Michael Fauscette

Raising the Bar

The dynamics of community are changing expectations. Exposure to higher community standards has always tended to raise individual standards, offline or on. Today though, with the widespread use of social networks and proliferation of social media outlets the collective voice is loud and has a very long reach. The more empowered I become, the more empowered I become, it's a cycle that has an upward slope over time. In a people centric world, individuals are catching up faster than businesses, by the way, which is causing some friction (in some cases more like fire than friction actually). Customers are demanding more, employees are going around corporate policy to "get the job done", partners and suppliers are looking for closer relationships. In fact, everywhere you turn people are talking about "relationships". The word relationship is being redefined by the connectivity and real time nature of the web.

For many businesses these new behaviors are quite confusing. Practices, policies and procedures that customers used to accept (although they certainly didn't like) now set off an explosion of negative sentiment online that has real business impact. Customers are refusing to "listen carefully because our menu options have changed"! When prospects do product or company research they turn to their trusted networks more often that company controlled channels. They publicly rate and berate the company and its products. If they call for service and get the "old supervisor shuffle" instead of action, they go off and make a viral video. And if the business doesn't respond appropriately the customer becomes an ex-customer...which is unfortunate but the the rest of the story is that they don't just leave quietly, they tell all of their networks about it. 

And what happened to the old dutiful employees? Issue them a Windows based PC and they go buy a Mac and use it instead because it "fits" their work style; the corporate Blackberry replaced with an Android device or iPhone, collaboration doesn't mean email and a file server it's Google Docs or Yammer or whatever the employees think will make the work flow better. Social against corporate policy or blocked on the network, then use your smart phone or iPad to get around it. Work is spilling out of its traditional boundaries; employees want to work when and where they choose and with as much flexibility as practical depending on the job. They have a voice and will use it (sometimes to their own determent, but that's a different post). More and more IT organizations are moving to a tech allowance approach just to accommodate the "bring your own" workforce.

So what's a company to do? Here are a few ideas:

For customers:

• Don't suck (here is an excellent post from Mitch Joel over at Twist Image, if you don't read him, you should, especially if you're in marketing)
• Listen (and listen in the places that your customers are talking)
• Fix your support policies and organization (I love this video, I've felt like this so many times). I think as a tech industry we've gotten away with some pretty rotten practices in the past, these don't fly anymore.
• Be transparent with policies and procedures. Customers just want you to be credible and honest.
• Remember the customer manages their relationship with you, not the other way around. YOU do NOT "own" the customer.
• Be easy to do business with.
• Create a positive customer experience at every interaction.
• When you screw up, and you will, come clean and fix the screw up. Cover ups almost never work and when you get caught, yikes.
• Have a social use policy and train your employees. Also have a crisis communication plan and again, train your employees.
• Have a coordinated voice to the customer. Embracing social CRM and starting to have conversations with your customer is good, having a dozen conversations with the same customer that put out conflicting or different information is bad. (I should add, fix your siloed organization, or said another way, conversations start at home).
• Use social tools / technology to help you scale your customer interactions and provide a richer experience.
• Encourage co-innovation if possible, your customers know how to improve your products and services.

For employees:

• Fix whatever is keeping your employees working in silos. (might be incentives, culture, management, goals)
• Embrace your empowered employees and help them by providing access to socially enabled collaboration tools, not file centric anti-collaboration tools.
• Consider shifting to an IT program that allows flexibility of tools, even an allowance program that gives employees choices and some control over the tools they need to get their jobs done effectively. (and yes I realize that you still have to maintain enterprise security and integrity but don't use that as a shield)
• Coaching is more effective that managing in most situations.
• Flatten hierarchies, empowered employees expect transparency and want to be involved.
• Communication is 2-way.
• Use social tools / technology to enable collaboration, communication, and increased productivity.
• Allow and facilitate flexible work. Employees can be more productive and have a better quality of life. Connectivity and mobile tools are critical in this real time, connected, information rich work environment.
• Encourage strong employee brands, your brand will benefit from the association (and it's 2 way as long as you have the relationship.

