crm watch list 2010

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CRM Watchlist 2010To engage that new breed of customer - the social customer -vendors of enterprise and small business software aretransforming the way they build and deliver their goods.Here are the companies worth your attention.

February 2010


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CRM Watchlist 2010

B Pal Greenberg

Every now and then, something truly revolutionary

impacts the business world. In the last 7 or 8 years,

we experienced a transformation in the way that wecommunicate.

There were business ramications of this revolution,

although business by no means led the revolution.

Business faced a new kind of customer a social

customer. This new breed of customer set a much

higher bar for business. The social customer expected

businesses to recognize that customer trust had shifted

from those businesses to peers, and the tools to

communicate with those peers made it inexpensive, simple

and fast to communicate their opinions about those same

businesses to their peers. And their peers listened.

Companies in the vendor world of enterprise software,

particularly CRM, realized that the way they constructed

and delivered their software had to change to meet the

business requirements for engaging these transformed

customers. This wasnt an easy transition because

most of the traditional CRM software was operational

and transaction-based. The new software called for

customer engagement and capturing the interactions

of those customers in addition to the operational and

transactional. Companies also realized that the software

needed to provide features and tools that would allow

this social customer to sculpt their own experience of the

companies with whom they chose to interact.

These watchlists look at the vendors in the enterprise

software and social software worlds that are making that

attempt the attempt to evolve the kinds of software that

both satisfy business internal requirements and extend

the channels to intersect with customers. Some of these

vendors are doing great at it, some not so great. After

all, these are watchlists, not love letters. But all of these

companies are worth your attention.

Take a look, and let me know what you think. 2010 is a

big year for all business. Some of these companies may

even be able to help you.

Part I: Te Big 4

Selection for Part I was simple: The universally recognized

Four Big Bad Boys of CRM are, in no particular order,

Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and salesforce.com.

SAP

2010 is going to be an interesting

year for SAP. As I noted in my SAP

Business Inuencers Conference analysis, if they are

going to begin to regain some of the market, especially in

the on demand and cloud worlds (which they claim a total

commitment to), they are going to have to clarify their

overall message. Regain might be the wrong word here -

gain is more appropriate. They not only must decide what

they are going to be to the market, but how they are going

to approach their own product/services portfolio. I have

some denite differences with the efcacy of the message

they seem to be presenting, which you can read in my

previous analysis.

But there is much more here than their message. Ive seen

a release of SAP CRM 7.0 and it is a clear improvement

over their rst real CRM market killer product -- which was

SAP CRM 2007. SAP CRM 7.0 is a very, very good app

with a couple of aws, most notably what I think was (atleast when I saw it) badly executed territory management

functionality. However, the overall CRM 7.0 app is not

only strong in traditional sales and customer service func-

tionality (I didnt see the marketing pieces) but also has

integrated social channels such as Twitter and Facebook

and allows for other channels through customization that

is not hard to do. They also have, gasp of all gasps, a very
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attractive, user friendly, even-better-than-the-Google-

white-interface-of-SAP-CRM-2007, interface that allows

for personalization of the workspace through individualized

widget selection and through arrangement of what you

want to see and view including feeds and dashboards, or,

say, current opportunities that need to be acted on.

But, this is about the company in 2010, not the product.

Were going to be reviewing the product among many

others in 2010.

Okay, onward and upward.

One area that I (and others) think has served SAP very

well and will continue to be a market mover for them is

their acquisition of Business Objects. From a CRM stand-

point, there are several products of importance that comefrom Business Objects. First is their integration of Twitter

with Business Insight, which provides a strong sentiment

analysis/text analysis of meaningful Twitter streams and

attaches business rules and workow so that alerts and

routing at the enterprise level based on the Twitter senti-

ment can be done. Second is the use of Business Objects

Explorer, which theyve made the analytics engine as-

sociated with their in memory model computing. It does

lightning-fast, near-real or real-time calculations (we saw275 million data rows gured out in less than a second)

and an actually accomplished on demand product with

Business Objects Business Intelligence on Demand.

But for them to regain ground that I think they lost in the

CRM world in 2009, they need to gure out who they are

fast and make a far better case for their commitment to

the cloud and on demand than they have to date. While

not strictly a CRM-related effort, their release of Business

By Design this year will be critical to their reinvention.

Theyre already at version 2.5, which they call a feature

pack not a release. (I guess because it hasnt been

released. Duh.) It seems to be fully functional; yet pinning

them to an actual release date is a bit of a chore. They

have a theoretical 100 customers now, which places them

well behind the on-demand curve - at a distance they may

never catch up if they dont get down and dirty and take

a calculated shot at releasing this elusive product. If they

dont, they will suffer cross-enterprise, including CRM,

because of their publicly stated commitment to SaaS and

the cloud - at least as a hybrid (also Oracles strategy).

And, honestly, I dont know that they will release it, which,

at this point, puts them in the enough but too late and

Im still a skeptic category.

On the CRM side, to their credit, they are following some

of the trends they need to. They have a major commit-

ment to mobile. They have a REST API that smacks

of mobile technology love. They have an alliance with

Sybase and the Sybase iAnywhere platform, which gives

them the ability to translate content on the mobile y

regardless of operating system. They have a partnership

with Syclos that gives them a highly congurable eld ser-

vice mobile app that focuses on asset & service manage-

ment. They have their BlackBerry SFA app, which was

developed by RIM in breakthrough collaboration by SAP

and released in May 2009, about a year after the initial

announcement. In this domain, nothing could be clearer

regarding their commitment - and its CRM impact.

2010 for SAP -- at least when it comes to CRM -- is a

watershed year. They have three things theyre going to

have to do to jump forward. First, the company has to

clarify who they are and commit to that vision and mission.

Second, they need a MUCH better marketing and mes-

saging effort around CRM 7.0 despite their apocryphal

someday three letter acronyms will disappear thrust

taken at the SAP Business Inuencers Summit. (Yeah,

thatll happen soon.) This part of their work has been

muddied at best, poorly managed at worst. But CRM 7.0

needs to have top-of-the-class visibility, since it could be

a agship for SAP. Third, they need to release Business

By Design, even without a CRM component, so that

their commitment to SaaS at least is seen as something

serious, because it isnt easy to see at this point. For our

purposes, a CRM 7.0 campaign and release is something

that makes or breaks their position in the CRM industry

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and with customers, in 2010. Its a big year for these guys.

They lost ground in 2009 and need to make it up in 2010.

