Lenny wanted to dig deeper into Social Business and get into the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’. We talked about a decisive approach to connecting customers, employees and partners and covered a number of topics including:

• The implications of todays increasingly social, vocal social customer on business and why Social CRM matters to customers and to the sales enablement process.
• Why building and connecting vibrant employee and partner engagement networks is imperative to get customer relationship management in the 21st century, right.
• How analytics will play a role.
• And finally, how organizations can get started.

Conversations with Industry Innovators Series with Lenny Liebmann.

The tracks represent the big issues facing organizations today and in the very near future: People Culture and Communications (HR), Sales and Marketing, Social Apps and Platforms, Architecture, SharePoint Strategies, Mobile, Video and UC, Risk and Governance, and Internal/External Communities.

In the summer, I keynoted the Boston event on the topic of “Putting back the R in CRM“. This time, we have an entire track on the topic of sales and marketing that I am privileged to chair. And so I wanted to introduce the track and speaker line up, and more importantly, showcase the real progress we have made as an industry towards delivering meaningful business outcomes.

We kick off with Social Channels Engagement, Integration and Response. Increasingly, the customer doesn’t really care which twitter handle is your official support or marketing channel or where the appropriate place on Facebook is to engage with you. This puts serious strain on organizations that have traditionally broken out functions by sales, marketing, support and the like. Social Channels require that we rethink how we engage and route the right discussions to people with the best answers – be those in traditional customer touch point roles or experts hidden inside organizations in product development, or design, or even the extended supply chain. As important, we still need to have a process and the needed technology to move social media discussions into traditional process that’s often powered by CRM, Call Center or other programs and applications. We have a panel of experienced practitioners from well known organizations that are tackling this problem day in and day out:  Peter Simonsen, Sr. Director, Web & Community, QlikTech International AB, Daniel Zucker, Social Media Manager, Autodesk and Franck Ardourel, Sr. Director, Online Marketing, 24 Hour Fitness. Each of them offers deep expertise in not only shielding the prospect or customer from silo’d organization designs but have also been instrumental in helping re-cast how organizations rally around customer needs in the 21st century. John Ragsdale will be moderating this session.

Then we move on to how collaboration is critical to Sales Operation and Multi Channel Distribution. First, an in-depth case study from one of my new favorite examples of enterprise collaboration in the last few months: SuperVALU -  the grocery store conglomerate that owns household brands such as Albertsons, Shaws, Shop ‘N Save and other retail chains. At SuperVALU, the leadership has chosen to follow a hyper-local strategy to cater to the unique needs of each community they serve. With hyper local comes a natural decentralization model that still needs a level of cohesiveness. A central collaborative fabric has been put in place to enable store managers across brands to share tactics on hyper-local design and service.  I’m looking forward to listening to Erin Grotts as she presents the SuperVALU story.

On to channel strategy. I’ve long believed that partner collaboration is a gaping hole in the social and collaborative ‘stack’. Steve Bamberger from Toshiba is going to talk about the challenges of a multi channel sale that requires coordination between third party vendors and service providers to truly put your best foot forward. If your organization sells its wares with the help of partners, come listen to Steve illustrate how “Toshiba has improved the transparency of vendor sales support and fostered more unified collaboration and communication with their strategic partners within their dealer and direct sales channels.”

Moving on from Sales Collaboration, we’re going to deal with the elephant in the room that social media idealists often tend to stay away from: if Social Media customer engagement is all that, why hasn’t it invaded the traditional marketing mix in a consistent way? Kelly Ripley Feller, Director at Citrix System wants to lay out the big road blocks and collaborate with the audience to find realistic pathways for social media marketing and measurement. If you want to add your two cents on why the problem exists and what we as a community can do about it, come on by.

And finally, B2B customer engagement is a beast in and of itself.  Lauren Vargas of Aetna will talk about how regulated industries engage with prospects and customers on social media. In her words “Discover the right blend of art and science your organization needs to execute to get people excited about doing business with your company.” In turn, Michael Procopio from HP will discuss how customer engagement works at scale. HP sells personal and enterprise hardware, software, services and more and has a market cap of over $50 billion dollars. It’s a treat to have Michael share how large companies can keep their head above the social media marketing waters. Esteban Kolsky, a very well-known name in the customer service world, will moderate this session.

If you would like to learn more about the event and register, here’s the link to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

I’m really happy with how the track has come together. Broad insights, deep case studies focused on solving gnarly performance challenges that big business faces today with decisive uses of social and collaborative approaches.

And, if it didn’t come through, this sales and marketing track has only end customers speaking. 100% pundit-free practitioner insight.  -)

See you in Santa Clara.

UPDATE: Just when this track looked like it couldn’t get stronger, we now have Ted Saptountzis, SAPs Vice President for Audience Marketing joining us. Ted will join Kelly Ripley Feller at 2:30 pm to talk about post-hype use of social and what it looks like when its embedded into core marketing and sales processes.

