My Ongoing Debate about Twitter’s Relevance

Earlier this year I wrote about my doubts regarding Twitter. I had concerns at the time about the relevance of Twitter and whether it would be effective enough to warrant investment and attention. I’ve kept at Twitter, I’m an active user with the service integrated into my other social activities. Whilst mainstream media continues to be slap happy about Twitter, I’m still not convinced.

I get the whole information distribution thing. I blogged recently about how effectively Australian band Powderfinger had been in using Twitter to build enthusiasm for their free concerts. I see lots of other good examples – ABC Radio for example. We’ve even had tremendous success – for another business I own Twitter has become a very powerful sales and communication channel.

But

The system has issues and the risk for enterprise in my opinion is too great – particularly in the B2B context.

Here are my concerns:

1. The system is flakey – part 1

The whole ‘fail-whale’ thing is cute for like – 2 minutes. Google gets its butt kicked when Gmail is down for 10 minutes yet constant service from Twitter is a rare thing. Running a major service channel through Twitter with this service standard? Sorry, I wouldn’t be hanging my career on that option

2. Hackers Rule the Roost

I used to get angry when people sent me DM’s about ‘I’ve added you to my mafia family’ or ‘are you as smart as me’. Then I realised these users were subject to hack attacks and spam attacks.

Here’s an example of a user who I consider to be prominent issuing an apology:

This would be a tough conversation with the CMO or CIO – ’Lets get on Twitter. Good chance we’ll spam our followers, our account will be hacked – but it’s all good. Everyone’s doing it…’

3. The system is flakey – part 2

What is it with changes being lost, blocks being unblocked, the system being severely constipated before it suddenly spews out a torrent of ‘past due date’ content?

This is poor. And again, in an enterprise context – why would you put trust in a system with these flaws?

4. Inappropriate Content

I’m pretty diligent about blocking anyone who mentions money, sex, or religion. But most days I find companies and individuals with followers who are so suspect it beggars belief that they haven’t been blocked or reported.

I’ve seen some really really inappropriate avatars used by Twitter accounts – why aren’t these users blocked?

Worse, I’ve seen some major US companies following users who have avatars that are quite shocking. I have to ask. If you’re following users who have graphic images of women – what is your Twitter strategy? Is this really a reflection of your company’s values? One of these companies is a major brand in the social media space.

So how are we protecting our brand in this free-for-all world? Can someone fill me in on what Twitter is doing to police this space? And don’t give me that ‘oh there’s a new report spam link’ – rubbish!

5. Widespread Abuse

This really irks me. Company names and brands are being hijacked. The proliferation of this abuse is amazing.

Given I work in the CRM space I’ve been watching a couple of accounts. One account bbakari uses the Twitter API to flood the service with – spam.

Here’s an example

Now, granted I can block this user and not worry about the mindless river of drivel – but the fact is if you search for Salesforce.com or SugarCRM.com this torrent of spam clogs up the search results.

And just so you know, this is bbakari’s second account on Twitter. His first account @freecrm was killed off.

My Conclusion

Personally, I like Twitter. I follow people whose opinions I value and I like that they use the service appropriately. I like the fact I can tie my other social profiles into Twitter.

I can see the value. I can see the big picture with Twitter being a useful tool for information distribution.

But if I put a CEO hat on I have concerns – serious concerns. Would I recommend a B2B company jump into Twitter – probably not! I think their social media strategy would make more sense and they’d get better value focusing elsewhere.

Tough Questions to ask Your SaaS Vendor

Smart Company – An Australian online business magazine ran an interesting story today about the proliferation of software-as-a-service vendors and the attraction of this model for SME’s.

Whilst this isn’t news, Michael’s story delved into the important issues surrounding the need to ensure your SaaS vendor has the right infrastructure, expertise, and security in place to protect your business data.

Ask questions and review the provider’s written policies. Your questions should cover the:

• Type of facilities and security arrangements in place – reputation and history are important.
• Infrastructure and virus protection used.
• Backup procedures and storage – think business continuity planning.
• Privacy policies.
• Level of data encryption to protect website transactions.
• Hardware and power redundancy.
• Qualifications of operations staff.
• Hours and procedures of site monitoring.