ORACLE

The last year has

been game changing for Oracle when it comes to Social

CRM. While they initiated their effort in 2008, what they

called Social CRM then was really more Enterprise 2.0

and sales optimization functionality with their announce-

ment of Sales Prospector, Sales Library and Sales Cam-

paign. The only thing they did that approximated actual

Social CRM - meaning it provided a pipe for customer

engagement - was the mobile loyalty stuff they did with

LOreal, which allowed customers to provide and get

user-generated content via comments, ratings, rankings

etc on the consumer Internet. But in 2009, their road map

and releases were spot on when it comes to the pulse of

the public and business -- and were more along what we

expect Social CRM technology to be. During OpenWorld

2009, they announced a number of key applications,

including one from left eld that I personally would never

have seen coming. They announced a toolkit that worked

with Siebel customer data (transactional, one must pre-

sume) that seemed to be one of the rst realized applica-

tions using social characteristics - in this case Connect

to someone like me access for customers using Siebel

data. They arent the only company using transactional

data to gure out and score who is like me. (SAS in

their Customer Intelligence analytics is entirely capable

of doing that.) But the fact that they are taking the social

customers seriously throughout their entire CRM organi-

zation is actually refreshing.

What makes Oracle a no longer so surprising contender

for leadership in the Social CRM realm is that their CRM

organization is committed to innovation -- and is commit-

ted to it from thought leadership (mindshare) to product

development and marketing (market share). Is that a

company-wide trait? Not to my knowledge; but their CRM

team sure gets it.

Then the cherry? CRM is Oracles most successful

revenue producer in 2009. Not too shabby.

What are the pitfalls? Well, there are a couple that can make

Oracle someone less than like me. First, they have to

actually release all these things they are showing and not do

what the big boys often do, which is endless beta cycles.

Put it on an accelerator program if need be and get it out,

and iterate, iterate, iterate with the customers. Let the cus-

tomers point out the production aws. This is an area where

SAP does very well and Oracle not as well. I get what their

corporate imperatives are, and I understand we dont live in

a pure world. But there does come a time when the custom-

ers need to know youre real, and the social customer is that

much more demanding than they were ve or six years ago.

Releasing these products and not just endless roadmaps

would go a long way to slaking that social customer thirst.

Second, align the cloud messaging coming from Larry El-

lison with what the benets of the cloud to Oracle actually

are. His mockery, while ha-ha funny, as you can see from

the Churchill Club video, isnt appropriate if Oracle wants

to be successful in 2010. Like every company with deep

on-premise commitments, no one is going to fault Oracle

for a hybrid model. SAP has one too. Microsoft sort of

has one. As Ray Wang, one of the most respected and

well liked analysts in the enterprise world, recently said

on a video interview with Robert Scoble and his Altimeter

Group partner, Jeremiah Owyang, on premise informa-

tion, thats not going to go away. But all the edges, best of

breed solutions...what you can do to move infrastructure

costs, thats moving into the cloud. But Ellison needs to

realize that, regardless of his pronouncements, not only

is the cloud here to stay but it is of increasing interest to

many of his major customers. Im not speaking of the

CRM group here. They are down with that already.

In 2010, then, they have to deliver their roadmap and kick

up their efforts in the cloud to maintain a leading position

in CRM.

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SALESfORCE.COm

What can you say about

these guys? Theyve

understood from the get

go that consumer thinking

actually has been driv-

ing business for years. In

fact, as far back as 2002, Tien Tzuo (now Zuora CEO and

then CSO of salesforce.com) told me that. Their current

product iterations - their so-called 4 clouds -- Service

Cloud 2,Sales Cloud 2, Custom Cloud 2 and Chatter --

are indicators of that very approach, as is Marc Benioffs

announcement of that very premise on the stage of

Dreamforce 2009.

If you look at the social vendors -- the Radian6s of the

world, Jive, InsideView, etc. -- the rst CRM-related

company they integrate with -- their test runs so to speak

-- are all with salesforce.com. These arent insane deci-

sions. They are calculated for many reasons; the compat-

ible technical architecture is of course part of it, though

not all of it. Remember, Apex is a proprietary language.

But its also the compatible culture, the AppExchange, the

stage salesforce.com is willing to give selected partners,

and the aura and mystique that salesforce.com provides

them -- sex appeal is probably the best term. Integrating

with salesforce.com is hot. I mean, salesforce.com is one

of the Big 4 in everyones books, with about 1/30th the

revenues of any of the others. Their run rate is $1.3 billion

as of Dreamforce. Doesnt that tell you something?

Salesforce.com continues to do two things incredibly

well - innovate and market. While the marketing doesnt

actually reect the quality of the innovation, it does get

them noticed. However, its their innovation that shines.

Yet they are a very conservatively and well-run company.

They combine sound business practices with a culture

geared toward innovation (not a combination that lives

together that easily, usually) and probably the best mar-

keting CEO in the world -- Marc Benioff, named recently

San Francisco Executive of the Year by the San Francisco

Business Times. Salesforce.com also swept all three of

the major CRM Market Leader Awards given by CRM

Magazine this year.

Additionally, salesforce.com has made inroads into areas

that they arent traditionally in and will prove, I think,

to be quite formidable. Public Sector is among them.

Their Force.com platform -- especially Ideaforce and

Visualforce -- were used by the Obama Administration to

do several things, including the Obama Transition team

Citizen Brieng Book.

Yet, they have a few things they need to think about too

this year. Nobody gets away free.

First, a clarication: Salesforce.coms marketing claim is

that Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2, Custom Cloud 2 andChatter are clouds. They are not. They are cloud apps

or cloud services. Custom Cloud 2 can have the case

made that its Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a component

of the cloud. But the cloud per se includes a platform,

infrastructure, storage, SaaS delivery etc.

Now onwards. There are several things that are note-

worthy about Chatter, which is their highly trumpeted

Facebook and Twitter-driven social toolset released at

Dreamforce 2009.

1. It is a serious attempt by salesforce.com to

provide a complete social toolset. In conjunction

with its nicely enhanced sales product (Sales

Cloud 2), customer service product (Service

Cloud 2) and dramatically enhanced customi-

zation capabilities (Custom Cloud 2), Chatter

begins to establish them as a complete Social

CRM player minus a component or two -- no-

tably reasonable native marketing functionality

-- which puts them in the camp currently of onlyOracle, making the same attempt from the CRM

side of the house.

2. Chatters only original piece is the fact that you can

subscribe to data objects -- anyone in any system

you have -- even, say SAP or Microsoft. The

problem now is the lack of lters, which means

nearly an all-or-none subscription to all events

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around that data object -- which diminishes the

value. The rest of Chatter Ive seen elsewhere,

often better executed, but never as aggregated

as this - and whats there is good enough.

The reason I emphasize Chatter is that salesforce.com

seems to be banking a lot of 2010 on the success of this

particular piece of the platform - which I wouldnt. As a

standalone, it doesnt impress at all - at $50 a head, its

expensive and not worthy.As a layer inside of force.com

this becomes impressive and a signicant addition to the

platform worth examining.