UPDATE 2: Killer conversation going on on Google Plus about “Why does Marketing STILL not get social?” – one of the big topics were going to discuss this week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

(Disclaimer: I’m on the advisory board of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference)

The topics include Socializing Knowledge Management, KM Metrics, Beyond Enterprise 2.0 and more.

For my part, I will be talking about the business case for 21st Century Collaborative Enterprises and why its critical to how we market, sell, support and innovate for today’s increasingly social and vocal prospect and customer. This is a keynote I did early on to US and European audiences that were focused on Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business. Jane Dysart, the conference co-chair at KMWord was kind enough to ask me to bring this discussion to the Knowledge Management Community.

Here is the presentation:

If you are at the event, come say hi.

• Recent challenges companies have been facing on the collaboration front
• The current generation of tools and how they’re moving toward that goal and advantages/ disadvantages / inhibitors of different approaches
• Systemic inefficiencies
• And in the midst of all of this, the changing role of Identity (more on this subject, here)

You can find the whole interview on PwC.com, here.

"For five years we’ve been engrossed in one giant collaborate group hug, measuring things that don’t keep executives up at night"

Unscientifically judging from reactions on Twitter, this sentiment I expressed got me the equivalent of a vigorous virtual head nod, pretty much across the board. And not for some genius insight put forth by me, but because seasoned practitioners know this already. This, and from what I heard about other tracks, summed up a big part of the general mood and current state of practitioner mindset at the conference. For those who know this community, you will appreciate how significant it is that enterprise social and collaboration practitioners have started to either realize that they need to move beyond measuring nebulous stuff like engagement, "getting social", productivity and adoption.

The market is moving forward. Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business practitioners are no doubt getting more strategic at the outset or along the way, but as important, we’re at the early stages of understanding both the challenges and opportunities that will come from the emergence of an increasingly connected and vocal customer and as a result, the changing contract between her and organizations she choose to do business with. Most critical, the ramifications of this on how we need to be wired internally to meet her expectations of meaningful engagement, expert insight, minimal latency and localized relevancy. The most trusted voices, in my opinion, echo this in their own unique way. I’ll talk separately about the sales and marketing track in another post, but its important in this context to call out impressions from those previously considered outsiders to our work of internal collaboration. Folks who have a clear view of tomorrows expectation of customer service, of co-creation and feedback management, of authentic customer advocacy than most, provide their insight into how the internal and external business worlds can come together: Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Brian Vellmure, Mitch Lieberman the man himself, Paul Greenberg, and many others.

Paul Greenberg had a great comment that sums it up:

What makes social business greater than the sum of its part is also why it needs both parts to work seamlessly inside out and outside in.  Customers and the need to acquire and retain customers are driving it. It is being driven by the same imperative of business that has driven business since its inception, But it is being driven by the changed expectations of those customers.

What that means is that not only do we now need not just an enterprise value chain, but a collaborative value chain that engages customers who we know enough about to keep engaged, but that the employees of the companies that are trying to reform and restructure what they do are empowered to act both internally and externally to do something about it.

There’s no question were slowly starting to embrace critical performance acceleration opportunities that existed long before social x showed up and that’s evident.

The Beef

Some highlights of the event that represent the state of the state with respect to all things Enterprise Social and Collaboration:

More Customers at the forefront: Bert Sandie (Electronic Arts), John Stepper (Deutche Bank), Bryce Williams (Eli Lily), Kristen Hersant (Strong Mail), Tyler Knowlten (Dept of Foreign Affairs, Canada), Tony Martins (TEVA Pharmaceuticals), and scores more. These are the types of companies we all do business with or have heard of. Bill Ives and Emanuele Quintarelli have the goods on customer keynote sessions.

More Business and Infrastructure Focus: A Sales and Marketing Track and HR Track, Supply Chain Collaboration Case Studies and various IT Tracks (Mobile, UC, Integration and Apps) moved the discussion from ‘this is everyone’s problem’ (read: it’s no ones problem) to a mature discussion on how social and collaborative concepts can be a serious weapon in the arsenal of execution initiatives that help drive customer, partner and employee performance. Folks like John Stepper even dedicated a keynote on why not to get caught up in social for social’s sake.

More Depth: Dedicated how-to discussions on how to grow and sustain meaningful communities beyond launch for advanced practitioners that need to take it to the next level. Many of the sessions show where social and collaborative efforts fit in the larger organizational fabric.

Broader Vendor Representation: The Social software tapestry is being yanked from four different ends: Pure-play upstarts, ERP, Unified Communications and Specialty Application Vendors (e.g. HRIS, CMS). Besides the usual suspects, we had folks from Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, Avaya, Cisco and others. Clearly, a plethora of supply-side folks are seeing the value of folding in collaboration offerings.

All in all, the surgical use of social and collaborative concepts to drive performance is finally here. And the event provided that platform to ascertain progress and identify what else we need to do to get it right.

