Fast forward to the 21st century where we’re looking to create more fluid organizations. Cloud computing based solutions means no CDs, less lag time and minimal disruption between updates. But what about the how-to insight that comes with it? If the software is going to change on a dime, the associated know-how needs to keep that same pace. That’s where vibrant customer communities come into play. Communities where you can have live discussions with peers in your industry, and with solution experts who have answers to the broadest or most deepest topics on how to make software work. In turn, the hosting vendor gets to build ongoing relationships with customers and guide them to success, show a commitment to support not just on a paper contract but in action. And yes to find up-sell or cross-sell opportunities for them and their partners. If done in an authentic way, good for both sides.

In the software industry you can’t really have a discussion about communities without referencing the SAP Community Network. No other vendor has had the ability to manage a community at this scale, (2+ million strong)  and as seen at TechEd last week and every other SAP conference, the needed offline/online balance to keep it vibrant. The community is not just a rudderless forum. It;s topical, it has reputation standards for participants and lead gen and commerce abilities.

SAP has had a lot of false starts and lost the compass a number of times over the last few years. In my opinion, had they not had this community (and its influencer engagement efforts led my Mike Prosceno) to have authentic discussions with customer and partner stakeholders, they would have bled customers at a faster clip. In good times, the customer got a helping hand. In bad times, an authentic forum such as this bought them a lot of patience as they worked to get the train back on the rails.

At the Enterprise 2.o conference in Boston this summer, Jon Reed, (a mentor him self and one of the most well known and respected faces in the SAP Community Network) and I sat down to talk about the value of collaboration – be those with customers, employees or partners. At minute 14 of this video, I asked Jon what value he got out of the SAP community. He characterizes the value by saying  “I can’t imagine not having this community”.

And last week at SAP TechEd, Jon sat down with Mark Yolton, SVP at SAP, who provides an in-depth perspective on what the community has achieved and why its the much needed bling that goes along with the software sale.

There’s a saying that goes something like this: “Be nice to people on your way up. They’ll help you when you’re on your way down.”

There’s obviously value to get from communities in good times as well, as Mark lays out for SAP. I’ve written about it a lot, here and my pal Rachel Happe works tirelessly with community managers every day to get this right. But if the day to day benefits described in Mark’s interview doesn’t give you the ‘aha moment’ right away, consider what it can do for you when times get tough.

Kudos to the SAP leadership for continual investment in this program.

Over 60 Re-Tweets on Twitter as of April 19th resulting in god knows how many tens of thousands of impressions on Twitter. Yay for social media syndication.

There’s only one problem. That link hasn’t worked for three days.

So, basically, this link was never even clicked on before being re-tweeted.

Now these good intentioned folks may have well wanted to read the link later and I’m no one to judge how each of us as participants choose to use the medium. But if Re-Tweets are being considered an acknowledgment of quality content and subsequently relied upon as a metric by marketers, a Re-Tweet itself can clearly be a terrible measure.

I’m a huge advocate for social media engagement as an important component of marketing. It’s got mucho potential. That said, we complain about inaccurate open or click through rates with respect to email marketing but measuring the effectiveness and true reach of social media has a long long way to go as well.

So if a link drops on Twitter but there was nothing there to read, will it make a sound? You betcha. A really really loud, albeit hollow sound.

Hoping practical topics such as this come up at the 140 conference today.

The central theme of the research is that consumers value product durability less and less as time goes on. It used to be that when we bought products and services, life of the product was an important consideration and products were advertised as such. In Dina’s post, Stuart Henshall provides the most well known example:

When I think durability I think of Maytag – the washing machines that go forever here. Yet today that “durable” isn’t expected to last 20 years and new features, energy efficiency etc are changing the definition

Dina provides some great local examples of how consumers look at durability today. Based on her research, she concludes:

Thinking thru current Ads on tv – only the infrastructure and paints guys seem to talk about Durability in their communication today.

As Dina points out, its obviously not the case that customers don’t want products that last; it’s just that the markets in India finally afford choice. When I grew up there, you could only by one of 2 types of cars, a handful of electronic or appliance brands or for that matter, chocolate (yes, a travesty). All that’s changed now. And with choice comes the desire and willingness to swap for newer, shiny models at a more frequent pace.

There’s plenty of parallels to be drawn in the rest of the world where choice has been standard for decades. However, the marketing approach to this was to turn up the volume when it comes to badgering the customer with more marketing emails. Or to throw in the towel and compete on price with promotions that were often loss leaders or just a way to empty out the warehouse.