How salesforce.com treats this in 2010 is going to be

important because the companys threats are not only

from SAP and Oracle and maybe Microsoft (from Azure)

but also from the dozens of social vendors who are

not only integrating with salesforce.com but claiming a

Social CRM mantle that they may or may not deserve.

The small guys nipping at their heels are good enough to

take some chunks out of the salesforce.com ankle this

year unless salesforce.com stays innovative, concentrat-

ing itself on new market places like public sector where

they can have a competitive impact, stay the course

when it comes to their 2002 plan of being the business

web as they called it then and, nally, position Chatter

where it belongs - inside force.com.

Or else salesforce.com might be calling someone else

their daddy. They are in a great, great position. They con-

trol their own destiny. But we see how that can succeed

for example in baseball (NY Yankees) or fail, cant we?

mICROSOfT

Every year I have to

start out by saying the same thing. Im a fan of Microsoft,but.... Sadly, my projection for 2010 is something of

the same.

I continue to be perplexed by these guys. On the one

hand they do great things that are signicant in the

Social CRM pantheon of things - such as integrate in the

public sector with Neighborhood America (now INgage

6

m Sort o metodolog& Togt Process

There is no universally recognized group beyond the

Big Four of Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and salesforce.

com. For Parts II and III of this Watchlist, I have whit-

tled down a list of CRM vendors and social vendors

numbering nearly 90 in all. I cut the total list down

to 40 plus. Then I had to distinguish the winners

- those worth watching in 2010 based on a number

of criteria, including, importantly, having enough

information on these companies to make a smart

decision. Other important criteria included the clarity

and consistency of their direction; good technology;

potential impact; customer and analyst thinking about

these companies (outside my own); and whether they

t the criteria for the companies (mostly technology)

to actually be considered among those in the sphere

of Social CRM - since none of them are pure Social

CRM vendors. Their claims to be Social CRM might

have gotten them attention, but several who claimed

it didnt make the cut for one reason or another. For

example, given the maturation of the industry, some

of the companies I included last year because I liked

them a lot -- like Zuora -- arent on this list -- though

I love them even more than last year. They just arent

Social CRM - now that the denition of Social CRM

is approaching something that can be called rigorous

without being called rigor mortis.

As a result, the remaining 40-something choices had

to be separated out. Thus, in Part II youll see the

CRM vendors who will continue to have (or are poised

to have) an impact in the CRM world in 2010 - whichlargely means Social CRM. Youll also see the CRM

vendors who are on a 3 or 6 months Revisit list.

The 3-month Revisit list are those companies that I

thought deserved recognition for the quality of their

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Networks) to create the Public Idea Bank, integrate

MSFT Surface with SAP apps, and give Ray Ozzie the

right resources and lab to do social experimenting.

Additionally, they are a remarkably innovative company

despite their public image of stolid and old, with amaz-

ing projects in the works like Bing Maps, Microsoft Vine,

Project Natal and, of course their strong Microsoft Azure

Cloud platform.

They have the best partner ecosystem in the world and

the most complete, smart partner program Ive ever seen

- bar none.

Their Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications are strong

when it comes to SFA, and customer service, and theyve

made them operationally effective. Theyre working on

mobile, though I still am not and never have been a

big fan of Windows Mobile as a platform. Theyve even

managed to show that Dynamics CRM is a surprisingly

effective and extensible platform, not just a product suite.

(Nikhil Hasija had me as a judge on a competition to watch

about 6-7 partners build an effective CRM app using Dy-

namics CRM in 5 days. They all did it, to varying degrees

of success. But they all did succeed.) Theyve priced

the Live versions of Dynamics CRM (which they stupidly

still insist on calling software plus services) at better than

competitive pricing against their opposition, by nearly

halving the price.

They have a great PR person inAmy Adamsak, from

Waggoner Edstrom who is smart and knows how to stay in

touch with the analysts, etc. she has to. No slouch, she.

YET - and there ALWAYS is a YET - they are just not that

innovative when it comes to CRM and they need to be

when all three of their chief rivals, whatever their aws,

are. They have no visible social presence beyond Neigh-

borhood America. No presence beyond that in all sectors

is a serious mistake.

Even when they are innovative, they dont pursue the op-

portunities that they have, For example, I sat on the Board

of Advisors with Surface - their multipoint touchscreen

display or with their Dynamics CRM Live. It could have

been a market maker. It wasnt though it still remains a

great piece of technology. This isnt to single out Surface,

just a aw in how Microsoft as a company pursues things.

Things die as quickly as they live as far as visibility goes.

Opportunities come, and the ball is dropped. The percep-

tion in the market of them is at best stolid and so so.

They even frustrate their fanboys - among them me.

MSFT is expectedto both be a market leader and an

innovator, and to be perceived as a market leader and an

innovator too, not a follower, But outside of public sector

constituent engagement, Im hard pressed to nd the in-

7

offering but one way or the other are just short of

ready for prime time - which, by the way, could also

simply be my lack of information about that. Then

there was the 6-month watchlist, which were those

that I thought still needed to sort their thinking out

to provide some real clarity to their place in the

universe, but had a lot of potential when it came to

Social CRM - though each of them has some issue

to deal with substantial enough to keep them off the

list. Each of these lists will be presented without

individual discussion but with a link to the compa-

nies involved.

So, heres how it all goes down. Part II is the

companies coming from the world of CRM who are

becoming watch-worthy in Social CRM in 2010. The

3 months and 6 months lists in Part II are those CRM

vendors who dont quite make it.

Part III will be the social software vendors -- which

could mean social media monitoring, community

platforms, or even social channels. But what they

all have in common is that they are moving toward

CRM integration in some way - not always in the

right way, but their noses are snifng the right winds.

There will be social vendor-specic 3- and 6-month

lists here, too.

(Continued from previous page)
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8/34

novation in CRM. Their product is ne, except for market-

ing which is actually starting to be weaker than the pack,

not in the pack since most CRM companies with sup-

posed suites are moving forward to strengthen the social

marketing at least, if not the more traditional campaign

management functionality.

Given that innovation is part of everyones 2010 mantra,

Microsoft needs to step up this year. Im tired of YET,

YET, YET when it comes to speaking of them.

Honestly, I dont care which of the myriad of companies

wins the competitive wars. I couldnt care less if SAP,

Oracle, Microsoft, salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow,

whoever, takes the lead. What I want is for all to succeed

because I want businesses to be protable and customers

to be happy and the social fabric to be right. There is room

for all the companies to get a sufcient piece of the pie to

do that. I dont want losers, I want winners. In the case of

Microsoft, that means innovation, up front, 2010. Step it

up so I dont have to say YET again in 2011.