I had a chance to speak with the very smart Jon Reed about my overall take on the state of “Enterprise 2.0”. Jon is an Enterprise 2.0 curmudgeon who spends his time working on gnarly enterprise integration problems that make transactions work. He’s great at holding our feet to the fire when it comes to the finding the tangible value of collaboration:

Some changes we need to consider though.

First, the event itself:

• More Marketing Cowbell: We’ve now got functional tracks – we’re not talking social ‘X’ but sales, marketing, HR, supply chain, service, and so on. The conference needs a far stronger effort around attracting functional and IT decision makers who may or may not care about social but really the larger challenge of connected ecosystems to meet functional objectives that they are goaled on. The content is here; now we need the awareness that goes with it.
• We’ve moved from vendors talking to practitioners leading the discussion. I concur with Megan Murray when she says that we need end users to talk about benefits in their own words.
• Don’t forget middle managers: We had great broad coverage on the future of business. We also saw excellent tactical how-to content for practitioners. We need to start to talk to another really important constituency that’s missing – those that get sandwiched between strategy and delivery – the middle managers. They need all the help as its their next on the line when it comes to turning strategy into execution plans.

Second, as an industry:

No doubt we’re talking business problems now but we’re still far too hypnotized by that group collaboration/social/engagement group hug. There’s still a sizable (and in some ways growing) ‘movement’ feel that we need to shed, which understandably so, appears as a very self-congratulatory when seen from the outside. I say this not based on just lobby talk but based on what many Sovos customers tell us and who will not come to Enterprise 2.0. Granted, we deal with some of the most conservative industries and organizations in the world but that’s a big chunk of the market that we need to address. Threatening executives with hyperbole around bottom-up ground swells and flattening designs that defy org chart physics, all said in many different ways, takes away from the true promise of collaboration as a business performance accelerator. Don’t get me wrong, we all need an enthusiastic pat on the back that our efforts are worth it and there’s no question that many practitioners and pundits have the chops to tackle real business objectives, head-on (I know most of them personally). But if you superimpose some of the current rah rah uprising rhetoric (and in and of them selves, nebulous end results such as more engagement, more productivity and more social) in the face of stark revenue increase, competitive, cost reduction and risk mitigation objectives that most of our businesses struggle with, we come off the camp that’s doing ‘stuff’ that will not really satiate wall street or our shareholders with any certainty.

The reality is that line, staff and executive HR, Customer Service, Marketing professionals and others have established problems to solve – changing customer expectations, prospecting demands, employee turnover, dismal on boarding and missing WD-40 that results in lethargic and expensive supply chains. That’s the stuff that needs fixing.

The intent behind our work as an industry is solid. And we will have in fact changed how organizations will ultimately well….organize. But to earn the currency to engineer that change, we need respect the transactional and connectivity challenges of 9 to 5 (for employees) and quarterly heartburn (for managers) and do our part to fix these, alongside painting that picture of a possible future, three-five-ten years out. Again, it’s the messaging, design and execution planning that needs to be decisive, not the cause.

We’ve come a LONG way and we have so much experience built in thanks to those pioneering the way forward over the last three-five.  And as we saw at the event, business managers are in fact injecting social in decisive ways. But we need to push harder at embracing the problems and opportunities that keep our executives and shareholders up at night and become indispensable weapons that deliver tangible results. The good news is that it’s really within striking distance – we saw many examples at this event already.

Lets just make sure we don’t find our selves revving in neutral.

(Hat tip to Tony Martins for that great line).

Thanks

To close, an expression of deep gratitude from my end:

• - To the TechWeb team for pulling together a great event and for inviting me to keynote. I know there are a ton of folks who do stuff behind the scenes but I want to especially thank Manuela Farrell, Colleen Kraskiewicz, Natalia Wodecki and of course Steve Wylie for making my life as a track chair as painless as possible. Its really an amazing operations team that exceeds its own high bar at every subsequent event.

- To panel moderators who I consider leading lights and consummate professionals and who I have the privilege to call peers and colleagues. They put together amazing panels, recovered from last minute panelist conflicts and yet, brought it home: Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky and Mike Fauscette.

- To a few in the vendor community who really worked hard with their customers to create great presentations for sessions I managed: Jeff Nolan (getsatisfaction), Karen To (Jive Software), Sara Campbell (Appirio) and Mitch Lieberman (Sword-Ciboodle). Paul, Esteban and Brent have done the same for their panelists in the blog posts above.

- To all of you who took the time to comment during my keynote as well as our track sessions.

Next up: A wrap up on the Sales and Marketing Track, Interview highlights and notes on some of the Tracks I attended.

If you want more, Jim Worth has a wicked wiki up that collates all press and writing on the event here.

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.

Back in the summer of 2009 I wrote about taming the supply chain beast with Enterprise 2.0 approaches and technology. On the value of connecting suppliers to not just each other and to the procurement department, but to other organizational facets generally quarantined from suppliers, I wrote:

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.

