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CRM 2.0 – dead by natural causes?

What should we expect from the mashup of CRM and social, user-driven tools?

Although I’ve been a promoter of “CRM 2.0″ myself, I am not surprised by Paul Greenberg’s analysis of the state of affairs. The money quote:

Have the vendors really kept up with the strategy in their desire to provide CRM 2.0 applications? Is this even something they need to do? [...] When marketing is removed and a cold hard look is taken at the applications out there with a view from the CRM 2.0 precipice, the answer is that as of now, there is very little that can be called true CRM 2.0.” [taken out of context, rather ruthlessly]

But that’s only true as long as we’re talking an integrated, full lifecycle solution that would perform all the operational, analytical, and also social functions.

Instead, there is:

  • the traditional CRM 1.0 toolkit, now with “social” flavor. Don’t let that mislead you; as Paul writes: “Oracle Sales Prospector, Sales Library etc. [...] are designed for sales person collaboration (and other appropriate parties) so that the changes of sales success are increased by whatever multiples they can be. But they are not built around external customer engagement but, instead a model for employees and perhaps partners.
  • the vast CRM 2.0 userland of ad-hoc, beta-quality, loosely coupled tools that customers people are using to communicate and trade both among themselves and with vendors: blogs, Twitter, uservoice, etc.

Will and should those two be integrated more closely?

I thought so. I don’t anymore: vendors’ interests are dramatically different from those of the (small ‘p’) people, and only companies are buying Oracle, anyway. And companies are going to “open up” to those tool that people use, one way or another. As Paul writes:

It doesn’t matter if the fully integrated suite of CRM 2.0 products has been produced by a vendor somewhere now, somehow. Not as long as the capacity to combine traditional CRM with social tools exists in a less than onerous way. Which it does.

This conclusion is well aligned with the direction that VRM gang took: forget companies for a while, and build the infrastructure that people can use to connect to companies in their preferred way.

Companies will follow. Eventually.

March 6, 2009 | Filed Under CRM, Links and Quotes 

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3 Responses to “CRM 2.0 – dead by natural causes?”

  1. tomaskohl on March 6th, 2009

    Just posted: Has CRM 2.0 died by natural causes? http://tomaskohl.com/blog/2009/03/06/crm-20-dead-by-natural-causes Owing @pgreenbe big time

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  2. 4CRM on March 6th, 2009

    CRM 2.0 – dead by natural causes? | Tomas Kohl: What should we expect from the mashup of CRM and social, user-dr.. http://tinyurl.com/7qrvdq

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  3. scorpfromhell on March 8th, 2009

    Reading “CRM 2.0 – dead by natural causes?” – http://is.gd/mlET

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

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