Okay, thats it for this part. Next part are the next tier of

CRM focused companies. Then comes the social and

other companies moving into the Social CRM space.

Part II: Te Annal Locs

These are the other players of CRM. These are major

league unto themselves one way or the other and com-

panies that Im going to be paying close attention to in

2010 - for better or for worse. Luckily for all of us, this is a

substantially larger marketplace than just the Big Four. In

fact, Cognizant, SAS and Sage are bigger than salesforce.

com when it comes to both revenues and scope. So

maybe size doesnt matter after all.

Remember though, this is a Watch List, not a Love List.

NETSuITE

In the beginning of

2009, CEO Zach

Nelson told me that he intended to be more social in 2009.

Now, if you know Zach, this wasnt a personal statement; he

already is about as social a human being as it gets. The man

knows how to party.

So I watched for this throughout the year and he did what

he usually does, which is to strengthen an already strong

enterprise SaaS product. Some of the notable efforts were:

Strengthening of their Financial edition with

more cloud-ready capabilities.

A signicant set of additions to OpenAir, an al-

ready sterling professional services application,

acquired by NetSuite in 2008. To that end,

they acquired QuickArrow, a cloud based PSA

solution that they then began integrating into

OpenAir to extend the PSA product functional-

ity and the client list.

Acquiring a series of nancial certications in

England, Wales, and Germany among others.

In December, they automatically made their

customers VAT-Compliant (given changes in

the VAT requirements) while they slept. In

other words, they, as always, took care of

the operational and legal block-and-tackling

that has to be part of an enterprise softwares

functionality.

A solid set of improvements to an already internationally

strong feature rich set of applications and services.

But they also hinted at what was to come during the late

3Q and early 4Q with a few rather smart and sexy mobile

applications including bringing NetSuite ERP and OpenAir

to the iPhone and the Blackberry.

But this wasnt a year of pure karma love. They maintained

series of campaigns that I have always found misplaced -

their relentless direct attacks on SAP and a lesser series of

attacks on Sage and salesforce.com throughout the year.

I wish theyd stop these overt valueless efforts that either

were attacks on the specic rival they had, or took the

form of we took (ll in the blank) company away from (ll

in the blank) that theyve persisted in doing for years. My

take: Who really cares who they stole from whom? Their

products and services are good enough to stand on their

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9/34

own merits. I will say there was one silver lining in all of this.

At one point, they actually did approach the competition

the right way by announcing the availability of SuiteCloud

Connect, which would integrate NetSuite and salesforce.

com. Thats the way to go about being competitive. Fill in

the holes the competition has, play to your own strengths.

I have to admit, though, one of their more generalized cam-

paigns like this was really funny. They offered to give you a

cheaper price for NetSuite if in exchange you gave up your

on premise application - they called it Cash for Clunkers.

THAT was funny - and not aimed at any one company.

But that was the only negative in what was turning out to

be an otherwise solid year for NetSuite. But--I remembered

that Zach said he was going to get more social in 2009.

Damned if he didnt come through at the end of the year

- a Twitter feed integration and far more importantly an al-

liance with InsideView to cover both CRM and ERP intel-

ligence - NetSuites rst premier partnership with anyone.

This was a great move, given InsideViews preeminent

position in the social sales intelligence market. So Zach

came through wisely.

Whats there to watch in 2010? A very good company

with a childish marketing streak that has a lot to offer.

What makes this all good is that NetSuite continues to

build on a solid foundation and constantly improve the

basics when it comes to process and even compliance.

But they now are venturing at least with one or two toes in

the water into the social side of services and applications

- for them an important move. Once again, NetSuite is a

company to watch for 2010. And maybe even a company

to like a lot, if theyll just stop being attack dogs. I likethem anyway.

RIGhTNOw

RightNow has been on a roll the

last couple of years. Theyve seen

Social CRM and theyre acting on

it. Their 4Q release of the new version of the RightNow CX

customer experience platform reects what is so good

about this company. They actually create well thought out

and well-endowed services and applications that meet

what social customers are now demanding. For example,

who else has not just the feature du jour-- an embedded

Twitter stream -- but also a community building platform, a

web self-service capability, and tools for traditional agent

contact centers among a myriad of other capabilities. Their

commitment to the Cloud and Cloud connectors is strong;

though Cloud Monitor, their current agship when it comes

to the cloud and social media monitoring, is still a bit light

with only monitoring Twitter and YouTube feeds. However, it

does have embedded sentiment analysis, which is good on

the surface, though I dont know how deep it is since I have

yet to see it.

All in all, RightNow RX customer experience platform is

without a doubt one of the best, most comprehensive in

the entire software/services world. And it is well executed.

They are also a solid company with 800 employees,

approximately $150 million in revenue in 2009, and about

$100 million in the bank.

But even more than that, theyve done something whichVERY few companies have been willing to undertake.

Theyve transformed their culture and created an organiza-

tion based on that appropriate cultural transformation. To

see how it works, pay attention to their newest job position

- customer success managers. These are the people whose

only job is making the RightNow customers successful.

They dont have quotas; they dont have bogies. Their

performance is based on how successful their customers

are. I know few companies willing to invest in this level ofcustomer value creation. RightNow is right on target with

this effort - a key indicator to their cultural change.

But once again, there is a but -- and its around their

messaging. For reasons unbeknownst to me, at their

RightNow User Conference in October, they decided to

say that since CRM has failed, that CX wasnotCRM.

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10/34

They kept insisting that they didnt want to create a new

category but of course by being not CRM you are cre-

ating an are something which makes it a new category.

Plus, they used me to make their case on the same web

location that calls CX the big brother of CRM, in an ap-

parent contradiction. They claimed that Ive been quoted

as saying that 70 percent of CRM projects fail. I never

said that; Gartner did -- and I debunked this in my post on

their conference last October. But they havent changed

this page where they make this claim of what I said (and I

presume, other pages) so Ill reiterate it. Gartner said that

in 2002 with their 55%-70% CRM project failure claim.

Since then, everyone including them, pretty much recog-

nizes the success of CRM with 55-70% of the projects

succeeding as the industry matured and learned from its

mistakes - like most industries do. For god sakes, its a

$13 billion industry that grew during the recession and is

expected to grow more. I hope they remove that claim.

Though, if I were them, Id be more concerned about the

not CRM marketing - since most of their prospects and

clients arent going to not think of them that way - and

they are a CRM company.

Honestly, though, I still think the world of them. They are

doing the right thing at the right time. If theyd focus onthe value of RightNow CX and forget the not CRM stuff,

theyd be spot on for 2010. Lets see.

