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Racketeering

Jeff Atwood’s *ambivalent* Christmas experience shows a market that is ready for disruption. Jeff got a couple of Lenovo servers only to realize the package did not contain drive mounting brackets, meaning he could not use ANY hard drives but only those by Lenovo – at an outrageous markup, that is.

I am surprised that even today business models based on racketeering work – in the commodity industry such as PC servers. It’s an industry where all the know-how and standards are public knowledge. Is it really possible NOT to be able to get those mounting brackets off eBay, $5 shipped?

Odd.

December 26, 2008 | Filed Under Asides & Off-topic, CRM | Comments Off 

How to start with CRM

When is a good time for a company to start thinking about CRM?

There’s a thread at The Business of Software forums about CRM for μISV. An entrepreneur asked about CRM that integrates with MS Outlook; from what I’ve read there, a desktop quasi-CRM such as Act! could help him out nicely.

It prompted me to think about a) at what point should a business owner start with CRM, and b) how to build the CRM infrastructure for your small business that will grow with you.

And, c) whether it makes sense to think about it this way at all.

Upstarts and new businesses don’t have to traverse the same warped path that their predecessors have. They are starting out in the customer ecosystem; they can build their organization and processes around the customer from the get go. And if they do, will they still have to talk about CRM? I think not.

What organizations used to do was:

  1. Find a market
  2. Develop a product
  3. Sell

Companies are still moving around this axis but instead of defining just the “market”, they can drill down to micro-segments and individuals easily; using e-mail, social media, etc. Being able to interact at the individual customer level is natural for them.

Hence I am becoming convinced that for *new* businesses, CRM could actually do more harm than good. Instead of adding a customer management app into their mix, they should be building their whole infrastructure around their customers and conversations they have.

In other words, we won’t need the CRM acronym once CRM has become a defining architectural component of an organization.

December 15, 2008 | Filed Under CRM | Comments Off 

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