Hyper-connectivity, the networked business and social tools are enablers for business model innovation that can be as profitable (or even more profitable) than product or service innovation alone. The suggestions I listed above are not limited to employees and customers either, the business network extends and need to engage partners and suppliers as well. We're raising the bar, what else can businesses do to compete effectively in this exciting new environment?

Tags: social business, network, social, SCRM, e2.0, employee, customer, partner, supplier, engaged, empower

Getting Value from Your Social Projects?

According to the latest IDC Social Business survey approximately 41% of businesses surveyed have already implemented an enterprise social software solution. In a market (social platforms) that is growing ~38% CAGR over the next 5 years, quite a few of the other 59% will likely be following their peers shortly down the path of enterprise social bliss. Because of the rapidly growing interest in social software and the already substantial number of businesses using these solutions, value and return on investment (ROI) are hot topics these days. A lot of the growth in this market happened over the last 24 months so while the use of the systems is still fairly new there is an established track record that could give us some idea of value. A lot of the next round of businesses that will be implementing social solutions are looking to build a business case as justification for the projects. This is perhaps somewhat of a new approach since many of the first generation of implementations were initiated as reactions to grass roots social efforts that eventually pushed the business into embracing a broader social solution. I've called these businesses "accidental socialites" in the past, and now they've moved into the "consciously social" category. While the accidental socialites category continues to grow (often to the chagrin of the IT department) more businesses are making a conscious decision to deploy social solutions and I expect this group to grow rapidly over the next few years. All of this just puts more pressure on businesses to develop a more sophisticated approach to the business case around social projects.

There are a few problems (or perceived problems) with social ROI though. The first is an issue created over the last few years by some so called experts (or is that self proclaimed experts) that came at social from other than an enterprise business direction and have loudly espoused the idea that social is different and that you can't calculate social ROI in a standard business way. In my opinion this line of thinking has caused a huge loss of credibility among traditional business leaders who look at business and IT projects through the lens of value and ROI. To these "experts" I say bull, if you can't calculate the value of any project or initiative then why would you do it? As a business that's an absolute must.

The second issue is that some of the metrics that we need to look at for social projects are somewhat different from traditional IT metrics. This is only natural that we'd need to look closely at what metrics can be used to establish value from your social projects. In the end though, even with some new metrics to measure, we have to tie back to revenue, costs, quality, and innovation.

To help with this ROI issue and clearly establish our position on the subject I have worked with two analysts on my IDC team, Erin Traudt and Mary Wardley and two industry colleagues Kathy Hermann and Dr Natalie Petouhoff to develop some detailed research on ROI for social business initiatives which we have added to our Social Business Research at IDC. We have decided to offer that document as a free download on the IDC web site, download it here. In the document we clearly lay out the current social ROI myths and debunk them by applying traditional ROI processes to social projects. From the document we establish pillars of economic analysis for social projects:

Pillars of Economic Analysis:

Copyright 2010 IDC, Kathy Herman and Dr Natalie Petouhoff

And from those pillars establish clear social gains versus costs:

Copyright 2010 IDC, Kathy Herman and Dr Natalie Petouhoff

This is only a short look at social business ROI, for more take a look at the document itself and feel free to contact us if we can assist you in developing your social project business case.

Tags: social business, ROI, value, social media, social, web 2.0, e2.0, SCRM

Moving "Traditional" Online

I was reading the reports of Rupert Murdock's upcoming online "newspaper" product and it started a mental thread that I think I need to pull a bit. I guess calling it an online newspaper isn't exactly correct, if reports are correct, it's a tablet app based (initially an iPad based) newspaper. Apparently Murdock / News Corp is investing around $30M and a staff of around 100 to build a new business unit that will produce a daily newspaper that will mostly be released once a day (maybe a few updates during the day but it seems like it's really a daily) for $.99 a week. Pulling from the better know ranks of traditional media Murdock has announced some well known hires including Sasha Frere-Jones, the music critic from The New Yorker; Steve Alperin, a TV producer; and Richard Johnson, formerly of Page Six. The app / Daily will incorporate a mix of media including video, but will focus on original content. The large elephant in the room though is will people pay for a daily app based newspaper?