Durable Relationships

The truth is that in this age of transparent and open marketing which is moving to influencer and peer to peer modes, one sustainable approach to respond to this consumer trend is to focus on building durable relationships with customers. Existing customer relationship programs and enabling technologies (CRM) often enforce a fenced-in transactive model where its about that individual sale. That needs to move to a relationship model that can outlast that single transaction. And with the proper strategic planning, create an interaction environment that results in durability. Choice is here to stay. All you can do it make the customer comfortable with the notion that your first in line when they are looking to exercise choice. And one way to do that is to preemptively help them understand exactly why and when you should be in consideration. Thats done through effective customer Networks.

From a programmatic stand point, the answer is not jut Social Media or some other over intellectual way of looking at public or consumer relationships. Social Media is part of the larger tapestry. The answer lies in reworking the process of building and sustaining relationships with customers via social and collaborative forms of engagement. That comes from revisiting the mode of engagement that extends far beyond the nominated “social media leads” but permeates the walls that today, omit interaction with traditional sales, marketing, internal and partner experts who truly have the most substantive knowledge. Anything less will come of as plastic.

In turn, from an enabling technology standpoint, that means rethinking how your Social Media, CRM and so called ‘SocialCRM" and ‘Enterprise 2.0‘ efforts come together to build and foster genuine, durable relationships.

I highly recommend you read Dina’s original and follow up post on the implications of durability taking a back seat in the context of purchasing behavior. She’s got a very passionate community of intelligent folks that have provided comment.

This post is not about what’s right and what’s wrong or whether we should or shouldn’t fight for using one or all of these concepts.  That said, each of these monikers need to be dealt with as they will become increasingly important as organizations begin to consider more efficient ways of interacting and transacting both on the social web as well as in the enterprise.

Here goes…

Transparent:

Transparent just got elevated to the top of the list. Most executives love the idea, just not the potential fall out that can come from transparency. As we saw with President Obama’s I’ll-broadcast-the-healthcare-debate-on-CSPAN unfulfilled promise, when you get into the politics at many large organizations, its as much about the lateral competition (in the case of the government, how the right and right wing media would interpret the open discussion) in the executive suite that worries more people about bringing transparency to their enterprises, as it is about top down / bottom up / emergent transparency.

Consider the recent fall out from Google Buzz. Personally I think its an excellent start to something very useful and promising. As I commented in a post by Alex Williams on  ReadWriteWeb:

The best thing about all of this for me is that Google has recognized and capitalized on the fact that email is the ultimate social network and they are aggregating- which is what they do best,” said Sameer Patel, a founding partner with the Sovos Group that consults about integrating social Web applications and collaborative technologies into the enterprise.

However, Google stepped on a banana peel when they misjuded the level of transparency that the general public would be ok with then it comes to sharing our email contacts.

Its clear that we as social networkers seem to be perfectly fine with transparency when its looking at someone else’s data and gestures. Just not when it comes to exposing our own.

Social <insert enterprise context here>

Clearly the most hotly debated moniker in the enterprise context. A President (not CIO) of one of the largest healthcare organizations that I met with threw me a new curveball a few weeks ago.  As prepared as I was to address the ‘Facebook is too social for us” argument with solid business context, the new one thrown my way was “my kids are leaving Facebook because of the new privacy concerns. If social networks are not good enough for them when all they do there is socialize, how can I bring this interaction metaphor to the office?”

Socialized <insert process context here> with the emphasis on business outcomes or activities seems to be far more palatable but to each his own.

Customer Community

Less contested depending on who you speak with. The problem is that the discussion around community and marketing is often short sold due to lack of depth and process knowledge around core marketing performance.  As I wrote a few months ago in a guest post:

Finally, with respect to marketing, most of the community focus today (especially B2B) is on brand awareness and engagement. Certainly, there’s value to be gained there, however, lead generation is the elephant in the room most don’t want to tackle or acknowledge. Regardless of the economic times, the closer your marketing activity is to generating revenue, the more strategic your program remains to your organization. That’s where customer communities need to go – fast.

Of course there are a few seasoned marketers that can take this on. Not to mention, community as an approach to effective awareness and engagement has benefit. But when it comes to community based marketing, few in the “social media consulting space” want to or even have the credentials to tackle the moolah question.

Second, very few are prepared to objectively say when Community is flat out the wrong approach to accelerating performance for your specific business objective. Here are 2 excellent posts by Gil Yehuda and Rachel Happe about not lazily intermingling different concepts that seem similar when in reality, are very different.

Real Time

Though I wrote a report on this topic, the idea of ‘real time’ is a meaningless discussion in and of itself without core performance context. Worse, it scares the living bejesus out of the seasoned CIO who still sport scars from the millions and millions sunk into integration to come anywhere close to near real time, a decade ago. It’s far cheaper and simpler now but real time for the sake of real time invokes instant eye rolling.