It took a while but I’m thrilled that for the first time were going to see a supply chain case study at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, next week. Tony Martins, VP of Supply Chain at TEVA Pharmaceutical will talk about how TEVA is leveraging collaboration to improve supply chain performance. Tony is definitely is one of the pioneers in re-shaping what supply chain efficiency can mean.

The session description is here:

———-

Thanks to decades of supply chain optimization solutions, today’s leading organizations have mature transaction-oriented supply chain designs.
However, managers spend over half of their time dealing with unexpected events that can’t be addressed with structured processes. To maintain a competitive edge, companies need to embrace new ways that enable spontaneous association. Social Enterprise and Open Collaboration provides a more effective way to address the volatile world and gain significant improvement in operational efficiencies.

———–

Tony will present a case study at 3:45 on Wednesday the 22nd of June followed by a Q&A session. Tony will also share the keynote stage with Tom Kelly of Moxie Software on Wednesday at 9am.

If you’re looking to frame the business value of social and collaborative business to line of business leaders or to IT, this session is sure to provide you with the needed ammunition to make your case.

Last year I keynoted on the topic of 21st Century Collaborative Enterprises: The Customer Case. This year I’ll be talking about The Connected Enterprise – the business case, and people, process and technology ramifications as we connect the best brains spread across our customers, employees and partner base. This theme is central to the work we do at Sovos.

This year, the event boasts the following themes:

• Employee Empowerment
• Customer Engagement
• Open Innovation

Topics include:

• Open organizational and leadership models
• Defining the business case and getting top management commitment
• Framing social media into the broader company strategy
• Nurturing adoption, cultural change and people engagement
• Defining ROIs, metrics and business drivers
• Frameworks to cultivate successful internal and external communities
• Policies, guidelines and governance approaches
• The why’s and how’s of socializing business processes
• Best practices and lessons learned to mitigate risks and overcome stumbling blocks
• Choosing and integrating best of breed social software and collaborative platforms

I’m joined by a number of very bright folks who have devoted a lot of brain cells to improving employee productivity, customer feedback, contact center, customer service and as important, how these experiences are blending. They include the ever inspiring Luis Suarez, Mark Tamis, Andrew Gilboy, Esteban Kolsky, Keith Swenson, Bertrand Duperrin, Mitch Lieberman, Patrick Brandt, amongst others.

Solid customer case studies as well from the likes of Dell, Giffgaff, WeBank, BASF, Fujitsu. The event is put on by the good folks at Open Knowledge, a leading Milan based Social Business Consultancy.

To get a feel for the kinds of topics being covered at the event, check out a series of blog interviews conducted by Alberto Beccaris with Keith Swenson, Mark Tamis, Stefano Vitta, myself and others. Luis also has a great post up on his blog, here.

Here’s where you can register. Look forward to seeing you at the event.

Mike Wolf is the super smart VP of Research at GigaOM Pro, who by the way so totally needs to sit on the interviewee side of panels more often. Also with us was JP Finnell of Mobility Partners, one of the deepest thinkers on mobility and devices as it relates to the enterprise.

We talked about topics ranging from the state of collaboration and mobile today, to device proliferation and where entrepreneurs should be looking for the next big thing.

Later this week I have a post coming that expands on this topic.

For now, here’s the video of the session, below. The Appconomy website has more details on the panel here.

Whilst this is billed as a CRM event, the event looks at the broader technology footprint that serves customers and prospects, but also employees and partners. As customers increasingly look for expert insight from organizations they want to do business with, its increasingly harder to only consider the set of capabilities traditionally offered under the CRM moniker. To truly create, nurture and manage customer relationships, cross pollination between folks across the enterprise (sales, marketing, channel, product, support, etc.) and prospect/ customers becomes important.

Paul has assembled some of the most well-respected names in traditional CRM and Enterprise Software as well as Social CRM, Social Media and Enterprise 2.0/Social Business. 

CRM Idol is a unique opportunity for those substantive start ups struggling to find or afford a stage and a microphone. And so, big kudos to Paul Greenberg for providing them with that opportunity. Paul’s contribution to the CRM industry is second to none and this event is one the few public examples in a string of good deeds, most of which you probably will never hear about.

This is going to be a blast but also extremely valuable to larger enterprise software ecosystem. Speaking from a social and collaboration view point, to those of us close to the topic it can seem like most of the innovation is near complete. But that couldn’t be further from reality. In the larger scheme of things there are gaping holes in todays technology stack and lots of room for good ideas to improve customer, partner and employee performance. So this event couldn’t be more timely.

Paul’s post has been cross posted below. Give it a good read to learn more, understand the criteria / deal-breakers, and above all, learn what it takes to win.

Submissions start today. Good luck to the contestants!

——————————————————-

Cross posted from Paul Greenberg’s ZDNet Blog:

Okay, everyone this is the big one. CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season is here and we’re ready to take your companies and find out which one of you in the Americas and which one of you in EMEA is not the next CRM Idol but the FIRST CRM Idol.

