November 23rd, 2009

Chatting (Not Chattering) About Salesforce - Part I

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 6:35 am

Categories: CRM Buzz, Customer Service, Enterprise 2.0, Industry Analysis, Marketing, Social CRM, Social Networks, Technology Reviews

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Customer Service, Twitter Inc., Sales Force, Customer, CRM, Integration, Force.com, Service Cloud 2, Sales Force Management

(NOTE BEFORE I START: This is one really long post. So rather than post it in all its glory in a single file or post it here over two days, I’m trying something new. I’m posting the first half here. And the second half on PGreenblog.  Let’s see how that works.)

I’d like you to think about something. The Big 4 of CRM are considered the following:

1. Oracle
2. SAP
3. Microsoft
4. Salesforce.com

Salesforce has at best 1/15th the revenue of the smallest revenue of the other three.  At best.

By no standard imaginable - except one - does salesforce.com belong in this list - especially IF size matters.

But that one factor is the combination of their continuing ability to at least be the leading market edge when it comes to recognizing trends and at best be the innovator and the creator of those trends.  Plus the incredible energy and charisma of Marc Benioff doesn’t hurt either.  ’Cuz if it were sheer numbers that determined the leadership - not just the shareholder value - there is only a big three - and little slightly more than a billion dollar salesforce.com wouldn’t be on that list.

But larger than (business) life they are - as Yoda told me just the other day.

So where are they with the release of what Marc called the “4th Cloud”  Salesforce Chatter yesterday along with the other three - SalesCloud 2, ServiceCloud 2 and CustomCloud?

I’d say, at least if choosing my body of options, they aren’t creating the trends or innovating here. What they are doing is nailing what the trends are and being on the leading edge of those trends.  That’s going to be the suit they wear in the post-Dreamforce 2009 world that we will all be inhabiting after this week.

Marc and salesforce.com have always had an uncanny ability to see the business world in its sexy glory. Marc put it well several times when he said that creating the company and the initial sales app/service were inspired by Amazon and the current incarnation of salesforce with its products etc was inspired by Facebook, Twitter and what pretty much amounts to the social web.

My take has always been that consumer thinking has penetrated the enterprise - been saying this since I was a young whippersnapper back in 2003. But salesforce.com has had a vision for years and been following through on that vision with an extraordinary rigor.

What is that vision, you ask? Well hop onto the Wayback Machine, Sherman and let’s go to 2003.

The scene is a hotel restaurant in Shanghai with men and women of mystery eating their breakfasts, talking to “someone”, murmuring under their breathes about important things.  I’m sitting at a table with Tien Tzuo, the then CMO of salesforce.com, now CEO of the very successful SaaS billing and payment systems vendor Zuora.  Know what he’s telling me?

(This is a paraphrase. Read the 3rd edition of CRM at the Speed of Light for the literal): “We want to be the place that all business people come to run all their business applications. We want to be the  Business Web. We’re not just a CRM company.”

Guess what folks, while this may be an ambitious goal and one that they’ve tempered with the message that Marc peppered his two days of keynotes with at the conference that (again paraphrased) “we realize that companies will be running other systems,” this is precisely what they are continuing to drive for -  with force.com and cloud computing.  Have they succeeded? No, not yet, there is a long way to go, but they are walking on the same road - even trotting on it - that they were walking back in 2003. To those who say that force.com takes them away from their “core competency.” Knaves, you are wrong. Force.com is their core competency. (Boom. Fade to black).

Now, lets get on with it.  For the rest of this post, I’m going to discuss their so-called 4 clouds.  Service Cloud 2, Sales Cloud 2, Custom Cloud 2 and of course, Chatter, their 4th cloud.  At PGreenblog, I’m going to do a piece on the back stories of the conference - like the analysts who were there in droves, the conference management, the meetings I had, and maybe even some of the parties.  We’ll see. That’ll be out before Thanksgiving.

First, Is All This Social CRM? The 4th Cloud?

The answer - which will be qualified by the end of this piece - is “Yes” “No” and “who cares?” But I do want to start this by telling you that calling Service Cloud 2, Sales Cloud 2, Custom Cloud 2 and Chatter the 4 “clouds” are not clouds. They are either cloud services (Chatter), cloud applications (Service Cloud 2 or Sales Cloud 2), or platform as a service (force.com a.k.a. Custom Cloud).  I don’t particularly like marketing like this because it just confuses a market with customers and prospects who are trying hard to understand what the cloud is.  This isn’t the cloud. Not clouds. Niet wolken. No nubes.Keine wolken. ניט קלאָודס.  没有云彩

That’s my multi-lingual declarative and I’m sticking to it.  Take me on if you want with some comments, but I won’t fold. Ironically, I did a webinar on the cloud for salesforce.com about a month or two ago that you can access here (registration is necessary).  Listen and then tell me that those 4 things are “clouds.”

The Big Picture

While touted as game-changing, earth-shaking, revolutionary, and transformative, I didn’t see that. Other than the “apps are talking to me” I didn’t see anything that I hadn’t seen implemented somewhere else - and better elsewhere n some cases (I’ll discuss that later).  But what I did see and was beyond impressed with was a fully integrated framework and architecture for social computing that integrates social CRM, and could easily enough deliver social ERP and social “supply chain” and social “anything you damn well want.” We saw that with the extraordinary - and I do mean extraordinary demo by Vetrazzo CEO, James Shepard.

Were they perfect and seamless?  No.  But after all the conferences I’ve attended this year of all the vendors, this was the most developed and integrated execution of an end to end contemporary platform I’ve seen to date. That said, it still was a demo with what seems to be a February through indeterminate 2010 release date.  So how complete it ends up, remains to be seen.  By way of comparison, Oracle Fusion, talked about for 3 years, which could be the competitive platform to this someday, is still in the “wait and see” stage  with a demo of Fusion Apps for the first time at Open World 2009.  For now, end of 2009 and into 2010, force.com, even with the problem of Apex as a proprietary development language, is going to be the platform to beat. (if anyone dares excerpt this in part, w/o the caveat, I’ll kick your butt.).

Also, the claims that were being made sounded a bit much at times, though not always by salesforce. One that particularly stood out was that Frost and Sullivan in a May 2009 report said that salesforce.com had 55 percent of the revenue from North American SaaS deployments of customer service. I’d love to see that Frost and Sullivan report and hear they came to that.  I literally don’t believe that number - even if Frost and Sullivan “proved” it.  Sorry.

So how does this all shake out ? Let’s break (dance) it out.

The Health of salesforce.com - Left Brain

The numbers speak for themselves. If you’re a fan of run rates they are at a run rate of $1.3 billion annually as of now. My run rate is about 4.5 mph.  So you know where they and I stand in this.  That’s all fun but a bad month can kill a run rate. But their actual numbers are pretty healthy too. Revenue for the 3rd Quarter was $330.5 million up 20%, beating financial analyst expectations by a little (I had no expectations - which is why I’m not a financial analyst)  They now have 67,900 customers with 4700 new customers. They were slightly more profitable.  All in all not a bad showing, which of course is why their stock price declined on the news of their improvement - nothing like Wall Street to ruin a party - except the ones they throw using their newly restored bonuses. (PG Safe Harbor: The previous sentence is a populist commentary, not an expert analysis. Thank you).

