We Have Moved to the Concursive Blog!

You will be redirected shortly or access
concursive.blogspot.com
www.concursive.com

Getting and Growing Customers during the Holiday Shopping Frenzy

When it came to holiday shopping this year I had only two questions: “is it possible to avoid real stores and do it all online this year?” and “where the heck can I find a Nintendo Wii?”. As promos for “Black Friday” begin showing up as early as October and an abundance of stories emerge in the papers highlighting the joys of holiday shopping - excruciating lines and fights with fellow shoppers over merchandise, it is clear to many that the holiday shopping experience can be a burden.

CRM Buyer recently ran an article “Tips for Surviving the Holiday Shopping Experience” outlining what consumers are looking for to get the most out of a shopping experience. These tips aim to help both consumers and the companies out there - looking for ways to improve time spent in stores.

This article is predicated on the notion that we need help to survive out there in the consumer frenzy. And that’s just it: consumers are now expecting a negative experience. While consumers see this time as a nightmare, I see holiday shopping as a chance for retailers to get and grow their customer base.

The holidays present an opportunity for companies to impress their customers; show them they are different, friendly, helpful, and that they standout from the pack. Surprise your consumers who are expecting to be overwhelmed this holiday season by offering them exceptional customer service and they will be your customers for life.

Making a positive impression on your consumers this holiday season will help build brand loyalty, gain your company a few customer champions, and turn a little extra effort now into better relationships in 2008.

Red Hat's blessing of Sun Java: No longer any excuse for open source developers not to use Java

Red Hat's recently announced support of the Sun OpenJDK project is a huge win for both the open source and Java developer communities. In the past, Sun's licensing practices kept it from being fully embraced by the open source community. To date, Sun's Java—which is obviously the gold standard—has never been included in a Linux distribution. As a result, open source developers in the past may well have adopted other languages and architectures because of this. As of today, Java comes fully into the open source mainstream. Given its technical superiority including a great security architecture and unrivaled suitability for enterprise-class applications, there is no longer any excuse for open source developers not to choose Java as their platform of choice. I suspect we will see a flood of new open source applications developed on Java. At Centric CRM, we fully embraced Java many years ago and have never regretted our choice. Today's announcement by Sun and Red Hat only increases our commitment to both the open source and Java-based paths that we are on.

Google's Android: Open Source Phones and CRM

Google’s recent announcement of Android, the open source development platform for mobile devices, is a fascinating new move in mobile software and as I see it, an important step in the ongoing evolution of next generation CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Take a look at Mobile Opportunity’s post which breaks down the details of Android.

From a technical standpoint, I think it makes a lot of sense that Android’s fundamental platform architecture is Linux and Java, with a SQL database, because of its advantages with security, cross-platform portability, and general robustness. From a business standpoint, I’m thrilled that Google chose this platform because it is precisely the same architecture that we used to build Centric CRM. With all the advantages of the Java platform, there’s no question why we--and Google--chose it as the basis for enterprise-level applications.

To kick off Android, Google is hosting a competition for mobile developers with a $10M prize for the best application built this winter. And while it will likely be a glitzy consumer application that wins, I think the most valuable use of the platform will be to enable the creation of true enterprise class business applications that can be used on a wide variety of devices by business people on the go.

An extended enterprise needs a CRM that can adapt to its diverse needs independent of location. Now with the opportunity Android provides, and other advances in the mobile enterprise space, CRM can extend this advantage to mobile devices optimizing productivity for anyone in the company in any location.

Now I’m not officially stating that Centric will be going after the $10M prize… but let’s just say that the opportunity that Android created has really generated some buzz from our development teams. With the convenience and portability of the Java platform and the new demands of mobile business people, Android could easily be the next big step for CRM software.

The Benefits of Beta Software

Here at Centric we have several rules of thumb. One of my favorites is never cast your beta net too wide, which seems to be happening in the CRM market recently.

The beta testing system is about bringing a select number of users into the vendor's fold in order to get a close communication between user and the developers. This not only helps the vendor with the trickier aspects of fine-tuning, it also ensures that end users are crystal clear on what they are using at the stage it is at. The final version might be right round the corner, but what if the company responsible for the beta keeps moving the corner? Without complete insider knowledge, customers simply can’t predict what will and won’t break when the final code ships.

Of course from the platform vendor’s point of view there are obvious advantages to rolling out a beta to as many people as possible. Microsoft in particular has long enlisted the help of interested enthusiasts and experts to help it iron out the inevitable bugs in its software. Parading betas in public can also prove to be a useful marketing ploy in terms of raising the profile of both the company and its products.