SAGE

This might be the company

that made the largest leap in

2009. Not only have they mastered the REST architecture

that is becoming increasingly important to Social CRM

and mobile devices, but they also have introduced social

features in useful ways (via their Saleslogix, SageCRM

and evenACT! 2010 products) so that you can see social

feeds for customers and accounts. This is on top of

utilizing that simplied architecture (think HTTP) that is so

smart when it comes to the Sage target market - small

and the lower end of mid-sized businesses.

What makes Sage a great story and something that I

expect to see develop further in 2010 is that this is a

company that was behind the eight-ball for years - always

a generation and a half back when it came to how they

architected their CRM applications. Plus their partner

channel would compete with itself. I actually saw a Sage

partner (twice happened - two separate partners) decide

to have SageCRM compete with SalesLogix CRM in a

meeting with potential buyers.

But theyve done wonders with both their CRM products

and their partner channels - not only adjusting to the con-

temporary customer trends and demands but also giving

the partners a forum to interact with them.

Theyve even done something that I never expected.

They made ACT! 2010 Premium a nearly SFA product -

it still lacks business rules/workows and strong pipeline

management. Also, using Lithium, they created an ACT!

community that had 8.9 million page views in its rst 12

months. Theyve made what was a stodgy product into an

exceptional one -- as they have done, to a lesser extent,

with SalesLogix and SageCRM.

But they havent stopped there. They have developed

solid mobile products for their CRM offerings, and theyare moving SalesLogix into the cloud, though that isnt

a nal project yet. They have folks like Ryan Zuk who

knows how to stay in touch with and retain the good will

of analysts and journalists, which -- as ridiculous as it

sounds - is something that IT companies have to do to

remain visible and competitive.

So we have a company that is necessarily contemporary

with technical and functional trends, on target with their tar-

get market, not getting greedy, and doing what they have

to do when it comes to visibility. All in all, solid as a rock.

This is where any nagging doubts remain. Rocks are

solid, which means they dont ow - and resting on laurels

is something that Sage/Best Software/SalesLogix (past

ownerships) has had a tendency to do in the past. There

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11/34

are some things they need to do and improvements they

need to make. Among them:

1. Keep innovating even though they are now on

target. I dont know what that means for them.

Could be more in the mobile realm; could be the

incorporation of more SMB useful social features

2. Keep eyes on the prize - dont get greedy as so

many other companies have and trick yourself

into believing that you have a different target

market.

3. Do a bit better - not a lot but a bit - when it

comes to thought leadership for the SMB CRM

market.

If Sage does these things, their ascent will continue. If

they dont, they might prove me wrong in 2010. That

would not be good.

COGNIzANT

This is one of my

most out-of-place

and yet most ap-

propriate picks for 2010. IBM is the only consulting rm I

have ever chosen for this category in the past and usually

thats because of Lotus Connections. IBM is very much

the enterprise solution provider. But Cognizant is here for

something that they are doing uniquely, doing interestingly

and doing well. That would be not just CRM consult-

ing, but also building a Social CRM practice that is not

absolutely identical to the CRM practice.

For those of you who dont know Cognizant - just think

a systems integrator/strategic consultancy with 66,000

consultants in total. Their CRM consultancy alone has

1,400+ associates worldwide and is not shy about draw-

ing on their Master Data Management (MDM), Customer

Data Integration (CDI) and Business Process Management

(BPM) for consulting support when need be, making the

pool that much bigger.

But what they are here for is not just the sheer size of their

CRM consulting practice, but their creation of a Social

CRM practice in 2009. While it currently is small, with 20

consultants (though, again, they can borrow from within

Cognizant for stuff like CMS integration), I want you to think

about it. Who do you know that has SCRM consultants at

all? Thats 20 more than any other company that Im aware

of in the consulting realm, including the other giants like

Accenture. The fact that Cognizant is creating this nascent

organization not only validates Social CRM as a legitimate

practice (among other things of course) but at the same

time speaks volumes about the visionary leadership of their

vice president of customer solutions, Peter Grambs.

The fact that they have a practice is well and good, but

they back the practice up with content and that makes

a huge difference. They are actually developing a Social

CRM framework for both technology and strategy and

investing resources in products that can support them.

For example, they have a sentiment analyzer that I saw

not too long ago that is a solid entry into the tool belt.

This is not a commercial product, but a tool for their

work and their clients to use. Honestly, with not much

more work, it could be a very sellable sentiment analysis

tool - competitive in most ways. To top this off, they

have someone actually positioned as an evangelist, Prem

Kumar, whose responsibility is just that - not sales, not

service, but evangelism for SCRM. Prem, one of the rising

stars of CRM, made his appearance in thought leadership

circles in 2009.

How could I not pick Cognizant?

However, like everyone on this list, Cognizant needs to

continue to support this SCRM practice and grow it in

2010. Budget concerns are with everyone now, and new

and innovative thinking is not usually the last to lose funds

so to speak. But theyre off to a good start. Watch themin 2010 as this thing sprouts.

ELOquA

Eloqua has always

been a top of the

heap kind of marketing automation solution - in my think-

ing, the best of them for a while - formerly very expensive,

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12/34

now better priced than they were. However, for 2010, to

make it onto this list, you have to be in line with where

the market is going -- and social marketing integration

is one of the key places it is going. Eloqua is up to the

challenge, going well beyond just the nonetheless valu-

able Share-to-Social that many marketing automation

(especially email marketing) rms have embedded in

their feature set. This year, Eloqua went horizontal and

vertical when it came to expanding their already classic

marketing automation platform. On the one hand, they

added social media monitoring generally and share-to-

social for their email capabilities. Even better, they are

integrating with the Pedowitz Groups Sweet Suite, a

comprehensive social marketing suite that allows real time

monitoring of prospects and customers and then, based

on the response, can initiate appropriate and sometimes

automated responses and offers - and so much more

than that. Sweet Suite is currently integrated with Eloqua

right down to the dashboard.

Its easy to conclude that Eloqua has rightfully swallowed

the social marketing Kool Aid. But lets also see, via CRM

industry thought leader Bruce Culberts wordsmithing,

what Eloqua has in store in 2010 and three reasons why

they belong on this list:

1. Grot in te Global Enterprise: Eloqua is a

workhorse in the enterprise and currently has

one of the most comprehensive solutions for

sophisticated multichannel Marketing Automa-

tion for global companies. Large deployments

are not unusual for Eloqua. Their ability to

provide customers the capability to scale and

process millions of automated marketing and

sales transaction with large data sets is truly

impressive. Eloqua has international language

and global product support, a mature API and a

number of successful integrations with complex

legacy systems. As multinational companies ag-

gressively deploy Marketing Automation in 2010

Eloqua should benet greatly.

2. Prodct Direction: Eloqua has big plans in

2010 to release a whole new architecture,

data model and user interface. You will hardly

recognize the new Eloqua, yet you will because

the new interface is very marketing and sales

user friendly and designed more as a Web 2.0

application with emphasis on ease of use. In

the backend they will be offering improvements

and more exibility in almost every aspect of

the offering. With these improvements and

advancements Eloqua looks to once again setthe standard for Marketing Automation.