However, customers are intermingling in real time and they increasingly expect feedback in near real time. The reality is that the organization (not just support and marketing) need to have that infrastructure to be able to respond as fast as possible. That’s a very different approach than trying to rudderlessly tune the enterprise for real time and then chase/manufacture use cases to back fill value from the investment.

Enterprise 2.0

And finally, yes, Enterprise 2.0. I could leave you with a link to a Google Search Result to Dennis Hewlett’s Posts (its here by the way), but frankly, too often Enterprise 2.0 gets casted as a solution to a problem that doesn’t give the customer adequate heart burn to become a top priority. Until we see a Chief Sharing / Social / Email-sucks, Productivity Officer emerge (NOT!), lets focus on discrete objectives around leads, sales, innovation, product development and the like. It’s awesome to see a few vendors starting to come around to this in their marketing not just in the context of selling the benefit but also adoption and participation. See this excellent post by the very sharp Michael Idinopulos.

In closing, as I said above, I’m not hoping to start a war on whether we should or shouldn’t use this terms.  Transparency, social, open, relationships, collaborative IS the future of work.

If you have opinions on these or other monikers, chime away, below. But they need to know their place and the context.

McLean, VA based SIM (Supplier Information Mgmt) provider, Rollstream was one of the more impressive but lesser-known-companies (to me) that I had the chance to meet with. If you read this blog often, you’ll get why I instantly liked their business. RollStream fixes specific problems – inefficiencies in the supply chain via Private Supplier Social Networks. Counting well known companies such as Walgreens, Owens & Minor, Johnson & Johnson and Tesco as customers, their SaaS solution services the partner relationship lifecycle for retailers, manufacturers and distributors. Business activity-focused capabilities cover partner on-boarding, compliance, performance management and dispute resolution.

Founder Nick Parnaby and CEO Kristin Muhlner discussed existing bottlenecks and cliffs in the supply chain mgmt process and how Rollstream hopes to open up the lines of communication, add visibility, and remove unnecessary interaction toll gates enforced by decades old SCM and ERP influenced work models. Also, today’s resource heavy supply chain management interaction models force relationship managers to pick specific partners to deal with. RollStream offers social software to reduce manual intervention during on-boarding and to help organizations more easily identify high performing partners in the network.

Re-casting the supplier relationship via Enterprise 2.0 enablement.

RollStream considers its’ primary value to be in the area of efficient partner management. They know their business of course and it’s early pickings, but to me, one of the biggest opportunities to enterprises using such social computing technology is be able to to pry open the gates that lock out supply chain access to core processes such as product management, R&D, marketing, end customer support, etc. And conversely – giving these business units access to knowledgeable supply chain partners as well. That’s where SIM providers can really help.

Why? First, no one knows the true power, limitations and opportunities for each component of a product better than the very folks who build them. Second, component manufacturing is largely a commodity business.  As a supplier, I need to differentiate myself from competitors who are waiting for me to falter or cut me on price. I need to be a strategic partner to be somewhat indispensible. Social Software can open up the lines of interaction beyond R&D, Procurement and Product Development, allowing suppliers to learn, first hand,  any pain felt by the end customer. Or help marketing really understand the deep competencies of each component of the end product. Or provide new insight to R&D on early technology innovation at the component level. And on and on.

That’s purpose built collaboration (a.k.a business case) with dead clear incentives for suppliers to participate (a.k.a adoption) and play a role in the success of an end product in the market place.

There’s sizable opportunity here, however, solutions such as RollStream may not be for everyone. And I suspect that gaining sustainable adoption across hundreds of suppliers for each customer can sometimes be culturally and programmatically daunting.  I’ve seen one too many partner extranets that eventually turned into ghost towns thanks to re-orgs, shifting priorities and erratic shepherding.

All that said, the use of collaborative software in this context can bring massive, measurable business benefit if its treated as a strategic initiative by enterprises. Pulling in a snippet from an older post….

ZDNet blogger and eternal pragmatist, Dennis Howlett says:

In my argument, breakthrough ROI comes from seeing these technology through the lens of collaboration, which in turn implies process and context. I am mindful that huge amounts of value continue to be locked up in supply chains. AMR quoted a number of $3 trillion in 2005. Has that materially changed? Simply being able to communicate across supply chains in a meaningful manner could do wonders to lubricate those rusty wheels.

Have other ideas about how an Enterprise 2.0 design can improve supply chain processes? Chime in.

