I’ve been buying computing hardware as a business customer from Dell for over 7 years now. All of our infrastructure technology as well as desktop equipment almost exclusively came from them. Servers, Printers, Laptops etc.

My experience, averaged out over this period with Dell has been a net positive. Their stuff works, the service and follow up has generally been good. A few issues such as a customer satisfaction calls at 6:30am (!?!), too many requests for equipment identification numbers after I’ve entered it into the touch tone system as I get volleyed from support rep to support rep. I can live with some of this as we don’t have reasons to call that often. And as a person, I’m generally not one to dwell unless you really get my goat.

Then a serious problem hit a few days ago where I really needed Dell to come through for me. My under-warranty hard drive was about to fail which would mean all my purchased software was about to be wiped out. So I asked Dell for replacement copies of software and the “its Microsoft’s problem” syndrome kicked in. So I went back and forth between these two ‘partners’ who’s reps had expert reasons for why the problem wasn’t theirs to solve.

During this, all I could think of is that the Dell has all the data concerning my purchase and loyalty history for seven straight years and yet, they wouldn’t budge to make this as simple as possible for me. When I mentioned to the these vendors that I have registered the software when I made the purchase (incase, the issue here was verification that I was the lawful owner), I was told, this information is captured only for future marketing purposes and that  customer support doesn’t get access to this data. Wait, my taking the time to register my software is to serve you and not me?

Please note my first comment: My experience with Dell is a net positive in spite of this. And as much as its unpopular in many circles to say you like Microsoft products, except for Vista, I really do like their stuff, personally. So this is not about these providers in particular.

The point is, CRM is a mess. Internal departments are not sharing my customer profile to appreciate my historical allegiance to the organization. OEM partners who had to collaborate to have the slightest chance at winning my business are not sharing data amongst themselves. Even when they know that keeping me as a long term customer is predicated on them both serving me equally well. As organizations, we just don’t have a handle on how to use what we already know about the customer.

As tempting it is to add to the chorus of many altruistic “CRM got it all wrong and Social CRM is here to reinvent customer interaction” or for that matter, “SCRM is strategy and not technology” (is it? or is it an execution path to established business strategy?) blog posts, Social CRM is going to accentuate the problems of CRM. The thing with SocialCRM is that it adds more customer data to CRM records when many organizations have not learnt how to act on existing data. Whist a quick look at my Twitter usage can give Dell an idea of my profile, what good will that do if organizations are not going to act on hard data they have today: How much I’ve spent with them over the years, my active registrations of software I’ve purchased, my loyalty based on the fact that I religiously buy new equipment from them every year.

So whilst we look at newly minted Gartner Magic Quadrants on Social CRM providers (Jive Software offers a copy here with registration), organizations need to understand how much house cleaning they need to do first. And unless that happens, SocialCRM only gives organizations a data migraine – more info that they don’t know what to do with.

Paul Greenberg, who sits at the pinnacle of the ‘whose who’ digerati when it comes to CRM and Social CRM has an excellent write up today about Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and the Gartner Event on Social CRM. A central point of this post is that whilst community and engagement are important and vendors to date have made solid progress, Social CRM integration with CRM to truly improve customer relationships is critical. And that nut has not been cracked yet. When the report was released a few days ago, I said to Mitch Lieberman, another SCRM thought leader on twitter:

“@mjayliebs those in the Gartner MQ #SCRM leader quadrant better have figured out lead gen in a meaningful, budget shifting way. think not”

My larger point (140 characters don’t often lend well to making larger points) was that this needs to move from community to supporting business tasks and an overall CRM initiative whether that is lead gen, or in my case, customer service and the like. In the case of my issue with Dell, everyone needed access to the same hard data (my company profile, purchase history), my probability of remaining a Dell/Microsoft customer based on my social graph , my in-warranty status on hardware and all OEM software (see that I was the legitimate owner of the software and simply wanted a replacement copy and only thanks to an in warranty failed hard drive).

We tend to think that using social media monitoring and listening systems reduces noise and lets us focus on things that matter in our customer relationships. I respectfully disagree. Until its surgically helping you execute business and process objectives more effectively, its still noise. Just squeaky clean. I asked Esteban Kolsky, a respected CRM analyst to chime in:

We have seen the positive effects that monitoring social media and acting on it in real time can have in an organization.  Even Dell, mentioned in this example, managed to earn some money in social media be leveraging real-time, social marketing.  However, that is not SCRM.  Social CRM is where the social data and the transactional data are analyzed together to create deeper insights that ever before.  Using Social data we can amplify what we know about customers by adding a sentimental, emotional layer to what we know — and that helps smart companies drive sales cycles and create better revenue models.  Are we there yet? not even close, we first need to figure out a way to integrate the socially-collected data with stored transactional data, then how to create better insights, and finally how to to act on them. Yes, it is a lot of work — but the rewards far surpass any amount of work you have to put into it.