3. Good People and Spport: In working directly

with Eloqua I have found the people to be

very committed to their customers success.

They are easy to work with and do what they

commit to. They have a rich set of intellectual

capital and a very robust knowledge portal to

share these best practices with both customers

and partners. They provide multiple levels of

support for a customer including global product

support, dedicated customer success mangers,

and a robust set of global partners ready to help

clients leverage their investment in Eloqua.

Good enough for me. Now Eloqua has to live up to all

these expectations in 2010. Last year, they were on

revisit this year they made it.

SwORD-CIBOODLE

These guys may have

been my nd of the

year in 2009. I knew

nothing of them until a dear friend of mine, Ted Hartley,

got the job as COO at the company. This got me inter-

ested in seeing what they did and what their product was

like. My professional interest (meaning friendship didnt

buy a free love ya pass to the product) was particularly

piqued after I got a demo of the product in Chicago and

my investigation grew. I spoke with them, saw the product

in action, met with their customers and came to the con-

clusion that they did something for the customer service

world incredibly well - better than any other product I saw.

That would be keeping the ordinary, ordinary.

Keeping the ordinary, ordinary is perhaps the most

important aspect of what a customer service applica-

tion can support. Most customer service actions are not

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13/34

particularly emotional exceptions -- like complaints and

the meltdowns and inadequacies associated with them.

The vast majority of customer service inquiries are just

ordinary e.g. the address of something, or how to do

something. Many can be handled without personal direct

contact with an agent via knowledge bases and web self-

service. However, if the contact is an ordinary inquiry,

screwing it up creates an immensely dissatised customer

because they would have had low expectations unfullled.

Not bad, but a utilitarian low level. However, by being

able to handle thousands of inquiries a day and keeping

the ordinary, ordinary you have immensely beneted the

company and customer.

Of course, our industry cant just call it that so we have to

create categories to explain things. So we created what

Forrester called process-based CRM. This would be a

focus around providing well-integrated, scalable embed-

ded best practices solution that a large enterprise could

adopt. In fact, Forrester did a process-based CRM Wave

in 2009 that Sword-Ciboodle won.

The accolades came for them beyond that. This com-

pany not only won numerous awards including a coveted

(by me) CRM at the Speed of Light 4th Edition SuperStah!

award for customer service. They are quadrupling their

U.S. workforce, hiring like crazy to be able to meet and

sustain the strong interest they are seeing in their solution.

But...2010 promises to be an important year for them

(for everyone it seems). Social CRM needs to be on their

agenda to continue to be both interesting to potential cus-

tomers for them, and to be able to provide support for the

customer engagement strategies at the customer service

level for those who need technology to do that. How theydo that - build or buy or partner - is moot in their case.

They could go on as they currently are constructed and, I

suspect, they will continue to be successful. But to really

crack through, providing some Social CRM capabilities in

2010 is the way that they are going to have to go to keep

the ordinary, ordinary.

SAS

This choice, I have to admit, is

both one that makes me happy

and one that Im almost reluctant to make. On the plus

side, they are a company that Ive admired for their

culture forever. First, they are consistently named one of

the best places in the United States to work for year after

year. Second, they dont stray from what they do extreme-

ly well, meaning they build on their strength as a rm that

makes analytics tools. Third, in a somewhat myopic but

still productive way, they are attuned to what are typically

going to be the contemporary trends that will have a last-

ing impact - meaning arent fads - and then develop the

tools that businesses need - provided that its in the realm

of what SAS does really well.

Hopefully, that makes sense to you. What I mean is

simple. SAS in 2009, decided that since analytics on the

on the one hand, and management on the other are their

strong suits, they need to develop products that will take

the social data, slice it, dice it and come up with insights

- not just data aggregation and some organized way of

looking at it. To that end, they are looking at the broad

brush stroke - capturing the data from the unstructured

world of conversation - but also being able to be granular

- who are the inuencers and who do they inuence. Their

overall Marketing and Customer Experience toolsets are

incredibly deep, play to their strengths, and are potential

market leaders, especially around customer experience

and now, social network analysis, a particularly exciting

tool that will help identify key inuencers in its positive

role and do fraud detection in its preventive role.

Additionally, they are nallystarting to pay attention to

mind share, using the incredibly capable Angela Lip-

scomb to reach out to analysts etc. This is just a start.

All in all, SAS nally is making the social CRM grade -

long overdue but a beginning.

But what makes me reluctant is what always has. I think

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that they continue to be decient in how they position

themselves in the market. Their approaches are bland and

traditional, no matter how hard they try to spice them up

or make them relevant. The best they achieve is cute

with their You Can ads. While I understand tradition -

there is a comfort level that 30 years of business success

provides - what I dont understand is why SAS, which

has exceptional products when it comes to customer

experience, dont build their campaigns and channels to

the rhythm of the social customers expected experience.

Everyone else is doing or attempting to do just that.

My concern is thus - even with a great product set, if you

dont market well, if you dont capture mind share - if

you dont feel the beat of the social customer, you

can suffer. So 2010 puts SAS in a great but dangerous

place, They are nailing it with their products but they have

to step up with a much better go to market strategy.

They are doing a few things in that direction. Hopefully,

because I really like companies that treat their employees

well, they will succeed.

SuGARCRm

SugarCRM has

always been a

company well worth watching -- both for their successes

and for their somewhat puzzling transformations. From

my perspective, as puzzling as they can be, they have

been more successful than not and they have had an

impact on the market which far exceeds their size.

One reason for their success is that they have a lot to

offer in the marketplace. Their 30,000-strong development

community and the release of a strong new version in

SugarCRM 5.5 bode well for them. Theyve been add-

ing Cloud Connectors that will tie the Sugar system to

third party data sources including Hoovers, Jigsaw and

Zoominfo - all smart choices. They have a strong mobile

administration capability and many mobile vendors are

tying their apps to SugarCRM, as are social vendors like

InsideView. They have a social feed builder of sorts that

resembles but is not as strong as salesforce Chatters

social feeds - allowing you as an internal customer to

subscribe to activity within the company. Their open

source developers community SugarForge had one of

its members create a connector to allow Twitter users to

tweet inside the Sugar system. SugarForge has been a

rich source of capabilities for SugarCRM. They alleviate

the quality control concerns by making sure that core

functionality is developed by internal teams, not Sugar-

Forge, though the talent on SugarForge is unmistakable.

In addition to their strategy for continuous improvement

(though not revolutionary innovation), they also understand

that the customer is looking for stability, too. To that ef-

fect, in 2009, they changed their pricing with Community

Edition remaining free, Pro at $360 per user per year, and

Enterprise at $600 per user per year. Thats right. Per year.