Service Cloud 2

When salesforce originally announced Service Cloud a year plus ago, I thought it was a good thing because they were filling out the portfolio for CRM at least with something that has been notoriously poor in CRM suites though it was offered, and for them it at least filled a major hole. Though I was, after an initial rush, somewhat underwhelmed by the first offering.   with Service Cloud 2 they’ve filled gigantic gaps from the 1.0 version and they’ve added some integrated social features.  They have the requisite Twitter integration, which is a perfectly adequate integration though frankly, the current stellar enterprise Twitter customer service integration  belongs to SAP with the use of Business Objects Insight to provide a sophisticated sentiment analysis capability and business rules/workflow/alarms/triggers etc. Salesforce.com, of course, integrated Chatter functionality around things like case resolution for example (e.g. have a “service conversation” with not only the customer but with the managers and so that the triggers and alerts are visible as a  subscribed feed. Again, you’ll understand what in god’s name I’m talking about a little later.)

They’ve also gone the “complete solution” route by allying with Cisco to provide a pre-fab contact center for small and medium businesses which is a very wise move on salesforce’s part as they continue to move upstream. This way they don’t lose the market that made them what they are - small and medium business.

One area that they’ve done extremely well in this release is built around customer knowledge. One of the reasons that customers are turning away from the companies and more toward peers when it comes to solving problems with products and services is that they don’t trust the companies to give them the right answer nor do the companies have the knowledge captured that they need to really help the customer. Plus the search capabilities for many of these knowledge bases is awful.

But rather than simply try to improve the quality of the knowledge presented to the customer from some internal source, salesforce has taken the most intelligent route possible by embracing this new paradigm and using the “wisdom of the crowds” (god. If James Surowiecki gets a royalty for every time that phrase is used, he will be richer than Ellison soon enough) rather than fearing it or trying to compete with it.

What they’ve done is create Salesforce Answers which essentially lies along the “engage customers through communities to help solve problems” spectrum. While this model in more specific ways has certainly become popular in 2009, Salesforce Answers is a relatively flexible option that is highly configurable to the customer service needs of the customer. Combined with Salesforce Knowledge their “multitenant” knowledgebase and their so-so Twitter integration, there is a lot of customer service value being provided, particularly around customer service engagement and self-service.  Service Cloud 2’s concept is responsiveness, information and engagement.

My rating: A bloop single because of the improvements from the original Service Cloud, not because of its strength relative to other packages. Its only a hard line drive but caught there. (for non-baseball left-brainers 3.00 of 5.00; for non-baseball right brainers “not bad.”

Sales Cloud 2

Now we’re talking! This is actually more exciting to me than Chatter, and given my proclivities toward (oh-be-have) social “stuff”, that’s saying a lot.

Salesforce was always a leader in sales force automation.  No doubt about that. They have had solid functionality,  a tolerable interface as the tab pioneers and strong traditional SFA functionality. Of course, that meant that the functionality was geared toward sales management more than directed toward providing features that would be valued by sales persons.  However, not only have they strengthened the management features, but they added features that were without a doubt aimed at providing what the sales person actually needs to do his or her job.

Are they the first to do this?  No. Oddly Oracle was back in 2004 when they added a quote generating engine for their Oracle CRM (pre-Siebel, pre-PeopleSoft CRM).  I wrote about it in the 3^rd edition of CRM at the Speed of Light in fact.

But salesforce has done a major league job by improving on other quote engines by providing a real time quote engine. They model it, according to them, on the power seller paradigm that eBay uses.  Meaning a few clicks and there is a quote based on the current pricing and configuration.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy as the Geico gecko says.

One major feature that I think is a vast improvement over past editions is the Cloud Scheduler. What makes it more than a personal information manager feature is that it allows scheduling with outside partners and customers pretty much using drag and drop.  If your partners and customers - and of course - other staff are connected (opted in) then you can do what Outlook does with the “find best available time for all concerned” automatically.

Of course, they have the requisite Twitter integration, though aside from me not being particularly impressed by their Twitter integration in general, what its doing in a sales application beyond a monitoring tool, I have no idea.  Even in their official press releases they talk about converting “Twitter conversations into customers” which is honestly, a crock. It isn’t an integration that converts a Twitter conversation into a customer.  I’m glad you can integrate Twitter conversations of customers into the sales record but beyond that, so what?

Any salesforce Content Library document is available on mobile devices with this release which is a huge plus for those on the road all the time - which includes, what else - salespeople. All in all a smart feature.

That said, let’s take a brief look at the social integration of the Content Library.  Salesforce claims that rather than just getting a presentation from a repository, you can now take a look at the content, see what others have said about it, find out which deals it was used on, solicit feedback on the value of the presentation or document given the opportunity and also collaborate on changes. While this is fine, it sounds like a somewhat less robust and thus almost dead ringer for Oracle Sales Library.  So I don’t think this was inspired by Twitter and Facebook.  Sounds more like it was inspired by Oracle.  But, its still a good addition to the library.

Sales Cloud 2 actually is a significant step forward for this company formerly-known-as-CRM’s CRM SFA application.

My rating: A line drive triple into the gap, driving in at least a couple of runs. (for non baseball left-brainers 4.00 of 5.00; for non-baseball right brainers - really quite cool)

(Okay, now continue on to PGreenblog for Part II - the remainder of this analysis which covers Custom Cloud and Chatter and some other notes on the conference.)

October 14th, 2009

Oracle OpenWorld 2009 - Social CRM Technology Rears an Actual Head

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 7:54 am

Categories: CRM Buzz, CRM Strategy, Industry Analysis, Marketing, Social CRM, Social Networks, Technology Reviews, Thought Leadership

Tags: Oracle Corp., Siebel Systems Inc., CRM, Anthony Lye, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Paul Greenberg

I am almost always in awe of Oracle OpenWorld.  The scope of this conference is spectacular. Can you imagine an event that the attendance is down to 37,000 attendees?  Actually, that puts me in awe of their event planners more than even the event. How in the name of whoever can you put together something of this magnitude?

Back in 2007, I was also thunderstruck by the changes they made to their CRM products thanks to the team led by Anthony Lye.  It was dramatic and it impacted Oracle as a company - and as it turns out, has had an impact on the industry as a whole.  While I can’t remember exactly when they started calling it Social CRM, I do remember they had somehow understood that the customer’s requirements and demands and mindset had changed. They adapted accordingly - which was another source of astonishment because they were about the last company I expected to see this kind of progressive and valuable thinking from. But to their credit they did it.

While my focus has always been CRM, I have some experience with enterprise products generally, having built practices for a variety of them back in the 1990s and into the early part of this century - so I keep my eye on them.  But the CRM transformation changed my expectations of what the company would deliver as a whole - ranging from their excellent CRM applications to their mysterious Fusion Apps (which are apparently going to drop at this show) to their entirely forgettable Beehive collaboration server (which I hope Oracle has forgotten too).  Plus Larry Ellison’s flair for the dramatic makes me expect something remarkable.

Sadly, there was nothing remarkable presented, which is not a condemnation, just a fact. Outside of the CRM products (more on that shortly), what I’ve seen from Oracle so far (with the keynotes of Safra Katz and Charles Phillips) has been…..uneventful at best and pedestrian at worst. Not bad, just uneventful to pedestrian. The changes (at least generally) in their products have been incremental and small increments at that. Statements were made that were dramatic such as Safra Katz talking about Oracle’s “slavish devotion to Open Standards” but nothing dramatic actually occurred.

Don’t get me wrong. The keynotes by Charles Phillips and Safra Katz were fine if you were interested in an overview of what Oracle has been doing in the last year or so. The “keynote” by an EVP of Hewlett Packard was nothing more than a giant ad for Hewlett Packard, only interesting because of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. Unfortunately, the wisdom of the crowds so to speak, supported me here because they abandoned the hall in droves during  the speech.

including the growth of their retail business and the useful sophistication of their retail products - but all in all, nondescript is a good description (get the irony there?) of what I’ve seen so far.