This is not News Corp's first foray into paid online content land, Murdock had a go at it in July of this year with two of his UK based properties, the Sunday Times and the Times of London. Both properties were moved behind a pay wall and based on the reported results, have been a miserable failure. These were "traditional" web sites though, and the new project is tablet app based, something that does provide a great user experience and has a history of selling paid apps so I suppose there is some chance of a more successful product.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not buying it (literally). I don't get it, I think this approach is inherently flawed for several reasons. Now admittedly I don't pay for news, I consume tons of free content online every day (it's my job to stay informed) but as soon as the content moves behind a pay wall I look for another source. I did pay for a good RSS reader app on my iPad, but then I will pay for good software (too many years in the software business I guess). I think:

• There's too much good quality free news content available to justify spending ~$50 / year for a daily newspaper
• Daily, really, what about real time news?
• No inbound links, the content is behind a pay wall, remember.
• The content cannot be shared and in a growing online social world that's the biggest failure of all. I can't get it to my Twitter followers or my facebook friends so why read it at all? Ultimately online news is connected and Murdock is creating a broken app that isn't connected at all.
• The report is that the Daily will be a tablet app only, no other online presence. (there is a rumor that there will be a mirror site that will be used to showcase some of the content in hopes of driving people to the app). I love my iPad and they are selling like hot cakes but is that enough?
• The content is "off the web" so to speak. That means you can't bookmark it or read it on any other device, like you know, your laptop.

This concept is really a step back in time to pre-web business models. It doesn't leverage the power of the web, it's not social, you can't link to it, you can't share it, you can't bookmark it, it's not real time, you can't...well, you get the point. Why do we keep making this mistake? Just moving some offline thing onto the web, while I get the intoxicating draw of it, does not make good and full use of the technology and is doomed to under whelm. I've seen this so many times, the company deludes itself into thinking that's its' content will be so compelling and unique that people will flock to it and in the process toss $$ to get access. Why would I pay for something that is less useful and lower value that the free news content I consume every day? To be successful Murdock needs 150K or so subscribers in the first year and that's doesn't include Apple's cut of the revenue. Maybe advertisers will flock to it but if they can't get the numbers that wouldn't work either. I guess time will tell and maybe they'll prove me wrong...but I doubt it.

Tags: new media, News Corp, Murdock, Daily, news, web 2.0, social web, business models

People Centric Communication?

I was mulling over the facebook email (or is that not email but messaging) announcement and looking at a bunch of the surrounding commentary when an idea struck me. First though, please don't skewer me over the blog title until you hear me out...and yes I do realize that communication should be inherently people centric, the problem though, I think, is that online communication today isn't. Online communication today is system or technology centric, not people centric. Think about it, if you're communicating with someone in email can you simply switch to IM...and which IM; Skype, Yahoo, gchat, iChat, MSN? You could maybe switch to an IM aggregator like IM+ or Fring I guess. Every communication system is a silo. Now of course you could answer that unified communications was an approach to solving this, but we all know that UC isn't a widely used solution, at least not yet (if ever), and even the best UC systems I've seen don't necessarily go far enough and that's just really an enterprise solution. The reality today is that communication is more than an enterprise or personal issue, the blending and consumerization of the enterprise makes the problem a holistic one. There's an underlying problem, every system identifies everyone differently. Each email address is unique, IM id's are unique, mobile phone numbers, land lines (I hear some people still have those), facebook, Twitter...all over the web you're known by a bunch of different ID's. And where do we keep / store those ID's, all over the place of course. Just to keep up with important contacts I keep my trusty Mac Address book and upload that to Google contacts (also sync'ed through mobileme)...oh, and there's my Cardscan database (and it's cloud sync backup); and on my android phone I have an address book (actually a pretty good one, it pulls from local, Google contacts and facebook). It's a complicated mess just to figure out how to contact someone and email as a primary communications method is, at least for me, really hard to manage and flawed (not even adding in the spam problem). I won't go on another email rant though, I just want to point out that there is a problem that needs solving, whether facebook or Google or any other tech company can solve it remains to be seem.