It’s not just vendors who benefit from betas. As users we all like access to the latest and greatest tools (so late and great they are still in beta). If you can deal with the pain that goes with them (now and in the future) it sometimes makes sense to experiment with beta products – you might even use them for some prototyping work. But to start working on mission-critical projects using a beta version as your preferred platform makes no sense.

Beta software, by its very definition, is unfinished software. It’s a product in the pipeline and inevitably contains bugs and glitches to be identifed and resolved. What’s more, test driving a beta version of a Microsoft Office word processor is one thing; installing a beta version of a complete CRM platform is quite another.

At Centric, we believe the whole point of coming up with a developer beta is to identify potential pitfalls, problems and challenges and resolve them before we release our products to the broader marketplace. As such, betas are very much an internal matter. What we might lose in short term publicity we will more than make up for in terms of long-term respect from our customers.

The Value of Transparency

Open source software can justifiably claim to have spawned one of the most vibrant and intelligent communities in existence. The main tenet of the open source community—and this should go without saying—is openness, running from the decisions made by the higher echelons of management at open source software companies down to the very bedrock of the code itself. This tenet has turned the traditional marketing cycle on its head.

As more companies embrace an open culture, there are fewer rumors about potential deals, releases and products, and this positively affects the quality of products. This is not to say that rumor mongering no longer exists: gossip and speculation accompany all healthy communities—it comes with the territory. There is, however, more knowledge of what is happening internally within each company in the open source space, than in other sectors. Dana Blankenhorn recently pointed out in a blog posting:

“What passes for rumor is speculation over the importance of things which have, in fact, happened. Even among proprietary vendors.”

In essence, because users are already familiar with the products under speculation, they are only left with guessing future impact. In short, open source users have an inherent understanding of their role in shaping the software and direction of a vendor.

This knowledge has several implications:
1.) Companies embody what users want. As the community voices its thoughts and concerns in real-time, the enhanced feedback leads to products that users want.
2.) Faster spread of information. In today’s collaborative Web 2.0 environment, information travels at breakneck speed throughout the software world. As products evolve, users talk about them more and more and become increasingly involved in their actual development. The more ownership users have of products, the greater they want to utilize them.
3.) More trust. Trust is a premium in the business world. If a potential user is able to read the comments of a community on open forums, and view the product’s progress, they will be able to see at first hand how reputable the product is, and the degree to which it is serviced. By experiencing an open source company delivering on its promises at first hand, a potential user is more likely to trust, and therefore want to utilize, the company’s software.

Matt Asay, in his “10 things the world can learn from open source” makes a great point on the subject of transparency and trust:

Transparency breeds trust, and trust breeds revenue. Open source teaches us to reveal the supposed crown jewels—source code—but it also teaches open-source companies to provide open roadmaps, user forums, etc. The more transparent a company, the less time that is wasted on helping customers to justify a purchase decision. Give them maximum information and then sell to them on their terms, when they're ready to buy. In the open-source world this translates into dramatically shorter sales cycles because by the time a customer knocks on your door, they're already sold.

To sum up, it is a never-ending cycle of openness breeding beneficial two-way relationships that bring more users into the fold. As openness grows, so do communication, trust and the user base. As more users get involved, they bring with them a more detailed and wider range of input, thereby ensuring continued innovation.

Oregon and on and on

The waves from this week's OSCON in Portland, Oregon, are still rippling through the open source community. As you would expect from an O'Reilly event, there was plenty of debate at the conference, not least about 'badgeware' licenses.

Ross Mayfield, the CEO of SocialText, announced at OSCON that the OSI had approved SocialText's attribution-style license. This so-called 'badgeware' license is called the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) and is based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with some significant modifications in the areas of developer attribution and delivery of the software as a service on a network.

I think this announcement will spark two stampedes: first, a number of vendors will rush to adopt SocialText's license and thereby gain OSI approval. But there will be plenty fleeing in the other direction too. I expect to see some OSI members dissociate themselves from the OSI, which has historically expressed a strong defense of its own strict definition of open source and a strong distaste for 'badgeware' licenses.

At Centric CRM, we're following nobody. We won't join the rush to the CPAL. Our recent announcement of new products, based on licenses which satisfy the needs of our users and communities, demonstrates we are very much open to different licensing approaches—some certified by the OSI, some not—that serve the interests of our customers and our business.

Software must be built in whatever way suits the users and companies that are going to build their businesses on it. It remains the responsibility of vendors to be clear about their intentions. But, as the debate around badgeware shows, there's no such thing as a 'one size fits all' license for software. You can't please all the people all the time. The important thing is to focus on the customer.