The Idea

Most of what we’re trying to do was outlined in the pre-announcement announcement of CRM Idol last week. But it bears some repeating:

Small companies – at least in the CRM software related world – and that means social software world, in this case, too – abound. There are thousands of companies out there that are possibly innovative, possibly commercially viable in a big way, possibly the next big thing. But, as we said, there are thousands of them. And, no matter how great your product is, if no one knows about it, well, then, oops. Not a good thing.

These small companies are all making efforts to get into the ecosystem that could benefit them – one which includes investors, influencers, technology/strategic partners, media connections, etc. While getting support from this powerful ecosystem is by no means a guarantee of success, it can be enormously helpful in getting well down the road there. But, those small companies are often thwarted in that effort by either really bad PR people, or just the incredible amount of companies out there trying to reach into the ecosystem who are pummeling the small amount of influencers, etc. every week with requests to demo or talk.

Now, to be fair to the influencers, they are human beings with lives that aren’t built around supporting this one company that really thinks they are it. All they know is that each of them is getting between 20-50 requests a week to take a demo or conversation with someone who owns or represents a company they’ve never heard of and never talked to yet. In addition to those that they know. Often enough, they are pitched by a public relations person who is either inexperienced or not really good at their job who makes no effort to find anything out about the person that they are pitching to. So the influencer, journalist, venture capitalist gets a generic curve thrown at them that doesn’t even break over the plate – guaranteeing that the email is going to be discarded as a matter of course before the first paragraph is even read. Or it could be that on a particular day the influencer got 10 pitches and had a headache and didn’t want to see any of them.

As unfair as generic pitches and high volumes of noise are to the influencers in the highly desirable ecosystem we are chatting about here, it is a problem because what are probably a lot of good companies are never given a chance to move ahead because of the difficulties inherent in the process and the vagaries of bad luck on any given day.

Which is why CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season exists.

The concept is simple, small companies out there. If you meet the submission criteria outlined below, you will be given the opportunity, first come first serve, to secure a time slot on a specific day that will put you in front of some of the most influential people in the CRM/SCRM world. They will spend an hour with you in a demo to hear about your technology product – software only – and they will write a jointly signed review of what they saw of you – that will be published in multiple venues as soon as its written. It can be a good review, a bad one, a mix or indifferent. There’s risk on your part to be taken here. But it is something that you need to be aware of. The reviews will go up as soon as the 5 judge sign off on the final content. They won’t be exhaustive reviews but they will be opinionated and fair.

Forty companies from the Americas and twenty companies from EMEA (that means ONLY Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will get a shot at this – again first come first serve (more later on what that means). Of the 40 in the Americas, 4 finalists will be chosen. (NOTE: There will be an APAC edition hopefully late in the year or if not, early 2012, depending on the success of these two events. Sorry, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, et.al. Logistics made it impossible at this juncture.) Out of the 20 in EMEA, 3 finalists will be chosen. Each of the finalists will be REQUIRED to do a ten minute video about their company and the product. Not a repeat of the demo but a video. Note I used the word REQUIRED here. Let me put it this way. If you make the finals and don’t do the video, we will publicly skewer your company. Know why? Because our judges are giving up what little free time they actually have in a summer to do this and it will take us 4 hours a day for 3 business weeks to do it. So if you can’t or won’t put in the effort to do the video, don’t bother to apply. Seriously. We’re trying to help out here and we want you guys all to succeed but it’s a two way street.

Okay, that rant out of the way. Once the finalists are chosen and the videos done, they will be posted online in multiple media outlets. They will be voted on in two ways:

• Popular vote – see, crowdsourcing is important. All the votes for the one winner from the Americas and the one winner from EMEA will be tallied from the public sites – in aggregate. That’s 50% of the vote.
• Extended Judges Panels – as you can see below, we may have assembled the greatest panels of judges – both leading vendors and influencers ever assembled in the history of CRM – not to be hyperbolic or anything. Each judge will select a specific winner in each of the Americas and EMEA from the 7 finalists. That’s the other 50% of the vote. The original judges will be voting as panel members.

The winners in each will get a major array of prizes, some of which are below, and be declared “CRM Idol 2011 Winner.”

Not too shabby is it? Vast amounts of media attention even if you don’t make the finals. If you make the finals at all, some prizes to you. The winners get everything that the ecosystem can offer but guaranteed success. But they do get all the accoutrements they need to support their increased likelihood of it.

That way, you small companies out there who have been victimized by bad approaches or just circumstance have the opportunity to bypass all of that and make something happen. It’s up to you to take the reins in hand but once you do, you have at least a serious chance at making yourself successful.

The Criteria

This competition is for small companies in the CRMish/SocialCRMish world. – see the categories below for some guidelines though please feel free to make the case if you don’t see yourself in the guidelines.