They decided to go to a completely partner-driven sales

model which, given their past history with partner pro-

grams, was a difcult move to make. Larry Augustin, in a

useful video interview with the VAR Guy, claims that two-

thirds of SugarCRMs revenue comes from the channel

now - which indicates to me that one-third comes from

direct sales. Perhaps they are rethinking a pure partner

channel, or else its just a long transition to make.

One thing that sparked their moves was a change of

CEO this year which, regardless of merit, creates some

turmoil as the new guy who is actually a shareholder of

SugarCRM -- Larry Augustin, a very capable guy -- has

to stamp the company with his unique signature in order

for things to move forward. That takes time - and time is

precious in a roiling, ever changing, customer-demanding

market - though I have no doubt they will make thechanges work for them.

However, this is also a big transition year for SugarCRM

because they need to stop seeing themselves as the

open source CRM alternative. Yes, they are that, but

they also are the only real open source player of any

consequence and, when it boils down to it, most of the

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regular players now have open source components

which mitigate an open source CRM alternative as

something of great value. Which means open source is

less of a differentiator than it used to be.

Plus, they have some very aggressive goals in 2010, look-

ing to double their business which is pretty aggressive

no matter how you cut it.

Their very success means that they have to position

themselves differently in the market place. Theyve

dened the open source market in CRM. They now have

to prove that they provide more than that. They provide a

exible, well-supported platform that can be delivered in

any way the customer likes - on premise or on demand

for a justiable price. While they remain decient in social

tools as of now, its to their credit that they are getting

started there. But whether or not they can come up

with a clear way of differentiation beyond Open Source

remains to be seen. They are a talented, exciting bunch.

Now comes the tough part.

hELPSTREAm

In 2009, Help-

stream was

one of the companies that I saw as a harbinger of things to

come - a company whose products actually reected Social

CRM with a focus on service communities as a business

model for companies. Even though they were light on

agent-based capabilities in any traditional sense, they had

enough chops to integrate a strong workow and business

rules engine so that problems that customers raised or

even solved could be routed to the appropriate parties or

service answers could be integrated into a knowledge base.

In other words, they were a solution with a new model that

was gaining credence as they delivered the model.

But that hasnt only been the strength of their solution.

CEOed rst by Tony Nemelka and then Bob Wareld,

they had two intellectually strong leaders who have led

them to a buzzworthy leadership position when it came to

the Social CRM market and to some thought leadership

in the space also, which is highly unusual for a vendor

company of their size. Theyve done a very good ebook

on Social CRM (registration necessary). They tout a

Social CRM Virtuous Cycle (a kind of very coolly

medieval name) which places customer service at the

pinnacle of Social CRM - which, while probably a little

bit self-serving, is also probably right.

Their long-standing (such as it is) strategy deserves some

kudos, too. Among other aspects, theyve been integrat-

ing with the more traditional (whatever that means)

CRM systems. For example, they now are partnered with

marketing automation up and comer Marketo and with

Eloqua (see above). Another aspect: Theyre integrated

with salesforce.com and Oracle CRM on Demand.

But their strategy goes well beyond simple integration

with CRM or social systems. Its probably best reected

by the Marketo alliance really, which is a way of provid-

ing the missing pieces that a company might need

- as components or as a platform. Helpstream denes

itself as the in betweenness (though thats my term,

not theirs) when it comes to Social CRM. Their strong

workow and business rules engine can be an asset to

companies that are trying to provide social tools but have

no workow or business rules engine - a necessary CRM

component. Their customer communities can be used

as possible components for companies that have a more

traditional agent-based model so that the contemporary

and traditional approaches to customer service can meld.

Using the model they seem to have with Marketo, they

provide the customer service component of a Social CRM

suite, while Marketo provides the marketing pillar. (NB:

For some reason, Marketos sales pillar is the Salesforce.

com Twitter integration, which is one of the reasons that

Marketo is on my revisit list, not my watch list). All in all,

Helpstream is a company that provides solid products/

services, has an interesting and differentiable strategy

and, a rarity, has a strong visionary leadership.

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But I do have a problem with them, though its not a

problem the way you might think of one.

Simply put, I cant get a handle on how well or poorly they

are actually doing. Ive seen their ROI numbers, when it

comes to customer community solutions for customer

service problems. They have a nice looking customer list

with a number of high tech customers and some marquee

names like Toshiba and Johns Hopkins.

But what I dont know and cant seem to nd out is how

is exactly how they are doing - what their pipeline is

like, how customers are responding, what their revenue

numbers are, what they are planning for 2010, and how

big their base is. Some of that is private company lip lock

- I get that. But some of it should be exposed and is just

downright puzzling as to why I cant nd it.

They are going to need to step up their public exposure

next year if they are to continue to be a leading voice in

social CRM. But I remain bullish on these guys because I

know what they have. What they do is the question that I

hope they answer in 2010.

APLICOR

This is,

partly due to

themselves, one of the most underestimated companies

in the CRM world. They are a longstanding SaaS CRM

vendor with a great reputation with their customers, a

solid presence in domains like the public sector, and a

highly scalable product that has done well enough to

create a record revenue year (up 40%) during recession-

driven 2009. They have an incredibly astute and very cool

CEO Chuck Schaefer who thinks at the level of a thought

leader, rather than just a corporate manager, though he

can do that too.

Aplicor is a company that knows how to execute. They

have deployments in the thousands of users that have

been successful over a period of years. They have a

product that functionally competes and in some cases

exceeds the best SaaS products on the market.

They are decient in two areas - rst the execution of

social capabilities with their CRM platform, something

necessary for social customer love. Second, marketing,

which seems to be a theme this year. They dont pay

enough attention to getting attention in a marketplace

that is increasingly dened by the number of messages

cluttering up the human individual brain. Attention is a

currency in a manner of speaking and its one currency

Aplicor doesnt trade in. You can only go so long by doing

everything via referral. Thats one avenue among others.

Also, just using social media is a limitation that you dont

want to have, either. Maybe traditional media isnt cool,

but it has some effect on the hearts and minds - though

not often that cost-effective. The combination of differ-

ent traditional and contemporary avenues works best, it

seems -- depending on the company. Most importantly,

though, mindshare matters.

To that end, Aplicor has taken one important step, hiring

Chris Bucholz to run a mostly agnostic social channel

for them, ForecastingClouds.com - a very wise decision.

Chris is one of the true talents in the social CRM world and

the reason that the formerly important InsideCRM was im-

portant at the time. Now he is Aplicors rst step in doing

some seriously good marketing and thought leadership.

But that, course, is not enough. So well see how Aplicor

handles its way-too-low prole in 2010. They got the

tools, now lets see the are.