I think Michael only addressed half the issue. In reality customers need to also examine what contracts and legal terms are in place to govern data ownership. As we’ve seen in the US this year, when SaaS vendors go bust it gets very ugly very quickly for customers.

So whilst your data might be secure what are you going to do if the service is shut off by the Administrators?

Customers need to be asking questions including:

1. Do you have clear ownership of your data AND the right to demand your data from the vendor or whomever is in control of the vendor if the service is shut down for a period of more than X hours?
2. What recourse do you have to get your data in a timely manner?
3. Is the vendor obliged to warn you in advance of a likely shut down of the service?

Now let’s take that a step further.

Data is one thing, but what about the customisations you have built into the SaaS solution? The sales reports, the sales process, the email templates, your marketing campaigns, your business dashboards, knowledge base, quote templates, and document library – do you see the broader issue? Yep, the data’s secure but we’re screwed as we can’t get it and nor can we get our customisations.

So whilst it’s important to ensure the vendor has a proper data centre and knows what they are doing you need to ask a lot more questions and be prepared to put the vendor under a pretty harsh spotlight. Your ability to operate your business depends on it. The worst case scenario is you pay a premium to get your data back and are then faced with having to implement a new CRM system – more implementation cost, more training cost, more unproductive hours.

These types of issues are why we chose to partner with SugarCRM as the core CRM platform that we recommend for our customers. No other vendor in the CRM space provides customers with the options and peace of mind as SugarCRM.

Here’s why two key reasons why I make that statement:

1. SugarCRM can be deployed on your own infrastructure, Sugar’s Cloud, or a hosting partner of your choice
2. If you choose a hosting provider it’s a very simple process for them to extract the system structure and send this to you so that you also have a back up of the CRM system – in addition to the system data.

This is peace of mind. This is SugarCRM putting control in your hands.

Open Source Government Software Suite

An interesting post on the Gov 2.0 Australia community got me thinking about the future of open source software, the growth of collaborative communities, and Government business systems. Open Source is something we’ve moved into quite heavily in terms of our business systems focus due to the maturity of many of the vendors – like SugarCRM, Talend,  Atlassian etc.

The author of the post – Wayne Eddy raises the question about Government expenditure on proprietary software and whether Government would deliver better value to their constituents by embracing open source and using this to build a Government software suite.

As I thought about this the idea really intrigued me so I started making a list of pros and cons and a rough outline of how this ‘might’ look.

The Barriers (are not with Open Source)

I hate to start on a negative but I have to as I think the barriers to making this happen are quite significant.

1. The major software giants have deep pockets and will spend a lot of money to kill off an initiative such as this. They all have a vested interest in keeping open source in its cute cubby hole.
2. Add to this the threat O/S poses to the big system integration vendors. That’s a pretty big bear you’re stealing cake from…
3. How do you distinguish between raw open source and commercial open source? Or are we simply shifting the customer/vendor paradigm?
4. The Culture of “nobody got fired buying IBM”. There’s safety in dealing with global giants – though I bet there are a few GOC’s and Departments around the country who beg to differ…
5. The inherent disorganisation of the open source crowd. Let’s face it, O/S people are well different. I’d argue it’d be a bit like herding cats

The Opportunity for an Open Source Government Software Suite

Depending on how you approach this I can see merit in this idea and I can see an attractive model being developed.

I view this as an ecosystem of solutions that can be tied together with a common glue. Realistically we’d need to have a panel of O/S vendors for each core area along with an agreed set of protocols as to how data and integration is managed. You would also need to create a certification program so that any vendor wanting to be part of the panel has to meet a minimum set of standards with these standards covering core areas such as stability, documentation, development standards etc.

The real opportunity by doing this is that Government fosters broad collaboration as listed vendors can co-create solutions amongst themselves and in conjunction with Government. For example, a group of vendors could collaborate to create a small council business system – where the functionality is pared back such that the ‘product’ suits many of the smaller regional councils in Australia where resources and budgets are limited.