• You have to have software that is commercially available by the time of the demo – that would be in August – again see below. No betas, alphas, release candidates allowed. If we find that you’re not commercially available, and you have a time slot, you’re out and someone else will fill the slot. So please be sure that you can verify the claim if you want to participate.
• You have to have 3 referenceable customers that, if we care to, we can contact and ask about you.
• You have to have revenue under $12 million U.S. your last fiscal year. As far as disclosure goes, you have the choice of making the claim that you do – though that will have to be stated in your submission and we’ll trust you or you can disclose your revenue in the submission with the knowledge that only the permanent judges will know what it is. If you make the claim, please be prepared to back it up if we ask. Your call on how.
• You have to be willing to make a ten minute video if you get to the finals. More on that later.
• You have to fit a category – though there is some leeway there.

The Categories

The categories that we’ve identified to start are:

• Traditional CRM Suites
• Social CRM
• Sales – Sales Force Automation, Sales Optimization, Sales Effectiveness
• Marketing – Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, Enterprise Marketing Management, Database Marketing
• Customer Service – all permutations
• Mobile CRM
• Customer Experience Management
• Social Media Monitoring – requires the possibility of integrating with a CRM technology
• Customer Analytics – including text/sentiment analytics; voice based analytics; social media analytics, influencer scoring, etc.
• Enterprise Feedback Management
• Innovation Management
• Community Platforms
• Enterprise 2.0 – collaboration, activity streams etc.
• Social Business
• Knowledge Management – this one requires the possibility of integrating with CRM systems
• Vendor Relationship Management
• Partner Relationship Management

Once again, if you don’t see yourself in this list, don’t worry. Just make the case as to why you have some customer-facing possibilities and the likelihood is that we’ll be cool with it. We’re trying to make this easier for you, not hard.

The Rules

They are numbered to be entirely clear.

Submissions

There will be 40 slots made available in the Americas and 20 in EMEA.

The submission will be by email ONLY to: nextbigthing@crmidol.com. (See below to see this again and what to do if there are problems). Any other attempt at submission will be rejected out of hand with the problem exception mentioned below.

The submissions will occur starting today – Monday, April 25 and will continue until Friday May 13 or until all slots are filled, whichever is first (watch #crmidol on twitter for updates on that as it occurs). On May 13, should any slots be left, the remaining specific dates and times will be made publicly available and another final round of submissions for those remaining slots will occur from May 13 through May 20. After that the submissions will be closed.

Each submission will include the following:

• Your company contact and named person contact information Two date and time specific slot requests. ONLY two. If your slots are not available, you’re out of luck until May 14 – and then you can resubmit to any time slots that are publicly announced as still available. Though there is no guarantee that there will be any available slots at that time. (see below for examples of how to submit the dates/times)
• The category you feel you fit into – or if you don’t but think that you qualify – why.
• A description of what the product is/the company is. Be persuasive here that you meet the criteria, not that you have a great product. This is merely a qualifying discussion. URLs cannot be used as substitutes for this description. The submission needs to be all inclusive. However, they can be used as supporting documentation.
• The names of the three (3) referenceable customers – the company, the contact and the way to communicate with them – minimum of email and phone, please.
• A statement that says that you meet the revenue requirement along the lines of “our company states truthfully that our revenues in our last fiscal year 2010 were under $12 million U.S”. OR you can state the actual number with the knowledge that the primary judges in each of the Americas and EMEA will treat it as under non-disclosure. But please be aware those designated primary judges below will see the actual figures if you choose to reveal them.
• A statement that says, “if (you) make the finals, you are committed to making a 10 minute video for submission and public viewing as part of the conditions for entry.” Word it anyway you prefer but make the commitment clear.

If you are accepted, you’ll be notified privately but it will be posted that you’ve been accepted on the Twitter #crmidol stream. The time will only be sent to you privately. Just your acceptance will be posted. Please allow some time between your submission and the posting of it to the hashtag and your private notification, since we all still have to work for a living.

If you don’t include everything specified in the rules for submission, it means automatic disqualification and you cannot resubmit.

The Demo

The demo has few rules. Just be prepared to a. explain your company; b. show your product – live please c. answer questions from the influencers/experts. Not much more than that. I’m sure many of you are experienced at this already so wed don’t have to tell you this, but just in case… A site for the demos with login etc. will be announced to the timeslot owners in early August.

The Video

The standards for the video will be mentioned to the finalists once they are named. To rest any unease, you won’t be required to spend lots of money to get it done. How much you spend and on what will be up to you as will the content and how you present it. We’ll issue guidelines when the time gets near, including how the video is going to be distributed for posting and voting.

The Judges

Here are the lists of all the judges. As you can see, we have what is likely to be the heaviest hitting list in the history of anything done in CRM when it comes to awards or competitions. Click on their names to get to their LinkedIn bios. They are in alphabetical order.

Primary Judges

The Americas

These five judges will handle the 40 entries for the Americas which consists of the United States, Canada, South and Central America. They will all be involved in the one hour reviews each of the days over the two weeks and will jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the four finalists for the Americas.

