExpo and Oracle OpenWorld mashing and spiraling wonderfully in my brain.)
—
Tara gets asked: "How do you guys get any work done with all of the things you are involved in?"
Stowe writes: "In a world of flow, information will find us. And we will find ourselves more connected, in a richer world, with a different form of attention."
I totally agree with both of them. And I also think that we need to nudge the thinking along just a step further. "Flow" is needed, and for individuals in an organization to be part of what’s going on, they need to be in it. Agreed.
Back in the early and mid 90’s, I did a lot of whitewater rafting, primarily on the Gauley River in West Virginia. Once you were in the flow, you were in the flow. No turning back. However (and this is a big however), if you were in the wrong part of the flow, things got very dicey, very quickly…sometimes with significant consequences.
Before jumping into the flow, you need to know the direction you’re going. Just as importantly, after you come out of a particularly turbulent part of the flow, you need to look back, and think about what worked, what didn’t, and what you’re going to do next time.
At SXSW this weekend, was thinking about this a lot, and realized there are really two parts of it:
(Gauley photo credits: The fine folks at Ace Whitewater, from whom I learned as much as I ever did in any classroom. Jack & Tug…thanks again!)
Off to Mobilize today. Seeya there.
GigaOm’s next-generation mobile conference, Mobilize is a one-day conference
designed to bring to you the future of the broadband mobile web. Using
the existing industry as a platform, we will examine emerging ideas and
emerging markets.
tags: #mobilize #mobilizeconf
Francois Gossieaux from Beeline Labs, along with Deloitte and the Society for New Communications
Research,
has done some great research on how organizations are using online communities in both the business-to-business (b2b) and business-to-consumer (b2c) contexts (some nonprofits were included in the mix as well). Over 140 organizations were included in the study, which covered online business communities with only a few dozen members, all the way up to communities with over 10,000 members. While we’re on the topic of online businesses, the idea of using tools similar to this keyword position checker google could help you get a better understanding of the SEO side of it all and finding ways of improving your business.
Here’s a link to the Tribalization of Business study results.
Some key quotes from Francois about the findings, by way of an interview with Shel Israel:
On organizational structure: “Most community efforts ended up reporting in to the CMO, even though
that is not where they all originated. In the recent past, most
community activities started somewhere as a skunkworks project – only
to be rolled into the CMO’s turf after the program gained recognition.”
On technology versus strategy: “Another surprise was how many companies started their community
initiatives as a technology platform decision – only to realize that if
you build it, they may not come. Some very successful community
executives suggested that if your community cannot survive in a Yahoo!
Group-like discussion environment, it will probably not survive
anywhere. One of the more important factors for the success of
community initiatives is the content strategy for the community – not
the technology strategy.“ (emphasis added)
On bringing marketing back to the customer perspective: “We believe that CMOs have an opportunity to transform their role
into that of Chief Customer Officer – and represent the Voice of the
Customer at the executive table…Leveraging the power of communities and the customer insights that
they provide could put CMOs back in the strategic seats where they
belong.”
The last word: “Please, don’t start your community project as a technology platform selection.”
Jon Gatrell and Sheryl Altschuler have just put out a great e-book called The Social Marketing Construct. Check it out.
Two pocket guides for events this week. Get ’em! Click on the icons to get the guides. They’re tuned for iPhone and
mobile, and you can also get a widget for your blog, if you’re so
inclined.
BlogWorldExpo
The first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event
dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media.
In addition to the only industry-wide exhibition, BlogWorld features
the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50
seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on
the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business.
Mobilize08
GigaOm’s next-generation mobile conference, Mobilize is a one-day conference
designed to bring to you the future of the broadband mobile web. Using
the existing industry as a platform, we will examine emerging ideas and
emerging markets.
Enjoy!
Great VRM article in the Financial Times by Alan Mitchell. An excerpt.
"When the UK market research company CCB FastMap asked consumers
which method they most wanted companies to use when communicating with
them – e-mail, phone, letter and so on – 63 per cent ticked the box
that said “Not at all”.Even where consumers have an existing
relationship with a company, 23 per cent prefer not to have marketing
communications from it. The rate rises above 50 per cent for some large
utilities and banks.Consumers are also increasingly unwilling to
divulge data. The same research found that 86 per cent of consumers
routinely tick the third party opt-out box when providing personal
information. “People have become less happy about revealing information
and especially allowing third parties to share it,” says David Cole,
managing director of CCB FastMap.This was not what customer
relationship management was supposed to deliver when it was first
touted in the early 1990s. The more data companies could gather about
their customers, it was argued, the deeper the insights they would
generate. This would lead to longer, more profitable relationships.Instead,
many companies have found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard
place. On the one hand, most organisations’ transactions with their
customers are too limited for them to get an accurate picture of their
motivations and any data they gather quickly goes out of date. On the
other hand, subsequent attempts to fill these holes by gathering more
data simply intensify concerns over intrusion.A research
project in vendor relationship management at Harvard University Law
School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has suggested a way
through the impasse. The core idea of vendor relationship management
(VRM) is simple: the more empowered individuals are when it comes to
managing and using personal data – including the ability to manage
their relationships with vendors – the greater the benefits to both
sides."