Oracle CRM Moves Forward In Quality…And In Thinking

I will say, even with my narrow focused lenses, Oracle CRM stood far out far ahead of the rest of the Oracle Apps pack.  Also let me tell you right now, I’ve been a retained consultant with Oracle though as you all know, that buys them nothing but a good job (I hope) by me. Not anything in these things I write.

CRM at Oracle seems to remain their star application, probably because it is, in 2009,  the fastest growing application suite at Oracle and probably will be the Oracle revenue leader this year.  That’s because they’ve understood what businesses need when it comes to being successful with customers.  Note that I didn’t say collaborating with customers. That’s not what Oracle CRM is all about. They are really applications for sales and marketing effectiveness. They don’t have  much to speak of in the world of customer service - with the exception of their tight partnership with Helpstream - an excellent move given their lack of native customer service apps. But they are doing what they do very well utilizing their existing Siebel applications expertise and their on demand applications in combination with a view toward internal collaboration at a company. Witness the development of  Social CRM Sales Library On Demand in the last few months.

But what Anthony Lye, Mark Woolen, Christine Viera, Melissa Boxer and Adam May showed at an executive briefing yesterday on the advances in CRM was heartening because they are molding their CRM applications - traditional ones - with social and collaborative features that make them infinitely more valuable.

Anthony Lye, SVP in charge of Oracle CRM and the intellectual driver for much of this, started off with a discussion on the idea of reinvention rather than recovery as the strategy that companies need to take aggressively during poor economic times.

So far, so good.

He then framed the soon to appear demos by talking about what he saw as 3 game changing strategies:

1. Executing the cross-channel customer experience flawlessly - Anthony distinguished between multi-channel and cross-channel (which was something like the difference between multigrain and whole grain) - multi-channel was a strategy that delivered an experience in mobile, field, community, call center etc.  Cross-channel was a strategy to traverse all the individual channels at any given time by embedding processes to instrument business so that the customer experience was consistent.  PG: While I thought the strategy was smart from a software and processes standpoint, I wasn’t truly sure that cross-channel was that much different from what I know as multi-channel. But regardless, the idea of a consistent (though he didn’t talk about authentic which is the companion piece of consistent when it comes to the customer experience) customer experience accessible whenever across channels was dead on.
2. Tap into the power of the social web - this is the one that goes without saying and is the technological and process driven aspect of how Social CRM works - though by no means all of it.
3. Deliver CRM data, when, how, and where users need it - this was the most interesting actually.

Anthony’s contention was that there were two types of relationships that CRM users needed to know when it came to customers. First, the explicit relationships - what kinds of communities was the customer associated with; who were his or her friends or friends of friends; the historic transactional data about the cutomer and the more contemporary profile data. But most interesting to me at least was his idea of the implicit relationships. These were not of the “who do you know” variety, but more of the “who do you look like?”  When Mark Woolen, the always personable and very accomplished #1 VP for the Oracle CRM grouplet, demonstrated an app for a I presume fictional company though it was one that sold the iPhone 3G (S), he showed a button with the name “Connect to Someone Like Me.” When that button was pressed, it took you to a list of customers who were ranked by percentage of how close to your profile they were.  You then could type in a question to ask of those like you.  Great feature and entirely social in how it was connected. Built through the new Siebel toolkit I believe.

This is not a new idea. Political campaigns use micro-targeting to identify the lifestyle habits of their potential voters and identify blocks of voters who might all own Mercedes, be involved in social clubs etc. They then use this “implicit information” to figure out who those “similar folks” would most likely vote for, based on this kind of data.  What Oracle is contending and I think rightfully is that the transactional data that’s been gathered by CRM applications can be used to find “someone like me” segments - and they’ve gone ahead used Siebel toolkits to build out what they claim here.  Impressive and smart.

Melissa Boxer, who is probably the smartest person I’ve met anywhere when it comes to applying the principles of loyalty to enterprise software, demonstrated a genuinely fantastic iPhone application for Swedish Rail (SJ). Here’s a screenshot on that.

What makes this application powerful is that it literally allows you use the points you have in a loyalty program to purchase items from Swedish Rail including tickets that are not only shipped right to your iPhone when you’ve used the points to buy them but can be redeemed via the iPhone. Additionally, you can make reservations directly and then have your itinerary delivered to your iPhone and if you choose to make it public so your friends (chosen friends) need to know where you are going - it can be delivered to Facebook for public or semi-public scrutiny.   Swedish Rail then gets all this new data about your transactions and interactions and can use it to create targeted offerings on the spot.

Way cool and what social marketing looks like, albeit in a nascent form (so don’t get in my face about something that might be missing, okay? Nascent form.).

But Oracle is even doing more than that.  They have done some I think is important with a traditional CRM application. They’ve extended Siebel with the use of a new Siebel toolkit that allows developers to integrate business processes and components into any framework whatever. That means the results of the development can be delivered to users via a widget, or an mini-application or a mobile app. But what makes this toolkit particularly important is that its got APIs based on RESTful architecture.

This is big for Oracle. The reality is that Sage led the way in the effective use of RESTful architectures and builds their current products on this simplified and yet powerful architecture.  Unlike Sage, Oracle, and most of the other major vendors has been relying on service-oriented architectures which use far more commands than a RESTful architecture for their messaging and are considerably more complex. For the Siebel toolkit to use REST to deliver Siebel metadata is an important step forward in the world of CRM.  It will allow for more effective and easily consumable applications when combined with the other piece of the Siebel puzzle - a visualization toolkit to change the interface to be appropriate to the delivery channel.

There were a number of other developments including a strong offering of Siebel OnDemand Release 17, which has added features that are most often found in larger on premise products including PRM, advanced analytics and what I think Adam Day said was the OEMing of Best Systems Marketing Development Funds program.  and an increasing amount of vertical applications including a mobile pharma app for salespeople.  All in all, there are 12 new products, 31 new features, 88 “customer-driven enhancements” - Anthony’s words not mine - and nine new integrations.

But to me the core developments are the improvement in true social marketing that recognizes the behaviors and activities of social customers. Oracle is using the traditional customer transaction data and the newe interaction data in an intelligent way tp micro-target and create “segments like me.” That’s really good for improving customer insight but what makes this truly powerful is that they’ve developed the channels and outputs to give the customers access to that same information by hooking them up with the people discovered through the micro-targeting efforts. Not only does the business gain insight, but the customer gains access. Truly multi-directional. In other words, this is what a technology can do to support a social CRM strategy. Everyone benefits.

So, hats off to Oracle now for conceptualizing and building a genuine social CRM application.  But capital H Hats off to Oracle when they release it and get it beyond the demo stage.  This is important and may be a paradigmatic set of CRM applications if it bears out in the real customer world as well as it seems to in the demo and development environment.

NEXT UP: Marc Benioff Speaks; Denis Pombriant and I speak; Larry Ellison speaks. Other OOW 2009 coverage worth following.

August 3rd, 2009

Inside Curve: Lane Bryant Scores Plus Plus

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 5:37 am

Categories: Marketing, Social CRM, Social Media Best Practices, Social Networks

Tags: Apparel, Exclusion, Community, Brand, Women, Network, American Eagle, Bebe, Curve, Jay

Who doesn’t love style and fashion?  Well, I suppose I don’t love fashion, judging from my incredibly poor clothing selection skills (I rely 100% on my wife, who has mad skills when it comes to picking out good looking clothes) but I am in love with style. I love to feel cool.  In my case this translates to gadget head stuff, but in the case of many, its clothes that make the hip man or woman.

