Brent's CRM Blog

Sage 2010: A CRM Odyssey

Last week I attended Sage Insights - Sage Software's annual partner conference. It was my first time attending the event, and unfortunately for me I only was able to make one day of it. But it was enough time for me to get some insight (pun intended) into Sage's CRM strategy they're rolling out over the next few years. They call it Sage CRM Strategy 2010. For those interested you may want to check out the following:

Whitepaper: www.sagecrmsolutions.com/2010strategy

There was a lot going on while I was there, including new Sage CEO Sue Swenson (try saying that quickly five times) laying out some high level direction the company is taking in hopes of becoming the most trusted software company in the world. Sage partners seemed pretty positive with some of the changes outlined in the partner programs that are aimed at making it easier for them to "engage with Sage". Apparently many felt like all partners were treated the same, regardless of how much business they brought it. Sage wanted to address this in their partner programs, and wanted to make sure incentives were in place to reward partners creating lots of business opportunities. This step shows the importance of the partner channel to Sage with respect to building their brand with small and mid-size businesses. Growing the partner channel will also be important to fight the television advertising moves that Sage competitor Intuit has been dabbling in lately, with their Quickbooks commercials. The feet-on-the-street partners, along with online marketing efforts, are two of the main tools Sage will be depending on to make their presence felt in the SMB communities that everyone seems to be focused on at the moment.

Sage offers a dizzying array of products aimed at companies of all sizes. But of course the bread and butter for me was the analyst briefing on their CRM strategy, and my one on one conversation with David van Toor - GM for CRM Solutions. The analyst briefing was led by , among others:

Joe Bergera - EVP & Global General Manager, Sage CRM Solutions

Larry Ritter - SVP, Product Management and Marketing, Sage CRM Solutions (check out my interview with Larry and Connie Certusi - SVP and GM, Small Business Accounting Solutions)

I was already impressed with Joe, Larry and David, having spoken with them in the past. And the Sage CRM 2010 strategy they laid out has a number of interesting points that are also impressive. Being able to access customer information across Sage CRM products makes a lot of sense in many cases. A company with salespeople happily using ACT! out in the field may want to have the internal marketing team using SalesLogix. Sharing data across CRM apps makes it possible for each group of users to keep their tool of choice, which should positively impact the probability of success. Additionally, Sage CRM products also will share CRM data with Sage's other non-CRM products, which also can improve CRM acceptance throughout the organization, by impacting back office effectiveness.

Sage also has committed to making it as painless as possible to transition from one platform to another. So, according to Sage, if you're currently on ACT! and you want to move to a full blown CRM, you can opt for SageCRM.com or SalesLogix without migrating your data. This will remove a significant barrier to companies staying with a platform no longer suited to their business needs, strictly to avoid the typical headaches inherent in switching platforms.

Anywhere Access is also a big part of the 2010 strategy. Sage says it will allow organizations to access CRM data and functionality at their discretion based on their choice of devices (rich clients, smart phones, etc.) and state (connected or disconnected). What I like about this is that it reminds me of an article I wrote almost two years ago on my hopes for CRM and The Next Generation Network. Where we can access information and services based on who we are, where we are, what device we're using, and what network we're on (or not on). This could be a significant development from a productivity standpoint, but more importantly a move that aligns work lives to more closely resemble personal lives, and not the other way around.

There were other interesting things that also shows Sage is embracing Web 2.0 tools and philosophies. David van Toor demoed ACT! on the iPhone, which gives you access to your customer data via a nice interface. SalesLogix for the BlackBerry goes even further with GPS enabled "Accounts Near Me" - that tells you what customers/prospects are in close proximity to your current location. Then you can view alerts on the customers and get directions leading you to their doorstep with all the relevant information at your disposal. That's pretty sweet. Sage also has embraced enterprise mashup capabilities , such as the Google News Feed they demoed. I will say that Sage did go much further in addressing Web 2.0, social media and its role in CRM much more than Microsoft did at Microsoft Convergence.