Failing house cleaning on existing CRM design and decisive use of Social data as part of that revamp, we’ll just have glorified community forums that no doubt look far more sexier than forums of yore, but don’t mean much when it comes to tacking large scale operating and growth objectives of organizations.

ZDNet Blogger and eternal pragmatist, Dennis Howlett is at it again. As a follow up to his original “Enterprise 2.0: What a Crock” post and an attempt by a panel at the Enterprise 2.0 conference to respond to his contention, he validates his original argument, saying:

What I find staggering is that despite the panel’s general acknowledgment that ‘it is early days’ they have no clear answers for solving the problems that Enterprise 2.0 evokes. If this is the best that industry can put forward then forget it. There are far bigger problems to solve like correctly managing the workforce in times of economic crisis, smoothing out lumpy supply chains, beating down on data center costs or just getting ERP to deliver the benefits that were intended and which have consumed billions of IT spend dollars.

Given how the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 plays out on the blogosphere as well as at conferences, you really can’t objectively argue with this statement. In fact, Ill go further: The ‘Its the early days’ argument just doesn’t stand up. No different from the plethora of consumer services that we all use (Twitter et al), first impressions are lasting impressions in the enterprise setting as well. As participants, we make up our minds very early about the usefulness of a program, technology or service. And so if intent, incentive, context and usability are not hard coded into the effort from the get go, its never going to have the required street credibility, no matter how much time and money you throw at adoption.

And if you can’t shake fact that Dennis often sports an ERP-colored lens, a fresh eye provided by Venturebeat reporter Anthony Ha also results in a similar conclusion.

The Colossal Enterprise 2.0 Short Sell

The problem is that, in the context of E2.0, there’s little discussion around performance objectives where social computing constructs and technologies can move the needle on discrete but large scale business solutions. Equally bad is that there’s little thought and discussion around the optimal solutions architecture and combination of process + social that can solve large scale problems that keeps the c-suite awake at night. Instead, the discussion is dominated by suites vs. platform debates, more technical gobbldygook (to an executive at least) about feature superiority, endless back-to-the-drawing-board definition debates, and post deployment adoption difficulties that in actuality might not have been so bad had the requisite execution planning been considered in the first place. I’m not pointing fingers, by the way. I also engage in some of these when prodded.

In actuality, Dennis’ assessment is not entirely correct. It’s just that the Enterprise 2.0 airwaves (and conferences) are subsumed by weak business benefit alignment exacerbated by tactical discussion around ‘strategy’ (NOT) that centers around suite implementation, why no one stuck around after launch, and how email sucks.  All that achieves is driving the promise of social computing constructs further and further down the food chain – to a place that few executives really care to hang out at. And the process performance practitioners and pundits have a field day with all of this.

The Beef is, In Fact, Here

My colleague Oliver Marks (who also takes on this issue) and I co-chaired the strategy and execution planning track (review by Ben Kepes | CloudAve) at the Enterprise 2.0 conference where we ran a 3 hour workshop on how to get executives to understand the business value of social computing in the context of performance goals that keep them up at night. Following that we ran sessions that addressed delivering tangible value in the context of known functions and processes in the enterprise: purpose driven collaboration, reducing customer support costs via social concepts and improving product innovation via social concepts. No tools, no features and frankly no adoption. Just performance acceleration via strategic process and performance alignment – topics that are central to the consulting work that Oliver and I are involved in and frankly those that need to dominate the discussion around Enterprise 2.0 (detailed below).

How would the skeptics respond if they heard GetSatisfaction CEO Wendy Lea explain how Nike centrally manages its offsite community discussions for a whopping $8,000/ year? Or Altimeter Group Partner, R Ray Wang’s estimate that social computing concepts, when injected into process, actually reduces costs 2 to 4 X times over those very ERP-esq call center/CRM technology driven programs that Dennis and other skeptics are all too familiar with? Contrast that with the fact that traditional CRM systems on their own are often nothing more than glorified reporting systems that sales reps are mandated to use, in exchange for their commission check. Building on Rays assertion, now, with the strategic use of social computing concepts and technologies in context, these new approaches help nip customer support problems early and at a significantly reduced cost. As important, they inject qualified leads into traditional CRM systems finally giving them a real performance acceleration purpose, beyond bean counting by a Sales Operations Manager. That’s process + social, exponentially improving performance.

Want more? Take the case of how an extremely conservative organization such as Chevron  significant improved safety risk and improved performance:

• Chevron used social computing (in this case to generate ideas) constructs and technologies to find new applications for patented processes created at one of its oil refineries. These processes, powered by ERP inventory management as well as other systems that manage chemical mixes, fume levels and repair management were limited to one process and one physical location. Idea management via social software enabled Chevron to find and select 6 out of 115 re-application candidates globally where existing patents were reused or extended as new patents, to also improve similar processes on aboard ships, offshore refineries, energy exploration efforts and other “dangerous monitoring environments”. Federated risk management programs and more patents – thanks to the power of social computing that brought the right minds together to ideate and collaborate.
• Second, reducing safety risks at residential and commercial communities that sit above oil pipelines is obviously critical to Chevron. They used social computing constructs  to get its IT department, ERP inventory management provider and GPS system vendor to generate ideas and to collaborate on a new approach to removing process breaks and paper based processes that impede timely community notification when pipelines break. Social computing was central to this effort to speed up communication to folks that lived close to pipelines and to reduce the time from problem notification to repair.