Umberto’s analogy is spot on. Also, if you’re worried about your Sales folks getting distracted by Social Media tools such as Twitter, sorry, but you have bigger problems. Either your compensation structure is just not juicy enough to keep them focused or I’m afraid, you got the B team. Or maybe marketing isn’t filling up the funnel effectively with qualified leads from Social Media channels.

My ex-colleague from marchFIRST Margaret Francis (now killing it at the awesome ScoutLabs) responded:

If your sales team is going to goof off, Social Media hardly presents the first opportunity to do so. There’s over 300 channels on cable TV, Golf Courses, Hulu and if all else fails, Vegas.

In the course of my work, I’ve conducted user needs assessments with well over 200 sales reps and sales managers at large organizations and it takes under 3 minutes to spot the ones that have “time is money” ingrained in their DNA. They have a nose for islands of opportunity and know how to use it effectively, always keeping the goal in sight.

I’d argue there’s ridiculous amounts of un tapped sales opportunity hidden in social media, and the good sales reps are figuring it out. And it’s time to fold in lead generation and revenue as outputs from Social Media, beyond awareness and engagement.

What a Good Sales Rep Would Never Do

I can’t imagine any good sales rep actively scouring Twitter for leads at the expense of traditional prospecting, especially in the B2B area. Sure, set up some persistent searches and if something juicy shows up, engage. But beyond that, carpet bombing Twitter or actively following (by following I mean reading) thousands of people to see if someone pops is obviously a waste of time. And the good ones know it.

Where Social Media Makes Sense for Sales

Social media for Selling pays huge dividends 1) as a lead qualifier and 2) as an engagement platform, after you have established a requisite qualification level.  Start with a qualified list from your existing funnel and using Social Media to connect, network, nurture and enrichen your prospect intelligence, as you begin the close.

Social Media rock god Chris Brogan has some good advice here.  After marketing has created awareness and surfaces leads, selling can commence:

So now you’ve put someone into your lead cycle. You’ve decided you are going to close them for a sale (and remember, let’s use “sale” loosely. Maybe you’re “selling them” on donating to your charity, or watching your video channel. The advent of services like Twitter allow you to mind read from afar. If I’m going to hit up Len Devanna from EMC to sponsor a conference of mine, I’m sure as hell going to read his Twitter stream from the last two days and make sure his dog hasn’t gone into the hospital or that he’s not dealing with a budget cut, etc.  It also allows you to gently touch (without selling) your clients so that they keep you top of mind.

Mark Hausman of the Strategic Communications Group also lays out a good approach, though focused more on how Marketing can use a Sales reps time more effectively:

• Step 1 Prioritize the Hot Ones. By working closely with your sales team, a set of prospects can be culled based on their standing in the sales pipeline, intimacy of existing relationship and potential size of the transaction.
• Step 2 Map and Monitor. Compile an overview of each prospect’s [Social Media] engagement
• Step 3 Engage in a Prospect’s Communities of Choice.
• Step 4 Evaluate. Get Sales reps to give you feedback on how social media has helped move these deals forward.

There’s some basic tenants of what defines the work model of a killer sales rep. These hold true for the use of both internal sales operational data as well as prospecting insight. The simple fact is that the availability of data or any other potential distraction such as Social Media will never, ever, come in the way of a good sales rep making his or her numbers.

Of course, there’s always another perspective on all of this, best characterized by Conan O’Brien:

“In the year 3000, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook will merge to form one super time-wasting site called YouTwitFace.”

Happy Friday

Earlier this week, I did a Q&A with the folks at Helpstream on the need and importance of customer communities to the enterprise.

We covered the following topics:

• the importance of building customer communities as part of an Enterprise 2.0 design 
• the role of a community manager and skills
• which functional areas will get the most value from communities in the enterprise
• important questions you need to think about when building a community
• have we reached the ‘social tipping point’ wrt the need for a community

Here’s an except:

Helpstream: What’s your general feeling on the importance of building customer communities for companies today?

Me: A customer community is one of the more promising components of the emerging enterprise design that’s powered by social computing technology. In a world before online communities existed, insight into customer intent and sentiment was limited to the few people on the organizational front lines. In contrast, most community initiatives today offer an open format that enables everyone in the organization to see what customers expect from you. But that only signals the very beginning of the promise of the open enterprise. Eventually the best minds across your organizations’ supply chain, employee and customer base, and distribution partners will be able to truly rally around the needs of your prospects and customers – often in real time, to accelerate business performance. A critical initial step to realizing such a work model is a well-conceived customer community.

The rest of the Q&A is over on the Helpstream blog, here.

Thanks to the folks at Helpstream for reaching out.