Perhaps communication online is changing too? I have watched my 15 year old daughter communicate with her friends (and me) over the last year or so and I agree with Zukerberg's assessment that digital natives like her don't use email. She has 2 email accounts, she just doesn't ever check them (actually not completely true, if I send her something in one of them I send a facebook message to check it out). She communicates on facebook and SMS, and switches indiscriminately between the two. Conversations can start in one place, continue in the other and then return back (it's kind of funny to watch). Voice is also something she rarely uses and in fact I see her react negatively to phone calls all of the time, she would prefer another vehicle and it annoys her if someone won't meet her on her own digital terms. Doesn't mean email is dead (yet) but I do think that it signals the start of a change in the way people communicate online.

I try all sorts of tools and processes to make communication easier, after all communication is a big part of being an analyst. I'm currently managing my never ending stream of email from four accounts mostly out of 2 gmail priority inboxes. It's a little better but still a long way from even okay. The priority inbox is hit or miss, sometimes it learns and sometimes it refuses to learn what is important to me...I keep training but... Chat is another issue, I use Skype, gchat and yahoo so they're mostly scattered. I do use Skype for a lot more so it's usually open but the other 2 I switch around from Addium, IM+ (on iPad, iPod Touch and android) and once in a while Fring. I also use the web client for gchat at times...I have two mobile phones but use both Ribbit on the back end and Google Voice on the front end to help manage them, and at least both transcribe voice mail and send it to my email inbox. Ribbit also ties Skype voice into it. I have reasonable consolidation from a device perspective I guess.

Speaking of communication devices I recently had a a very interesting discussion with Avaya on it's new Flare Experience device, a desk top UC hardware and software solution that let's enterprise customers consolidate multiple communication channels including consumer social web into one experience. If facebook could deliver that kind of experience for "messaging" I'd say they had a home run...but that's asking a lot and it's not (at this point in time) the point.

So back to Facebook, what are they actually doing and is there more potential here? From what I can figure out the basic premise is that facebook provides messaging, a simplified email-like experience that can tie all your email, facebook IM and SMS into a single, manageable inbox centered on individuals in a threaded format. That's something I guess, although I'm not sure it does any more than my already messed up comms plan. There is something in this though, that could form the basis of a new online (and I guess I'm including mobile in online too) way of communicating. So if we could have a way to consolidate all of our communication methods into a model centered on each person and configurable by the individual to route to the device of choice at any given time, with much more granular control than we have today and both from origin and destination, then there could be a new system. Ultimately all online comms are digital and really only vary in mode of interaction, synchronous or asynchronous. In a new model of comms let's say I wanted to contact a friend. If I had that friend's single "ID" I could use whatever device I had / choose to initiate a "conversation", either real time synchronous (I'd need to know presence information for that though, or risk leaving a message) or an asynchronous message sent to that single ID. On the other end the recipient would have established rules with how to route the message and respond. Hmm, I think I just described a Ribbit or Google voice system that includes more than mobile, Skype and SMS (which adds email and IM I guess)... Ok, enough of this, my gmail inbox is filling up again.

Tags: Google, facebook, unified communications, email. IM, Ribbit, messaging

e2.0 Conference Fall 2010 - Santa Clara

I spent the last few days at the Fall Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara. The conference was well attended and there was good energy throughout. While the e2.0 conference is well established I think that it is in many ways a conference in transition, much like the term e2.0 itself. Many of the exhibiting / sponsoring vendors are now messaging the term social business as a representation of the expanded focus on the both the internal and external and the connection between them. This is the growing trend and I for 1 welcome this broadening of focus. The other trend, which is also welcome, is the focus on doing much more so than debating and defining. That a sure sign of maturity in my book and the most attended and highest rated sessions had a practical side to them that spilled over into the hallway and reception conversations as well.