But oddly, despite the fact that clothes and styles are a primo topic of discussion both at schools, on the street, while watching makeover shows, or “Who Wants to be the Next Supermodel,” there have been no social networks or communities built around the retail apparel world. I’m not saying there isn’t innovation or there aren’t Facebook pages. Retail apparel companies galore have Facebook fan pages and they tweet. J.C. Penny’s has a Facebook page targeted at teens that links back to an ecommerce site for back-to-school clothes. American Eagle has Mike Dupuis, a VP of Digital Marketing who works their Twitter, Facebook etc. strategy. Bebe’s, Candie’s and other apparel - especially younger apparel stores/chains have some presence on social networks of others creation.

But I gotta tell you, its taken a visionary dude that I met when both he and I spoke at the Global Retail Marketing Association (GRMA) - an rather astonishingly interesting association run by Stephanie Fischer - national conference in April to take the retail apparel world where it’s supposed to go with social networks. That would be Jay Dunn, VP of Marketing at Lane Bryant, who, today, is hard launching Inside Curve - a social network, sponsored by Lane Bryant, for plus sized woman.

What makes this important is several fold (please see my article later this month on vertical communities at SearchCRM for more conceptual detail):

1. Apparel of any size are an emotional buy - totally tied into style, look and feel, and even identity and self-worth. Studies have been done that show how emotional this actually is. One 2008 Fitness magazine study of woman who were trying on clothes in stores found that 64% (80% among those who thought they had to lose 30 pounds or more) of the women felt that shopping for clothes was bad for their self-confidence; 10% admitted to crying in the dressing room. Even trite expressions are tied to this intensely emotional activity and product - “clothes make the man.” Of course, if that’s true then I’m in real trouble. Sniff.
2. Buying clothes is something that is important for socialization. Multiple studies since the 1980s and through today, have shown two things - 1. What kids wear is important for a child’s socialization into the world of other children; 2. Buying clothes without their parents, with their own money is one of the more important acts of growing up as an independent person for a kid when they reach a certain age.

In other words, clothes - how you wear them and what you wear are a deeply personal part of a person’s life, and, unless you’re a nudist, skinny dipping or having sex (at least most of the time), a necessity of ordinary life along the lines of food and shelter.

So what’s the Inside Curve story with all this?

A Really Good Inside Curve

Let’s face it. Plus sized women don’t fit the stereotypical view of the perfect body. The fashion industry to give you a number, says a plus sized woman is size 14 and weighs 162.9 pounds. Let’s hear what Jay has to say which will give you an idea of the beauty of Inside Curve as a community.

“The plus-size woman has been excluded from mainstream media, fashion, and advertising for 4 decades. If you think back to the 1950s and early 1960s, the icons of femininity were voluptuous women such as Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren. In 1966, Twiggy hit the scene and the “thin is in” movement started and continues to this day. Kate Moss is Twiggy reimagined.

“The psychology of the plus-size woman has been altered by the fashion industry’s insistence on “beauty” as “thin.” As you look at the blogs and social networks you see those women have an immediate bonding, a commonality, a shared experience of exclusion that becomes the foundation of community. A “community by exclusion,” if you will.

“An interesting aspect of exclusion: when enough of the “excluded” bands together, their identity can change from “exclusion” to “exclusive.” Suddenly, a new tribe develops, with a language, rules, desires, and needs based on shared experience. And if you’re not one of them, if you are not a size 14+ woman, you do not belong. It is the power of the tribe, and the psychology changes from one of weakness to one of authority.”

What Jay and Lane Bryant had to consider was how do you turn what organically was a community of exclusion and institutionally make the membership a powerful organized voice.

Lane Bryant

Keep in mind, Lane Bryant is hardly a stranger to the world of the plus size woman. They actually invented both the concept and the clothes.  They have over 800 stores located throughout the U.S. that deal exclusively with this group of people.  As Jay says, “Lane Bryant never deviated from the plus-size category. we invented it….For over a hundred years we’ve done only one thing and that’s plus-size apparel for the American woman.”

But that didn’t mean that Lane Bryant was ready for the development of this ambitious social network project.   Their focus and culture, like most apparel retailers, had been sales and product focused. It wasn’t easy to go from a “plus-size retailer who sold women’s apparel” to a “fashion-retailer who sells plus-size.” While that might sound like marketing, its actually a culture change that takes the social customer’s emotional experiences with not just Lane Bryant but why they buy clothes and want to feel good about how they dress and what they buy.  That culture change took well over a year to evolve, but it did and Inside Curve was born.

Inside Curve

So what does Inside Curve provide to plus-size women that makes it something Social CRMers like us can be glad to see?

First, take a look at this image of the site: So you can think about it and feel it a little at the same time.

Inside Curve is focused on customer engagement. While Lane Bryant does advertise some of their wares, which is something which will test as good or bad over time, they also involve the customers in finding out what they think and how they think.  Customer driven product reviews, design tips and style advice in the Buzz section not just from the experts but also from the customers themselves, discussions on fashion trends, behind-the-scenes exclusive stuff, and even promotions and savings for members of the network are part of the experience designed to reinforce the development of what Jay Dunn unashamedly calls “a sisterhood.”  Blogs are an integral part of Inside Curve, too. Blogs, articles, etc. are written by Jay’s staff, with some forthcoming expert commentary from the Lane Bryant trend group and other fashion experts in the brand.

They aren’t ignoring the glam either - which, regardless of how you view the fashionista world and the catwalk, is something that zillions of “ordinary” humans pay attention to.  They are involving the Lane Bryant models “behind the scenes” content that would show what goes on in a photo or video shoot; content from the TV show More to Love with clips that will be for the site and other glitz of interest to the members.

While Lane Bryant plays a major role in the blogging and the content exclusive site, they are playing much more hands off when it comes to forums and groups.  Not only are they allowing them to grow organically in Inside Curve, but also are encouraging external growth too. They are fully aware that their customers are using social media to communicate.  Consequently, Lane Bryant sees its role as providing brand content.

Jay again:

“We want to allow ‘inside’ access to the brand, thus the name. If ever there were a brand with whom its customers feel a “lovemark” connection, it’s this one.”

As of this morning, Inside Curve had 3642 members - prior to launch - an auspicious start.

Thoughts? Of Course!

A couple of things.

Notes to Lane Bryant

First, would I do anything different, add anything, or at least monitor some of the more touchy areas? Yes, of course.  What would this be posting be without me being opinionated?  Here are a couple of iniitial thoughts on that.

1. I think that I’d minimize the advertising and clearly differentiate it from the brand content.   Until the community is substantially large enough and has the confidence of its members, the advertising can be detrimental. I’d tread lightly.
2. I think too that I would make a serious effort to encourage and support a blog or two from members of the community, not just experts.

Community Building Notes

There is one exceptionally important pioneering lesson in the Lane Bryant community that I want to make emphatic.

With the creation and launch of Inside Curve, Lane Bryant is institutionalizing an already existing community of people who have no organization and loose ties. The plus size women are as he called them “a community by exclusion” that grew organically - almost protectively. They’ve had a presence but no organization. Now they do have that presence under the umbrella of a trusted brand.