I think the ecosystem would also be attractive for the SI vendors. It gives them a chance to foster innovation and sponsor development that is owned by the Government and O/S community and is there for the benefit of Government. This shouldn’t be new for some of the major SI companies given the likes of Cap Gemini and Logica already have relationships with leading O/S vendors like Talend.

Most importantly, you start creating an IP pool that remains in Australia and is there for everyone in Government to benefit. Any international vendor wanting to utilise IP overseas could be expected to pay a royalty back to the Australian ‘pool’.

CRM Vendors Continue to Confuse the Social Media Space

I continue to spend time working on our strategy and product offering around social media for the B2B world. Having evolved our business from the CRM space, we keep a close eye on what some of the big dicks are doing and I continue to be profoundly disappointed at what I’m seeing. And whilst it dismays me that I have to mention SFDC twice in the one month, it is necessary as yet again, the propaganda from SFDC has hit the airwaves without anyone being critical of what it all means.

Firstly, this initiative is not ground breaking. I commented on this recently in another blog post and stand by those comments and this additional post.

The article in question goes to great lengths to promote the failings of the social media monitoring tools (even mentioning the thought leaders like Radian6 and Techrigy) creating in my opinion a Benioff-esque tone of “they’re not a CRM so clearly they can’t be any good” as well as promoting a “jump in with jack boots” approach to interacting with the community

Example #1

After all, monitoring a conversation is one thing, but responding to it is another entirely — the domain of CRM, something Salesforce knows better than almost anyone else.

Monitoring or listening is one of the most fundamental activities of any company wanting to harness the power of the groundswell (with due credit to Li and Bernoff).

SFDC’s strategy seems to not so much put them on a collision course with the community monitoring start ups but puts you the customer on a collision course with your own community. I can’t help but feel SFDC are rushing into this space with grand plans about how you can use their platform to “respond” to social media activity yet they haven’t given a second of time to understanding the strategy that MUST reside behind the use of web 2.0 tools.

These “monitoring tools” deliver far more value than they are given credit for. Tools like Radian6 and Techrigy have a rich set of features that if used properly will allow a company to quickly and easily tap into the true feeling of the community. And it’s not just the “I’m interesting” bit that you should be tracking. Why not use these tools to keep an ear to what the community is saying about your strategic customers. Can you imagine going to one of your major customers with a solution to a problem that you unearthed via Radian6 when they probably don’t even know the problem exists? How can you use this information to deliver innovation to a major customer? I’m sorry but SFDC isn’t going to do that for you…

Example #2

But monitoring thousands of conversations across Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and blog comments is only part of the challenge. You still have to respond to them.

Absolute rubbish. If anyone goes into this thinking they need to respond to every piece of social noise about their company or products then they will fail quickly (and spectacularly).

This is what you’ll be doing if you follow what the author and SFDC are suggesting:

Due credit to Marta Zagan

Let me repeat something else Marta Zagan suggests – “The goal is not to control the conversation”.

In simple terms, the goal of using social network analytics is to watch, listen, and share some information with your community.

Don’t ever think you can skip the listen bit. And without tools like Radian6 or Techrigy you won’t be listening properly. Brian Solis (Social Media Manifesto) commented – “It’s about conversations, and the best communicators start as the best listeners”. Think about that for a minute. Isn’t this suggesting we step back and listen, then contribute? Not jump in boots and all with a human-being charged with responding and controlling?

Don’t go jumping in thinking you can communicate. You will need humans involved, but more importantly you need to have everyone understanding what the strategy is and what effort and commitment is required. Because this social media stuff isn’t easy. Get your VP of Sales in and let them see the data, let the Exec’s see what people are saying, in fact, make it a priority to have non-sales and marketing people looking at some of this information so that you can gain insights into the information.

CRM will have a role to play in how you engage with your communities, but it can’t be the driving force behind this. You must have everyone understanding how you as a company will harness these tools to deliver a dialogue and engagement. And you must also confront the problem of whether you even want this data in the CRM in the first place.

