CRM 2009

[#1]

Paul Greenberg has a terrific article on ZDNet this morning: CRM 2009 - Companies to Watch For - Second Verse, Different Than the First.  Paul has long been waving the "social CRM" banner, and his summary of where CRM vendors stand -- and where they are going -- in 2009 pays close attention to the integration of social elements into the CRM suite.  

There aren't good numbers out there on this, but I'd venture to say that Lithium has the largest base of CRM-integrated communities of any vendor.  While people speculate on when this trend will happen, we've been delivering integrated solutions with Right Now Technologies for more than two years.   So it's nice to see Paul give us a shout-out for all this good work:

They have been long established as the go-to guys for on demand customer service for quite some time. In fact, two months ago, Gartner positioned them as leaders in the E-Services Magic Quadrant, rightfully so. Unlike many of their on demand brethren, with perhaps the exception of Aplicor, they've penetrated the public sector deeply, an incredibly smart move.  They've spent a good deal of time trying to position themselves and direct and redirect strategy. Sometimes too much and with odd glitches. For example, they bought the highly functional SalesNet in 2006 for $9 million (see this Phil Wainewright ZDNET 2006 entry for some solid analysis of the deal) and then tried to call it something that "improved the customer experience." Not one of their better moves. Yet, they've moved to keep a focus, one better directed on customer experience as a core requirement of customer service. More recently, they've wisely begun to integrate some social CRM thinking and a bit of the functionality into their offering. For example, they have a tight partnership with Lithium since 2006 - which gives them the capability to provide threaded discussions inside of company-produced forums and communities.

It's a great piece to read if you follow CRM trends like we do.

I can't neglect to mention one other thing about Paul's article -- his attention to Sage Software, a Lithium customer.  Paul likes what Sage is doing these days, and gives credit to Sage CM General Manager Dave van Toor, who he describes rightfully as an innovator and visionary.  Not mentioned in Paul's piece is the fact that Dave has been a strong advocate for community at Sage, through his blog and through many channels both internal and external to Sage.  Good luck to Dave in his new responsibilities for North American operations of SalesLogix and SageCRM.

Message Edited by JoeC on 12-16-2008 09:42 AM