Monday's Musings: Q1 2011 State of Social CRM and CRM From An EMEA Point Of View


Greeting from London!  It's been a great surprise to enjoy the sunny and warm weather (by UK standards) as I readjust my body clock.  Thankfully, I've had a chance to catch up with a few new and old clients, several analysts, media moguls, and in real life meetups w/ close relationships (i.e. @grahamhill and @buchanla) built over Twitter.  Nothing beats in-person conversations and I'm thankful we could connect on the state of disruptive technologies such as Social CRM, CRM, Cloud optimization, gamification, and mobile enterprise.  A few trends from some great discussions and debates:

  • Social CRM (SCRM) adoption picking up in the UK for marketing and support/service. Conversations with Laurence Buchanan, CapGemini's chief dude on CRM and Social CRM, indicated that clients are interested in SCRM for both an offensive and defensive strategy.  Offensive strategies focus on social media monitoring and marketing.  Defensive strategies mitigate risk in public relations disasters from support and service incidents.  Talking to a few utility and public sector prospects and clients, it became quite apparent that Laurence's experiences proved out true.  A regulated industries CIO confided in me and said, "We're doing this b/c we don't want to end up as the top BBC story."  Talks with a retail prospect focused on shifting marketing budgets to digital marketing.
  • Design thinking a key differentiator in successful SCRM adoption. Over some great Earl Grey and Matcha GreenTea latte's, rockstar strategist and CRM guru, Graham Hill, discussed some of the key elements of successful implementations.  The introduction of services design thinking presents a key factor in success.  Success requires balancing the left brain and right brain points of view.  Moreover, his experiences from working at Toyota and other quality focused enterprises prove out why it's better to get the design right the first time.  Good design embodies input in organizational culture, business processes, and of course technology.  One of the memorable quotes from the day stuck with me - "Consume as little technology as you need".
  • The cloud will play a key role in social media monitoring. As media monitoring evolves from a highly paid, skilled craft to a high volume mathematical data crunching exercise, BPO offerings will emerge to address big data crunching.  Companies such as Wipro and Capgemini are already building such service lines.  Also, these Cloud BPO services such as CapGemini's Immediate gain traction with clients who want a set of unified CRM and Social CRM services delivered in the cloud.  It's also healthy to note that the EMEA clients have gained confidence in privacy controls and cloud security provisions by EMEA providers.
  • Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM gaining traction in UK. In 29 conversations over the past 2 quarters, CRM discussions lead with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Salesforce.com dominates the CRM replacement buy-side decisions among large enterprise CIO's.  Meanwhile Microsoft Dynamics CRM leads discussions among net new buyers in small and medium sized businesses, public sector, and divisions of large enterprises with Microsoft centric IT shops.

Your POV.
Are you in EMEA and deploying Social CRM?  What's working? What lessons have you learned?  Share your thoughts here or send a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.
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