• Paul Greenberg – Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC
• Jesus Hoyos – Managing Partner, JesusHoyos.com, LLC
• Esteban Kolsky – Principal and Founder, Thinkjar LLC
• Brent Leary – Managing Partner, CRM Essentials
• Denis Pombriant – CEO, Beagle Research Group

EMEA

These four judges will handle the 20 entries from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia etc. They will all be involved in the each of the 1 hour demos/discussions from Sept 5 through 9 and will write and jointly sign off on each review which will be posted to multiple media sites. They will also solely choose the three finalists for EMEA.

• Laurence Buchanan – Vice President, CRM & Social CRM, EMEA, Capgemini
• Silvana Buljan – Founder & Managing Director, Buljan & Partners
• Paul Greenberg – see above
• Mark Tamis – Social Business Strategist, NET-7

Mentors

This is an exciting part of CRM Idol 2011. Each of these fine human beings has volunteered a day of their time – two during the finals and one with the winners – to provide the benefit of their experience to the contestants. What they will do is noted by their name. This is an awesome idea that Anthony Lye actually cooked up. Each of these mentors has decades of experience in the software and venture capital world and is considered a leader in the CRM space. So if you make it to the finals, you have the benefit of their knowledge and their valuable time. Amazing.

• Anthony Lye – Anthony will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Anthony has had years of experience as a senior management person for enterprise CRM and a thought leader.
• Joe Hughes – Joe will provide one day for the Americas finalists and one day for the EMEA finalists for consultation on how to best do the content for the contending videos and whatever other pertinent advice the finalists need. Joe has been a leader in the CRM space for as long as we can remember and one of the more foresighted when it comes to the value of Social CRM
• Larry Augustin – This is a prize for the winner of EMEA and the winner of the Americas. Larry who has years of experience as an executive in the software space and has been a successful venture capitalist will work with the winner to prepare them for dealing with possible investors including doing a VC matching with the winners.

There will most likely be other mentors announced as the competition gets closer to the demo dates. We might try to make some mentors available to prepare you if you need them for the one hour demos but that’s still up in the air. We’ll keep you posted.

Extended Judges Panels

The Influencer Panel

• William Band – Vice President & Principal Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
• Jim Berkowitz – CEO, CRM Mastery
• Bruce Culbert – Chief Service Officer, The Pedowitz Group
• Zoli Erdos – Publisher/Editor, CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars
• Mike Fauscette – Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions, IDC
• Josh Greenbaum – Principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
• Dr. Graham Hill – Partner, Optima Partners
• Dennis Howlett – Buyer Advocate
• Ian Jacobs – Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction, Ovum/Datamonitor
• Michael Krigsman – CEO, Asuret
• Marshall Lager – Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting
• Kate Leggett – Senior Analyst, CRM, Forrester Research
• Maribel Lopez – Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research Founder Lopez Research LLC
• Jeremiah Owyang -Managing Partner, Altimeter Group
• Sameer Patel – Managing Partner, Sovos Group
• Scott Rogers – Customer Evangelist
• Robert Scoble – Managing Director, Rackspace Hosting
• Brian Solis – Principal, Altimeter Group
• Dilip Soman – Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
• Ray Wang – CEO, Constellation Research
• Mary Wardley – Vice President, CRM Applications, IDC

The Vendor Panel

• Larry Augustin – CEO, SugarCRM
• Anthony Lye – Senior Vice President & GM, CRM, Oracle
• Phil Fernandez – CEO, Marketo
• John Hernandez – General Manager, Customer Care Business, Cisco
• Jonathan Hornby – Director, Worldwide Marketing, SAS
• Joseph Hughes – Senior Executive, CRM Service, Support and Social System Integration Lead, Accenture
• Charlie Isaacs, VP, eServices and Social Media Strategy Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
• Vinay Iyer – Vice President, Marketing CRM, SAP
• Katy Keim – CMO, Lithium
• Marcel Lebrun,- CEO, Radian6
• Mitch Lieberman, Vice President, Marketing, Sword-Ciboodle
• Chris Morace- Senior Vice President, Business Development, Jive
• Zach Nelson – CEO, NetSuite
• Bill Patterson- Director, CRM Product Management, Microsoft
• Dileep Srinivasan – AVP – CRM & Social CRM, Digital Marketing & MDM, Cognizant
• John Taschek –Vice President, Market Strategy, Salesforce

The Journalist Panel

• Elsa Basile – Director, Callcenternews (Argentina)
• Barney Beal – Managing Editor, SearchCRM,
• Anita Campbell – Publisher, SmallBizTrends.com
• Robin Carey – CEO, Social Media Today
• Neil Davey – Group Editor, Sift Media
• David Myron – Editorial Director, CRM Magazine, Speech Technology Magazine
• Valdir Ugalde – Board, Member, mundocontact (Mexico)
• Ann Van Den Berg – Senior Editor, CustomerTalk (Netherlands)

Media Partners

You’ll note that we have 8 journalists on a panel of judges. Well, each of them represents a media partner that will be broadcasting the competition and posting the videos for voting in the finals for the popular vote. They are an awesome array of the most influential media sites in social media, CRM, and small business as well as local influencers in CRM in Latin America and Europe. They will be significant in the lives of the contestants, the finalists, and the winners giving each what may be an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage. Their coverage will be supplemented by posts to the blogs and other sites that are owned by many of the judges so there will be significant reach for all 60 of the initial contenders. Each of these partners will be getting exclusives from the judges and hopefully some of the companies too so that we can add a quality of coverage that would enhance the value to the SMBs participating. in all areas – CRM, social and small business directly.

