The Long Term Future of Social CRM

This is my last post for this session with Jacada.  I want to really thank them for giving me the platform, I think it was an awesome series (did I mention this will be turned into an eBook in the next few days? You can then download the entire series and relive it anytime, anywhere – way cool!).

Last time I talked about the near-term, two-to-three year's horizon, for Social CRM.  This time I want to go a little bit further, focus on what happens after it reaches critical mass and is widely adopted.

But first, a little debunking.

Social CRM cannot do anything by itself.  

There is no software, magic motion, silver bullet, or Hogwarts' spell that will make it work and be useful as a stand-alone solution.  Actually, I don't even know what it means to do Social CRM as a stand-alone solution – are we talking about setting up a Twitter account? Creating a community? Either way, what I mean is that the only way you get some value of Social CRM is to realize that it is a part of a business – much like CRM was is. And ERP. And SCM. And…you get the idea.

So, how does the future look for Social CRM?

Fantastic, there are three things that will happen to Social CRM going forward:

1. Social CRM will integrate with CRM very well.  Your customers, partners, employees, entities-you-deal-with, etc, don't change who they are, or how they relate with you, just because you added new social Channels.  Social CRM (the ability to bring in those social channels, their data, and their value to CRM) has to work in harmony with your existing CRM solution.  If this integration does not happen, you merely implemented Social Media – added some new channels and their management tools, but have no idea what to do with them.
2. Social CRM becomes part of the Social Business evolution. Let's face it, the term as shiny, new, and cute as it may be really means nothing without being part of business.  Same as it happened with CRM.  Remember when CRM was a four-letter word? I do, I even wrote at that time that if you wanted to get CRM approved in your organization, you had to call it something else (Sally or John are popular names).  Bottom line, Social CRM is one core component of a Social Business – it will evolve to join forces with Enterprise 2.0 implementations (no, not the real ones – the internal collaboration as Enterprise 2.0 ones) and become the basis for a Social Business – organizations collaborating with customers, suppliers, partners, employees and others – in preparation for...
3. Social CRM disappears, as it became part of the Collaborative Enterprise. Look at this chart (figure 1), the evolution of Social X – I wrote about it before many times, this is all interim steps as we learn what it means to collaborate, to work together towards better organizations.  The collaborative enterprise model is about destroying the barriers between people and let whoever needs to collaborate in any situation freely do so.  It is about leveraging expertise and knowledge and data regardless of where it lives and what it is.  There is limited, at best, future for Social CRM as there was for electronic CRM, mobile CRM, and many others in the past.  It is not about adding a letter or word to CRM to make it better – it is about making CRM, Social CRM, Electronic CRM, and the many other flavors work better for the business.

I know all the reactions – this is going to take forever to do, there are no guarantees, it is just an opinion, etc.  

Actually, this is not just an opinion – this is the direction we are taking today's world.  The more customers, consumers, partners, suppliers and others that get exposed to what it means to “go social,” the more pressure there will be on organizations – all organizations – to become social businesses.

And later, collaborative enterprises.

What do you think? Am I off?

Esteban Kolsky - Principal and Founder of ThinkJar

Note: Esteban Kolsky has been retained by Jacada to participate in the Customer Service 2.0: Access the Experts speakers series. The opinions shared herein reflect the views of the author, and not necessarily Jacada or its employees.

Comments

[Barry Dalton]

Esteban,
Good series. As always, I appreciate your 'thru the telescope' view of the landscape. As a framework, I'm with you. A caveat and an observation. The caveat: like other business models, management practices and ecosystems, not all companies will get there, or choose to go there. And I'm not convinced that this will mark their ultimate demise. Macro (and some micro) economic factors will determine the rate of change and the ultimate level of adoption, e.g. switching costs, elasticity of demand, etc. The observation: collaboration, for those customers and companies that go there, seems to me will require radically different operating models, org structures and skills/talent applied to various functional operations. Won't customers need to be smarter about the companies with which they interact? Won't various functional personnel in the enterprise need to have better working knowledge of other functions? Does this shift the focus of staffing more twards generalists that rotate around the organization? Sort of the GE management development model extend down the org chart. Or can the accountant collaborate effectively with the marketing guy and engineer without haven't a clue as to what they do?

Thx
B

[esteban kolsky]

Barry,

Thanks for the read and the comment. Much appreciated.

I will give you one part of your argument: it is not for all users. I will add then -- yet. You may not agree with my schedule, 10-15 years seems like too little time to do this, and you may find kinks in the armor. It is likely you will find a much better model to explain what is going on and what companies need to do about it.

However, the social evolution that is taken over society is not going away, and all companies will eventually be faced with having to deal with them. It happened with the internet, it happened with the phone, it happened with email -- and it is happening again with social networks (the fact that I wrote something similar to what I am saying now in 2003 makes me think I am onto something; my timing was wrong by at least 10 years though). As long as the customers go there, you as an organization have to follow.

That is what is happening now, and what organizations will have to react to. In 10, 20 or more years -- depends on their comfort level with risk and new technologies -- but they will all get there.

Thanks for the RT as well.
Esteban

[Si Chen]

This is really interesting. I agree with everything you've said here and yet ...

I'm hoping for more. What will the social business of the future armed with both social CRM and traditional enterprise software (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.) be like? What would the people there be doing all day? Could you take us for a tour?

[esteban kolsky]

Si,

thanks for the comment -- i will reply to this later this year, at years end when i have more time, in my blog. that is a very loaded, and interesting, question -- thanks for the idea!

Thanks for the read and comment
Esteban