I spent two days this past week attending and participating in CRM evolution in NYC, an annual CRM conference managed by CRM Magazine. It's always a good conference with a solid line up of speakers and this year was no exception. Chaired by Paul Greenberg again this year, the conference provided informative keynotes and 3 days packed with session around 3 tracks, Social CRM, CRM and Deployment Strategies. The overall conference focused on:
- Streamline business processes
- Increase profitability
- Create great customer experiences
- Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Generate high returns on CRM investments
- Prepare for customer trends that are reshaping the marketplace
- Leverage technologies that will change customer relationships
- Benefit from Web 2.0 and Social CRM
I want to look at some sessions and other commentary from the event but first I have to share some insights from the opening key note by senior political analyst and former advisor to 4 US presidents, David Gergen. He's a good and entertaining speaker with lot's a great stories from his days associated with the White House, whether you agree with his politics or not. This association gives him an interesting perspective on leadership, which is a subject that he addresses often, having written a book on the subject, Eyewitness to Power, The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. On the subject of leadership, Gergen advises that keeping an eye on the basics is key, "if you want to lead others you must listen to them." According to Gergen, courage is the number 1 virtue of a leader, as evidenced by leaders like Winston Churchill during WW II. In addition to leadership Gergen shared some insight on the political use of the Internet, which he says is all about the 3 M's, mobilization, message and money. For business use of social media he offer this advice, "have your objectives set but be willing to adjust your tactics." For more from the keynote see Brittany Farb's post.
I participated in two sessions, a panel in the SCRM track and a session in the CRM track. The panel, titled "Disruption and the Lean, Mean CRM Machine, was moderated by Michael Krigsman and in addition to me, included John Taschek, Mitch Lieberman and Becky Carroll. During the discussion we looked at the impact of the key disrupters, social, mobile, cloud and big data on CRM and on businesses. One of the important themes, at least from my perspective, is that SCRM and social initiatives are additive on top of a solid CRM foundation, not a replacement for the basics.
For my session I presented on "The New Face of Commerce, Customer Experience Redefined. While I won't try to recap the entire presentation here, I will share the Prezi I used during the session:
As with most events these days, there's a lot of good commentary on the sessions, here are a few worth checking out:
- DestinationCRM / CRM Magazine's Brittany Farb's commentary on Brent Leary's day three keynote on accommodating the changing customer.
- Blake Landau's CMSWire interview with conference chairman Paul Greenberg and interview with Brent Leary.
- Lauren Carlson's commentary on Software Advice.
- Chris Bucholtz's commentary posted on CRM Buyer about Brian Vellmure's session.
All in all a worthwhile conference, maybe I'll see you there next year?