From the small business perspective, Sage is making sure they look after the 2.8 million current ACT! users who have invested huge amounts of time building up their customer databases. They announced a partner hosted option for those wanting ACT! "on demand". Partners started applauding on hearing the news, which leads me to believe their customers must have been asking for this. I think this could be very good for all involved. But it will only be good if partners do a good job in providing all the safety nets that we've grown accustomed to in terms of, security, up-time, and application responsiveness. This could be a negative if partners aren't able meet expectations, as Sage and ACT! will be the ones to take the hit. I'm guessing the reason why they aren't taking on hosting responsibilities for ACT! is that they'd rather see customers move over to SageCRM.com for full CRM requirements. With that said, ACT! is still very central to Sage's strategy at the individual and small business level, and it makes sense to make those millions of users comfortable if they choose to stay put, or if they need a broader solution which they can easily grow into. I do question how easy it is for new small business prospects to determine which Sage solution (and delivery method) is best for them. Microsoft has a similar challenge with respect to delivery method, but without the different CRM application codebases.

The other question I have, which is similar to one raised by Paul Greenberg, is why Sage doesn't seem to really be pushing SageCRM.com has heavily as other on-demand CRM players are. It still feels like Sage hasn't jumped full boar on the SaaS bandwagon that everyone else is joyfully riding. SaaS has received so much attention and its due in no small small part to customer relationship management. SageCRM.com has some nice functionality and would probably benefit from the SaaS craze if it were pushed out there more, particularly with the SMB crowd. I'm just guessing here, but I think small businesses still don't think of Sage in the same manner as other major on demand players. And I do believe some confusion is out there with respect to what SageCRM.com has to offer as compared to Hosted ACT! So I think those SMBs taking their first dip into CRM may find it difficult to navigate Sage's product offerings compared to their main competitors.

With all that said, the one thing that is clear to me is that Sage is serious about providing SMBs with solid CRM solutions. This was clearest to me when speaking with David van Toor - whose passion for this came across in everything he did during the conference. It also comes across in his efforts in growing the ACT! community, where he fields a number of questions and engages in many conversations with community members. The community is still early in its development, but van Toor says the feedback he's getting is already being factored into how Sage will provide products and services. As the community grows it will be interesting to see its impact on Sage's products and its service to small businesses. It will also be interesting to see if the messages they receive from partners with respect to customer sentiment, are they same messages coming directly from the community.

Sage is doing some really interesting stuff and have chose a different path than many players in the space, like building a REST-based platform as opposed to SOA-based one. So it's critically important for them to leverage their partners and growing communities to help shape and deliver the message that they are serious about CRM for the SMB community.

Technorati : act!, crm, sage, saleslogix, social crm
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Microsoft Convergence: The Good, The Bad and The Missing

Last week I attended my first Microsoft Convergence, the annual conference for users and partners involved with the business application side of Microsoft's business. Many small businesses still think of Microsoft has just providers of operating systems and office productivity software, but they go way beyond that with Dynamics line of apps that handle things like ERP, retail management and a few other things.....oh yeah, and CRM. I was attending as an analyst/press kind of person to check out what Microsoft has in store. So here are a few of my impressions from the three days I was in Orlando hanging out at the event.