There are many groups like this out there that have grown organically and are loosely tied. You can point to the PC gamers community for example. If I were a business, I’d take the Lane Bryant lesson and find those that are there, identify who the influencers are and engage the influencers - who are the glue of the loosely tied - in helping me build my institution so that these loosely tied, organically created groups are supported by your brand.   There is mutual value to be derived in that - more on that in an article I’m preparing for SearchCRM today.

What Lane Bryant has done is important - for plus size women and for Social CRM community practices. For the plus size women - they have a place to go to converse and benefit and in return, Lane Bryant benefits too.  For Social CRM community practices - providing a model that recognizes that the community doesn’t have to always be built - it can be captured.

That works too.

July 27th, 2009

Dead Finger Tech: MLB At Bat + MLB iPhone App = Summer Bliss

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 4:00 am

Categories: Marketing, Mobile

Tags: Apple iPhone, MLB, Video, Games, Personal Technology, Paul Greenberg

If you’ve been reading ZDNET blogs much this week, you’ll notice that there are a lot of a lot of them that are called “Dead Finger Tech” and then there is some piece of technology that follows.  Us’n ZDNET bloggers have been asked to name that one piece of technology that we can’t do without; that we love as we love our family and friends; that we wil take to the proverbial desert island.  One that I liked in particular was Matthew Miller, our Mobile Gadgeteer’s Kindle. (a man after my own heart)

But i gots my own Dead Finger Tech too. And, being a New Yorker, which means talking and at least aspiring to live large, I needed a two pack combo to make my Dead Finger Tech work. Its not hardware either though there is hardware necessary.   Of course, I would complicate it.  Its that livin’ large thingee.

What is it, Paul? I know that you’re just dying to know.

Its the combination of MLB At Bat including MLB.TV Premium and the MLB At Bat iPhone app.

Here’s the picture:

You probably know by now that I love the New York Yankees. If you didn’t, I will now yell it to the rooftops. I LOVE THE NEW YORK YANKEES! - and have for at least 53  years which is as far as I can remember. I have no doubt its encoded into my genetic makeup, though.

I also love the game of baseball and even love Kevin Kostner for making the greatest sports movie of all time with Field of Dreams. There actually is crying in baseball, Tom Hanks, if you watch the scene where Kostner has “the catch” with his Dad in the movie; I cry every single time that scene is up. I admit it. Okay, c’mon all you big tough studs out there, admit it man up, you cry too.

I’ve gone as far as to find out who some of the best Yankees fans are in the world of CRM and related areas. We’re plotting to take over the business world, BTW.  Among them are Joe Pine 2, the author of business classic, The Experience Economy and the 2007 best seller Authenticity; Ken Juster, Executive Vice President of Law, Policy, and Corporate Strategy at salesforce.com; and Tien Tzuo, Founder & CEO of Zuora (former salesforce CSO) and brand new daddy (Congrats to Tien!!!);  That is among an incredibly large number of others. Carly Cooper of the SAP Business Influencers Group is more of a Yankees fan than I am, which I didn’t think was humanly possible. We rule in CRM baseball fandom!!

So I cannot, repeat, cannot live without my MLB At Bat Premium TV subscription - which gives me Internet connectivity to watch all 162 Yankees games (minus those that fall under the horrible blackout rules)  and of course, other than last year’s aberration, the playoff games that we’re going to rightfully earn.  Combine that with the $9.99 annual iPhone app and we have a winner.

I won’t show  you the MLB.com subscription but take a look at what this iPhone app provides.

It shows the schedule with games in progress and the scores live:

It shows the scoring plays game by game or the play by play after its occurred:

But its so much cooler than that. It also sends video highlights to the iPhone about 10 minutes after they occur in game for every single game playing that night. You access them inside the individual game that you’re watching or tracking or listening to.  I’m drooling, in case you can’t see me.

Even better, you now can get either selected games or, if you’re a subscriber to MLB.TV Premium, all games shown live video streaming on the iPhone.  BTW, this is Robinson Cano’s two run homer off the Orioles last week.  I saw it live on the iPhone but of course, through the clever use of the video highlights am able to show it to you as if I actually captured it that way too.

I’m only showing you some of what this app does. It also carries every single radio broadcast of every single game every single day or night.  That means if the Yankees are playing the Oakland A’s, I can listen to the Yankees broadcasters audio or the A’s broadcasters audio - live.

It also carries Gameday  which is the pitch by pitch graphical representation of the game that tracks the batter pitcher interplay to the point of insane description - e.g.  Polanco strike (Curve 83.2 mph).   That granular. Oooh. I’m shivering.

Think about this. You get EVERY SINGLE MAJOR LEAGUE GAME pitch by pitch graphically, or listening to your live audio broadcasters of choice, or watching the games live video streaming - all of them if you’re already an MLB.TV subscriber or a few if you have nothing but the app.  The audio and video are glitchless on Wi-Fi and nearly so on 3G.  You get video highlights in game about 10 minutes after they occur so you don’t have to miss anything. It also has the standings broken down by league and wild card and a whole other set of MLB videos - like a compendium of the day’s highlights etc.

To add to the unadulterated bliss, they are going to add a condensed game video - condensed like cream of mushroom soup, I imagine.  That means a shortened maybe 20-30 minute version of the game.

Now, all of this isn’t a great substitute for being at a game or even watching it on TV - and I have the DirecTV Extra Innings (Extra $$$$) package too.

Tell you what, though, this is about as good as it gets. The price for a whole season is frigging 10 bucks. That’s it. Ten bucks.  $9.99.  Less than 10 bucks.
Oh, life can be grand sometimes.  I have the iPhone App and Internet connectivity to prove it.  Now the Yankees have to win this year.  Again.

Got any favorite Dead Finger Tech you want to blab about?  Or fight me on the Yankees?  Or agree with me on everything?  This is probably the only time on ZDNET you’re going to be able to talk sports or gab with me about gadgets. So go at it.  Talkbacks a.k.a. comments are a lot easier now.

Okay, everyone, bring it.

May 29th, 2009

Excerpt: Marketing 2.0 From CRM at the Speed of Light 4th Edition

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 7:12 am

Categories: CRM Best Practices, CRM Strategy, Forecasting, Industry Analysis, Marketing, Social CRM, Technology Reviews, Thought Leadership

Tags: Advertisement, Attention, CRM, New Competition, Engagement Rating, Marketers, Marketing Professional, Marketing Research, Marketing, Paul Greenberg

I’m going to try something out here. I am ready to cringe as the tomatoes and old iPods are thrown at me, or the praise is showered on me…oh, wait, that’s someone dumping buckets of tar over my head. I’m providing an advance excerpt of Chapter 13 of CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition, my new book coming out with McGraw-Hill in late October 2009. The chapter name is “Sales & Marketing: The Customer is the Right Subject.” I’m down to writing the last three chapters as of today and should be done with a bullocks to the wall effort by mid June.

But I want feedback and discussion on the ideas that I’m putting forth. That said, there are some caveats.

1. This is completely raw. Unedited. Its a submitted chapter untouched by other than my human hands (and there is some question on whether or not I fit the category)
2. This is a small part of what is the largest chapter in the book on sales and marketing 2.0 so there is some context issues here - though don’t let that stop you.
3. This is a new area. But I think I’m right about the synthesizing of the material and the concepts I’m putting forth - though I’m not claiming tons of originality in the concepts. A couple of pounds maybe.

