This post was written after reading this post on John Moore’s blog.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about creating social CRM strategies, and where technology fits in. A lot of people have argued their case that technology should be considered last. This I think is wrong, technology should be considered at the same time as strategy, not afterwards. After all how can you develop a strategy not knowing the tools needed to implement it?
Technology is essential for large scale social CRM initiatives, and a good understanding of this technology is essential when creating the strategy. Where CRM marketers are having difficulties, and understandably so, is that there does not yet exist a software package that we would recognise as being social CRM.
Developers have justifiably focussed on solving the easier solutions first. They have focussed on community management, with social support community software. They have allowed CRM managers to pull in social streams, but given them little options to analyse them. Rather than incremental improvements to existing CRM systems we need a whole new system. Just as social CRM is a whole new approach to CRM, we need a whole new approach to the technology, a new system built from the ground up, with a focus on social customers and engagements rather than historic records being kept in databases.
Great response, thank you. Keep in mind that I am a CTO and SVP of Engineering and, as such, think about technology first. However, it cannot lead the way on Social Business Strategy (aka Social CRM), it must complement the processes and enable the people to successfully use the tools/processes.
I have, too often, seen organizations try to lead with technology only to end by missing key business targets. The technology was great but people were not willing to change how they work to fit the technology.
I look forward to hearing what others think as I am learning, as we all are, about how to best approach this new world. While I am looking forward to the destination I am also having as much fun as possible while taking the ride.
John
John, thanks for the comment. I am not advocating that technology leads, but instead that it must be considered when developing a social CRM.
I also feel uneasy with the term Social Business Strategy, it’s rather unspecific. Even after reading your post about the death of social CRM I still still feel the term is a better fit to what we are trying to achieve with the integration of social media and CRM technologies.
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