LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 

‘Social CRM’ changing how processes are developed


By David Worthington
Email    print   
January 7, 2010 —  (Page 1 of 2)
Social media has become the new soapbox, and public conversations about companies and products have changed how customer relationship management systems and business processes should be developed, according to a Forrester Research report published on Tuesday.

The report, entitled "Social CRM Goes Mainstream," suggests that CRM solutions should now include technologies that support business processes for acquiring, retaining, targeting, understanding and collaborating socially with customers. Business process professionals should design their future plans around that vision, it says.

Forrester believes that the social Web is forcing business process professionals to expand their thinking beyond the traditional two-way channel of communication between enterprise and customers to also include the interactions that customers have among themselves.

"CRM is evolving from its traditional focus on optimizing customer-facing transactional processes to include the strategies and technologies to develop collaborative and social connections with customers, suppliers, and even competitors," it states.

Forrester vice president and principal analyst William Band and senior analyst Natalie Petouhoff contributed to the report.

The social trend has not gone unnoticed by CRM solution makers, both new and old.

New York-based startup Bantam Live is building its CRM platform around social CRM, and Salesforce has introduced a new capability called Chatter to its subscribers.

Social CRM was initially adopted by large organizations such as Comcast and Zappos on the customer support side, but also gives businesses the ability to listen and respond to the voice of the customer, said Bantam CEO John Rourke. That ability has shifted social CRM back to where CRM started: sales and marketing, he said.

The Twitter API made it possible for wide adoption of social CRM, and other social networks are copying its API functions to enable applications to pull in information, said Bantam CTO Henry Poydar.

Bantam uses its service to draw information from Twitter to discover new customer prospects, Rourke said. "We search for 'Salesforce,' and reach out to people, asking, 'Have you considered us?' "

Conversations are imported into a business process to create tasks for a sales team member to follow up with individuals, Poydar said. The company intends to introduce an API in Q2, and it will be integrating new project management capabilities into its platform.


Related Search Term(s): Bantam, CRM, Salesforce

Pages 1 2 


Share this link: http://sdt.bz/34040
 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development
Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists
Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter



Comments


01/08/2010 01:55:31 AM EST

Just like with Traditional CRM, Social CRM is about a lot more than just the technology or software. The very underpinnings of society and business are changing because of the rapid growth of social tools. In short, Social CRM is the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation. For more thoughts on Social CRM, visit http://freecrmstrategies.wordpress.com

United StatesBrian Vellmure


Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
Loading




close
NEXT ARTICLE
Google, Salesforce cozy up on cloud services
Force.com now works with Google App Engine thanks to a newly released Python library. App Engine applications can now read and write to data from Force.com, and the library allows access to Salesforce services through native calls to Salesforce's APIs Read More...
 
 
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?


 
blogs tab
Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST

 
Events calendar tab
Cloud Connect
2/13/2012 to 2/16/2012
Santa Clara
TechWeb

SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conf.
2/26/2012 to 2/29/2012
San Francisco
BZ Media

RSA Conf.
2/27/2012 to 3/2/2012
San Francisco
RSA

IBM Pulse Conf.
3/4/2012 to 3/7/2012
Las Vegas
IBM Tivoli

Game Developer Conf.
3/5/2012 to 3/9/2012
San Francisco
TechWeb