Have at me. Let me know what you think of the ideas, the writing, the works. For those of you unfamiliar with CRM at the Speed of Light, I’ll toot my own horn for a sec. It’s called the “Bible of the Industry” (though I insist on Old Testament because I’m Jewish). Its gone through 3 editions, sold quite a few copies, and is in 8 languages. This will be the 4th edition and it will be a combination of print (600 pages) and electronic content (another roughly 150 pages or so) and is a completely (from scratch) rewritten book. The foreword to this edition is written by Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com. It is due out in late October and is meant to be a reference for Social CRM/CRM 2.0 - I think the first of its kind. I hope the first of its kind. I pray the first of its kind. I am down on hands and knees the first of its kind.

In any case, that’s the background. Without further ado: the excerpt. PLEASE GIVE ME THE BENEFIT OF YOUR INSIGHTS AND ARGUMENTS. This chapter still can be edited and changed. If I use something you give me, you’ll get attribution in the book.

Have at it.

*******************************************************************************************************

Marketing uh, 2.0: New Mindset, New Tools

What I’m about to say may be obvious, but doing what I’m about to say just isn’t easy. In order for you to sell to someone, they have to care enough to know who you are, what you sell and see some reason to buy what you sell. They also have to see the reason that they should buy what you sell from you since they can probably get something similar from someone else.

That’s the essence of marketing - but to achieve that customer advocacy nirvana takes a lot . That “a lot” means a strategy, the use of tools and systems, and a completely new view of what marketing today is.

Listen Up! The New Competition is Attention

When you go to Whole Foods, you see heirloom tomatoes, regular red tomatoes, plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, locally grown tomatoes from a variety of different local farms, and organic versions of all of them. Which do you buy? Oh, you don’t shop at Whole Foods? Oh. Well, the point is that there are some twenty or thirty different varieties and types and sizes and farm-specific versions to choose from. If you’re confused about which to buy, you tend to the familiar. You buy regular or organic regular tomatoes. If you’re decorating a salad with something other than slices or chunks, you buy grape or cherry tomatoes. But if you’re making a sauce, you know it most likely calls for plum tomatoes - sometimes in another section of the store where you can get canned versions of the same. If you’re someone who supports local farmers as a principle - you get a locally grown version. If you’re decorating a salad you might buy heirloom tomatoes due to their riot of color.

In other words, your choices are specific to you and the person next to you buying the exact same tomatoes might be buying them for different reasons entirely.

Now, multiply that by some number that reflects the all the other vegetables calling out to you from the produce department - and then the fruits in the same area. If you’re not planning on buying tomatoes the rest of the produce might make you skip them entirely. There is so much to see and choose from, that the choices become bewildering.

The tendency when confronted with too much is inertia - to simply not make a choice. This creates a major problem for marketers, as we’ll see in just a moment.

The Attention “Economy”

If ten or eleven choices for tomatoes (or something) are blindingly difficult to decide about, imagine what it takes to do something when you’re being besieged by 3000 messages per day or roughly one million per year. That means via the Web, direct mail, on television, when you see a billboard or an ad in a store or in a newspaper or magazine and in a video game.

Think that you’re immune to it as a consumer? Here’s test that I do when I speak and the subject of capturing just the attention of someone comes up. I ask the crowd (and you can ask yourself):

1. How many of you get direct mail? (Of course, everyone raises his or her hands)
2. How many of you read all the direct mail you get? (Almost no one raises his or her hands)
3. How many just throw out most of or all of the ads? (Almost everyone raises his or her hands)

I have no doubt that the vast majority of you follow the crowd when it comes to answering those three questions. If you don’t, you win a prize. Let me know your address and I’ll put it in the mail. Just remember, don’t throw it out when you get it.

As marketing guru Seth Godin put it in an interview with William C. Taylor of Fast Company as far back as 1998:

“Marketing is a contest for people’s attention. Thirty years ago, people gave you their attention if you simply asked for it. You’d interrupt their TV program, and they’d listen to what you had to say. You’d put a billboard on the highway, and they’d look at it. That’s not true anymore. This year, the average consumer will see or hear 1 million marketing messages - that’s almost 3,000 per day. No human being can pay attention to 3,000 messages every day.”

This is called, as you might be able to guess, interruption marketing - your attention is captured because your routine activity is interrupted. But with 1 million messages a year, this doesn’t work the way it did in the 1960s. You do what I said above - you just zone out.

This isn’t just some construct that is there to move things in this book forward a bit. While you might think that your business competes with other companies who put out like products and provide like services, the stark reality is that you compete with every single message being thrown at your prospective customers. You can’t even start a smart legitimate marketing campaign aimed at lead generation without capturing the attention of your prospects first.

This is a recognized problem. Howard Handler, the Chief Marketing Officer of Virgin Mobile USA, in 2008, understood it: “To cut through with a message or a brand or a piece of content is more challenging than ever.”

The underlying idea in Handler’s comment is that because the amount of attention a consumer can give a product or service or company or idea is finite and increasingly more difficult due to both bad information like spam and rich information sources available everywhere, the competition for that attention is increasing and attention is becoming a commodity.

Customers are so tired of being bombarded (aren’t you?) with this constant barrage of messages that they simply zone out and don’t want to give companies that they might otherwise be interested in their time or consideration. What they actually want and are beginning to accomplish is control over what messages they consider “taking” and what brands they allow into their homes. Attention is given so little at this time that it’s been commoditized by its scarcity.

Evidence of this commoditization of attention is pretty easy to find. It shows in the compensation that is often given if you’ll just watch something. For example, when you watch a TV show that you’ve had queued in Hulu, the Web based service that’s either owned by NBC, Disney and News Corp. or aliens who look like Alec Baldwin and Dennis Leary, you will often get a choice of commercials that run at regular interludes through the web broadcast or seeing a single one minute commercial at the top of the show. For your attention to the commercial in the form that you want, you are being compensated by being allowed to watch the show for free. This is a very different model than Apple’s iTunes which sells the content commercial free for between $1.99 and $2.99 per episode. What the Hulu model is doing is buying your attention. They know your name through the registration on the site, but they recognize that having your name and you watching a commercial doesn’t mean that you’re a qualified lead. It means you gave them consideration. Period.

Compensation for attention is something that is not only being considered, but has to be considered. The rather old-fashioned idea of “pay them for their time” is becoming “pay them for their attention.” So there are companies who will give you free things e.g. cell phone minutes, ad free music, etc. if you view their ads for x time frame. There is a model for online revenue sharing that even Microsoft is looking into. There is a service called “Scoopt^TM Words” that operates as a “blogger agent” that will get companies to buy what bloggers are saying for commercial use and then split the revenue stream, which sounds kind of nice for bloggers, but not exactly in the spirit of the blogosphere.

The music industry has had an ongoing discussion which very well may go nowhere that is also around attention compensation but was driven by music piracy. The idea would be that rather than trying to prosecute or scare or harass someone who downloads a music file, usually MP3, illegally, give them the music in return for them viewing a 30 or 60 second ad. Once the ad has been completely viewed, they get the music.

While that may never go anywhere, it points to how serious the competition for attention really is.

There are nascent metrics to measure the attention too. They’re called engagement ratings and they’re primarily focused around TV at the moment. Not exactly a big surprise. They’re being used to figure out what programs to advertise on. Also not a big surprise - and sadly typical of the TV world - new metrics, old reasons.

Engagement ratings are the equivalent of “stickiness” on a website. It’s not just whether you have a large audience; it’s whether that audience is willing to continue to lavish its attention on you and your advertisers

Myers’ Emotional Connections© research in 2007 showed that Fox News Channel topped the “viewer engagement ratings” with positive engagement ratings in four categories by 80 percent of its viewers. But it dropped to 21^st place and 30 percent (for two categories) when it came to advertising engagement. What this can be interpreted to mean is that the audience was riveted to Bill O’Reilly and made a sandwich during the ads. I’d be the other way around.

