General Consultant Discussion

I wonder whether this could ultimately be the future of CRM - @PeterWolf ?

There is a big push right now for what is called Social CRM. I believe it is the forerunner of smarter applications that will help usher in the Knowledge Age (as opposed to the Information Age that we are in right now). The basic problem is that most businesses and individuals are still trying to get their hands around CRM 1.0 concepts of streamlining internal operations. It's possible that some folks will need the Social CRM aspects to kickstart their CRM 1.0 initiatives but my opinion is that a) it's not necessary and b) it will actually increase chance of failure. Too many CRM initiatives fail because organizations try to do too much too fast. Adding Social CRM in to the mix will be a disaster. Particularly since most organizations don't know what Twitter is, most don't have a LinkedIn account, a handful have Facebook but typically not for their businesses. tl;dr - right you are Wayne. This future is a few years off from being mainstream.

I'm not really buying it. Outside of some specialty consumer facing companies, how does 'social networking' help plumbing supply houses, or manufacturers of gaskets?

Mostly it benefits Google, Facebook and LinkedIn because it feeds them more of your data so they can sell you to a higher bidder. Also, simplicity, power and flexibility all require tradeoffs - increasing one generally comes at the expense of at least one of the others (assuming the starting point wasn't just poorly designed in all areas).

I wonder if a large percent of typical users need nothing more than note tacking and common contacts. My guess is yes.

I spoke with an executive of Salesforce.com who later worked for SAP ByD. They said about 90% of the users don't use the system for much more than contact management. Microsoft really blew it by not adding just a little more functionality to Outlook and exchange. Their afterthought plugins were stupid. If base outlook had an option to separate contacts and companies easily and to more elegantly relate email, tasks, notes, contacts and companies, and if that worked seemlessly when Exchange was involved, it would really have put a dent into the feature creep CRM market.

I agree with you all if you think of ""Social CRM"" as CRM + Social Networking. I think it's important for a select few but worthless for most (at least in its current stage). I think it helps to take the current image of ""social networking"" out of the equation. Instead consider this term: Collaborative CRM. With Collaborative CRM, you are opening your doors to your customers, prospects, suppliers and the rest of your value chain to enable everyone to communicate efficiently and effectively about your products and services. Not only does this give everyone a feeling of belonging (which is touchy-feely), it helps you control the message when things go wrong. Does that paint it in a different light or does it still seem like bs?

Can you give me a real world example? I don't get it

Sure - Amazon is one - they allow you to see past orders, comment on products,place new orders, perform returns, etc. all through their collaborative system. Service firms could do something similar - allow clients (and even prospects) to have access to a secure portal where they could see project information, tasks, read and leave notes about the project, access project documents and collateral, review time (if you are so inclined) or task status (if you don't track time), make requests for changes, approve proposals, see past invoices, pay past invoices ... the list goes on from there. To me that is Collaborative CRM. Basically SocialCast + CRM + ERP + firm management in one easy to access portal.

I use Freshbooks for billing and all of my invoices are viewable by customers. I've also tried the collaborative project idea with Basecamp and found most customers have zero interest in taking an active role in projects by logging into a separate system, etc.

Did you find that Basecamp was an effective tool internally for managing projects even if customers were not active in it?

@JenniferChriston Yes we use Basecamp on all of our projects and even though customers were not enthusiastic about participating - we do setup each project interenall. It's very helpful to keep track of all these moving pieces especially as projects get delayed, change, re-scheduled. It's not a perfect system. For example I find you need to develop some methodology as to how you use it. However it's the best I've found so far.

That's interesting to hear. We have often thought of using Basecamp, as the system we are using now has it's shortfalls. Currently we use Deltek Vision to setup WBS structured projects, but it's not very user friendly in handling schedule changes for multiple change orders. Jennifer Christon Technical Consultant | Accounting Systems, Inc. ~ ASI Phone: 970.692.5136 | 866.440.5510 x136 Fax Number: (970) 416-0732 Email: Jennifer.Christon@ASIsucceed.com <mailto:KCordes@ASIsucceed.com> Web: www.ASIsucceed.com <http://www.asisucceed.com/> From: support@socialcast.com [mailto:support@socialcast.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Schulz Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 9:11 AM To: Jennifer M. Christon Subject: [90 Minds Consulting Group] Connected's Delightful Approach to CRM | Mark Evans Tech

We are very light users on the scheduling end of things --- so it's possible that Basesamp might be too light. The thing I like is there's no user limit (though there is a project limit but you just pay more if you exceed the threshhold).

That's good to know. I am struggling with the thought currently that there may be such a thing as too much project management? It seems like spending too much time planning, knowing that change is inevitable, could result in diminishing returns.

I do it all in Google Docs (templates) and Basecamp. Billing goes through Freshbooks (I LOVE that you can send an estimate via email that the customer approves then you can turn it into a bill). I've found that stressing over perfection in the past kept me nailed in place - now I just make mistakes and change my approach and move on..

Do you charge for project management?

Ours is all fixed price so there's no line item for project management -- it is built into the fee which is why when you look at the price you might say ""that's an awful lot of hours"" - but in reality a fixed price has to include all that overhead.

We add a flat 20% to all bills for pm

Like Wayne, we use Google Docs and Sites for all of our project management. I looked at Basecamp but didn't see much benefit to it. And project management is built into our fixed price. Since I've found that customers don't have a clue as to what real project management means, not having PM is not an option we offer. And I'm not sure that you can have too much planning. Planning is the most valuable thing we bring to the table. That's where the real knowledge transfer occurs. And we price it as such. The price for the planning phase is usually higher than that of the software purchasing phase. The software has become almost an afterthought.

Shame on you Wayne for not using Sage products... When we do an EDI project which is turnkey fixed fee by the third party provider we add PM time. When we do fixed fee engagements, the include an allowance for PM time. When we do hourly billing we always add time in the beginning for Business Blueprinting and for Project Mangement. In the end, one of our BIGGEST VALUE ADDS is the fact that we can manage projects and many smaller customers simply can not. However, the source of this dialogue was social CRM, which will grow whether we believe in it or not. We almost all use facebook and LinkedIn now and the fact that it can be tied into a user profile in CRM or ERP makes it useful for communication. If we know what our customers see and like, we can use that information to our business advantage. If our customers and prospects see us more, it is to our business advantage. If we can automate the use of that knowledge, we will have an advantage over our competitors who do not. For example, if a prospect likes a competitor's page, we should know we need to market to them or stop marketing to them if they are lost. Either way, if we can save the prospect we win, or if we stop wasting our time, we win. It is turning that data into knowledge and automating its use that is the missing link today.

I looked at Google Docs. In my opinion Google does not have their act together with respect to logins. I also find that customers - despite their claims - have no clue what level of support they require and a customer who only needs to call ""maybe once a year"" is not worth the time and should be referred to Sage.

The logins can be problematic but it has gotten much better over the past few months. Gary, we do use Sage tools. Most of our project management tools are based on the ones from Sage CA.