And just so you know, there are some CRM vendors doing some far more interesting work in this space than SFDC. RightNow is really ahead of the curve when it comes to customer experience management and SugarCRM are miles ahead in terms of how they are harnessing the power of open source with these great new web 2.0 tools.

Gorilla in their midst – hardly…

Your comments are welcome as always

Selling in the field – Open Source Delivers

Sometimes it is difficult to find relevant and tangible examples of how the open source architecture/model drives unique value for end users and partners when examining only business benefits.  In many cases, the ROI is there, but it is hard to quantify in hard dollars due to so many variables at play.

I want to share with you an example of the power and value of open-source. Pramati Technologies has released iSugarCRM, a free application for your iPhone that allows users to access SugarCRM via the Apple iPhone. The application has full offline sync and works across all SugarCRM modules.

There are two value benefits that I want to highlight as they are unique to open source. Firstly, Pramati are offering the application free of charge. An equivalent application on iApplications will cost north of USD 150 per user per year.

Secondly, if you tried to use this type of application on closed proprietary solutions like Salesforce then you’ll need to be using their top-shelf Enterprise edition plus you’ll being paying additional mobile application fees (a double-dip).

I’ve not been a big proponent of mobile versions of CRM solutions primarily as I’ve felt the mobile devices and the communications platform have not been up to scratch. My opinion has changed this year as 3G has taken hold and new, better devices such as the iPhone, the better, richer range from BlackBerry plus the smart devices offered from companies such as HTC and Nokia.

iSugarCRM opens up a huge range of possibilities particularly as version 5.2 of the SugarCRM product moves further into the social media/social networking world.

The Smart Selling team are in the process of road testing the application over the Christmas break so we’ll post back here once we’ve got some feedback to share.

The Role of Social Media in a B2B Sales World

I noticed a really interesting post over on SalesBlogcast – Doyle Slayton’s sales blog. The post introduced a question from a member about the emergence of blogs and social media for sales professionals.

I posted a response as this is a really interesting issue and one that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time researching and trying to get my head around. So much so that as I’m now in the US for 2 weeks, I’ve made contact with a number of thought leaders in this space to try and get a better feel for this and what we should all be doing.

Personally I’m very excited about this direction and I’ve been talking to our customers and prospects about this trying to get it onto their radar (with some success). I love researching my prospects and customers and using this information to give myself an edge – I guess that’s come from years and years of competing against much larger foes (like Oracle and SAP) – timely relevant knowledge was our competitive advantage and we’d spend hours looking for facts and building this information into knowledge. What we’re seeing now is the power of this technology to do that for us. It’s like an application of neural network technology in a way that sifts and organises information en masse.

Interestingly, I feel we’re in phase 2 of this revolution. The first phase started when Google really got going. Google started the information overload Tsunami and has now swamped us all. What we’re seeing now with solutions like Avitage, MindTouch (their Dekki for CRM is quite amazing), Mzinga, Brainshark. These guys and a few others are really pioneering the business oriented application of Web 2.0

Where it then gets exciting is how we can use these new information organisation type services with the next generation of CRM/Sales Automation that we’re now seeing – the guys at InvisibleCRM, and SugarCRM (the open source leader) are starting to apply this technology in new ways so that it’s easier to evolve the role of the sales person. I’ll come back and create another post about the discussions I’ve had with SugarCRM around mobile CRM as this is a really interesting space now that we’ve FINALLY got some useful devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry Bold, HTC, as well as some of the emerging/proposed devices from Google and Sony Erikson.

The question is how quickly will we evolve as sales professionals so that we take advantage of these new generation tools?

How do we time manage ourselves when in most cases the culture is still one of ‘hit the number’ above all else?

Are these tools going to deliver the process improvements required so that we can do more with less and more?

Will these tools actually detract from core skills development in new sales people? Are we automating too much? Relying too much on non-personal information?

I’ve been reading a really interesting book that’s related to this topic – Groundswell – Winning in a world transformed by social technologies and the authors seem to address some of these points with their notion that social media is another form of listening (the core skill of any good salesperson).

The question I can’t answer is how the revolution will deal with this…