Despite the particulars here, what’s important about the Myers work is that they’re doing some of the first research and measurement of level of attention and what it takes to gain that attention - which precedes even lead generation.

But attention-getting can go overboard and does especially when devotees of what is called the “attention economy” actually call attention capture the new currency - and they mean that literally. Meaning, somehow, providing attention will substitute for your national currency.

Lead generation from the marketing side comes when you have gained and kept the attention of your potential customers - but I wouldn’t go overboard with this either.

Hard Times for Tradition

Marketing never gets respect (We miss you, Rodney Dangerfield). Never ever. Never ever ever. Know why? Because marketing is viewed by the company as an expenditure that has immediate tangible return. Marketers are by the customer as a nuisance. They are viewed by people like me as a department that presumes for the customer and doesn’t really know what the customer is actually thinking, which to add to their problems, is often true.

It’s even truer now because the stakes are higher, the expectations and demands of the customer have increased and their hunger for being contacted in multiple ways - the ones of their own choosing - is greater than ever.

But that doesn’t negate the value of traditional marketing - especially when it’s used in combination with new marketing approaches. For example, the conversation rates in email marketing are still between 2 and 5 percent. Good numbers there. A study in May 2009 done by internet marketing small business legend, Hubspot, took a look at the effectiveness of traditional press releases as opposed to social media press releases found that the traditional media releases were considerably more effective in syndicating. The typical ratio was about 5:4 in favor of the traditional press release when it came to the number of places it was syndicated. The only time the ratio was favorable to the social media releases were with online properties. Not exactly a surprise. But what that indicates is that you shouldn’t stick with a single kind of release or a single approach. Do what makes sense for the location, channel and people you’re trying to reach. Social media marketing, search engine marketing and the like are becoming the centerpiece of many organizations marketing efforts.

If I had to speculate (or maybe pontificate is the right word here), marketing is up for the most comprehensive and dramatic overhaul of any of the three traditional pillars of CRM. Marketing professionals are aware of this and, those that aren’t panicking are remodeling the way they do what they do

I’m only here to help. I come to praise Caesar not to bury him.

If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe this statement from someone with a lot of street cred on what constitutes successful contemporary marketing:

“Ultimately, successful marketing results,” Anil Dash, SixApart’s Chief Evangelist who you met in Chapter 10 says, “Lead to “people relating to brands as culture. They will be part of a cultural, emotional and entertainment bubble.”

You KNOW he’s right, don’t you? So remember, traditional isn’t dead, but the old marketing logic is.

May 13th, 2009

Sapphire 09 Live: Smart business plans, moral benchmarks

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 3:43 am

Categories: CRM - Traditional, Enterprise 2.0, Industry Analysis, Marketing, Thought Leadership

Tags: SAP AG, Paul Greenberg

SAP is always a bit of a conundrum to me. They have extraordinarily talented people, an incredibly deep product portfolio that they are always extending, more often than not make good acquisitions that take some time but work out all in all, and seem to be actually dedicated to transforming their ecosystem - internal and network - when the world’s conditions merit it. Which is more than I can say about a lot of similar companies. On the other hand, they make business decisions that I politely would have to say are perplexing and statements that they just simply shouldn’t make.

All in all, I have to say, before I get too far into this post, I am a fan of the company. I find them to be innovative in places I don’t expect; with some caveats, especially related to Territory Management, they’ve developed a CRM product, CRM 7.0 that will be highly regarded and is a valuable addition to the choices that that enterprises have. More on that in another post. They are innovative in ways that have nothing to do with software - but have more to do with culture (collaborative value chain) and with perception and intellectual influence - their unique and useful Business Influencers Group, an organization that is an exceptionally smart idea - and unlike any other at any company I know. But SAP has these flaws that just…just…shouldn’t be there.

Leo Apotheker Keynote Kicks It Off

CEOs, as far as I’m concerned, need to be visionary, not salespeople. Several years ago, in 2003, Craig Conway, then CEO of PeopleSoft, went and did this almost literal song and dance routine about “no code on the desktop” when speaking about PeopleSoft’s first web-enabled applications and it sounded like a sales guy making a hard core pitch with a bit of theater thrown in that shamelessly (though I’m sure he thought it was funny) included his young children. There was no vision, there was no sense that you were dealing with a leader - just a guy trying to sell a product to an audience of about 16,000. It was pathetic actually.

Now, I’m not sure of the size of the audience at Sapphire 09, Chris Musico, an associate editor and bright bulb at CRM Magazine tells me is 10,000 here and 8,000 virtually - they call it their largest audience ever but there are not as many here as there were last year - live humans that is. The numbers are impressive.

But what I am sure is that Leo Apotheker knows the message and believes in it. His sincerity, to my slight surprise, came across, to the audience and if you followed the Twitter feed on Sapphire 09, you’d see that.

But that doesn’t mean the message was perfect. Nor the vision was totally clear.

Leo began his presentation by a grim look at the world economy and the effects of the recession on how the world of business is going to have to function. The net of that part of the discussion is that companies will have to function in a world that has limits and that is at greater risk. This means that in order to bring forward the next generation of business, its going to require “clarity.” That means a clarity of purpose and strategy. Businesses must be able to make strong choices based on a realistic evaluation of “the situation” and then executing on those choices. It means full visibility into the operations of an enterprise with speed and accuracy. It means leaders who think clearly and act accordingly. He mentioned that he had hosted a conference of academics from around the globe and they all decided that it was urgent to rebuild trust and confidence with all stakeholders - especially customers and shareholders. That, I have to say doesn’t take an entire conference to figure out, but it was still good to hear it.

Clarity, which consists of transparency, accountability and sustainability drove the core of his keynote. Around that, which was, of course to be expected, he pitched SAP software and services and SOA architecture. One point that i found interesting was that SAP now supports more than 25 industry specific best practices based roadmaps. SAP is working toward cross pollinating industry best practices, which in theory might sound good, but when it comes to best practices, history kind of bears out the idea that one company’s best practices might be the reason for collapse of another company - so cross pollination of industry-wide best practices might lead to nothing more than a bunch of bee stings rather than honey. So to speak.

Without going on forever on this, there were two specific areas that I want to cover because I see them as exceptionally important - one good - excellent in fact, and one the continuation of a mistake that SAP just seems to keep making.

The Good: Sustainability

I get the fact that my speciality is CRM so I’m not the most qualified to talk about sustainability as an expert. My commitments to being green (beyond seasick), carbon footprint reduction and using less paper tend to be at the level of citizen who owns a house who is trying to reduce energy use without freezing to death in the winter. However, I am more than aware of what has to be done at the corporate level.

When it comes to this, SAP, as evidenced not just by the passion and sincerity of Leo Apotheker on the issue, but in their actions as a company and in the products they’ve acquired and produced are going to be if not already a leading force in sustainable business over the next several years.

Apotheker pointed out that in 2008, SAP had reduced its total corporate carbon footprint by 6.7% compared to 2007. In fact, Peter Graf has been named Chief Sustainability Officer to deal with all things sustainability at SAP including not only meeting their corporate objectives but also to provide their related products and services.

Their commitment went beyond just the achievement of their corporate objectives. Leo showed a Sustainability Solution Map that was comprehensive and valuable. Here it is.

They have not only committed to be a company that is socially responsible, but they’ve developed an initial blueprint for other companies to be socially responsible and sustainable. That is something that no other company has even considered that I know, much less done.