We expect to add more media partners as we continue on throughout the competition.

The current partners and links to their sites (in alphabetical order, like every list here):

• Call Center News (Argentina)
• CRM Magazine/DestinationCRM
• CustomerTalk (Netherlands)
• Mundocontact (Mexico)
• MyCustomer.com/Sift Media
• SearchCRM
• Social Media Today
• SmallBizTrends.com

The Prizes…So Far

These are the prizes as of launch today. There are several others in the works that will be announced as the contest rolls out.

All Finalists

All 7 finalists will get to choose one day of consulting from the list of Influencer consultants below. The order of choice will be based on the popular vote on the video which will be kept confidential but used for the choosing. There will be more consultants added to the list as contest moves forward.

The Americas and EMEA Winners

Each winner will get to choose four prizes from the list. Note – in the case where multiple prizes are being offered by a single vendor – the vendor counts as a single prize with all the items as part of that.

• Accenture A full day workshop with CRM leaders in Accenture for possible partnership and/or possible investment.
• Capgemini (for EMEA winners only) A half day workshop with Patrick James, Global VP CRM and Laurence Buchanan to explore joint go to market opportunities and help you refine and test your value proposition.
• Social Media Today A blog post featuring the winner of the contest to run on both The Customer Collective and Social Media Today. A single blast to the Social Media Today opt-in list (approximately 50,000 names) which will conform to their minimum standards (valued at $10,500)
• Microsoft 12 mos. of CRM Online Free for developing extensions to CRM, 12 mos. of Windows Azure Free for developing web-based portals and BI solutions, Access to the Office 365 Beta for building collaborative applications and services, Access to the BizSpark One program -a program designed to connect emerging businesses and their investors with a Microsoft advisor to help them identify unique opportunities and expand its business presence
• SugarCRM Free 10 user subscription to SugarCRM Professional or Enterprise, Membership in the Sugar Exchange and free consulting on product integration with SugarCRM, CEO Larry Augustin, a successful venture capitalist in his own right, does a mentoring & VC matchmaking session with the winners
• Brian Solis One hour internal webinar on how to use SCRM and social media to your advantage
• Paul Greenberg One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
• Ray Wang One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
• Sameer Patel One hour pro bono external webinar on a subject TBD for lead gen, mindshare, etc.
• Influencer Consulting– free strategic consulting for 1 day or 8 hours from a variety of judges (in person travel expenses to be covered by winners)

Esteban Kolsky (in person only)

Paul Greenberg (on phone or in person)

Denis Pombriant (on phone or in person)

Mark Tamis (on phone or in person)

Jesus Hoyos (on phone or in person)

Brent Leary (on phone or in person)

The Times, Dates, Hashtag and Email

Okay here’s the hardcore stuff:

• The hashtag is #crmidol
• The email for submission is nextbigthing@crmidol.com
• If you have a problem submitting to that email send your submission and a report of the specific problem to pgreenbe@gmail.com

Dates and Times Table for the Americas and EMEA

We’ve put together an easy little table with all the relevant dates and times that you’ll need as you progress through the competition.

Dates/Times	Americas	EMEA
Submission Dates	August 15-19; August 22-26	September 5-9
Submission Times	3pm ET; 4pm ET; 5pm ET; 6pm ET	3pm GMT; 4pm GMT; 5pm GMT; 6pm GMT
Finalist Video Submission Date	September 30	October 14
Winner Announcement	October 17	October 31

A Note or Two

A little bit of unfinished stuff that will sort itself out as time goes forward.

• There will likely be a CRM Idol site (Joomla based) coming in the next month or so that will be an aggregate site for all the media outlets and streams. However, this remains a work in progress that’s still under discussion.
• There will be more mentors and prizes added and possibly a judge or two.
• For now ongoing news will be found at the twitter hashtag #crimidol.

In Closing

That’s about it. Now its time to bring it. First come, first serve. See you, maybe as the 1st ever CRM Idol, in Vegas, Hollywood. London or on the Social Web. Somewhere anyway.

CRM IDOL 2011 IS NOW OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY

Chris and I talked about how social and collaborative concepts can power real business challenges and opportunities, examples of strategic alignment, the value of social analytics towards employee performance / HR measurement and realizing benefit during and at point of scale.

Thanks to Aparna for inviting me and to Chris for a fun chat.

And here is the recording: