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Articles
Social
Networking Makes CRM Business Case
CRM Daily It is becoming clear that social networking
will be yet another methodology embedded
in a sales operation. The question is, will
such applications remain viable as a stand-alone
technology, or will they eventually be acquired
by suite providers?
Social networking, a relationship-building
application for businesses -- a la the Friendster
model -- has become the latest hot technology
with new arrivals entering the space every
month. The most recent company talking about
entering the fray? Yahoo , nipping at the heels
of Google's experimental offering.
The big question, though, has been how companies
can leverage this technology most effectively
to win new business. Certainly, everyone seems
to have an opinion -- or at least a business
plan. The most successful ones, though, predicts
Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone, "will
be those that are integrated into a CRM application
and not necessarily controlled at the user
base."
Innovation Wave
The next wave of social-networking applications
will have to incorporate some kind of tangible
value-add to the company -- and, most likely,
that will be in CRM, specifically sales and
lead generation.
One example will come on Monday, when Spoke
Software, a hosted provider of social networking,
will announce its technology for work groups,
a complement to its Spoke Network for individual
professionals.
The work-group module, which will debut in
early March, will integrate into Web-based
sales-force automation and CRM applications.
Spoke says there are 20 work groups lined up
to implement its new product, including the
Atlanta Braves, Citibank and Bank of America
.
Mark Organ, CEO of Eloqua, a lead-generation
software provider, told CRM Daily that his
company has been using Spoke Software in a
similar manner. "It is an amazing tool," he
enthused. "What we have done is integrate Spoke
into our sales workflow."
As a result, lead generation at the company
has, in effect, morphed into a two-pronged
operation. "We use traditional lead generation
techniques in our own software coupled with
Spoke to see if there is another contact we
should approach outside of the traditional
campaign," Organ said.
Indeed, Spoke Software co-founder Chris Tolles
says the application extends a company's CRM
system instead of replacing it. "Most CRM systems
track a contact's presence in a system. We,
on the other hand, through communications traffic,
measure and rate how well you know this contact."
Adjunct to CRM
Some companies see social networking as a
feature to be incorporated into a CRM system
instead of used as an ancillary tool. One vendor
in this space is Interface Software, which
offers a CRM system built around a social-networking
tool.
Social networking has become hyped to the
nth degree of late, says Interface Software
CEO Nathan Fineberg, thanks to Friendster and
its spawn. Because of its roots in the professional-services
sector, Interface, which is seven years old,
has been working with this technology for years.
"Our product looks and feels a lot like traditional
CRM with marketing and sales-force automation
applications," Fineberg told CRM Daily. "But
because personal contacts are key to building
relationships for professional-services firms,
we developed and built up this functionality
called 'corporate social networking' early
on."
Now, he adds, all industries are beginning
to recognize the value of capturing personal
contacts in an automated fashion to build sales.
Sector Shakeout Ahead?
It is becoming clear that social networking
will be -- if it is not already -- yet another
methodology to be embedded in a sales operation.
The question is, will such applications remain
viable as a stand-alone technology -- much
like advanced analytics has thus far resisted
the siren call of the enterprise suite -- or
will they eventually be acquired by suite providers,
as was the fate of the early e-mail marketers?
The next two years will tell, one way or
another, according to a recent Aberdeen report. "In
the coming 24 months, emerging social-networking
companies will struggle to find and occupy
profitable niches for their solutions, and
we expect many of these companies will be acquired
by larger companies as social networking becomes
part of the overall CRM suite."
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