The Good

• Personal Stuff
• • The best part of any event always deals with people and this event was no different. It was great being a member of "The Gang of Four" for the time I was there. The Four being comprised of CRM gurus Paul Greenberg, Denis Pombriant and Marshall Lager...and me. It's always great seeing my buddy Paul, but it was also a pleasure to finally meet his lovely wife Yvonne. It had been about four years since I met Denis, so it was good catching up with him. And although I've enjoyed reading Marshall's stuff for a while, as well as having him on my radio show, I hadn't met him until last week. I'm glad that he's just as funny in person as he is in print.
  • Speaking of people who have been on my show that I had never met, here are a few more people I had a chance to finally meet:
  • • Laurie McCabe of AMI Partners - Laurie was our first guest and has been a regular. She's about the only other University of Delaware grad I run across in the industry.
    • Sheryl Kingstone of Yankee Group - Sheryl was our second guest and member of CRM magazine's Hall of Fame
    • Rob Bois of AMR Research - Rob was a part of one of our most popular shows where we held a CRM round-table conversation with him, Marshall and 1to1 magazine's Ginger Conlon. Come to think of it, where were you Ginger???
    • Brad Wilson, Microsoft's GM of Dynamics CRM - Although I didn't get a chance to speak with Brad, I did check out one of his sessions, which I think was the best session I attended during the week
  • Denis Pombriant, who was responsible for naming Paul G. "the dean" of CRM, came up with a new nickname for Mr. Greenberg - the Walt Whitman of CRM. I'm told I'll have to read Leaves of Grass to really appreciate this one though.
• Strong Commitment to CRM

It was easily apparent to anyone who attended the event that CRM is, and will be, a big focus of Microsoft. From Steve Ballmer's opening keynote right on through the rest of the conference, CRM was front and center. It appears to me that it's possibly the number one focus on the Dynamics side. That's not to say that other areas are being short changed, as ERP, business intelligence and other segments are also areas of focus. But I definitely got the sense that CRM is the center piece of what's going on. Which is pretty cool to see from my perspective.

It's also pretty apparent that Microsoft has spent a great deal of time making sure Dynamics CRM 4.0 looks a great deal like Outlook, which they hope will help smooth transitions and increase user adoption rates. I wrote about this before after getting a briefing I had a few months back with Bill Patterson, Sr. Product Director for Dynamics CRM. In fact there is some really nice integration with Word and Excel which should help the millions of Office users who live in those apps.

• CRM the Way You Need It

As many of you know the 4.0 version of Dynamics CRM is being offered in three formats - on premise, hosted by Microsoft as "Software + Services" and hosted by Microsoft partners. Now at first I was kind of skeptical, as were many of the partners, as to why any customers would choose a third party vendor over Microsoft if they were looking for a hosted solution. But after thinking about it a bit this could be a good thing for both customers and partners. This could be the beginning of the long tail approach to CRM. The opportunities for third parties service providers to go beyond creating the traditional vertical offerings and create highly specialized niche offerings built off the Microsoft code-base could attract businesses with unique crm needs that do not want to manage, maintain and customize in house. This kind of plays up something Microsoft refers to as xRM - where other "relationship based" applications are being created from the Dynamics CRM app. So if partners can get past the fact that they may lose some of their traditional revenue streams, maybe they'll find they can create even more streams, which could possibly create deeper, longer lasting relationships. So it's all up to the partners to really make this a decidedly positive development.

• Integrated Experiences

In the session on how Microsoft is (and will use) Dynamics CRM internally, they shared a few of the top needs identified by their own people with respect to using CRM software. Integrated experiences was among the top three needs, along with returning more time to users and... I know it will sound like a cliche, but... a need to have a 360 degree view of accounts. Maybe it was these internal needs that led to a focus on making it easier for CRM to play nice with their ERP apps, SharePoint portal software to share CRM data, access to data on Windows Mobile devices and use high end business intelligence tools to analyze performance. Ballmer also mentioned a new server product - Windows Essential Server - that will help make it easier for mid-size businesses to install and run Dynamics apps. It sounds like Small Business Server for the "M" in the smb crowd.

• CRM and Football: Win-Win

The break out sessions I checked out were actually pretty good. Brad Wilson's session on customer choice had some nice demos showing the three flavors of CRM delivery, giving folks a look at how the on premise, partner hosted and Microsoft hosted solutions look and feel. He also had the Dallas Cowboy's head of technology, Pete Walsh, talk about how they are using CRM to manage customer experiences across all of their business units, which includes tickets, merchandising, luxury services and more. It was probably the most interesting case study of how someone was using Dynamics CRM I heard all week. I really hate saying that because I've hated the Cowboys ever since they knocked my beloved Los Angeles Rams out of the playoffs in the mid 70's when I was a little kid.