As good evidence of the trend to include both the internal collaborative solutions from the e2.0 world and the outward facing customer solutions of social CRM, the conference added a track devoted to SCRM chaired by two of the true SCRM thought leaders, Paul Greenberg and Sameer Patel. From a social business perspective SCRM has led the way, partly because many companies feel the pressure to deal with the growing number of social customers in new and engaging ways and partly because during tough economic times companies easily see benefit in customer and prospect facing initiatives. e2.0 is learning much from SCRM I think, particularly in the areas of using peer to peer communities to create engagement and generate highly leveragable social content. The SCRM track sessions were filled with great lessons from the field which resonated with the audiences.

Another track that seemed to generate a lot of interest was the Community Development and Management track chaired by Rachel Happe and Ted Hopton. Certainly community is one of the key tools in both the e2.0 and the SCRM toolkit so there is a great deal of interest in continuing to build and improve the growing profession of community manager. As a fast growth and still fairly new occupation there is always a thirst for practical skills development and practical knowledge sharing.

These conferences provide a great opportunity to catch up with companies that I've followed closely over the last few years and this time was no exception. Here are a few highlights from those meetings:

• Newsgator: I had a chance to get some hands on with its newest edition app build as a front end and social extension to Microsoft Sharepoint. Sharepoint has continued to see rapid growth and is a very popular content management and file centric collaboration tool. In the lastest version 2010, Microsoft added a "social connector" but frankly is a long way from providing a social, people centric collaborative experience. This is where Newsgator shines and for me, this is one of the few ways I'd want to deploy Sharepoint at least as a collaboration tool. The user experience is excellent and very web 2.0ish. If you want to kick up your productivity with your Sharepoint installation I'd suggest you take a look.
• Moxie: Moxie is the latest incarnation of an idea I first discussed with serial entrepreneur Steve Papermaster at some conference over three years ago (I remember the conversation but I guess I've been to so many conferences since then that the exact one escapes me). At that time he and I both thought something was starting to happen in the enterprise that would turn into a significant business opportunity as web 2.0 like functionality coupled with the rise of the social customer and employee moved into the enterprise. We were both pretty early in our thoughts but still it was a great discussion. Fast forward three years and the ideas have evolved a great deal from Steve's first relaunch of BSG Alliances to NGenera to the rebranding and launch of Moxi this year. Moxi, with it's social business spaces product and services offering is clearly an up and coming player in a market that is quickly gaining momentum.
• Jive Software: I've spent a fair bit of time in the past year talking about Jive and its broadening to a complete social business solution so I won't rehash that this time. Instead I had a chance to catch up with its new CMO, Lynda Smith and get a better perspective on the progress they are making in the market. Probably the best news is that the prospect list has expanded away from just early adopters and is now moving towards more traditional companies and verticals. From my own work with end users I'd mirror that observation as I see the momentum of social business expand into the mainstream.
• IBM Lotus Connections: I should confess that it's been quite a while since I had the chance to catch up with the Lotus Connections team even though IBM is the clear leader from a revenue perspective in the social platforms market. I had a great discussion and I will dig into what they're doing much more deeply over the next few weeks. From a customer perspective they confirmed to me that they are also seeing social business move into the mainstream and that there is significant momentum across all business and industry types. To date IBM's largest deployment of Lotus Connections is over 380,000 users and many of its customers are over 100,000 users so far. There is strong interest in deploying activity streams and the flexibility of the products are a draw as no one size fits all. From a product perspective release 3.0 incorporates a lot of socialytic capabilities and has moved beyond the "search on steroids" approach to analytics and provides more individualized analytic capabilities leveraging work done in the IBM research labs. IBM customers are expanding the use of communities from just inside employee based implementations to reach out into the customer facing side of the business. Lastly 3.0 incorporates what they're calling social anywhere with features embedded in other applications like Cognos analytics and also supporting multiple device mobile access (iPhone, Android, iPad, iPod Touch).
• Neudesic Pulse: I just recently started getting acquainted with Neudesic, a long time Microsoft partner, and I found their product, Pulse, to be an interesting addition to the activity stream market. Like Newsgator it integrates with Sharepoint and puts a more social face on that product. Pulse also integrates with Microsoft CRM so if you are currently a MS CRM customer or are planning a deployment Pulse can add significant functionality across your business. One of the features I found particularly useful was the ability to build Twitter like lists and follow them in lieu of following individuals. These lists aggregate conversations and give users another way to filter and manage the growing information glut. 
• Novell Vibe: I've been a fan of Novell's activity stream product, formerly called Pulse, since I did some consulting with the team almost two years ago. This week Novell announced the rebranding / renaming of the product to Vibe, the merging of their integrated collaborative environments product and the movement of that new product into public beta. The new product is even more interesting and I think adds some very useful functionality to an already great product. I hope this weeks announcement will be followed by a more aggressive sales and marketing campaign for the Vibe product, now is the time for social vendors to grab market share.