In all of these cases, data, and intelligence normally buried in closed process centric activity and systems were pushed into people centric social realms for improvement, only then to be put back into process systems in their newer highly optimized forms. If these are not clear examples of how process and so called enterprise 2.0 social concepts came to together to accelerate performance, I don’t know what is. And I’m willing to bet that if the naysayers saw more of these examples, they would pontificate based on a different set of facts.

I suspect this is what SAP EVP, Zia Yusuf might be thinking when he tweeted

@dahowlett blog and wikis will not drive value alone, I think the trick here is to connect "crowd insight" directly into specific bizprocess

…and what ex-SAPer and author of Driven to Perform, Nenshad Bardolliwala credibly elaborates on in his architectural illustration of where social computing can co-exist traditional process based activity.

Whilst we are on the subject of SAP, think those ERP laden processes are all that?  Lets see how Tony Hsieh feels about not using community constructs during, say, the order to cash (and refund) process to provide the same insane level of customer service that Zappos offers during the pre sales process. Sure, you need to have compliance and governance covered, but social constructs injected strategically drastically improves the quality of output in a world where customer centricity is inevitability becoming front and center.

But truthfully, in the defense of the Process advocates, what else can they benchmark against? Certainly not the prevalent E2.0 discourse that’s focused on unseating Knowledge Management, Email, Intranets and Portals to drive nebulous benefits such as productivity, time savings, and worse, the rudderless catch all – workplace transformation.  All in all, these older technologies and programs have shown little to no large scale performance acceleration and the C-Suite is acutely aware of that. If for nothing else, at least SAP helps to keep the SEC, Justice System, FDA and IRS off your back.

The Moment of Truth

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of real work required in the area of adoption that dominates the airwaves and I don’t mean to discount these efforts of some very hard working folks. And even ERP, CRM etc have their own share of usage problems, giving birth to a sizable industry that just focuses just on ERP/CRM training to drive proper adoption. The difference is that intent and the business case for using these technologies are dead clear. Something that’s just missing in the Enterprise 2.0 discussion and stated promise.

The moment of truth is about to hit this category over the next 12 months where executives are going to ask the hard questions about the applicability of these constructs and technologies to performance acceleration and to alignment with discrete business goals. Anything but a succinct answer that involves the right balance social + process and the estimated switching cost will result in E2.0 being tragically (and wrongly) regarded as yet another example of Micky Mouse technology that belongs on a server under someone desk, if at all.

The choice is clear.

Update: More from Dennis on ZDNet commenting on this and some other very good posts on this topic.

Earlier this week I wrote about the Google ChromeOS announcement and its impact on the Enterprise. Disqus, one of my all-time favorite blog tools, dutifully posted Social Media reactions across Twitter and Friendfeed. However, the most spirited debate sparked by this post happened not in my blog comments or on Twitter. It happening on Facebook as I write this. Here’s what’s there, so far.

(sorry for the low res pic. Ill update with another one as soon as I can)

Want to know who these very smart folks are? Too bad.

The irony here is that Facebook and LinkedIn do allow my friends, who have never heard of each other, to have a discussion. And Facebook is happy to make it very easy to pull in my blog RSS feed to spark that discussion. So why not let Disqus expose this to all my friends on other networks. If you must, insist that a participant sign in or sign up to your network to add to the discussion, but expose the damn conversation, will ya?

I get that LinkedIn and Facebook sprouted back when it was all about creating closed networks and these platforms have adapted since then but the willingness to let specific conversations seep out is woefully tepid. Had you let MY social network (of which any one platform controls but a small fraction) see the discussion ensuing on YOUR service, between very smart people in YOUR network , my guess is that more people would be inclined to engage on your platform. And maybe others would be compelled to sign-up if they haven’t already done so.

But no – you’re so hell bent on keeping Google’s crawler in the dark that you’re willing to prevent plenty of super smart people on my other networks from participating in a great conversation that you facilitated.

User engagement on a blog post or other social objects (photos, videos etc) that I syndicate into Facebook is a true showcase of intent, and that’s gotta mean higher CPMs for you. That’s much better than silly defensive tactics such as copying FriendFeed/Twitters UI that early adopters like me might appreciate but alienate your mainstream users.

You’re just cutting your nose to spite your face.

End of rant.

Update: After writing this it got me thinking about the TechCrunch Real Time Crunch Up that’s underway right now.  Its great that were discussing this topic but really, what’s the point of real-time anything in the context of the social web, when two of the largest social networks throttle output to any real time engine.

I’m headed over there this afternoon. Lets see if this topic comes up.