All in all the key here is that Microsoft knows how to make software, and now that they seem serious about CRM you can expect they will create compelling CRM offerings that can be delivered in formats customers can use to increase their opportunities of success.

The Bad

It's time for all technology companies to stop incorporating Star Wars themes into every trade show and conference they put together. I mean it's 2008 already, it's time to let it go. Give me some LOTR (Lord of the Rings), X-Men, or even Harry Potter, of which I've never read the books or rented the movies. At this point I'll take anything else, even rip-offs of Ishtar, Howard the Duck, or even (gasp) Soulplane. Anything but Star Wars...I'm begging you.

With that aside, on a more serious note I have to say what was really bad about the event has to do with what was missing.....

The Missing

Over the last few weeks I've been involved in Oracle's first ever CRM blogger's call , Sage's analyst call outlining their CRM strategy for the next two years, and Infusion Software's user conference. And without exception the main themes coming out of all three of these events is the growing importance of social CRM - how social media and web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into traditional crm strategies to reach their customers and prospects in a more meaningful way. In fact social CRM has very little to do with software, and everything to do with acknowledging that customers have the power to engage with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want and how dramatically they wish to do so. So the masses can more easily amass without the boundaries of the past, and drive how they'll consume information as well as how they will do business. Which means that old maxim of business not being personal is no longer the case, if it ever was. Business IS very personal, so CRM has to be way more than great software, productivity gains and integration. These things are important, but so is understanding why people blog, leave comments, digg or stumble, create videos, etc.

So I was really surprised that I only heard the term web 2.0 mentioned once in the sessions and keynotes I sat in on during the three days I attended Microsoft Convergence. I was hoping to hear Steve Ballmer explain how Microsoft's investment in Facebook would play into their strategy for helping their customers build effective social marketing strategies. But I can't recall Facebook being mentioned at all, or LinkedIn, which I couldn't help think about as both Oracle and Sage are building links to these unbelievably popular sites AND business platforms into their CRM offerings.

And while there was an interesting demo of how you can manage Microsoft adCenter campaigns from within Dynamics CRM - what is being dubbed as keyword marketing services - I kept on thinking what about the ability to manage Google AdWords, which the vast majority of search engine marketers may be interested in. And why wouldn't they be interested as Google is still the tool of choice for finding things on the web. And that goes for those people who want easy Dynamics CRM access on iPhones and BlackBerrys. This last point I do believe there's something in the works, if I'm not mistaken.

Now I know Microsoft is in the process of trying to buy Yahoo!, but even if that goes through you can't ignore the hold Google has on the market, or expect folks to conform to what works best with your software, even if the software is good. It comes back to the philosophy of social CRM - participating in the conversation where the people are. They will value you more if you contribute to the conversation, and not try to take it over or force it where you want it to go. And that understanding of the social aspects of CRM is what seems to be missing here. The Dynamics CRM application looks to be solid, the choices for consuming it will work (I think), and enlisting local partners to lend expertise and support should really serve Microsoft well. Focusing on productivity, ease of integration and user adoption is also critical and looks to be well thought out and implemented. But it's just as critical to understand successful CRM initiatives need to go beyond the traditional areas of centralized databases and operational efficiencies. You have to understand how the web is transforming how customers and prospects want to communicate with your business. And that's more social than operational. Companies like Salesforce.com, Oracle and others are demonstrating their understanding of this. And it would have been great to see this on display at Convergence because Microsoft definitely has the capacity to compete in this area as well. I'm sure Microsoft understands all this, but it would have been great to hear it from them at this event.

All in all I was impressed with what went on at Convergence as it was a top notch, well run event. The exhibitor's area was great with a number of opportunities to check out all the different Dynamics apps. And a personal thanks to all the folks that made it easy for guys like me to concentrate on the event without having to worry about much of anything. However I can't help but think about how much better it might have been if Microsoft's business application side displayed their understanding of the social path we all seem to be on. Maybe that's coming at the next Convergence. I look forward to finding out.

Technorati : crm, crm live, microsoft, microsoft convergence
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CRM Magazine Turns To The Negrodamus of CRM for Answers To The Future

CRM magazine's December issue features an article on CRM trends and predictions for 2008 you should check out if you get a chance. It's written by one of the cleverest writers in the industry, CRM magazine senior editor Marshall Lager. His monthly "Pint of View" column is a must read because it's a fun read as well as an informative one.

I was honored that Marshall asked me for my take on what's going on in the space, particularly when it comes to the SMBs. We talked for about 30 minutes and I was pretty surprised with how much of the conversation was included in the article. Pleasantly surprised because we had a good time talking about what's ahead and it came through in his writing. Plus my good buddy Paul Greenberg is heavily quoted in the piece, and he as a lot of interesting things to say, as always. Especially when he referred to one of the web traffic ratings organizations as "a dumb-ass company" for deciding to measure web pages by length of time viewed. Now that's some good stuff from Paul, and from Marshall for putting it in there just like he said it.

About the Negrodamus of CRM Stuff

One of the comments I made to Marshall during our conversation was a mention about a prediction I made last year about Google buying a CRM company. So when the rumors started flying about Google and Salesforce.com getting together, the first thing that came into my mind was that I could be the Paul Mooney of CRM. For those of you not familiar with him, he's one of the funniest comedians coming out of the 70's. Why I said the Paul Mooney of CRM is because he did a comedy skit where he called himself the black Nostradamus, aka Negrodamus. But that would have been way too much to try to explain for a magazine interview about CRM, so I just told Marshall I felt like the original Nostradamus and left it at that. And yes, he included that in the article. Which is precisely why I like Marshall. He made it as fun to read about what's going on in CRM as it was to talk about it.

And for my fearless prediction for 2008? You'll have to read the article to find out.

Thanks for keeping it real Marshall!

Technorati : crm, crm magazine, crm predictions

CRM, Internet TV and Me

I had fun today being interviewed by Ruth King, author of The Ugly Truth About Small Business and host of an internet tv show with the same name on www.iBusinessChannel.com. The interview runs about 30 minutes and I get to talk about......customer relationship management and small business.....what a shocker. If you want to check it out just click here but do it before November 8th as I think it gets archived after that. Let me know what you think if you get a chance to watch it.

Thanks Ruth for inviting me on the show and letting me have fun with it. I truly enjoyed myself!

Technorati : crm, internet tv, small business

The 3 Most Asked Questions About CRM By Small Business Owners

I'm happy to be contributing a monthly article over at Anita Campbell's great site Small Business Trends. If you're not familiar with Anita or the site, both are truly great resources for those who own or work in a small business. And Anita also hosts a weekly Internet radio show you can check out at www.smbtrendwire.com.

So here's a link to my first article - The Three Most Asked Questions About CRM by Small Business Owners. Let me know what you (either on this blog or at Small Business Trends).

While I'm at it here's a link to this week's Reality Tech column over at BlackEnterprise.com - Getting Search Results.

Thanks Anita!

Technorati : crm, entellium, salesforce.com, small business

SaaS, Along With Crime, Doesn't Pay....According to Larry Ellison

Talk about your mixed messages. Thanks to David Powers over at GotVMail for passing this along to me. Apparently Oracle's Larry Ellison doesn't believe that SAP's strategy of going after SMB's with their Business By Design Suite is a good one. He said that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market and the lower mid-market (whatever that is) sector is not worth going after.