I also had the pleasure to moderate a panel session on Wed titled "Social is Evil". This topic, managing risk and compliance in the new social enterprise is very timely and the session garnered a lot on interest. The panelists were a diverse group including an attorney, John Pavolotsky of Greenberg Traurig, two executives from network security vendors, John Burnham, VP of Marketing for Q1 Labs and David Rowe, CEO of NetVision and a social practitioner Jae Kim, Director of Social Media strategy for Facetime Communications. Some of the best practices discussed included:

• Every business needs a clearly defined social policy that covers how employees can use enterprise and consumer social tools, proper behavior on public social networks and communities, IP protection guidelines,and  the extension of HR policies like harassment to the online environment.
• Having a social policy isn't enough, you have to train employees on the policy and include that training in the regular onboarding process.
• Businesses are being naive if they believe they can block access to all social tools. They may control the network but they cannot control employees use of mobile devices to access and use social network and media sites while at work.
• Employees will do what it takes to get their job done and today that includes using social tools. Better as a business to sort out a corporate strategy and policy; and educate the employees on that policy than to try and prevent or block its use.

Thanks to everyone who attended the session, the audience participation was some of the best I've seen in a panel session and I even had to open up to audience questions 10 or so minutes earlier than planned as they were literally jumping up and down to participate.

All in all this e2.0 was a good experience and offered a lot of value. The acknowledgement of the blending of SCRM and e2.0 into social business is a reality and its good to see that approach expanding for the conference. I suspect you're see that trend continue in Boston next spring.

Tags: e2.0, SCRM, social business, conference, IBM, Moxie, Novell Vibe, Jive, Neudesic, Newsgator

Modern eCommerce, or is that just next gen commerce?

In the late 1990's sticking an "e" in front of anything was just the cool thing to do...eCRM, eProcurement, and particularly popular eCommerce. As the web moved from static to transactional eCommerce became an important business model, taking brick and mortar retailing online with technologies like eCatalogs and online shopping carts. Internet powerhouses like Amazon, ebay and even some forgotten names like CDNow, grew up during this dynamic time. Analysts firms rushed to get coverage on eCommerce technologies and practices as it became the flavor of the day. And of course like all flavor's of the day the day went happily by and eCommerce became just a part of doing business if you were a retailer. The underlying technology continued to evolve though, we just stopped talking about it as a great new frontier, it was a part of your business and your business software had to support it. Over the last year though, I'm hearing the term eCommerce more and more as well as a new flavor of the day, social commerce.

Now I'm just as guilty as the rest of the analysts community when it comes to the use of the word social, I've written regularly on social business as the evolution of social CRM and enterprise 2.0 (the other flavor of the day trend, the 2.0's). I've managed to avoid calling everything social "social media" at least, preferring to use that term as a specific thing, not a broad general statement. When it comes to commerce though I'm going to draw a line. Not that I don't think social is having an impact on commerce, it is and I do, but there are several trends converging at once to change commerce and it's bigger than just social, IMHO. Just as I think the underlying motive force for social business is the hyper-connected or networked nature of the new economy, I believe the same force is driving changes in commerce. For commerce tech trends are indeed having a significant impact including mobile, social networks / community, social search, social media / socially generated content, SCRM, e2.0, hyper-connectivity, location-based and context aware software, cloud and the networked business.