16

Reisiting Later in 2010

Tree mont List

1. Unica

2. Cast Iron

3. Zoho (CRM)

4. Marketo

5. Maximizer

Six mont List

1. Neocase

2. Parature

3. LoopFuse

4. Genius
http://www.helpstream.com/site_company/customers.htmlhttp://www.helpstream.com/site_company/customers.htmlhttp://twitter.com/cschaefferhttp://twitter.com/cschaefferhttp://www.forecastingclouds.com/http://www.forecastingclouds.com/http://www.unica.com/http://www.castiron.com/http://www.zoho.com/crm/http://www.marketo.com/index.phphttp://www.maximizer.com/http://www.neocasesoftware.com/http://www.parature.com/http://www.loopfuse.com/http://www.genius.com/http://www.genius.com/http://www.loopfuse.com/http://www.parature.com/http://www.neocasesoftware.com/http://www.maximizer.com/http://www.marketo.com/index.phphttp://www.zoho.com/crm/http://www.castiron.com/http://www.unica.com/http://www.forecastingclouds.com/http://www.forecastingclouds.com/http://twitter.com/cschaefferhttp://twitter.com/cschaefferhttp://www.helpstream.com/site_company/customers.htmlhttp://www.helpstream.com/site_company/customers.html


17/34

Part III: Social Copanies and

Social Cannels

This is going to be my most eccentric set of selections

because its a new group coming into an older world

and making claims that they may or may not be able to

support. That means Im going to look at social enti-ties: Companies that encompass community platforms,

social business platforms, social networking platforms,

and social media monitoring capabilities. Channels that

have taken on the role of locations but locations with a

CRM twist as we shall see. Do all the companies that

Im going to put on the watchlist meet the claim of being

social CRM? No, but who cares? None of the companies

or any of the channels meets the criteria for a complete

Social CRM technology suite. What they do provide is amore mature and sophisticated capability to support the

engagement of customers than weve had in the past -

which is the strategy that Social CRM supports. Though

by no means are we in a mature market - puhleeze.

Te Social Copanies

In 2009, the social software vendors began to call them-

selves Social CRM enmasse and rather suddenly. Im not

100% sure why but I have to speculate that there is a lotmore money in calling oneself Social CRM than social me-

dia and it opens the way into an established $13 billion plus

market. Plus, strategically, it allows access to both major

enterprise software vendors for partnerships and directly

to larger enterprises. Social software originated on the

consumer side but the market for them is on the business

side - which they clearly are aware of and which will drive a

different set of behaviors by them then they are used to.

But thats speculative and not meant to be derogatory in

any way. That is the reality and they were recognizing the

reality of the marketplace.

However, that also created a good deal of confusion and

some sadly overextended discussions on what was Social

CRM (good for awhile and then not so good) and who

was Social CRM and who wasnt. My who at this point

is who cares?

Several of the social vendors who make the Social CRM

claim are productively doing what they should to be part

of the space. Ive chosen ve of them that I think make

the grade and are doing everything they can to be worth

watching in 2010.

LIThIum

Unlike the bulk of the

companies on this

watchlist, Lithium actu-

ally has done the right things from both a thought leader-

ship and a marketing standpoint to position themselves as

a Social CRM company (though I know theyd like to be

the Social CRM company). When it comes to creating a

market presence, the always charming and smart Sanjay

Dholakia, CMO of Lithium, does a really good job. For

example, if you remember earlier this year (and if you care

at all), Lithium held the First Social CRM Virtual Summit, es-

sentially pulling a coup. They had a superpowered group of

speakers at the event - so to speak - including, ahem, me;

Brent Leary; Ray Wang: Jeremiah Owyang; and Dr. Natalie

Petouhoff (all on my analysts all stars list) among others,

and they had a stellar attendance with 1,300 folks, about

450 from outside the U.S. (Ahh, love those virtual environ-

ments). Unlike many of the companies on either list, they

dont have a problem marketing even though they might

overreach when it comes to claiming #1 status. There is no

one that has the right to that claim now. Just an FYI.

They also are well nanced, having just received a Series

C funding of $18 million U.S., which will provide them with

a lot of latitude when it comes to building out their story

including the products they need to deliver.

Coupled with their good marketing moves is a solid com-

munity platform.

First and foremost, because Lithium founder Lyle Fong

was one of the worlds greatest gamers, they have a

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http://www.lithium.com/https://www.linkedin.com/reg/join-pprofile?key=1472753&authToken=0oVo&authType=name&lnk=vw_pprofile&locale=en_UShttps://www.linkedin.com/reg/join-pprofile?key=1472753&authToken=0oVo&authType=name&lnk=vw_pprofile&locale=en_UShttp://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Social-CRM-Virtual-Summit/bd-p/VSCRM-2009-11-11;jsessionid=090E1AFC1DD7D3922856868A451E5612http://twitter.com/brentlearyhttp://twitter.com/rwang0http://twitter.com/jowyanghttp://twitter.com/drnataliehttp://twitter.com/drnataliehttp://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100106006176&newsLang=enhttp://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100106006176&newsLang=enhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/lylefonghttp://www.linkedin.com/in/lylefonghttp://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100106006176&newsLang=enhttp://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100106006176&newsLang=enhttp://twitter.com/drnataliehttp://twitter.com/drnataliehttp://twitter.com/jowyanghttp://twitter.com/rwang0http://twitter.com/brentlearyhttp://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Social-CRM-Virtual-Summit/bd-p/VSCRM-2009-11-11;jsessionid=090E1AFC1DD7D3922856868A451E5612https://www.linkedin.com/reg/join-pprofile?key=1472753&authToken=0oVo&authType=name&lnk=vw_pprofile&locale=en_UShttps://www.linkedin.com/reg/join-pprofile?key=1472753&authToken=0oVo&authType=name&lnk=vw_pprofile&locale=en_UShttp://www.lithium.com/


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gamers paradigm which means theyve got a terric

interface and scalability in their DNA.

While there is no time to get into the details of their product

since Id be writing the 5th edition of CRM at the Speed of

Light to have the room to do that, I do want to talk about

one product component. That would be CRM Connect,

their native connector for CRM systems, considered a part

of their Social CRM suite. Lithium, I have to presume, used

CRM Connect when they integrated several years ago with

RightNow. They not only provided the communities for

RightNow customers etc. but also the community platform

that RightNow used until their acquisition of HiveLive.

But and again (there is always a but), the integrations with

CRM seemed to have stopped beyond the original Right-

Now partnership and the usual one with salesforce.

com. There doesnt seem to be much other interaction

with Lithium and the CRM community that I can see. This

isnt meant to go to the strengths or weaknesses of CRM

Connect. It might be a great product - or not - but it

crm watch list 2010

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