Here's a quote from Ellison taken from a recent conference call with analysts:

"We've looked very closely at it, and we think it's very hard to make money because there is no synergy. To go downmarket you need a new product and new product development teams. You spend a lot of money developing a whole new product for the low end. But you also need an all-new sales force because we don't call on those customers. We don't call on small businesses, and it's very expensive to call on small businesses. It's very expensive to do ERP implementations in small businesses. The cost of sales is high. The cost of implementation is high. There are virtually no synergies in sales, marketing, and product development and support."

Due to it's large and growing presence, Ellison said Oracle is interested in the "small market" (again, whatever that means).But he said, "We just haven't figured out a way to make a substantial profit in that market. We think it's hard to make money."

I give him credit for coming out and saying it. I questioned SAP's devotion to really going after the SMB market over two years ago when they began making overtures to the SMB space for many of the reasons Ellison brings up. And I still do question it if they still define small businesses as those with up to 1000 employees. But I admit I don't know much about this new product and its pricing, so I can definitely be wrong here. I'll have to do some due diligence.

But with all this talk about SaaS not being worth their time it can't make all those Oracle CRM On Demand customers feel that great.

Technorati : crm, oracle, sap

Is CRM Right For Your Small Business

I wrote an article for this month's Certification magazine on the three questions you need to ask yourselves in order to know if your small business is ready to implement a customer relationship management strategy. Believe me I wrote it, even if it says Paul Greenberg is the author at the top of the article. Paul asked me to write the article as he had an arrangement with the editors over there to provide some CRM content. When he turned the article in I guessed they got a little confused, although they did get the "about the author" paragraph at the bottom correct.

Anyways, you can check it out by clicking here.

Technorati : crm, small business

My Interview on Atlanta Business Radio

I did an interview on Atlanta Business Radio this morning which I really enjoyed. I got a chance to talk about some things I typically don't cover on the air, like why I spent four years getting an accounting degree when I detest accounting and my collecting Negro League paraphernalia. I covered a few other things with Amy Otto and Lee Kantor, the hosts of the program.

To check out the interview just click here. And if you do get a chance to listen it would be cool if you left a short comment on their site. It would be even better if you left a positive comment! :-)

Also you may want to check out my latest article on BlackEnterprise.com on why content is still king on the web if you're trying to get noticed.

Technorati : crm, google quotient, google test, notworking

GoogleFarce: Much Ado About Nothing Much....But it's Still Good For Small Businesses

While I'm in the midst of figuring out my blogging strategy I couldn't resist this. Over the last few weeks we've been hearing about this big announcement coming from Salesforce.com that had something to do with Google. So many thought it would be a deep partnership greasing the skids for Google to acquire SFDC, which would have been great for me since I predicted Google acquiring a CRM company sometime this year. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen after yesterday's announcement that Google and SFDC will be doing a deal similar to what Google and Intuit did last year.

Basically, Salesforce.com Group Edition will allow smbs to use Google's e-mail, mapping and word-processing programs, as well as AdWords. It's actually a pretty nice bundle, especially for the intro price of $600/yr for up to 5 users - that price is good for 30 days before going up to $1,200. It's just not the Earth shattering news that everyone was anticipating. Everyone but NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, who pretty much nailed it in a conversation we had with him last week on our radio show. All in all it's good news for small business, but leaves you feeling a bit cheated if you're expecting something a little meatier to chew on.

Technorati : CRM, adwords, crm, google, salesforce.com
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Other Side of the Mic: The SMB Trend Radio Interview

I'm so used to being the radio interviewer at this point I found myself feeling a little apprehensive being on the other side of the microphone.  But Anita Campbell, host of SMB Trends radio, made me feel right at home.  Thanks again Anita for having me on your show.  I really enjoyed it.

Anyone who cares to check the interview out can use this link do so.  And if you like it, please leave a comment on the show page.  That would be greatly appreciated!