Today's shopping experience at my local Safeway inspired--nay, compelled--me to write a post over at The Heretech about revolutionary changes in the use of CRM. If there is a CRM revolution that's going to happen, or already is happening, how far is it likely to go?
The short version of the post: Don't look to Maximilian Robespierre for answers. (And not just because he's dead.)
Yesterday, two of my research interests, Agile and CRM, intersected during a briefing. The demo, which I'll describe in a moment, was a great illustration of one of my pet theories: integration will be the killer feature for software in general for the next several years. CRM in particular needs these benefits of integration.
Rally Software has a nice integration between their tools, designed to support Agile development teams, and the Salesforce CRM system. Salesforce users can record enhancement requests and product feedback that are fed automatically into the requirements component of Rally's suite of tools. Product managers then can refine this information (has anyone asked for this feature before? how does it fit into a user story? how important is it?) and add it to the backlog. The product roadmap, which now includes requests that start in the CRM system, can also have some visibility within Salesforce.
Very slick, particularly in how this example shows the value of integrating CRM with other things. As of today, CRM has a lot of untapped potential. As we discovered in the "product management tools" study earlier this year, the CRM system ranks at the bottom of requirements sources.
That just seems wrong. Salespeople, who spend their days talking to customers about their needs, should be a prime source of information for product managers. In theory, the CRM system should contain at least some information about these needs. But why not be more ambitious? CRM data should help answer many other important questions for the product group: Which features helped make sales? What missing functionality is the cause of losses to competitors? What are the most common configurations? And I'm sure you can think of 10 or 12 other questions you'd like to pose.
There's no replacement for the kind of insight you get from direct conversations with customers. At the same time, there's no substitute for the level of confidence you can only get from more aggregate data. Even if you're not using Agile methods, you'd rather hear about new market trends right away, as they make themselves felt through the customer conversations stored in the CRM system, instead of waiting for the yearly customer advisory board meeting. (Or, for that matter, hearing about them much later through the other side of CRM, the support desk.)
It'll take some further research to find out how effectively people use these sorts of bridges between CRM and the product team. In theory, at least, salespeople have more incentive to record customer requests, if they feel as though someone is listening. Product managers get more aggregate data on which to base product decisions. And CRM becomes more central to how the company operates.
I don't think I've ever worked for a software company that didn't aspire to be a platform. Of course, the meaning of platform isn't always the same. For some, the word means infrastructure on which you build applications. For others, it connotes a category of data that is central to your business. And, of course, there are other variants.
Being a platform, in either meaning of the word, takes a lot of smarts, sweat, and patience. You don't become a platform overnight. It's not merely a matter of positioning--as if something that's presumably as solid as a platform could somehow be positioned in the first place. (Of course, we're dealing with companies that are, by and large, headquartered in California, so perhaps the concept of a foundation that shifts to and fro isn't all that strange.)
The trajectory of Salesforce is interesting, as it traverses both definitions of platform. As the infrastructure on which you build applications, the Force.com platform provides a set of APIs, tools, and services. Both this platform and the actual infrastructure behind it (databases, application servers, etc.) just happen to reside in the clouds.
The other track on which Salesforce moves is the CRM application path. While they continue to enhance their name-brand CRM system, Salesforce also offers a wide variety of complementary capabilities, such as knowledge management and human capital management, through their AppExchange. Regardless of how many different applications one runs against the same Salesforce repository, the information about customers and partners in that repository can be, in its own way, a platform. If several important applications all point to the same data, the label platform is certainly merited.
The story of the Salesforce platform--both Force.com and customer data--may not be finished, but the basic strategy makes a great deal of sense: the chances of becoming a successful platform increase as you move along more than one track. The repository and development aspects of the platform help each other. If you have data you care about, you'll build applications around it. If the people building applications like the platform, they'll figure out how to move data into that environment.
This strategy is the platform technology equivalent of the old adage, "Trust in God, but keep your powder dry." Build an innovative platform for application development, but maintain a healthy flow of data into this environment.
Recently published: "Beyond Innovation: Adding Adoption To Your Business Objectives."
This document started as a survey of technology industry professionals, asking them what they thought set this part of the economy apart from other verticals. The title of the piece reflects the conclusion, from taking a close look at the survey results. The punchline is, focusing on adoption can provide a powerful competitive advantage.
Coming soon: "Inquiry Insights: CRM Customers Focus On Business Processes, Not Technologies."
This document will be my inaugural piece about CRM. What does it have to do with product management? Quite a lot, both in how CRM does and does not factor into the sources of information for PMs. In this case, we looked at the questions we receive from customers implementing CRM systems. Obviously, these questions say a lot about the real needs of CRM customers.
I'll add one more observation about the connection between CRM and product management. When our PM group at one technology company developed a custom requirements application, one of the executives asked, "Why are you developing a CRM system, if we already have one?" Well, er, sir, it goes something like this...