But they’ve also monetized it and kept it at a viable level.

For example, the always incredible Ian Kimball, who does many of the SAP presentations to loud applause (guy is a master of this), showed a web based ecommerce application an SAP Web Store (a construct) that had a product - GPS system - that you wanted to buy. Under the GPS system was a note that said, “Guaranteed: Most environmentally friendly product in its class.” That doesn’t sound like much until lan actually took us behind the scenes and showed us the algorithms and dashboards and KPIs built into applications that had the benchmarks for that guarantee built in. In other words, it wasn’t just a claim, but it actually met standards that were provable via app.

But they went beyond even that. They actually have identified a path for themselves as a company that means a rigorous adherence to a set of sustainability KPIs that are probably a first for the industry.

All in all this is a world-class effort that they mean. This isn’t a marketing ploy or a trick to play on the conference. This is a passionate and serious commitment by a mega-giant company that can affect the next generation business models if they can follow through. I think they can and will.

The Bad: Once Again On Demand

I am constantly perplexed by the on demand strategy of this company. Leo was both vague and ultimately defensive and didn’t provide any real reason to let me see that SAP is on the right path to an actual Business ByDesign product that is anything but fluff. I heard Leo make a commitment to “on demand” or “on demand, on premise, hybrid or anything that you want to use.” I even heard him speak on the “cloud coming to earth” and their architectural map had a bottom layer of private cloud - virtualization - and public cloud in that order. But the delivery dates? Unclear. Again. It was almost as if he said, “We are committed to on demand and we’ll deliver it to you….someday.”

He even then said, “if you think SAP is a newcomer to on demand, then think again. We’ve been doing it for five years. You can do your research.”

First, they have been doing it for five years - and doing it badly. I had a conversation in Dallas with an SAP VP when the first “hybrids SFA” came out and was told that the reason for it wasn’t to meet a market need but instead to stop the encroachments of salesforce.com on their customer base. Awful strategy.

Not much real progress has been made. I truly hope that SAP someday gets this right because its almost impossible to be in the market without a SaaS product. They have Business Objects BI On Demand which is an actually good product, but we heard nothing about that. I guess we can continue to wait, but the message was “we don’t have much yet” whether it was intended that way or not.

The Press Conference

While this was a comprehensive press conference that covered a number of “ecosystem” announcements such as a smart and valuable global services partnership with Cognizant, it too was highlighted by one outstanding discussion/announcement and, in this case one horrifically stupid comment by someone who should have known better.

The Good: Business Objects Explorer

One of hte most intriguing products that emerged this conference was Business Objects Explorer, an analytics application that SAP claims may change the way that decisions are made forever. For me, that is a hard thing to say and see but no matter what this is an interesting and potentially important product.

What makes Explorer important is that even a mathematical moron like me can use it to get results of real interest and it provides results lightning fast, so that you don’t have to crunch numbers for hours or days before decision gets made.

For example, if you are doing a simple product analysis, and you want to look up all the refrigerators in a massive catalog - style and price - it takes milliseconds to get an answer. They did a run on some actual data from Sara Lee, one of their beta partners and they were able to go thru 266 million rows in a third of a second. It was breathtakingly fast.

But you can do much more complex analysis - let’s say a comparison of television models that are over 43″ and cost over $2500 or more that are located in inventory in the southeast states compared with all the same criteria for the EMEA and that are plasmas and LCDS but not DLP or any other variety. That would take a couple of seconds of clicking and, apparently, since they didn’t actually do this study, less than a second to get the answers.

Here’s a screenshot to show you the simplicity.

Now, of course, there are questions - which mostly revolve around data types. In the press conference Ray Wang, a superb Forrester Group analyst, raised the issue of data quality - what is the quality of the data going in - how that affects it? All in all, it will obviously but that’s out of the hands of SAP. He also raised the question of Master Data Management (MDM) - can it handle multiple data sources with different data types? They say yes, but how well remains to be seen. The SAP claim is that it can do that or it can operate as “accelerated Explorer” - which enhances queries power and speed when it comes to SAP own’s Business Warehouse - especially those that are over a million records in length - which even they admit start grinding BW’s analytic capabilities when things get that big. Explorer can easily handle it.

The combination of the extraordinarily intuitive interface and the speed of results makes this a truly interesting and potentially leading product.

That’s the good thing in the press conference.

Shame on John Schwarz

It was just one statement and I truly can’t imagine that he meant to put it this way. But John Schwarz, former CEO of Business Objects and a member of the SAP Executive Board, tripped and fell flat on his face when he….well, here’s a summary (paraphrased):

I’m sure that you heard that there was an SAP reduction in force that affected 3000 SAP employees. I just want to say that I assure you there was little impact in that loss and that in fact, SAP will probably operate leaner and more efficiently as a result.

I wonder if Mr. Schwarz, who I’m sure rests on millions of dollars of personal wealth, remembered that these people, who in effect he is saying are useless (no impact) fat (leaner), have families and no livelihood. I wonder if he remembers that we’re in a recession and its hard to find a job now. I can’t speak for how many of the 3000 are still not working, but I’m sure a significant amount are still looking.

I could excuse this shockingly cold comment by saying that Mr. Schwarz didn’t mean it and he may not have. But he is a member of the SAP Executive Board and what he says carries serious weight. This was a cold, cruel and callous statement that can’t go unnoticed. Literally everyone at that press conference I spoke with later (about 5 or 6 others) - analysts, journalists - were aghast at this.

There is no other way to be. Mr. Schwarz should apologize.

Consistent Doesn’t Mean the Same

Last year at Sapphire, one of the things that struck me funny was SAP’s incredibly scripted messaging which was so minutely micromanaged that it sounded inauthentic. This was around the RIM - SAP SFA for the Blackberry announcement. Everybody, regardless of where the message was delivered or who delivered it mentioned that they used their Blackberries as an alarm clock. Everyone. I commented on this at the time and talked to SAP about it.

Damn if they didn’t do it again - this time around their message of Clarity and Timeless Software. Not more than ten minutes after Leo Apotheker’s on the whole excellent vision and speech, John Schwarz said the same thing about Clarity and Timeless Software in the same way. Scripted and micromanaged again. Inauthentic again.

I won’t dwell on it. Suffice to say, there are two mantras I recommend to SAP that they repeat - in different ways and tones of course:

1. Consistent messaging doesn’t mean identical messagings
2. Authenticity trumps consistency everytime

Develop the message and then free your spokespeople to present it in any way they want to. Stop telling them how to say they. They have their own personalities and styles and interests and vocal chords. Let ‘em loose. You’ll get much better results.

In Sum: Day 1

Day 1 is always the key to any conference. The tone is set by the visionaries and the spokespeople and the revelations. All in all, SAP continues to impress me. They are locked and loaded and aware of the changes going on in who customers trust and how they communicate and they are responding. Leo mentioned the growth of Gen Y’s influence in the workforce (BRAVO!) and that 1/3 of the baby boomers are on their way to retirement. He got the recession down cold in terms of what to expect and how to think about it. SAP is responsive and working toward doing what it has to so they can meet and participate in the transformation.

But they still have weaknesses that their competitors can exploit especially in the SaaS space. They didn’t help their public image either with the Schwarz faux pas.

But on the whole, they are a company that is not only competing but in areas that matter like sustainability in business, it seems they are becoming actual leaders who have both smart business plans and a moral and ethical benchmark that other companies might do well to imitate.

Let’s see what today brings.