Dealing with the social customer and taking what we're learning in that arena, I am convinced that the underlying concepts really point to an obvious approach; to deal effectively with the social customer businesses must create a positive, engaging experience for that customer. Experience is what keeps the customer engaged in that conversation you so desire. I suggest to understand what the next generation of online retail and commerce entails that we need to drop the "e", not add the "social", leave off mobile and focus on the convergence of commerce, or multi channel experience facilitation (I actually typed management at first but I don't want to give the impression that companies can really manage the customer experience, they can facilitate or enable it, but managing it is up to the customer). 

So what do we "know" that can be applied to the next generation of commerce (and no that's not commerce 2.0)?

• The social customer looks for advice, recommendations and research from their own networks. Think of that as highly relevant trust filtered information. This could also move beyond personal communities and be extended into an integrated customer community where peer to peer support, recommendations and advice are available to customers and prospects hosted by the brand. 
• The social customer focuses on experience and what's in it for them first, then for their own network.
• Expectations are high for any interaction with your brand whether its online or in a brick and mortar store. There are a lot of options for customers today, don't give your customers a reason to help your competitors business be more successful.
• Convergence means that customers expect one continuous experience from your brand no matter where they are and how they choose to communicate with you.
• The 1st time you have to ask a customer to repeat an issue they have already communicated to you might be the last time you hear from them.
• Think context when you build commerce systems, use what you know about your customer to tailor every interaction and experience. This is where socialytics really comes into play, real time use of social and enterprise data to craft an experience.
• Socialytics plus traditional CRM analytics is also critical for turning loyalty from a passive program to an active, business strategy enabling system.
• Commerce systems need to tie together online, mobile, in store, phone, facebook, Twitter (and other community sites), customer service, order management and fulfillment, etc. into one seamless customer experience. We have to move away from the days of thinking of distinct separate systems or modules and into a full and highly complex customer experience process. This is not limited to CRM systems or financial systems either, but must also tie the inside of the organization (employees) to the outside (customers, suppliers, partners).
• The next gen commerce platform is based on the same concept that underpins social business, people are the new business platform. People are the key nodes in a business network and this design principal is key to the new, integrated commerce platform.
• As more systems move to the cloud the easier it will be to build this seamless experience. The Internet of things comes into play here too, as smart devices could provide context and another channel (think smart, socially connected vending).
• The economic crisis / recession has created a great deal of momentum for retailers and other commerce focused verticals to move to next gen commerce platforms.

 We have quite a way to go with this connected, converged commerce system and our ability to facilitate this multi channel customer experience but vendors are making progress. Last week Oracle announced its intent to acquire ATG for example. Oracle has already assembled quite a few key components to the new connected commerce offering with robust CRM, merchandising, analytics, inventory management, etc. and with this addition to its portfolio extends the platform significantly. In particular ATG adds a robust platform that works across online, in store and mobile channels creating the new omni-channel commerce offering. With ATG Oracle Retail provides additional  capabilities including merchandising, enhanced analytics, marketing, content personalization, automated recommendations and live-help services.

At a recent event one of my colleagues used a soft drink example of how connectivity and Internet of things was changing commerce. The example is an Internet enabled drink dispenser called Coca-Cola Freestyle that allows the customer to create something like 100 combinations of flavors. The connected machine "phones home" regularly to tell HQ what it's dispensing and when it needs re-supply. The idea streamlines supply chains and it also provides a level of crowdsourced product design info. I think though, that Coke missed the broader point though. The device is connected and has a touch screen interface so what if it also connected to your individual network and offered suggestions based on friends recommendations. You could ask questions from your network as well of course and create a social soda design experience. Or maybe even better the machine could connect via a mobile app to your preferences so that you could tag in to the machine, sharing and getting relevant information...now that's converged commerce.

It's Just About the Connections!

Ever feel like, as an industry (or industry analyst), that we make everything seem as complex as possible? I guess it makes sense, the more "technical" or more complex, the more you need us or IT or tech vendors or consultants...simple things anyone can do, right? There's a lot of change happening in business, partly as a hangover from the recession, partly because of extreme organizational pressures from several tech trends (see this post) and partly because for much of the business world the way they make money is fundamentally shifting. Now I don't want to oversimplify things either, but the more I look at all of the changes and potential for change, the more I'm convinced that in reality all changes lead back to connectivity.

Last week I did a keynote for an Ariba event and as I was waiting to go on I listened to Ariba executive Paul Melchiorre talk about the history of the company. Ariba was born in the late 1990's as the Internet was moving from the static web to the transaction web (I call that iteration web 1.5) and was really all about automating a bunch of paper processes and networking companies and suppliers together using the growing connectivity of the Internet. I was at PeopleSoft at the time and I remember looking with great interest at what they were trying to do. Today utilizing the Internet's hyper-connectivity for business is commonplace but at the time it was quite remarkable. They were clearly establishing an idea before its time in my opinion. Its business has certainly seen its ups and downs through the years since 1998 but by learning and evolving and sticking to the base principal of facilitating business connectivity Ariba today is a strong player in what is becoming the key next generation business model, the networked business. One of the key evolutions of technology that is at the core of its growing success is the emergence of cloud computing. In fact in my mind cloud computing was the missing piece that enables connectivity across businesses allowing the creation of flexible business networks. Ariba is now dead center as an enabler of this growing business shift. (disclaimer: my keynote at their event was a paid engagement)

Connectivity, both business and people, is opening up all sorts of other opportunities for business. The social web, with its new relationships models and interaction models, is a result of this connectivity. The growth of mobile as a business "desktop" is both because of connectivity and an enabler of increased connectivity. Social CRM and e2.0 have at their core connectivity. People-centric networks, or connecting people with each other, with content and data and to technology is the key driver of the business change and needs to be at the core of the new socialized enterprise software that will be required to enable managing and operating an organic business network.

New business models that leverage connectivity are popping up with great frequency. Using connectivity to drive transactions and build granular reach in ways not possible before can offer up all sorts of new opportunities. I had lunch with a colleague yesterday in Philly and beyond the fact that I had an amazing Italian hoagie, we chatted about several new businesses that are using connectivity in unique ways. For example, wouldn't it be useful if you could have a way to recoup money from expensive items that you want but don't necessarily use all of the time...or on the flip side wouldn't it be nice if you could rent high value or unique items that you use infrequently at a reasonable price and in your local area? Without the concept of connectivity this would not be possible but today several new businesses are doing just that. They enable people to post items for rent in local areas and for people to rent those items at a reasonable price. Even more connectivity also allows the creation of a community around the activity of renting that is self policing and transparent and for a trusted method for carrying out the transaction. There are a bunch of start ups in this space so I'll only list a few: Zilok, Rentalic, Cool-Rent.com, rentstuffeasy.com, Rentoid and irent2u. Here's an explanation graphic from the Zilok site:

The idea of peer to peer transactions could also work for other types of transactions. One interesting and disruptive business that is using this idea is Airbnb.com. Airbnb is sort of like ebay, but for space or accommodations. Using hyper-connectivity it creates a marketplace where people with space to rent can find renters / travelers and carry out the rental transaction. It uses community to create a trust environment and provides the eCommerce backbone and reservations system to make the marketplace work. Airbnb is so disruptive that the hoteliers in some large cities are campaigning to get it legally blocked.

So there you have it, connectivity is simply the backbone of the new economy. Underneath it there is complexity of course, as we develop new technology to facilitate the use of connectivity as a business model disrupter but that's the beauty of the new tech, simplicity on the front often hides the complexity from public view.

Tags: connectivity, social web, e2.0, social business, business models, disruption, web 2.0